
80% ???
From reading the review, it seems that there are many more negative points being raised than positive ones, so how on earth is this worth an 80% score?
From the review I'd have expected no more than 65%
Six years ago Nintendo brought gaming to the masses with the Wii, now it’s hoping to repeat the trick. The Wii U signals not only Nintendo’s first foray into HD, but the arrival of a new peripheral for us to get to grips with in the shape of the Wii U GamePad and its ‘asymmetric’ gameplay. Wii U Playing the field: Nintendo's …
It's not about the number of points, it's about their weighting.
This is not a hardcore gaming machine - to 99% of this console's target market the lack of 5.1 surround on 2D Mario is not going to be an equal negative to, say, the positive of playing on the pad while the TV is in use.
I've had almost every console since the Megadrive, and the Wii has been a storming success with various members of my family who have never even uttered the word 'graphics'. This is the target market, and I know they will love the gamepad, the ergonomics, the style of games, etc.
"No Dolby support and no optical output means that, unless your set-up supports LPCM 5.1 via a HD cable, you can forget about hooking the Wii U up to your surround sound system"
so, any HDMI amp will be fine then? :)
not that im interested. this is basically a slightly more powerful version of consoles that will be updated very soon. so it will be 6 years out of date in a year.
i like the idea of the secondary screen though. i wonder if sony will allow people to use a vita in the same way?
They certainly have plans for that. But MS have a better plan, allowing touch screen phones to take the place of the game pad. Neither option has the "100% of the installed base" guarantee that you get with a wii U and pad. Still, if wii U is a success expect ps4 and 720 to get a pad controller about one year into their respective lives. And hope they don't go the way of Kinect and Move....
That's where nintendo have the advantage, all of wii U's customers will have the interface, so games will be made to use it. It's pretty rare that a later addition, or one that gets tacked on with another device later, ever makes it into the mainstream (light guns anyone?). Nintendo tried it before with the Gamecube/GBA, but the one game that properly supported it (Zelda four swords) required 5 consoles, 4 link leads, and IIRC 5 game copies to use it! The only notable exception I can think of is the PSX/PSone analogue pad, everyone and his dog bought one of those, so games were made exclusively for it.
Vita already does this, and of course has the avantage, that when the Vita is out of range of the PS3, it's a fine standalone console.
You can already buy games that come with both versions at no extra cost, and allow you to take the game on the road with you, and then continue it at home. It uses the PS3's cloud storage functionality.
>You can already buy games that come with both versions at no extra cost, and allow you to take the game on the road with you, and then continue it at home.
For as long as you will be able to buy games for the Velveeta. Considering that it barely sells more units than its largely obsolete predecessor that might not be for much longer (Sega Dreamcast anyone).
@sabroni
I think there is already some support for additional screens with the 360. I think there is an app you can install on your tablet or smartphone that allows you to use it as a secondary screen for some games. Forza Horizon is one that supports this, I think.
"MS have a better plan, allowing touch screen phones to take the place of the game pad."
Yup, that's a better plan IMHO. Go to a party and instead of having to buy 4 controllers, everyone just downloads an app and joins in. Better for users, but MS may miss out on some accessory sales.
Assuming the MS app is free of course, I haven't checked...
"i like the idea of the secondary screen though. i wonder if sony will allow people to use a vita in the same way?"
The PSP could be used for remote play and video / music with the PS3. The main limitation was that since it had only one nub there weren't a huge number of games which explicitly supported it. I suppose the Vita could act as a full controller so maybe it could remote play any game with some firmware support.
I wouldn't be surprised if Sony has a lot of patents on the remote play and if Nintendo has licenced them.
I wonder if the new powerful consoles will be huge, noisy, run hot and consume 5 times the power of the Wii U?
Many people these days will consider that sort of hardware to be out of date.
My guess is, the others will compromise. Expect a massive price tag if they go for mega power (which is what the whingers seem to want). The Wii U is the same price as the SNES and N64 with inflation.
Will be interesting to see how this does in todays climate.
Most people I know that bought the Wii that already owned other consoles, found it to be a 5 min wonder. Very few ended up buying more than one or two more games for it.
Most of those that liked the Wii were the more casual gamer but even then, many I know have only bought a handful of games or use just just for Wii Fit etc.
But that was then. Now most people have powerful phones or tablets. Since the day I first got my iphone (then android tablet, then ipad) my PSP and DS have never been turned on as there's simply no need for them.
Most of the people that found the Wii to be a 5 min wonder are hardly likely to buy the Wii U (which is the vast majority of Wii owners I know).
Many of the casual gamers that fell in love with the Wii now enjoy things like facebook type games just as much and I doubt that many will be in a rush to have the next gen Wii
I could be wrong (have been many times before).
Just not representative of all. In our house I'd say Wii gets the least game use compared to 360, iPad or iPods. However, it does get used regularly for dance, tennis and balance games, i.e. the stuff our other platforms can't do.
I avoid the Wii board like the bloody plague as it just keeps reminding me how porky I am. Damn thing.
I can't see us getting a Wii U soon. There's enough clobber with Wii remotes/nunchuks/wheels/board etc
I think I missed half of the review. This seems to basically be a rundown of the hardware features, which you could've done the day it came out, or even from a hardware preview. Any experiences of actually playing asymmetrically (quotation marks not needed)? Or really of playing anything at all? Other than the sound technology the games use?
I don't generally play console games, I brought the WII for its innovative controls, at the time it was the only way to really get off the sofa and enjoy a game, and it is great fun with a few mates and beers, or with the kids.. this seems to be moving back towards sitting on the sofa playing games... If I want that I have a quad core phone in my pocket that can play 3D Games with ease wherever I am not just within 5 meters of a box...
So this is definitely a fail from nintendo for me..
I am now going to wait for the XBox replacement to come out, hopefully with an improved Kinect as I am quite keen on actually standing and playing a game rather than sitting on my arse, I do that all day at work!
"I brought the WII for its innovative controls, at the time it was the only way to really get off the sofa and enjoy a game, and it is great fun with a few mates and beers, or with the kids.. this seems to be moving back towards sitting on the sofa playing games..."
That was, pretty much, my first thoughts on the WiiU.
I had considered one as an "upgrade" to the Wii, but as it appears that the thing has to be rebooted in some kind of low resolution compatibility mode to play legacy Wii Games there seems little point, and I see little attraction with the Game Pad.
The original Wii offered something different to the siiting-on-your-arse-twiddling-your-thumbs "traditional" gameplay, which is why people bought into it. This does seem a step backwards and while the Game Pad is different, it doesn't have that "Hey, Wow, want one!!" appeal I felt when I first saw the original Wii in action.
Looks promising that they have included a facility to transfer data across. Hopefully that applies to paid purchases as well as saved game data. Shame it looks like compatibility is a bit of a mode-based fudge though - this could have been a real winner if designed so that it was essentially an original Wii with some extra oomph, which could have meant that any title could seamlessly play on any generation device, but with extra features, detail etc enabled on the U. With consoles typically sold as loss leaders, that could have played very nicely into the hands of Nintendo, and ease across a customer base that might take a little bit of persuading to make the jump otherwise.
"Nope, I thought the wii was innovative but the wii-u brings nothing new to the table."
As a fan of the motion controllers, I'd argue wii-u brings less to the table.
The motion controllers were the key innovation in the wii, hard to understand why they got rid of them...
"The motion controllers were the key innovation in the wii, hard to understand why they got rid of them..." the Wii U still uses the same motion controllers as before, they've not gone anywhere.
This is an upgraded Wii U, with a new funky controller, PS4 will be a better PS3, XBox 720 will be a better XBOX. Is anyone expecting anything else from this generation of consoles?
question, does the UK version of the Wii U require the oversized day-one patch? Or did Nintendo have the time to pre-patch the UK version (or include a disc with the patch in the box)?
Regarding the processor speed, the article indicate that it is 3GHz. To my knowledge Nintendo never released the processor details, the closets we have to the processor details is some twitter posts by a hardware hackers who put the speed at 1.2GHz, and the GPU speed at 580MHz.
Reference: http://kotaku.com/5964432/hacker-says-hes-cracked-open-the-wii-u-cpu-is-nothing-to-write-home-about
I may be wrong, but I think I read somewhere that Nintendo only need to sell one game title per Wii U to break even. I think they'll probably survive. As for me, I'll wait and see what the other consoles are like. Within the next year we'll see an XBOX, a Playstation, an OUYA and maybe even something from Valve.
Interesting times.
They are renowned for it, comes with being kid friendly I guess. My launch wii is still running fine, and before all the haters chip it yes it has been used pretty much continuously since I bought it! Had to get a lens cleaner so it'd play Sakura Wars a few years ago (it's dual layer) but apart from that it's a rock solid piece of kit.
Be interesting to see if 720 and ps4 learn from their predecessor's teething problems and are similarly robust...
My launch 60GB PS3 is still perfect and is 100% bang upto date after 6 years. Not sure what PS3 teething problems you refer to...
It's the best money I have spend on ANY gadget. It's used every single night of the week, for either Blu-Ray, movie streaming, gaming, Loveflim or iPlayer.
"Suggested Price: £260 (basic) £310 (premium)"
I paid £199 for the premium on Amazon.
I got lucky and happened to hit the site during a pricing error in mid-September. The error was fixed literally minutes later when my friend tried to order one at that price. I half expected them to cancel it, but my order dispatched yesterday and it should be arriving tomorrow. :)
I would not have paid £310 for the Wii U (or £260 for the basic for that matter), but I do enjoy some Nintendo franchises.
My elderly PS3 has on-board storage (160 Gb - not much, but quite a bit better than 8 Gb...), supports BD, DVD and optical 5.1 output, HD video and allowed me to get rid of all the other boxes under the telly except for the Sky box ( content streamer for networked stuff, DVD player et al) and play games too.
Why would I replace it with a Wii U when I could just go and buy an actual iPad for the same money ? Is assymetric gameplay worth that ? I haven't tried it but I struggle to see how it could be all that good.
Your PS3 actually supports 7.1 audio.... And BD, and one of the best DVD upscalers on the market, and the latest 3D and HDMI specs...
All amazing considering it's over 5 years old... Just shows how antiquated the 360, Wii and Wii-U really are.
Have they got the Wii-U playing DVD's even yet?
It runs existing Wii games perfectly, apparently.
There are moves afoot to let you move your existing Wii download/VC/Wii content over to it too.
But if you just want a Wii, get one - they're a third of the price of a Wii U (and will also play Gamecube games if you get the older, squarer model).
I failed to see the point of this when it was announced and I'm non the wiser now, I have the original Wii and do not see the point to the new one, I thought they would do more with motion control, since they started the whole thing. But we've gone from bouncing around the room, to sitting on one's ass with a tablet, I think its going backwards, sorry, no sale.
Given that it's not going for the same market as the PS3/Xbox360, it'd be quite nice to be able to use it to stream media off the network, or play DVDs. I've recently persuaded an old Wii to do this, and I cannot for the life of me see why Nintendo didn't enable this "out of the box" - didn't Sony do quite well out trumpeting the PS2/3's DVD/Blu-ray playback abilities?
I am short sighted so glasses on when looking at TV, look down at the pad and I won't be able to see it properly.
This will be a problem for those that are long sighted as well.
This is normally not an issue if looking at pad for information etc as there is time to remove/change glasses, but during a fast paced game - deal breaker for the likes of me.
The GamePad’s screen at 854 x 480 and 158ppi, while not as sharp as the iPad, still looks bright, vibrant and near enough to HD to mean you won’t miss it.
That's nowhere effing near HD and given you can get better screens on £60 knockoff Chinese Android tablets, it's an utter insult to anyone shelling out 2-300 quid for one of these.
Curious about the history of home computing both west and east of the iron curtain? Berlin's ComputerSpieleMuseum in Germany's capital has you covered.
Museum director Matthias Oborski was The Register's guide around the ground floor site of the museum, which is located among the Soviet buildings of Berlin's Karl-Marx-Allee (a five-minute metro ride from Alexanderplatz, or 25-minute walk if you want to take in the brutalist architecture).
After the reception, with its impressive Soviet-era mosaic still in-situ behind the cheerful staff, there is a temporary exhibition celebrating the role of food in computer games. Oborski winced a little at the word "temporary" – it had been set up in 2019 and was still in place due, mainly, to the events of the last few years.
After a nine month pause, Beijing has finally granted new video game licenses to 45 titles.
The approvals arrived on Monday through China's National Press and Publication Administration (NPPA). The newly approved titles hail from video game makers Lilith Games, Baidu, XD, and Seasun Entertainment – but curiously not Chinese gaming giants NetEase nor Tencent.
China uniquely requires video game publishers to secure regulatory approval ahead of release, and NPPA suddenly ceased granting approvals back in July 2021. Prior to the halt, between 80 and 100 video games were approved monthly. The last batch, released in July, contained 87 titles.
Viral online puzzle game Wordle has been acquired by The New York Times Company (NYTCo), publisher of The New York Times.
The game requires players to guess a five-letter word within six turns – a task made easier by Wordle offering clues that players have chosen letters used in the word, and whether or not they are in the right position. Gameplay is similar to codebreaking pegboard game Mastermind, but with 26 different "pegs" – and of course the answer has to be an English word. A single puzzle is offered daily.
Wordle was created by a sole developer, Josh Wardle, as a lockdown distraction for his partner. It took off when Wardle added a feature allowing players to share their results, and is now thought to have millions of daily users – up from mere thousands in October 2021.
A software upgrade will disable a "feature" that allows the touchscreen on Tesla cars to play video games - even while the vehicles are in motion- after the USA's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) investigated a complaint about the tech.
The feature, called "Passenger Play", has been available since 2020 in the Tesla Model 3, S, X, and Y. As the name implies, it was aimed at passengers. Prior to 2020, occupants of the car could only play games while the vehicle was in park.
“Following the opening of a preliminary evaluation of Tesla’s ‘Passenger Play,’ Tesla informed the agency that it is changing the functionality of this feature. In a new software update, “Passenger Play” will now be locked and unusable when the vehicle is in motion,” said a statement from NHTSA.
The RPG Greetings, traveller, and welcome back to The Register Plays Games, our (sometimes) monthly gaming column. At long last, New World is out and we've been diligently grinding our faces off to answer the question: Can Jeff "mountains of cash" Bezos make a decent MMO?
On 28 September, Amazon Games released its first serious, big-boy-pants-on video game: New World. Why does this matter? First of all, it's Amazon. Not content with anything short of global domination, Jeff Bezos' e-commerce and cloud computing juggernaut has had a sticky start with gaming – two titles prior to New World, Breakaway and Crucible, were scrapped – and people would love to see the venture fail. I would love to see the venture fail.
Secondly, New World is an MMORPG. That's "massively multiplayer online roleplaying game" to the untainted. As far as game development goes, it's hard to think of a more complicated and ambitious genre, especially as this has transpired to be Amazon's "debut" outside of the mobile platform.
The RPG Greetings, traveller, and welcome back to The Register Plays Games, our monthly gaming column. 2021 continues to move slowly for the world's biggest entertainment industry and while we did ask Square Enix for a copy of new looter-shooter Outriders, they blanked us. So instead we are picking up a style of game Square is better known for – Octopath Traveler, originally a Nintendo Switch exclusive now on PC.
The release of Final Fantasy VII in 1997 was a bit of a watershed moment for '80s kids. The main character, Cloud Strife, gazed out moodily from the covers of various PlayStation and gaming magazines for months on end, and we all thought his ridiculous, spiky blond hair and oversized sword were cool as heck. Pretty much everyone who was lucky enough to own Sony's first console grabbed the game, and it continues to hold a special place in the hearts of many.
If you live under a rock, Final Fantasy is pretty much the definitive JRPG (Japanese roleplaying game), a distinct take on the genre mainly characterised by turn-based squad combat, walking about pressing "A" on people and things, and reading a lot of dialogue.
Since early September, Josh Muir and five other maintainers of the noblox.js
package, have been trying to prevent cybercriminals from distributing ransomware through similarly named code libraries.
Noblox.js
is a wrapper for the Roblox API, which many gamers use to automate interactions with the hugely popular Roblox game platform. And for the past few months the software has been targeted by "a user who is hell-bent on attacking our user-base with malware, and continues to make packages to this end," explained Muir in an email to The Register.
This miscreant, with the assistance of at least one other, has been "typosquatting" the noblox.js
package by uploading similarly named packages that deliver ransomware to NPM, a registry for open source JavaScript libraries, and then promoting the malware-laden files via Discord, a messaging and chat service.
The RPG Greetings, traveller, and welcome back to The Register Plays Games, our monthly gaming column. Not that anybody noticed but we skipped the last edition for a number of reasons. 1) Too many betas. Though we were monitoring developments in potential World of Warcraft killer New World and Left 4 Dead's spiritual successor, Back 4 Blood, we didn't see anything that could be discussed fairly. 2) Generally no new full releases of interest. 3) We had to RMA a graphics card and got sad. However, when setting out the vision for this column, there were no hard and fast rules about what got covered. So this time we're headed back to 2014 and a crumbling space station where something extremely violent and dangerous lurks in the shadows…
I own two copies of Alien: Isolation. The first was bought on disc for the Xbox One at release seven years ago. At this point I had never truly committed to a "survival horror" simply because, while horror films and literature are great, horror games are another kettle of fish.
The flicking of pages and glow from the big screen are gentle reminders that you are "safe". But gaming, as a far more immersive and active (dare I say) art form, is too real. Done well, your body and mind can forget that you're not actually about to be murdered – at least in my case.
Analysis Amazon Game Studios has reportedly dropped terms in its employment contract that gave the internet giant a license to the intellectual property created by employees, even to games they develop on their own time.
The expansive contractual terms received some attention last month when James Liu, a software engineer at Google, recounted via Twitter how in 2018 he turned down a job offer at Amazon "due to absolutely draconian rules regarding hobbyist game dev."
His Twitter post from July 6, 2021, since deleted, included a screenshot of a contractual agreement that laid out specific terms by which employees were allowed to develop or release "Personal Games."
Folks in the US will see the transformative effects of 5G first in the areas of online gaming and fixed wireless broadband internet connections, Ericsson North America CEO Niklas Heuveldop said on Thursday.
"When it comes to new services, look at gaming as one of the sectors that holds promise for 5G. You need the unique throughput that 5G offers ... and the instant response," he said during a webcast hosted by The Washington Post. And yes, Heuveldop works for the Ericsson that makes and sells 5G network equipment.
5G networks – which promise increased capacity as well as high throughput and low latency – could move game console hardware from the edge of your furniture to the edge of a network, he said, adding that is already happening in places such as South Korea, where high-performance 5G networks are operational. That is to say, the gameplay processing is done remotely and piped to a relatively simple terminal in your home, potentially using 5G if the connectivity is available.
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