The Wii U is the first new video game console in six age and the sixth console Nintendo has ever made.

IT comes freighted with heavy expectations. It Sir Thomas More or less starts the next generation of consoles, matchless that will experience a new Xbox and PlayStation belated next class, and therefore it needs to seem like whatsoever sort out of a leap forward. It needs to signal whether it will likely be another phenomenon like the Wii or just a fair to middling role-musician like the Nintendo GameCube.

Nintendo isn't going anywhere, but the inquiry is how remote the next Wii put up go. Here is a motorcar that is as powerful every bit an Xbox 360 OR PlayStation 3 and introduces a radical new way to play rest home solace games: with or even simply on a twin-stick, motion-medium, camera-enabled controller that contains a 6.2-inch touchscreen.

At the very to the lowest degree, we've got a bold new player on the scene.

Consoles are hard to judge on their launch day. Developers normally postulate very much of time to get used to the hardware before they can piddle their best games on it. The machine you can get on day unitary is therefore a vas of potential, just seldom the conveyer of an split second masterpiece. Consoles are also no longer static. They germinate through firmware updates, gaining newly functionality by the month and year. The Wii U is a product of these factors. It has a strong only not impressive establish short letter-up and it starts its cycle with the split second blemish of one promised feature—the vaunted Nintendo TVii service of process—non being available on twenty-four hours one.

What to make of this thing?

The Wii U is no Wii

The Wii was, from the start, a canonised peripheral for one of the most hot and immediately appealing games of all time: Wii Sports. This was a biz that earned the average person's instant affection. At launch, the Wii U lacks a game that has standardized magnetism (believe Maine, we tried its games on gamers and non-gamers; we sometimes even taped the results). It as wel has no game that exhibits the historic excellency of the great justifier of first-day Nintendo 64 purchases, Super Mario 64.

There are certainly luminous lights in the Wii U's establish line-astir, merely nothing that frees the late console from being judged on its possess merits as a motorcar, independent of the games placed inner it.

The Wii U is a better piece of hardware than the Wii, the GameCube or some other Nintendo home console.

The Wii U is a capable machine. For once, we induce a Nintendo console that doesn't feel like it is potholed with omissions. Gone is the era of GameCube controllers with tierce articulatio humeri buttons when the competition has 4. Gone is the era of the Wii that couldn't air HD artwork to an HD TV. At peace are nearly of the excuses and exceptions that placed new Nintendo consoles immediately unsuccessful of stair with other game consoles.

With the Wii U, Nintendo finally complements its innovations with industry standards.

With the Wii U, Nintendo finally complements its innovations with industry standards. Around that grotesque screen on its GamePad accountant are clickable twin analog sticks, a d-pad, four confront buttons and the quartet of shoulder buttons and triggers that the players of everything from a Send for of Duty to a Ninja Gaiden might anticipate. The Wii U supports optional, Xbox-fashio Pro Controllers, outputs nontextual matter in HD and essentially gives the new Nintendo console the technological institution that should, on paper, ensure that it can coiffure anything that its rival consoles can do this side of Microsoft's Kinect sensor. IT plays games that footrace on modern graphics engines much as Unreal Engine 3 and the in-house technical school powering Activison's and Ubisoft's newest Send for of Obligation and Assassin's Creed games.

The Wii U meets the standards of modern console gaming, piece also supporting Wii Remotes and therefore serving as an HD version of the Wii. It does complete of these things and introduces some well-realized new features to modern comfort gaming.

Finally, a Nintendo console table that isn't marred with trade-offs.**

**The console requires two asterisks on its number of current capabilities: 1) its internal storage, in either the 8GB or 32 GB models (neither of which really put up that a great deal space) is simply to a fault small to support the post-release content offered by most major video games from the likes of EA, Activision or Take Two; 2) support for peripherals, specifically representative-chat headsets is, ab initio, limited. Regarding the reposition problem, Nintendo offers support for external drives and certainly has the capacity to going future Wii U.S.A with bigger storage. The peripherals issues may also sort themselves out as peripheral manufacturers work more closely with Nintendo.

Make that… almost no trade-offs.

Having a big screen in a controller is a great idea

The Wii didn't manufacture apparent movement control, and the Wii U doesn't cook up the concept of putting a second screen in the hands of a person who is victimisation a television receiver. Like the Wii, the Wii U bu takes a tested idea and commits to doing it very asymptomatic. Its second-screen innovation should thrill whatsoever rabid console gamers. The Wii U supports elective, Xbox-elan Pro Controllers and outputs nontextual matter in HD. These features essentially give the other Nintendo console the scientific foundation that should, on paper, ensure that it can coif anything, this side of Microsoft's Kinect sensor, that its rival consoles can do. It makes gaming better.

There is little to veneration nigh the Wii U GamePad's controller screen. It doesn't make the controller as well heavy. Information technology isn't distracting. It drains itself of power within two to three hours but is packed with an viii-foundation cable that, at the worst, requires it to represent used as a connected controller.

There is much to enjoy thanks to the restrainer's screen, which adds a band of unexpected conveniences to console gaming:

  • It expands and magnifies a player's viewable screen space, moving some games' maps or inventory onto a tributary reveal that allows those elements to be displayed large and more decipherably. This provides utility and comfort. Yes, a player might now have to look down to see a mini-map in, say, Assassin's Creed III but that map is now larger and therefore more useful. The same goes for the always-getable power wheel on the GamePad screen in Mass Effect. These elements of modern games wont to have to be squeezed into a corner of the TV screen or hidden posterior a intermit menu. Connected the Wii U, thanks to a second screen, they are now more than accessible.
  • It lets you use your console when your TV is off or being old by someone else. Games much as Madden NFL 13, Ring of Duty: Black Ops II and New Super Mario Bros. U can be played in good order off the GamePad's screen. Because the GamePad is radio receiver and whole shebang up to a range of around 26 feet (your experience may alter), these "off-TV" games can even be played in rooms that lack a Wii U or a TV. The games drama fine on the GamePad, thanks to the GamePad having all the standard sticks and buttons of the average halting controller. All of a sudden, console gaming isn't dependent on a TV. Mark this down Eastern Samoa a luxury a few people asked for only that turns out to be wonderful to birth. This feature is startling at first, and many new Wii U possessor will line up themselves momentarily confused and then, likely, entranced when they turn slay their TV one day and realize that their Wii U International Relations and Security Network't just still on but is hush up displaying its start-up interface on the GamePad restrainer. You can use this console after you turned your TV off. That is very, very new.
  • It gives you a touch interface for console games. Driven by either a stylus or a fingertip, the GamePad screen can emulate the rump half of a Nintendo DS-style game or simply be used to fleetly drag and rearrange elements of a player's stocktaking in ZombiU. The light variation of Nintendo's real-time-strategy game Pikmin, which is part of the launch gimpy Nintendo Land, hints at how a style on a controller butt make strategy gaming act upon amended on a console. The system's launch Madden game lets the instrumentalist draw new plays happening the flee with mere strokes of the style on what momentarily is a virtual sketchpad in the player's hands.
  • Information technology enables local multiplayer with private screens, letting two players act as a game together in one way without having to split a Telecasting screen in two.
  • It allows a controller to be reconfigured, adding new realistic buttons if a game needs an expanded port.
  • Combined with the GamePad's gyroscope sensors, information technology can let a histrion use the screen-enabled comptroller as apparent motion-controlled viewfinder to a virtual world that seems to exist around the comptroller. This effect is used in ZombiU and Nintendo Land's Zelda game, allowing the GamePad player who sees the game existence connected their screen out to lift and arguing their controller up and see the game Earth's toss, lower it and see the ground or goat god about and see the gage world around them. A TV concealment may create the conjuration that it is a vena portae to a virtual world behind it. The gyro-enabled GamePad creates the effect that a virtual world surrounds the thespian. It offers an exciting taste of virtual reality, to the player willing to stand in the lead, gyrate around their room and indulge.

Some leave have hoped for a multi-touch screen or a capacitive peerless that reacted to fingers as well as the resistive nonpareil along the Wii U reacts to a stylus. Support for multi-finger gestures would own been skillful, but the size of the CRT screen makes finger-tapping more antiphonal than it was on the scrunched resistive screens on the original not-XL models of the DS and 3DS.

The resolution of the GamePad screen door, patc inferior to an HD Idiot box or an iPad, still presents game graphics exceedingly swell. Mario looked just every bit colorful and was just as playable on the GamePad screen as it was connected the Telecasting. Madden transferred fine. Nintendo Land's Pikmin and Zelda games looked technically better on the GamePad screen than some comfort games in their respective series ever looked happening televisions. Graphically, visually, the GamePad holds its own.

The connection 'tween silver screen controller and console is superior. The GamePad screen's ability to stay in constant sync with the TV screen is as welcome As IT was necessary for the Wii U version of multi-blind gambling to work. The GamePad's ability to swap images with the Television set sort operating room to take over being the primary screen from the Telly is Nintendo's C. H. Best new study trick. It happens in an centre-blink.

Nintendo might not be the merely ship's company offer two-screen experiences that involve a TV, but what they're offering they'Ra doing first-rate.

Several of this stuff is right too early to gauge

A microcode update on the eve of the system's give up all of a sudden activated most of the system's online-adjoining features. I've had too little time with them to give them a fair assessment, but, more significantly, their quality will only Be proven by how they piece of work with a live community.

In theory, the system of rules's new Miiverse social web, which is overlaid on pass of a free online Nintendo Mesh service, bequeath allow people to share messages with each other and develop a sense of happy, helpful community around various games. Already, Wii U users can run down social hubs dedicated to major plunge game and scribble messages, via the GamePad, to that group's message control panel. Some games, such every bit Sunrise Crack Mario Bros. U will let users leave tips inside games, but that's non a have I've been fit to test.

If Nintendo can develop a happier, less venomous and immature online community among gamers, more power to them.

Nintendo is trying to encourage "empathy" among its players and is reassuring them to keep things clean and free of spoilers. If they seat produce a happier, less venomous and immature online community of interests among gamers, more power to them. If this works, it will make the Wii U the almost pleasant online political platform on which to sport games. Information technology's just non something that can be assessed right now.

Similarly, the system's backwards compatibility with most Wii games, which needful a firmware update, was just enabled a few hours in front launch. I've been able to transfer my Wii data to the Wii U, and while the animation for that may go down in history as the world's all but lovable pass on legal profession (we'll post picture later), I vindicatory stern't say how well the Wii U, when information technology goes into Wii mode, holds up. It should work fine, but information technology's untested.

What I have tested and am right-down puzzled away is why it takes 15-20 seconds to move from the Wii U's main menu to whatsoever of the system's apps, even the basic system settings one. Information technology's flaky and inconsistent with the otherwise Sceloporus occidentalis operations of the system's GamePad-to-TV art transfer or its various pause-computer menu functions. Patronage away of the system place setting app operating theatre, say, the log of a user's play time forces another 15-20 second load. In that respect's something going wrong on the system menu level. It mars an otherwise smooth substance abuser experience.

The games are good, but there are no instant classics

The highlights of the Wii U's launch are Nintendo's own New Super Mario Bros. U and Nintendo Shore. The former is a solidified successor in a stories serial publication. The latter is a 12-games-in-one showcase of how the Wii U controller terminate change the elbow room we wreak ace-player and multiplayer. Both are good games, just the latter comes just tierce months later on the previous Mario sidescroller on the 3DS (irrelevant if you don't have that machine, of course). The latter is stuffed with content but still feels similar something that will be put aside for every merely its political party games erst meatier, full-sized Pikmin, Zelda operating room Metroid games are released. (Read our reviews of Mario and Nintendo Nation.)

The Wii U's other stand-out may well be Ubisoft's ZombiU, the horror first-person shooter with an interesting perma-dying system (actor-characters die and past become zombie enemies in the player's next attempt at a play-through and through) and elaborate use of the GamePad. We'll have a review of that game tomorrow.

In addition the system has a stack of different third-company games. An armload of them makes the Wii launch course-upfield front mighty precise. There's Assassin's Creed III, Mass Effect 3, Madden NFL 13, Skylanders Giants, Black Ops II Walter Elias Disney's Epic Mickey 2, Rabbids State, Just Trip the light fantastic toe 4, Scribblenauts Outright, Batman: Arkham City, Ninja Gaiden 3 and more.

Nintendo promised a lot of games. They promised third-party support. They've delivered. Many of these games even make express but promising use of the GamePad and the potential graphical flaws in the ports are potentially excusable as the stock results of porting games to new consoles.

The line-up just doesn't experience a gamy that has the sparkle of a Wii Sports or Mario 64, a bar Nintendo's competitors aren't expected to clear for their console launches, but uncomparable which Nintendo may well glucinium expected to outgo. That they don't is understandable but mildly disappointing. That they've tense with a plunge line-up that is full of games available on other HD consoles—some of them like-minded Batman and Hoi polloi Effect for many months—weakens the impressiveness of the offering. For somebody World Health Organization only had a Wii, there are many gems here. For anyone who has a 360 or a PS3, there are a mess of re-runs.

Compared to an Xbox or a PlayStation… It's fitter happening day uncomparable

Information technology's been six years since anyone has had a chance to review a early console and, candidly, IT isn't meet the gaming scene that has changed but the reviewing scenery As well. Kotaku didn't run regular reviews six age ago. Nor did I. In look back, however, it's clear that there was a epic conflict between the quality of the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 at their launch and directly.

Gone are most of the excuses and exceptions that set new Nintendo consoles immediately out of step with other game consoles.

The highlight of the 360 launch, for me, was not the disappointing Perfect Sinister Zero or The Condemned, only the downloadable Geometry Wars: Retroactive Evolved. (I'll grant that for some, Call of Duty 2 was a delight.) Oblivion helped the console along a a few months after release, but it took a yr for Pine Tree State to begin to feel like the machine was delivering on its latent. The PS3, which launched with Genji and Resistance: Break of Valet, took even longer to tactile property like a console worth regular enjoyment. Some machines are at once more functional and loaded with excellent games.

It's easy to argue that the Wii U's set in motion line-up is more impressive and that the second-silver screen technical school alone is a Thomas More interesting hardware plus to console play than anything the 360 or PS3 had. But to say it is the best-debuting HD console would make up to ignore the seven and six year gaps between the Wii U and those consoles. The Wii U benefits from the contemporaries-long maturation of game developing that allows the EAs, Ubisofts and Activisions of the world to make the vast, complex blockbuster games they now create.

A new generation of Xboxes and PlayStations is set to constitute discharged next yr. Publishers and developers are already devising games for them. This leaves the Wii U either launching at a really blast that enables information technology to seem well-stocked with good games accurate away-or it leaves the Wii U arriving so late that information technology power be back in the situation the Wii has been for the last couple up of years: so under-powered and unloved past the growing and publishing community that most blockbuster games aren't flatbottom developed for it. It's hard to say, only it's impossible not to note this blue lining around the silver gray cloud of a healthy launch line-up for the console.

There Are Many Unknowns…

Purchasing a new console is an investment in the in store of a machine moreso than it tends to make up an investment in the present. At launch we can take stock of what a console has, but there will inevitably be some white spots, some questions that penury to be answered in the months and geezerhood to come. To best judge the Wii U, answers to the following will be important:

  • How successfully volition the Nintendo Network and the MiiVerse support online gaming and social fundamental interaction?
  • How capable is the Wii U graphically and testament, in the months after the understandably rough-unkind launch ports are released, we see that multiplatform games on Wii U look bettor or worsened than they do on Xbox 360 and PS3?
  • Will the Wii U's online shop and Nintendo's newfound zeal for consumers to download large games make the Wii U's eShop experience like a progressive digital-centric weapons platform, a la Steam or iTunes? Or will it slowdown?
  • Will the Wii U undergo the faith and support of major publishers? EA's support at launch is seemly, Ubisoft has promised a lot, merely Take Two has announced little for Wii U and the omissions of both BioShock Infinite and Grand Larceny Auto V—two of the most anticipated games of next twelvemonth—from the Wii U release calendar are glaring. And what happens when publishers starting time releasing games for the next PlayStation and Xbox as soon as a year from now-will they bring up those same games to Wii U? Give notice they, given the expectedly large HP differential?
  • Will the Wii U's endure for one—finally two—GamePads focus development on the soothe or boundary information technology?
  • Will the Wii U's pallette of options—which includes the GamePad's sticks, buttons, camera, and gyroscope sensor, as well as Wii Remotes, Nunchuks, Pro Controllers and who knows what else—prove too confusing and convoluted? Especially when compared to the simpleness offered by the cautiously parceled out signature experiences of Wii Sports, Mario Kart Wii (it came with its wheel), and Wii Fit (it came with its board)?
  • Is the Wii U equipped to hold ou what comes next? Leave it need to support free of-to-play games or thrive ON selling one-one dollar bill downloadable games?

The Wii U is the letter-perfect console for this moment in account

Regardless of its future, the Wii U does tone same a machine of the moment. A year and a incomplete agone, I first proverb the Wii U and didn't understand IT. It struck ME as a solution in search of a problem. We've been playing console games just small without a second screen. The GamePad doesn't make gaming less intimidating. Who needed this thing? More significantly, WHO could even play it?

The Wii U is for any of us who, eve when we are together, are slay in our own worlds.

I was puzzled, but when I started interrogatory questions, a top Nintendo designer asked me if I'd ever glanced at my cellphone while watching TV. Naturally I had. Then I played some Wii U multiplayer games and had the odd experience of share-out a TV with a hardly a other co-op gamers while a rival gamer in the same way played his part of the same pun via his private screen happening the GamePad control. That's when I got IT.

The Wii was a machine designed to focus a family surgery a group of friends on one thing they could savor doing unneurotic.

The Wii U is for a new way we live. It's for the era of four people going to dinner party, theoretically organism together, but all also beingness off in their own worlds via the cell phones they hold over checking. It's for the husband who watches TV and has his iPad nigh patc the wife is on her laptop in the same room. IT's for the teenagers who text in the movie theater. It's for any of us who, even when we are together, are off in our own worlds. That is how you play the most interesting Wii U multiplayer games. You cooperate with someone in the same room. You theoretically play the same game, but the Wii U's two screens rent you nose dive into your worlds individually and—this is important and makes this more than a LAN party—lets you interact direct your two portals with different sets of controls, doing different things.

Look at Rising Super Mario Bros. U: four people are looking at the TV, linear across a sidescrolling landscape using Wii Remotes held sideways. They are jumping connected platforms and crushing enemies. They are foursome people at a dinner party talking about the same thing. The fifth role player is along the GamePad. They control no characters. They press no buttons. They just watch the same biz world scroll aside and tap the projection screen to make blocks that catch any TV players who are dropping and that construct staircases for any of those Tv set players who need a leg skyward. The GamePad player is at the same dinner, but they're not really listening. They're connected their cell headphone. This is our Earth right now. The Wii U is a perfect computer game console realization of that. Its timeliness is glamourous.

***

With games, we review the game and imagine we are asked if a game is worth playacting—not purchasing. We answer with a Yes, a No or a Not However. We don't presume to tell you whether to buy or to rent or to borrow a acquaintance's. We don't know what the treasure of a dollar is to you.

With a new console, we must imagine that you would wonder if a machine is worth acquiring. We still cannot know the impact on you of a $350 using up connected a deluxe Wii U bundle (packaged with Nintendo Land) or of a $360 expenditure on a basic Wii U plus one game. We can't know whether this would be your only console or if you beget them all.

We can entirely say that for those who only have a Wii, the Wii U is everything the Wii was and more. We derriere't, however, say that it demands the present attention the Wii did. We tin't say its games right at once are the games you deliver to play this flavour. If you get a Wii U, you'll likely be at least as content as the people WHO bought an Xbox 360 on day one were. You'll have than the launch-twenty-four hour period PS3 people had.

But if you are indecisive, if you are wondering if it's time to get a Wii U, we can guess with you that Nintendo is going nowhere, that first-class games from Nintendo are surely along the horizon, and that firmware updates may give the system altogether of the features IT was supposed to have at launch maybe as soon as early December. Having played a batches of games happening the Wii U and having had the system in my home for closely a week, I can confirm that it is a dependable machine that makes united's console gaming life surprisingly more convenient and luxurious. I just can't tell you that you feature to have one forthwith.

Is it time for a gamer to vex a Wii U? Is it a must-have?

Hand over IT a month or trinity. Wait until the "set in motion window" closes at the cease of Butt o and the like Pikmin 3, Lego City Undercover and a slew of interesting download-only games are usable.

With some new console you power comprise wisest to give it a year, particularly if you desire to be able to compare it to what Sony and Microsoft have coming following. And if they don't put screens in their controllers, know right straight off that Nintendo wish have at least that excellent vantage ended them.

Republished with permission. Stephen Totilo is a contributing editor at Kotaku.