The Wii U's Impact on PC Gaming

Nintendo's Wii U announcement has been pretty much impossible to ignore and more or less dominated the entire day. Joystiq's site lets you filter news stories by platform; PC gaming news was limited to a handful of posts discussing XCOM, Borderlands 2, some Steam deals, and a soccer title from Konami.

I watched the Japanese reveal last night (and understood none of it) in addition to the North American presentation earlier today. The Wii U is definitely intriguing - the Nintendo TVii feature looks pretty cool and I'm wondering how well it'd work with my Comcast DVR set top box. As someone who owns an aging laptop and doesn't have a tablet, I found the prospect of the GamePad's screen adding to the TV viewing experience pretty interesting. My Wii system has been collecting dust for a while now, so the idea that the Wii U could potentially function as a multimedia hub for several years makes me wonder if it might be worth the $300-350 price tag.

As far as actual gaming is concerned I'm still on the fence about the Wii U. Tom's Hardware posted some rumored technical specs yesterday that make me wonder about the Wii U's staying power.

CPU: "Espresso" CPU on the Wii U has three enhanced Broadway cores
GPU: "GPU7" AMD Radeon-based High Definition GPU. Unique API = GX2, which supports Shader Model 4.0 (DirectX 10.1 and OpenGL 3.3 equivalent functionality)
Memory: Mem1 = 32MB Mem2 = 1GB (that applications can use)
Storage: Internal 8 GB with support for SD Cards (SD Cards up to 2GB/ SDHC Cards up to 32GB) and External USB Connected Hard Drives
Networking: 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi
Video Output: Supports 1080p, 1080i, 720p, 480p and 480i
Video Cables Supported: Compatible cables include HDMI, Wii D-Terminal, Wii Component Video, Wii RGB, Wii S-Video Stereo AV and Wii AV.
USB: Four USB 2.0 Ports

Alt-Tab: Wii U Launch Announcement Ustream

Alt+Tab posts discuss things not directly related to PC gaming. Hey, it's my blog, so deal with it.

I just watched Nintendo's live-streamed Wii U launch announcement. It was entirely in Japanese. I sat there with XE.com open in Firefox, furiously converting every 4- or 5-digit number that appeared from Yen to USD.

Thankfully, the Verge/Polygon guys had a comprehensive post online about 2 minutes after the stream ended. The Wii U launches December 8th in Japan; two bundles will be offered for roughly $405 and $337.

The "Wii U GamePad" controller/tablet retails separately for ~$173; one is included with the console and (don't quote me on this) the console supports using two at the same time.

The Wii U North American launch announcement is scheduled for later this morning at 10am; it'll be interesting to see if the launch date is roughly the same or if everyone else will be waiting until the Spring.

Alt+Tab: Nintendo Power

Alt+Tab posts discuss things not directly related to PC gaming. Hey, it's my blog, so deal with it.

Ars Technica reported today that Nintendo Power would be shutting down after 24 years and 280+ issues.

As I mentioned last week, I was a pretty diehard Nintendo fan throughout the 90's and early 2000's. I subscribed to Nintendo Power in (I think) 1993 and continued to receive new issues monthly for 10 or 12 years. I still have every issue sitting in a box somewhere, including one with my name in it. Nintendo Power issued monthly gaming challenges and encouraged readers to send in pictures of their high scores. After racking up what I thought was a pretty solid score in Yoshi on the Gameboy, I took a picture of the handheld, got the film developed, and mailed it in. A couple of months later my name appeared in the magazine, which seems pretty fantastic when you're 8 years old.

It makes me sad to see the magazine go, though I guess it's a sign of the times. Both print circulation and newsstand sales have been dropping over the past few years and have continued to drop this year. I get pretty much all of my news online, but I still like to flip through a magazine every once in a while. Most of Nintendo Power's content from the 90's consisted of game previews, cheats, and partial walkthroughs, which are definitely easier to digest nowadays in a digital format. Oh well.

Alt+Tab: Nintendo, Consoles, and a Skyward Sword Deal

Alt+Tab posts discuss things not directly related to PC gaming. Hey, it's my blog, so deal with it.

Before I was a PC gamer, I was a diehard Nintendo fanboy. I received a Gameboy for Christmas in the early 90's ('91 or '92-ish) and was glued to the thing for a couple of years playing Tetris, Yoshi, Super Mario Land, and Link's Awakening. A couple of years down the road I stepped up to a Super NES and discovered Donkey Kong Country, Mario Kart, and Super Mario RPG, which is still one of my favorite games of all time. From there I obediently bought each new console soon after it was released, from the N64 to the Gamecube and finally the Wii. I started devoting more of my gaming time to the PC in the late 90's, and by the mid 2000's my consoles were starting to collect dust.

I haven't touched my Wii in years - interpret that as you will. Once you dedicate some funds to a solid gaming PC and start cranking up the graphics on recent games the Wii starts to look like a blast from the past. The last game I bought was Tiger Woods 10 (maybe 11, but I'm too lazy to check); the graphics look like something out of 2004 and ultimately make me sad whenever I look at the TV. The Wii was never cutting-edge in the graphics department, but these long console development cycles definitely haven't allowed the console to age gracefully. The fact that people are usually playing at 480p on a 40-50" TV doesn't help either.

Yesterday I came across a deal at Best Buy that shaved $35 off the price of the Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, taking it from $50 to $15. Zelda and Mario games are generally the main reason to stick with Nintendo. Their first-party content is usually ridiculously well-received and their exclusive franchises almost sell the console themselves. I've always justified sticking with Nintendo over Sony and Microsoft because of the exclusive titles; there are a lot of games out there similar to Halo or Gran Turismo, but it's hard finding a Zelda or Mario replacement somewhere else. I do 99% of my gaming on PC anyway, so I'd rather have console games that supplement rather than overlap with stuff on the PC.

Skyward Sword has a score of 93 on Metacritic, putting it up there with some of the best games of all time. The $35 coupon expires tomorrow and can be found by logging into the Best Buy Reward Zone website under the Gamers Club section. I feel like this might be the last Wii game I buy, so hopefully it'll be an appropriate sendoff.