Nintendo Wii U

[Red Alignment]

My daughter is playing F-Zero.

She's mainly enjoying the cars going pop.

I remember the first time I crashed my vehicle in F-Zero. Sounded like the tube in the television had just exploded. Gave me quite a fright; I still find it one of the most memorable game sound effects ever.

[b00dles]

I know this is going to be a boring anecdote of a post but I brought the Wii U over to my mates the other day for some 4P NintendoLand antics and showed F-Zero playing on Gamepad and telly, my one mate was totally bowled over by it, with memories of regularly going to a local Boots (of all places) to have a go on the demo pod as he didn't have a SNES and how amazing it looked and there it was being played on a controller. His rose tints made him think it looked a lot better than it did of course.

I love doing little things like that.

[scottcr]

I'm going camping on holiday soon - I normally take the 3DS and stuff. Is it wrong I'm thinking I could take my WiiU?? Playing Batman in the tent on the gamepad sounds great.

[macosx]

yeah it's wrong on a lot of levels

[scottcr]

it's wrong - but it feels so right...

(yes - the campsite has electrics and even wifi)

I will, of course, just take my 3DS... but the temptation is there....

[macosx]

reading that reply Scott in conjunction with your avatar picture just makes me smile.

[scottcr]

If you repeat a lie often enough - it will become true.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/tristanlouis/2013/03/02/nintendo-the-new-sega/

[Smitty]

If you repeat a lie often enough - it will become true.

http://www.forbes.co...o-the-new-sega/

Seems fair enough. At least some of the casual market has moved onto phones/tablets, there's no doubt about that.

I like this piece:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2013/02/15/the-wii-us-bleak-winter-nintendo-must-take-action/

The point about the gamepad at the end is true; it's nothing like the revolution that waggle was. Also nails the obvious problem that it's probably mostly the lack of good games behind the WiiU's lack of success.

[Super Craig]

I don't think It's a good article. Sega's margins may have improved by exiting the hardware business (and they didn't provide figures to back up this claim), but you'd have to assume that Sega were losing money on each Dreamcast sold. Nintendo are not in the same position as Sega was. The cheapness that they're always slagged off for gives them a bit of room to fix things.

[Bad Ambassador]

Asda Direct are doing the Premium for £249 and the Basic for £199, so as with the 3DS the retailer discounts are already setting in. How long can it be before Nintendo acts? They can't risk waiting too long or retailers will stop bothering with it altogether.

I've only recently got around to properly getting stuck into the Wii U, finally having a broadband connection sorted after a year without one, and it's just a lovely machine to use. Friendly, intuitive, charming. Miiverse is great, Nintendo Land is great... God knows why Nintendo is being so backwards at marketing the damn thing, because if more people actually tried it, they'd love it.

[pulsemyne]

Seems fair enough. At least some of the casual market has moved onto phones/tablets, there's no doubt about that.

I like this piece:

http://www.forbes.co...st-take-action/

The point about the gamepad at the end is true; it's nothing like the revolution that waggle was. Also nails the obvious problem that it's probably mostly the lack of good games behind the WiiU's lack of success.

No it really isn't a good article. Sega were in big financial trouble even before the dreamcast released. Nintendo could lose 1/2 a billion dollars for the next 25 years and still be financially sound. They have a huge wad of cash available to them as well as investments all over the place. They also have the cash cow that is the 3DS (which will probably have it's most successful year this year). You just have to look at the position the compnay is in. It has one successful hardware product that is making money, this also has a number of big sellers lined up. It has another console which has only just launched and is not doing well but is also not in an unrecoverable position. Yes times are tricky but they are hardly anywhere close to the shit sega was in.

Also only lately have sega started to make some money again. Years after they became a third party. That's how badly sega was run.

I remember the first time I crashed my vehicle in F-Zero. Sounded like the tube in the television had just exploded. Gave me quite a fright; I still find it one of the most memorable game sound effects ever.

I thought the speaker had exploded on my old TV the first time it happened.

[SMD]

Forbes are utterly rubbish when it comes to analysis.

[Not Thread Owner]

Does anyone know how to change your player/licence name on Sonic Racing?

[Not Thread Owner]

Wii U system update today:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-03-05-wii-u-system-update-issued-by-nintendo-the-first-of-many

Nintendo has issued an update to the Wii U's system software, the first of several planned for the coming months.

Today's firmware refresh adds "system stability improvements and other adjustments to enhance the user's experience".

The 30MB update brings the system's software to version 2.1.3 U, Polygonreported.

It does not include the overall speed upgrades that Nintendo has promised for the Wii U's lengthy OS load times. European users are also still lacking the system's TV guide service, Nintendo TVii.

Another update, due in April, and further refresh in the autumn will add in more of these features.

Also on the cards is a full Virtual Console section in the eShop, and integration with web-based and app versions of Miiverse.

[SMD]

I hope the placebo effect is strong with this one "oh wow, it's actually loading faster!"

[pulsemyne]

Some people timed things on neogaf and some bits do load and shutdown a few seconds faster.

[SMD]

I couldn't tell, roll on April's update.

[rubberducker]

its going to need a total system rewrite to make it snappy isnt it?

[JPickford]

its going to need a total system rewrite to make it snappy isnt it?

I can't understand why it's so slow. It's a fast machine with plenty of RAM. What the hell is going on?

[hub2]

Badly coded bottlenecks?

Maybe they started development on the OS late or with unfinished hardware, or maybe Nintendo is full of quite patient project managers and the furore over the OS speed came as a shock?

[TheSlugFormerlyKnownAsNap]

I can't understand why it's so slow. It's a fast machine with plenty of RAM. What the hell is going on?

It's very unNintendo-ish for sure, usually they make pretty snappy and elegant interfaces - bar some stupid stuff like having to reset the DS after changing settings etc, but those are just minor annoyances. Maybe they have coded it in such a way that they free up the entire RAM for the running game, and subsequently have to reload the OS and apps every time, even when no game is running. Maybe the OS and apps are in some slow flash memory. I guess they could fix it with some clever caching or so. Not sure if they'll fix it, I don't really recall Nintendo ever making major changes to their OS, apart from adding new features.

[hub2]

I'm also wondering how much is being run natively and how much is HTML5. For example they seem to be able to make changes on the fly to MiiVerse which might mean it's basically a website rather than an application.

[rgraves]

My guess was that a lot of the time is spent gathering network data for stuff like MiiVerse, friend list and the Wara Wara plaza - I've always just assumed the wait is while it contacts the required server(s) and gets whatever data it's looking for.

To be honest, while it's certainly not lightening fast (or even just plain 'ol normal fast really), I do think a lot of people exaggerate it a bit in terms of the actual impact it has on using the system - it's a matter of 5-10 seconds usually, not 5-10 minutes or anything.

Also, I kinda wish this forum had the 'checked box' thing - would be very interesting if you could tell who owned/had played what when they were posting sometimes

[scottcr]

it's certainly not snappy... I put the speed of MiiVerse down to it being a web application and their servers not being too quick either.

[rjpageuk]

It isnt just the Miiverse though, it takes ages to load up your system log. Basically any item takes awhile to load.

I was even surprised how slow loading F-Zero is on the Virtual Console.

[ras el hanout]

I think the os is so slow because nintendo know people are dimwits and will yank the power on the thing rather than turning it off. Reckon it's something to do with that, so it basically restarts just switching applications.

[b00dles]

This is going to be an odd question, so please bear with me. I did my initial update on a different wireless hub to the Virgin SuperHub I have at home so haven't yet done an update on my superhub at all, although it works in regards to being online / miiverse / eshop etc. I've never done an update since that first one at Xmas, it always says I am up to date. Is that down to the weird problem with the superhub? Do I have to do the fixed IP nonsense with the Superhub, or does it occasionally work? I somehow doubt I've been that lucky..

[Not Thread Owner]

Hmm. No update for me yet.

The first update at Christmas was the second update. Until today there hasn't been another.

[SMD]

its going to need a total system rewrite to make it snappy isnt it?

If Sony can manage it, surely Nintendo can too? People forget how painful the PS3 experience was at first. Maybe it's just totally unoptimised?

[Rain Birds]

If Sony can manage it, surely Nintendo can too? People forget how painful the PS3 experience was at first. Maybe it's just totally unoptimised?

They're not entirely beyond that even now - entering the recently revamped PSN exposes you to a longer wait than anything on Wii U. It's a remarkable turd.