Recently I described the just-revealed Wii U to a friend, and he said, "so it's basically Wii HD with a new controller?" And of course you could say it is, in the way you could say the PS3 is an HD PS2. The difference being, the PS3, like the Xbox 360, was a simple upgrade on a console that offered a lot more power but ultimately nothing else new at all. That cannot be said of the Wii U.
Nintendo did not go the game-console-on-steroids route. With the Wii, they zigged when the other guys zagged, focusing not on HD and high frame rates but instead on creating a new approach to gameplay that appealed to people who, up until the Wii, had no interest in video games at all.
While some analysts will argue that the Wii U is too little too late, because Nintendo's competitors will probably come out with something twice as powerful in a couple of years, Nintendo has clearly decided that zagging works for them. Now that Microsoft and Sony have both followed Nintendo's gesture-gaming lead, Nintendo is easing back a little on Wii-style gesture gaming rather than trying to push it to a new level. Instead, they are betting the farm on the same sort of innovation that has made the Wii and the DS such huge successes.
The interesting thing about the Wii U is that it is less insistent on its technology than its predecessor. The Wii remote was such a departure from anything before it that games that didn't use its unique gesture feature felt like a cheat. But in spite of its odd shape and largish size, functionally the Wii U remote is a variation on a standard analog controller, meaning game designers can create something that really pushes the technology, or they can simply make the exact same game for all three platforms and just add a mapping system or a HUD display or a weapons cache to the Wii U version, which would involve very little extra expense and design time.
The Wii's unique controller and underpowered CPU often forced designers to make entirely separate versions of games from those on other platforms, but with the Wii U a straight port will be possible. So while some people fret that the Wii will be more difficult and expensive to design for, it could actually makes things easier for game developers.
The Wii U will, however, force designers to make a lot of decisions. They can use the new touchscreen controller, but they could also still use the Wii remote and nunchuk which have their own strengths. They can even mix and match controls in multiplayer, making the Wii U the first console capable of asynchronous multiplayer gaming (it could actually be used for a port of the unique multiplayer PC game Savage: The Battle for Newerth, in which one player is commander in a strategy game and the other players his/her troops).
These decisions will be complicated by concerns regarding the other consoles. How much of your resources do you commit to adding features for Kinect and Playstation Move users? How much for the Wii U touch screen. If you use gesture gaming for the Move, do you use the same gesture design for the Wii U at the expense of the touch screen?
I think at least at first designers will all focus on the touch screen, both because it's something new and because all Wii U owners are guaranteed to have one, whereas only a portion of PS3 and 360 owners have gesture gaming devices.
While Nintendo's strategy for the Wii was to pull in non-gamers - the console is hugely popular in senior centers - this time around Nintendo seems intent on getting core gamers. The Wii U Controller is, in a way, already proven among gamers, as the Wii U is essentially an oversized DS, allowing the same sort of gameplay (expect some interesting ports of DS games over the next few years). True, the DS skews younger than the PSP, but once again that has to do with a mix of the graphics obsession of older gamers and of the lack of mature titles on the DS.
This time around Nintendo seems eager to get some of those mature titles. While always known for their poor support of third party publishers, Nintendo seems to have gone courting them, even bringing someone from EA up on stage at their E3 press conference to declaim his admiration for the Wii U. The titles currently known to be slated for the Wii U are heavily tilted to core gaming.
It's unlikely that anyone with a PS3 will run out and buy a Wii U because Darksiders II will be so much cooler with a touchscreen than without, but for people just considering buying a next gen system, that touchscreen could well make them forgo the more conventional consoles.
Obviously there are obstacles to Nintendo's success. For one thing, by introducing a new console when the other two are in the midst of their life cycle, the Wii U will be the most expensive console out there. However, it will probably be far less than the $500 cost of the cheapest launch PS3, and people still bought that. Even in tough economic times there are plenty of people who will buy something if they are excited by it.
There are already a lot of naysayers carping about the Wii U, but there were a lot of naysayers carping about the Wii before it took over the world and changed gaming forever. Nintendo's stock has fallen since they announced the Wii U, presumably because people just aren't sure it's viable. But I think it's brilliant, and for all the naysaying now, I expect Microsoft and Sony are already working on their clones of the technology.
My friend's comment about the Wii U being a Wii HD with a new controller reminds me of the famous dis of the Wii as being the equivalent of two GameCubes duct taped together. It is essentially a rejection of focusing on the stuff other people aren't focusing on. Nintendo continually strives to think outside the box, and critics keep saying, "But what about the box? You're doing a terrible job with the box!" And that is true. Nintendo has, in recent years, done a terrible job with the box, and if what you want is a good, conventional box built on conventional wisdom, then the Wii U looks like a failure waiting to happen, just like the Wii did.
As for me, I think a Wii HD with a really amazing controller is going to be great.
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