How are you feeling about the Wii U future

[Leo_A]

This isn't the same console, though. Only the gamepad's serial number matched what I sent in, when it returned. Plus, the SD slot door opens much easier than with my original, so they didn't just give it a new serial number for some reason. DLC has me tied to sticking with this anyways. Too heavily invested in the Virtual Console just to abandon it after almost eight years. So the question is purely if it's worthwhile to see if they really can resolve this issue.

And no, I don't think Splatoon will be a system seller. I don't think this one will be nearly as big of a deal as Nintendo is acting like it will be, although I commend them for trying something original. Hopefully it works for them though, and I'm just letting my disinterest cloud my opinion about its appeal.

[Kaypar]

I'm really, really excited for Splatoon! I got to try it in the recent "Global Testfire", which I think was more a server stress test than a proper demo, but for the hour that I got to play, I had a lot of fun. I want it even more, now! I haven't been this excited for a game in ages. Something about the art style and the theme just kinda grabs me.

That said, I have to agree that it probably won't be a system seller. The introduction of a competitive shooter might broaden the demographic a little and attract more buyers, if that particular demographic wasn't already plenty happy with what the other current platforms have to offer in the same genre.

Personally, I still haven't picked up either the PS4 or the XBox One. I could afford to, but there hasn't been a title out yet that really sells either console for me. I'm pretty happy with what the Wii U has to offer, so far.
If the NX is really Nintendo's plan to phase out the Wii U soon, though, that kinda bums me out. It's been just a few years since the console came out. That's less time than what separated the GameCube and the Wii.

[Tanooki]

This isn't the same console, though. Only the gamepad's serial number matched what I sent in, when it returned. Plus, the SD slot door opens much easier than with my original, so they didn't just give it a new serial number for some reason. DLC has me tied to sticking with this anyways. Too heavily invested in the Virtual Console just to abandon it after almost eight years. So the question is purely if it's worthwhile to see if they really can resolve this issue.

And no, I don't think Splatoon will be a system seller. I don't think this one will be nearly as big of a deal as Nintendo is acting like it will be, although I commend them for trying something original. Hopefully it works for them though, and I'm just letting my disinterest cloud my opinion about its appeal.

When mine decided to implode from the huge update last year and they did an out of warranty free repair they swapped out the systems itself with a refurb shell(with some light scratches...grr) and new guts on the inside and gave it a 1yr warranty so that's surely what they did for you. It's cheaper and faster than having to diagnostic check and poke away at the entire system to figure it out and repair it. Lazy but effective.


Kaypar if the NX comes at a time we think it should be from them announcing it by name only now, it would give the WiiU a 5 year life, the same as the N64 and Gamecube had before being replaced. Odds are like N64 the support will dry up first though and probably dual-release or move Zelda to NX.

[calthaer]

I kind of forgot that the Wii U even existed. So much of my game purchasing happens through Steam these days that I never go to stores and see the displays. If, as someone suggested, Nintendo is trying to court indie developers, then they're not doing anywhere near as good a job as Valve Software is.

The Wii really did allow one to play games in a new way. The Wii U is an incremental improvement, and doesn't bring anything that new to the table, in my view. To top it off, Nintendo really isn't releasing new games and franchises, or doing a lot of new things with its old franchises. As has already been pointed out, very few of the big players are really moving the ball forward. Why buy the umpteenth iteration of a platformer, when it's still just running and jumping? At one point, gaming had a lot of fresh ideas, but those have been tapped.

If anyone's really doing new things in gaming, it's the indie devs - even though a lot of those are just perfecting a genre, not inventing new ones. Maybe VR will change some of this, and maybe not. One thing's for sure...the games on the Wii U, in my view, simply aren't worth the $200+ price of admission. Even Pokemon, which I used to love, is getting too long in the tooth. That whole series desperately needs a reboot that culls the number of characters (some of which are entirely redundant), puts the entire experience in one or two games (HGSS is still unsurpassed for that awesome "go over the mountains and reach the world of the first game"), gives up the stupid "sell two versions of every game," and gets rid of the promo Pokemon. I used to buy Nintendo systems just to buy Pokemon games; now, I don't think I could ever get back into them until they clean things up.

[Tupin]

I know I'm a broken record with this and it might be an exaggeration, but a lot of indie these days isn't any more creative than what you'd get from a "AAA" studio. In fact, a lot of the times they're just "homages" to AAA studio stuff. Think about how many indie games are "retro-styled"/Metroidvanias/platformers. It seems like the supposed fountain of creativity indies promised us never came to fruition, it just birthed a lot of lazy devs who use nostalgia another company made to sell a game that takes less effort. It just amuses me when people bemoan Nintendo but praise indies in the same sentence. For every Minecraft or Five Nights at Freddy's you get 500 "Totally Not Metroid/Zelda/Marios."