Nintendo’s Satoru Iwata has been speaking to company shareholders and was asked how the Wii U will fare when Microsoft and Sony release their next gen machines.
“The difference between the Wii U and such console will not be as drastic as what you felt it was between the Wii and the other consoles because there will be fewer and fewer differentiators in graphics,” he claimed.
“Naturally some consumers are very sensitive about such a small difference in graphics so that we will make efforts to make the most of the performance of the Wii U to keep up with technological innovations and not to make the system out-of-date soon,” he added.
Meanwhile Microsoft have been having a nosey round the Wii U and have decided that the machine is destined to recieve a load of Xbox 360 shovelware ports.
“They are really making an on-ramp for the back catalog of games that are on 360. It is easy for those games to move over to the Wii U. They’ve moved the buttons around, and they’ve made a controller that feels familiar for 360 gamers, so I get why they are putting those pieces together,” he said
“They are building a platform that is effectively a 360 when you think of graphical capability,” he concluded.
Personally I’m inclined to agree with Microsoft, what do you think?
Dom El
Fundamentally, Nintendo consoles exist to host Nintendo software. It’s never been about technological superiority, rather functionality, and so far that’s served them relatively well over the years.
As such, the Wii U will almost certainly serve them relatively well in the upcoming generation, though as others have stated it’s unlikely to reach the peaks the Wii did with its breakthrough to the casual market. It will however be the only place to play the next big-screen editions of Mario, Zelda, Metroid, & Donkey Kong, and I can’t see that failing to connect with a proportion of gamers.
I’m sure there will be lazy ports of some PS3/360 games, and likely diminished versions of PS4/720 software as well; but Nintendo will still have their games, that will make the best use of their hardware, and I for one will always be interested in that.
BerackyWack
Its definitely not going to have the same power as the new Xbox or Playstation, but it will have its core games that are great. Like Zelda, Mario, Mario Kart, Super smash bros and the like. All great games that I will be interested in but not going to pay over the odds for it.
The Lone Steven
I agree with MS and Ninty are making a huge mistake if they continue with turning the Wii U into the Wii 360 but with a touchpad. But if the Wii U is basically a 360, won’t it mean the dashboard will be cluttered with adverts? :p
I think the Wii U will struggle for a few years as the Wii crowd won’t be convinced by it as they have zumba and probably don’t want to spend a lot of cash upgrading to a new console. But if ninty can get a lot and i mean a lot of third party mainstream games on the Wii U, it will put up a decent fight. :) Or they could just release Mario presents another Mario game on this Ninty console as well as another Mario game because it’s fecking Mario. Or Mario the 50th for short. ;)
BalramRules
I’m pretty sure that Sony also disagree. Wii U is totally PS2-Gen. ;)