Wii U to be 299/349$ and controllers ~175$

[ZeronHitaro]

$175 controllers...wow. /golfclap

Way to pretty much ensure I never buy a WiiU. Any Nintendo console I own within the last two generations has been for party games; as such I'm the one who has to supply the four controllers for a full group. :-\ With tax that's that's about $570~ for a full set (assuming one comes with the system); nearly $1000 when you factor in the console. I am not spending 3 months worth of food just to play Mario Party 10.

Remember those days when Nintendo used to be the affordable group gaming experience?

[Eusis]

A few problems there:

1. I believe the price pulled there is from the current exchange rate, which may be lower for the US release. It's gotten wide enough that we aren't getting a $250 Wii U with $300 Deluxe, but Deluxe would probably be $400 if they followed it fully.

2. You can't use more than 2 Wii U Game Pads per system, so it'd be... $175 for a "full set" at worst anyway, though really you'd need to pay $40-50 per Pro Controller, though the 360/PS3 controllers seem to reliably go for $30-ish anyway.

3. They will support Wii Remotes for multiplayer depending on the game, IE the Nintendo Land games, so for some games you already have a full set if you had one for Wii. Mario Party sounds like a prime target for this.

I also tend to find these full price arguments disingenuous, though at least you're actively using the 'I want to play party games' angle here rather than just acting as if you MUST have a full set because.

[ZeronHitaro]

So it uses Wii-motes, and pads, but only uses two pads at once? That's...a really weird design. I really hope the pads aren't integrated into the party games because 'pass the controller' is a bad design. Both for time (if you have a spacious gaming area) and if the group you're playing with is just a tad bit chaotic at times. But I have a really hard time seeing Nintendo not cramming their gimmick into as many titles as possible; that's kind of their thing these days. Thanks for the clarifications though.

[Eusis]

The two pad thing is for video bandwidth I believe, in fact the FPS gets cut down to 30 max per pad when you're using two of them. I'm guessing for games that require full controls you'd be expected to have Pro Controllers (or maybe CCPros) for everyone else.

[Aeolus]

Now that I got my Wii working again, I can certainly wait. I still 45 VC games to plow through, anyways.

See, this is why the artifacting issues bug me. Too many VC games tied to it that I'd want to move onto a newer, more stable, hopefully fully account based console. That way I can just redownload on a new one or whatever should something go wrong.

Then those VC games get the lion's share of playtime.

http://www.siliconera.com/2012/09/13/you-can-transfer-virtual-console-and-wiiware-games-to-your-wii-u/

And hopefully it will become account based rather than machine based during the transition.

[Annubis]

https://twitter.com/Micromania_Fr/status/246261203159117824

Basic 299,99 € (392.56 $)
Premium 349,99 € (457.99 $)

[Mickeymac92]

I guess Europe will be where all the profit comes from...

[Aeolus]

Going off topic about controllers for a second here, I figure a few people might be interested in this.

Obviously one shouldn't get their hopes up (especially given how we barely got Xenoblade out here to begin with), but this is awesome news regardless.

[Eusis]

If Xenoblade wasn't a failure then I imagine odds are fairly good we'd get this. Especially since a big angle for the Wii U is recapturing the core, and unless you only want the mainstream audience that wants shooters and open world games you're going to need stuff like solid RPGs.

[Mickeymac92]

Glad to hear it's not connected to any existing series. I kinda doubt they'd top Xenoblades so easily, so a sequel to that so soon is bound to lead to some level of disappointment. I'm really interested in seeing what more new stuff they could do. With that said, I'd love a Last Story 2 from Mistwalker someday...

[Aeolus]

If Xenoblade wasn't a failure then I imagine odds are fairly good we'd get this. Especially since a big angle for the Wii U is recapturing the core, and unless you only want the mainstream audience that wants shooters and open world games you're going to need stuff like solid RPGs.

Considering how many shooters we got on the Wii I doubt we'll even have that to fall back on.

But no, what concerns me is just how much effort it's been taking to get anything resembling an RPG out of NOA as of late (outside of Pokémon games). Out of the Project Rainfall games we only got Xenoblade out of NOA (with The Last Story getting an unprecedented 3rd party distribution of a Nintendo published game by XSeeD), and it wasn't until after E3 that we got word on whether FE11 was leaving Japan (unlike FEDS2).

But on the other hand, there really aren't a lot of RPGs really worth bringing over these days that aren't under the purview of people like Atlus and XSeeD.

[Prime Mover]

It seems as if the Pads are pretty much for single-player gaming, or for one person in a multiplayer game. I think you can pretty much guarantee that all party games will use Wiimotes and Classic controllers. Realistically, I think it's going to be very hard to find games where two pads can even be used. Supposedly each pad bogs down the system, so it's likely that 3rd party games will not even enable two-pad support. Though, I could imagine Nintendo might forbid this, and require that all games have support for two pads (so they can sell more), but you can be sure that most games won't use that as their goal.

It's more likely that the vast majority of 2nd pad purchases will be replacements, not additions.

[Eusis]

If Nintendo requires two pad support it'd most likely be for any game that has multiplayer with the pro controller, with the second Pad keeping the screen off and just acting like a Pro Controller. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if it "supported" 4 in this fashion.

And personally I imagine it's going to be some Mii-type game (like Nintendo Land) or Four Swords Adventure that would support two Pads, something low end.

[Alisha]

can the pads function away from the wii-u like the dreamcast vmu? i liked playing that skies of arcadia minigame to unlock moonstones.

[Prime Mover]

To my knowledge, the pads are "dumb". You might be able to turn the WiiU "Off", but it probably stays active enough to feed the controller. So, walk outside the bluetooth radius, and you're gameplay is toast.