There have been rumours that the Wii U is more powerful than current gen hardware. But when pressed, third-party developer Ubisoft struggled to explain how powerful the machine is.
Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto is more specific. At E3, he told GameSpot in a recently published interview that the Wii U may not “necessarily dramatically outperform the systems that are out now”. The reason for this seem to be price concerns, and Miyamoto acknowledged that at certain price points the console might not be something parents would buy for their kids.
“We’re very sensitive to pricing because people have generally only a certain amount of their spending that they’ll devote to entertainment,” said Miyamoto, adding that the inclusion of the new touchscreen controller might be “somewhat reckless” from a pricing standpoint.
The idea for the tablet style touchscreen controller isn’t a late addition, Miyamoto said.
If Nintendo can get the Wii U under $US350, it should be a success. Even if it’s not significantly more powerful than the PS3 or the Xbox 360, who doesn’t want to play Mario Kart at 60 frames-per-second at 1080p? Fancy new controller or not, the pretty graphics alone with sell consoles.
E3 2011: Miyamoto speaks his mind – News [GameSpot via Gamasutra]
Top photo: Kevork Djansezian/Getty
Republished from Kotaku
ming
Wednesday, June 22, 2011 at 8:55 AMi think this product should be 100 dollars because that is what kinect is and it outperforms wii u a bit.
zen
Wednesday, June 22, 2011 at 11:06 AM$100 includes the price of the xbox 360 does it?
olearymo
Wednesday, June 22, 2011 at 9:04 AMWow, this is giving me flashbacks. I seem to remember people saying the Wii didn’t have the graphics capability to keep up with other consoles.
You know, the Wii? That thing that sold craploads?
Chris
Wednesday, June 22, 2011 at 10:29 AMCraploads of consoles, crap all games!
olearymo
Wednesday, June 22, 2011 at 9:52 PMFor the sake of argument were talking about consoles here
CraftyNinja
Wednesday, June 22, 2011 at 2:06 PMI must admit, I bought the Wii when it first came out as it was the first of the (then) next-gen consoles that I could afford.
Cutesy graphics or not, there were one or two fairly decent games on it. I literally spent the first 12 hours, after buying the console, playing Zelda.
However, cutesy graphics weren’t enough to keep me satisfied especially once I upgraded my TV from a 51cm CRT to a 32″ 1080p LCD.
Soooooo – after all that, what I’m trying to say is this. Great for casual games, and one of the major complaints about HD gaming has now been answered. Add DVD or BluRay playback along with media streaming, and you’ve got a decent competitor.
Penmonicus
Wednesday, June 22, 2011 at 3:59 PMSkip the DVD or BluRay playback. Unlike Sony, Nintendo have no vested interest in either format, and there’s no value in me playing DVDs on a Wii U instead of my multi-region DVD player.
Media streaming yes please, though.
dave
Wednesday, June 22, 2011 at 7:24 PMIt either has to play blueray or be bloody powerful or it will be a hard sell. I’m not interested in the new controller so i’m hoping they will sell the console separately.
ChemZ
Thursday, June 23, 2011 at 5:14 AMThe damn console is gonna sell!
Like it or not, it’s gonna sell!