Wii U: Game Changer or Late to the Party?
A two-screen pitch for the living room, innovation, or catching up?
Anyone who’s ever played a Wii knows it’s a great party system and a great way to get people involved. While the other consoles chased the multiplayer and online experience, the Wii focused on the family. Nintendo’s goal was to bring people together to have fun, and for a while it worked. The problem is that family gaming only goes so far. It cuts out the serious gamers; it cuts out everyone who wants what Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network offer.
With that in mind, Nintendo built the Wii U, and last night a new Nintendo Direct laid out the details. The Wii U wants to be more than a game console, it wants to be the centre of the living room. The question is whether that’s a genuine game changer or Nintendo turning up late to a party the others have been running for years.
Here’s what Nintendo announced. The television and the Wii U GamePad work as two integrated screens, opening up “asymmetric” play where each player can have different goals, challenges and views within the same shared game. Miiverse, a brand-new communication network, lets players use their Mii to share experiences, discuss games and discover content, surfacing things you’ve played, shown interest in, or that friends are using, so you can challenge them, ask for help on a tough level, or post a share-worthy moment mid-game. The GamePad itself has been redesigned since its 2011 reveal, adding dual analog sticks and doubling as a TV remote even while the console is off, with a separate Wii U Pro Controller available too. And crucially for the install base, every Wii disc and Wii controller works on the Wii U.
It’s a smart, connected pitch, but “the centre of the living room” is exactly the ground Microsoft and Sony have been fighting over for years. The asymmetric GamePad ideas are the genuinely new part; everything else reads like Nintendo finally catching up on the online and social features it skipped last generation. Whether that’s enough to win back the serious gamers it lost, or just enough to keep the family crowd happy, is the whole ballgame.