Iwata in Nintendo Direct broadcast talks Zelda, Virtual Console, more for WiiU

[Grall]

Some bullets:

Two firmware updates will consecutively speed up program loads and returning to main menu screen in spring - meaning april - and "summer".

Virtual Console will come to Wii in force just after the spring update. VC games will feature restore points and from what I understand, cloud backups.

VC games purchased for Wii and transferred to Wuu will receive discounts in the Wuu VC store.

Nintendo is celebrating the 30th anniversary of the release of the Famicom in Japan (NES in the west), starting now and lasting until july. Every 30 days a Wuu VC game will be on sale for 30 cents. This month's game is Balloon Fight, on which Iwata was one of the developers.

A new Zelda is under development for Wuu, which will alledgedly feature coop gameplay and a non-linear story arch. The development of this title will take "some time".

To tide us over, Ninty is re-releasing Wind Waker in HD for the Wuu. From studying the sample screenies shown, graphics improvements also feature improved lighting, atmospheric haze and glow effects. (Woot! Shiny shine!) Release is slated for autumn.

More games including some Bayonetta 2, Wonderful 101 and what appears to be a wuu Xenoblade title in the full presentation (which is nearly 40 minutes of watching a painfully stiff Iwata, whom apparantly have no muscles at all in his arms... ):

 

[Grall]

The lack of interest in these announcements here at B3D is a bit depressing, although perhaps not totally unexpected after all. In any case, I checked out the virtual console, and it's no more of an improvement than it was with the wii, unfortunately. Balloon Fight, a game originally released back in 1984, takes up a claimed 35 megabytes of onboard storage. Don't ask me how the fuck that is even possible, because I'd say it isn't, unless nintendo's flash storage handling is as ineptly designed as every other aspect of the wuu, and 35MB is simply the smallest amount of storage that's possible to allocate to storing an item on the wuu.

The nintendo eshop is just terribly, horrifically awful. It's even worse than the wii shop, with a clutter of graphics everywhere in multiple columns, reams and reams of very slow page loads, and a multitude of steps required just to complete one simple transaction. It's just awful! Of course, the disparate stores for wii, wuu, DSi, 3DS are just an insult to customers, to force them to re-purchase the same games multiple times for their systems. Then add to the fact that when you buy something on the wuu it doesn't automatically download and appear in the main menu, you have to fiddle even more to accomplish that, hidden away in the home screen menu no less, and it just shows that nintendo totally doesn't know what the fuck they're doing, nor do they care either.

Oh, and by the way. NES sound emulation is still incorrect after all these years, games sound just as bad on wuu as they do on wii. Homebrewn emulators manage far better than nintendo's own "effort", and in fact have for almost a decade and a half.

This console is the biggest bucket of total fail since forever. I hate it.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Regards download sizes, I've been staggered by PSN download sizes too. Digger is 91.6 MBs! Maybe the Japanese have such great broadband they don't comprehend the concept of filesize and tolerate every degree of bloat and inefficiency?

 

[Squilliam]

The lack of interest in these announcements here at B3D is a bit depressing, although perhaps not totally unexpected after all...

This console is the biggest bucket of total fail since forever. I hate it.

I think your first statement is answered by your last. This is a technology orientated forum so the Wii U being low end technology in every way is uninteresting. It has a resistive touch screen and an obsolete GPU plus an even more obsolete CPU (as far as we know). From our perspectives aside from nostalgia and understanding the benefit of competition, we would be better off if a high tech console 'wins'.

 

[Grall]

The pathetic hardware in the wuu (apart from the just awful touchscreen, which is nearly unusable even with a stylus) wouldn't be so bad if just the software layer was good - or even great, but it isn't. If possible the resident software is even worse than the hardware itself.

The user interface manages to not only be extremely ugly and fiddly, it's also very cluttered, unergonomic and inconsistent, with vital modern features missing like voice chat in all titles. ...And now, a poor virtual console implementation where you not only need to re-purchase already bought-and-paid-for overpriced, 20, 30 year old games, you don't even get accurate emulation either.

This is wuu's absolutely largest fail, IMO.

 

[function]

I think it's safe to say that I've enjoyed reading Grall's Wii U tales of woe more than he's enjoyed owning one.

 

[function]

Woe U.

 

[Squilliam]

The Wuu is awesome just for the fact that it inspires so many Grall rants. I was missing them dearly.

 

[Kb-Smoker]

grall you are just awesome, love reading your posts...lol

I think your first statement is answered by your last. This is a technology orientated forum so the Wii U being low end technology in every way is uninteresting. It has a resistive touch screen and an obsolete GPU plus an even more obsolete CPU (as far as we know). From our perspectives aside from nostalgia and understanding the benefit of competition, we would be better off if a high tech console 'wins'.

Pretty much. I am sick of the ps360 level of gaming. I want new hardware. I hoped the wuu would have been a stop gap until the next Gen systems launch but it is just a wii60 with a touch screen.

Guess some of the disappointment of the wuu came from the "insiders" that over sold the hardware by a lot.

 

[menmau]

Grall just resumed altogether what is WUU.
Unfortunately this only but the truth, I cannot find any kind of excitement with this news from Nintendo.