7:00AM GMT 30 Nov 2012
Comments
It's been a difficult couple of years for Nintendo. Last year saw the Kyoto
video games giant post the first annual loss in their history, as their new
portable games console, 3DS, initially struggled and sales of their
record-breaking Wii console finally began to decline. It was the Wii that,
for many, catapulted video games to the heart of the living room. Its
motion-control revolution appealing to those who had never played a video
game before with an easy to understand concept: swing the remote, and your
character on screen will duplicate it. 97 million consoles sold around the
world confirming that its simple language was universal.
Nintendo's new home console, Wii U, arrives under a heavy burden and without
the simplicity that made its predecessor so easy to sell. Communication has
been a problem for Nintendo since the Wii U and its tablet-esque Gamepad
controller was revealed. Was the Gamepad an add-on for Wii? Was it a
portable attachment?
No and no. Wii U is a brand new home console that connects to your telly and
the Gamepad is its fascinating controller. The new console itself is
high-definition enabled and far more powerful than the Wii. The Wii U will
come in two packages, the basic 8GB white version and the 32GB black premium
edition, though the console is equipped with an SD card slot for you to add
to your memory space. The black Premium console we tested is a lovely piece
of kit too, the physical unit a sleek refinement of the Wii's compact form.
It's longer, but discrete and more pleasing on the eye than its competitors.
Few will be too interested in what's on the outside, of course, preferring to
focus on the Wii U's inner-workings. The Japanese company have been coy
about releasing detailed specifications --their philosophy is to let their
unique control system do the talking for them-- but the Wii U is largely on
par with Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's PlayStation 3 in terms of raw
power, meaning most games will have visual parity. However, the CPU is
reportedly slower and initial testing bears that out. The main hub-screen of
the Wii U is slow to load, and stuttering on a playtest of the Wii U version
of FIFA 13 does cause concern. However, this could be poor optimisation for
the game itself and as developers become au fait with the Wii U's specs, we
should see a marked improvement.
There's enough visual splendour in the games made specifically for Wii U to
leave room for optimism too. New Super Mario Bros. U has gorgeous, bright
and crisp visuals, while Ubisoft's ZombiU makes excellent use of light and
shaders to build their grimy vision of London. It's quite possible that
multi-format games will continue to look and run better on Xbox 360 and PS3,
as developers are more familiar with the hardware, but the Wii U exclusive
titles will have some of the best visuals around.
