E3 2011 Nintendo Wii U: Inside and Out - News - EB Games Australia
Nintendo found lightning in a bottle with the Wii and with Wii U--the company’s upcoming console--it might have found the bottling plant. Wii U builds upon the barriers broken by the Wii and takes advantage of a touchscreen-equipped controller that offer players a new way to interact with games paired with a console capable of HD visuals.
To save you the effort and grief of reading through the whole article we’ll just state up front that Nintendo did not disclose many pertinent details of its next system at E3 2011. There’s no official price point. And there’s no specific release date. It might come out somewhere between April Fool’s Day and New Years Eve in 2012. The rumors were also correct about Wii U. It’s most definitely going to be running in high definition and the controller is every bit as outlandish as we were led to believe. Probably more so.
The actual hardware behind Wii U is still under wraps. Nintendo offered no specifics as to the internals behind its upcoming console, but its size and capabilities give us much to speculate about. Wii U appears to be no larger than the Wii itself, but it's much more capable, outputting 1080p visuals over HDMI. The console has internal flash memory for storage that is expandable via USB and SD memory cards. Games will come on proprietary high-density optical disks similar in size to a DVD. Like the Wii, Wii U will also be able to download and play games. It’s also backward compatible with Wii software and devices(specifically the Wii remote and Nunchuk--a key point we will get to). Nintendo made no mention of backward compatibility with GameCube games.
Similar to the Wii, the controller is the heart of Wii U. And it’s large--think somewhat smaller than an iPad and considerably bigger than the original Sony PSP. The reps on hand noted that the controller was designed to offer a new way for players to interact with the console, games, and other players. They understood that, much like the first time we saw the Wii remote, the only way to really understand was to show us.
On the face of the controller you’ll find a 6.2inch touch screen (Nintendo declined to say whether it was multi-touch capable). A stylus slides out of the controller for use on the touchscreen(which makes us think it’s based on resistive touch technology). During the E3 2011 press conference, Nintendo showed the stylus being used for fairly complex sketching, which shows us how detailed/discrete the touchscreen will be. The matte screen has great viewing angles and offers vivid colors and brightness, making it ideal for use by two people at the same time at very off angles. The pixel density seems to be sufficiently high enough to put it on par with modern smartphones. Nintendo stated that it’s not high definition, but the resolution appears to be substantially higher than the 3DS screen. We’re guessing the screen is under 1280x720 and above 640x480.
Nintendo eschewed a complex controller with the Wii by limiting the number of buttons. By contrast, the Wii U controller practically bristles with them. Two circle pads, similar to the those found on the portable Nintendo 3DS, flank either side of the screen. A D-pad resides on the left, A, B, X, and Y buttons on the right, two shoulder buttons are on the top, two trigger-like buttons are on the bottom, and the usual array of start, select and Home buttons line the bottom. But it doesn’t end there.
Like the Wii, the Wii U controller also features motion controls that should be on par with the Wii Motion Plus. Although you won’t be using it like a Wii Remote, as its bulk and unwieldiness prevent it from mimicking sports equipment like bats and rackets.
A front facing camera sits at the top of the controller, ostensibly for use in taking pictures and possibly for augmented reality capabilities. At its E3 2011 press conference, Nintendo revealed that the controller will have video chat capabilities. Built-in speakers also playback sound, and the controller also features a headphone jack.
The controller is capable of playing games even if the TV is being used at the moment for something else, like watching shows. It’s portable in a sense, but only within wireless reach of the main console, as all of the controller’s visuals are generated by the console and then streamed to the controller.
One of the key features of Wii U is its backward compatibility with Wii controllers (Remotes, Nunchuks, and more). Many of the use cases we saw involved anywhere between two and four Wii remotes, with and without Nunchuks, and one player on the Wii U controller. Players on Wii Remotes would generally get split screen gameplay on the TV, while the player on the Wii U controller would primarily use the screen on the controller. Most of the games we saw would give the player on the Wii U controller extra information, or an entirely different perspective paired with vastly different controls. In general, the player with the Wii U controller was pit against the players with Wii Remotes.
Graphics
Outside of stating that the console outputs at 1080p, Nintendo was mum on details. But judging from the visuals, we can speculate a little on what’s driving Wii U. Many of the demos we saw had dynamic lighting and shadowing, light shafts, high dynamic range rendering, full reflections, bump mapping, and some titles also featured antialiasing. It’s hard to say whether the console was rendering at a lower resolution and then upscaling to 1920x1080, a common occurrence on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. The console’s GPU does has its limitations, distant objects in complex scenes were noticeably less detailed than those found in the foreground.
The screen on the Wii U’s controller receives a video stream from the console, and does not have its own mobile GPU. Looking between the controller and the console, the visuals were more than comparable, if not identical. Impressively, we didn’t notice any compression artifacts or lag between what we saw on the TV and the controller’s screen.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
More information on the top link..... above report has been trimmed.
I want one.
