Wii U

Nintendo reveals upcoming games ahead of E3

Sam Kieldsen — Fri, 17 May 2013 20:45:46 +0000

With no big press conference at this year’s E3, Nintendo announces a collection of new titles via video

E3 may be the home to huge gaming reveals this June but Nintendo has jumped the gun and unviled some treats early

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Nintendo - the announcements

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Nintendo has released a new Nintendo Direct video, announcing or detailing a handful of upcoming games for the Wii U and 3DS.

Probably the most exciting new announcement is a Winter Olympics-themed Mario and Sonic game for the Wii U, which will feature a variety of sports (including figure skating and curling) and is intended to coincide with next year’s Sochi Olympics. Interestingly, this is actually being developed by Sega, Nintendo’s old arch nemesis turned collaborator, who will also be launching action-adventure platformer Sonic: The Lost World exclusively on Wii U and 3DS.

Other games looked at in the video include Game and Wario for the Wii U (a collection of mini games designed around the console’s GamePad), Resident Evil Revelations (already available on 3DS, it’s coming to Wii U with enhanced graphics and new content) and New Super Luigi U. The latter is a major DLC for New Super Mario Bros. U starring (surprise, surprise) Luigi, along with Toad and Nabbit as playable characters. It’ll be released on 20th June.

Nintendo says another Nintendo Direct video will be released around the time of E3, and that it’ll detail games due to be released further ahead in the future.

You can watch the entire video above.

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Injustice: Gods Among Us

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 11:36:09 +0000

Holy smoke, Batman! DC Comics and Mortal Kombat have had a baby and called it Injustice: Gods Among Us

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Pricing

£45.00

Ratings

Overall rating:

8 stars

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Injustice: Gods Among Us – intro

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Playground scores are about to be settled. Injustice: Gods Among Us mixes the fighting prowess of gaming’s goriest brawler, Mortal Kombat, with a roster of DC Comics stars to finally give everyone a chance to see whether Batman or Superman would win in a fight. But can its clash of superstar heroes and villains deliver a superpowered beat ‘em up? We fire up the PS3 to find out.

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Injustice: Gods Among Us – story

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Story? In a fighting game? Yes, Injustice: Gods Among Us might be a one-on-one brawler, but it’s also keen to explain why Batman might be Bataranging the Green Lantern and how Lex Luther could end up fighting himself. The answer is some multi-dimensional trickery. Our heroes and villains have ended up in a parallel universe where Superman has gone all Kim Jong-un and established a global dictatorship where heroes are his evil henchmen. The result is a coherent and enjoyable justification for having a good and bad version of every goodie and baddie.

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Injustice: Gods Among Us – Mortal Kombat

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But we’re not here for a story, we’re here to fight, and Injustice is no slacker on the fisticuffs front. It’s made by the team behind the recent, and rather good, revival of Mortal Kombat and shares many of that game’s best traits. The fights are deliberate rather than hectic and while there are plenty of combos and lots of depth, it manages to keep things simple to learn but hard to master.

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Injustice: Gods Among Us – arenas

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To spice up its polished and balanced fighting, Injustice makes sure its arenas are more than pretty backdrops. Each is a multi-levelled affair and comes with a sprinkling of objects that can be used to help players make short work of their rivals - think super-hero incinerating spaceship afterburners and chandeliers that characters can swing from like Adam Ant in his Prince Charming heyday and you’re along the right lines.

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Injustice: Gods Among Us – minigames

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In story mode the game also spices up the brawls with a selection of minigames, such as having The Joker fend off an advancing opponent by flinging playing cards like throwing stars. While these mini-games aren’t anything special taken in isolation, they crop up often enough to inject some variety into the campaign while remaining short enough not to get in the way of the real action.

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Injustice: Gods Among Us – wagers

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Another feature designed to liven up the action is the game’s wager system. During bouts players build up a Super Meter that can be used to initiate a wager, where each fighter bets a portion of that meter’s juice. Whoever bets the most wins and gets a health boost. In theory it should give struggling players a chance to turn the tables when everything seems lost but in practice it’s tricky to execute and distracts the fairness that underpins the rest of the fighting.

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Injustice: Gods Among Us – S.T.A.R. Labs

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As if the meaty clashes and fun story weren’t enough to keep you hooked, Injustice is packed to the brim with alternative modes. First up is the Battles mode where players can unlock in-game extras by winning 10-rounds of fights. On top of this is the S.T.A.R. Labs mode, a huge collection of character-specific challenges (backed with short scene-setting stories) to test your fighting chops in a host of new ways. These, combined with the usual online multiplayer, make Injustice a game to keep coming back to.

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Injustice: Gods Among Us – verdict

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Injustice’s meaty comic book combat delivers almost exactly what anyone would want from a DC Comics beat ‘em up. It looks great and, wager system aside, the fights strike a spot-on balance of skill and fun. There are plenty of bells and whistles to the basic combat, too, and plenty of features to keep you coming back for second, third and fourth helpings.

Reviewed on PS3.

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Verdict:

Injustice: Gods Among Us is Mortal Kombat minus gore plus DC Comics stars. The result? Fantastic fighting fun

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Wii U TVii service to hit US tomorrow

Sam Kieldsen — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 14:41:43 +0000

Nintendo bringing TV to its console with subscription services, DVR functionality and social interaction

Nintendo has announced that TVii, the TV service for the Wii U, will arrive in the US and Canada tomorrow, 20th December.

TVii, Nintendo’s first real stab at bringing video to a home console, allows the Wii U to access TV subscription services (Amazon Instant Video and Hulu Plus at first, with Netflix and TiVo to follow in 2013), interact with TiVo DVRs and display TV listings.

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New video! Nintendo Wii U attempts to redefine gaming

Lucy Hedges — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 12:32:23 +0000

Once again, Nintendo is trying to redefine the way we play games with its next-gen Wii U console – but is it worth the upgrade?

There's no denying that the Nintendo Wii U's dual screen set-up certainly is a revelation and adds a new dynamic to gameplay. But is it the next must-have thing in gaming? Watch the video review.

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Best headphones for Christmas 2012

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Nintendo Wii U video review

Lucy Hedges — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 12:00:02 +0000

Once again, Nintendo is trying to redefine the way we play games with its next-gen Wii U console – but does it have the potential to become the next must-have thing in gaming?

Nintendo Wii U

Tom Parsons — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 12:11:30 +0000

The new future of consoles starts with Nintendo’s Wii U. Or does it? We hit up the latest gaming hardware to find out

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Tom Parsons

Nintendo has stolen a march on Microsoft and Sony by launching the Wii U before the Xbox 720 and PS4 have even been announced. But can the Wii U’s dual-screen gaming and raft of launch titles do enough to repeat the runaway success of the original Wii? And can games like ZombiU tempt hardcore gamers away from their Xbox 360s and PS3s? Time to find out.

Pricing

£250.00

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Ratings

Overall rating:

8 stars

Pros:

Great fun

Clever uses for the Gamepad

Brings multiplayer back to the couch

Cons:

Will be overpowered by rival next gen consoles

Sluggish UI

Not as accessible as the Wii

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Design

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While not a massive departure from the physical design of the original Wii, the Wii U is still a more sophisticated looking device than its predecessor, especially in the glossy black finish of the £300 Premium Pack we tested. It’s marginally longer, taller, weightier and more solid than you might expect.

So what does the Premium Pack get you over the Basic Pack? Well, aside from the black finish (the Basic is white), you also get the Nintendo Land game bundled in the box, a Nintendo Network Premium Subscription, a stand for the console, a charging dock for the GamePad and 32GB of internal flash memory as opposed to the 8GB of the Basic.

Is it worth the extra £50? We’d say so. While the Nintendo Network Premium Subscription is a loyalty scheme that’s a little hard to get excited about, we like the way the Wii U looks on the stand, the charging dock is much neater than trailing cables to charge your GamePad, and the Basic’s 8GB flash drive actually has just 3GB of usable space, which isn’t enough to install even Nintendo Land from the Nintendo eShop. Thankfully you can add a USB hard drive to increase storage, and even Premium Pack buyers may want to go down that route, but we’d still plump for more internal storage from the off.

Talking of USB, the Wii U has loads of ports – two around the back and two more on the front next to an SD card slot. The back panel is also where you’ll find a standard HDMI socket (a cable is included) and a dedicated connection for the sensor bar, which is unchanged from the original Wii. What you won’t find is an ethernet socket – Wi-Fi is the only option for making your network connection, which will be a slight disappointment for those who still don’t completely trust a wireless connection for gaming (yep, we still exist).

Now we don’t want to come across all weird or anything, but the Wii U also has one of the nicest slot loaders we’ve ever used. Start pushing a disc in and there’s no resistance, just a completely smooth action as the console takes control. There’s a bit of read noise, and you’ll also notice some fan noise in a quiet room, but as soon as a game soundtrack kicks in you’ll be hard pushed to hear anything from the console itself.

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GamePad

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The Wii U’s headline-grabbing feature is the GamePad. While the Wii U itself is surprisingly heavy, the GamePad is featherweight, and first impressions aren’t helped by the fact that the buttons rattle. We do not like gadgets that rattle.

Use the GamePad for a while, though, and its qualities eclipse those early niggles very quickly. It’s brilliantly ergonomic, even though the twin analogue sticks at first feel unnaturally far apart, and it’s easy to reach both the shoulder buttons and triggers. (Those triggers are digital, not something that will make a difference to the launch lineup of games, but it could prove problematic in future – racing games in particular tend to rely on analogue throttles.)

On the top of the GamePad you’ll find a headphone socket (no dangling wires from TV to ears), volume control and a stylus, which nestles neatly into its own slot. Front side, there’s a 1.3MP camera positioned just above the GamePad’s pièce de résistance: a 6.2in resistive touchscreen.

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Touchscreen

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If you’re expecting Apple Retina Display levels of detail, you’re going to be disappointed by the GamePad’s screen. The 854 x 480 resolution equates to a pixel density of just 158ppi, and compared to the picture on your TV screen lacks a little vibrancy and crispness, even at its full 10m range. So yes, you’ll find jaggies if you’re looking for them, but playing New Super Mario Bros. U is still a premium game playing experience. Viewing angles are very good, too, so showing your skills off to a mate or sharing a movie doesn’t involve one of you having to suffer through horrible colours.

Despite these redemptive qualities, the GamePad loses points on battery life (in our tests it averaged about three-and-a-half ours of intensive use, with a half hour recharge to half power). Thankfully you can carry on playing while the GamePad charges.

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Setup and day-one firmware update

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So you’ve raced home with your new Wii U, ripped open the packaging and connected everything together – what’s next? Now it’s time to run though the initial setup, a process made more fun than it sounds by the use of the GamePad throughout. Between it and your main TV screen you’re guided elegantly to choose your TV resolution, setup the GamePad as a universal remote for your TV and create your Mii avatar using the front-facing camera.

If you buy a Wii U shortly after launch you’ll also have to download an update – and it’s big. Even on our very fast cable broadband connection the update took over an hour. If you’re buying a Wii U for a loved one this Christmas we recommend you do the update before wrapping it up, unless you think their idea of a fun Christmas morning is one spent staring at a status bar.

The good news is that once the update has been done, the Wii U springs to life. The formerly sparse home screen fills with floating icons and other Miis for your own little avatar to wave and speak cute gibberish to. A new row of icons populates the GamePad display, giving you access to Miiverse, the Nintendo eShop, internet browser, Nintendo TVii (not available in the UK until 2013) and Notifications, which flashes when a new message has arrived. Your homescreen also gains Wii U Chat, which let’s you make video calls to other Wii U users, and the Netflix and YouTube icons that previously did nothing now actually open the advertised software.

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Performance

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If your vision of a next-gen console includes CPUs and GPUs that require their own nuclear power station the Wii U is going to disappoint. Nintendo isn’t prepared to talk details, but reports suggest that the Wii U’s power is roughly equivalent to that of the PS3 and Xbox 360 and the early batch of cross-platform games bears that out, with titles such as Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 and Mass Effect looking almost identical to the Xbox 360 versions in side-by-side comparisons.

The overall Wii U experience is actually disappointingly sluggish. With current smartphones and tablets offering instantaneous multitasking, the time it takes the Wii U to open and switch between apps is shameful. Even going from the settings menu to the Wii U Home screen involves a 20-second wait, and over time that’s going to get pretty tedious.

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Launch games

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The Wii U has launched with almost 30 games split between full disc releases and downloadable games from the Nintendo eShop. Many will be familiar to even the most casual of gamer – Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, Batman: Arkham City and FIFA 13 to name just three – and while each of these adds fresh functionality through the GamePad, it’s the brand new games that will excite the most. We’ll be posting full reviews of as many of the launch titles as we can in the coming days, but for now here are some highlights.

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Nintendo Land

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Anyone who buys the Premium Pack gets Nintendo Land bundled in. A multiplayer mix of party games, Nintendo must be hoping this can do for the Wii U what Wii Sports did for the original Wii, but it’s actually a rather different kettle of Pikmin. Rather than provide a host of games that are immediately familiar to absolutely anyone (even your Grandma knows what bowling is, and she’s not afraid to pretend to do it in front of your TV at Christmas), Nintendo Land is full of more complex games that involve Nintendo’s best-known and most-loved franchises. From Metroid to Animal Crossing, Zelda to Mario, all get a look-in, and most of the games have the depth and skill level to appeal to core gamers more than Wii Sports ever did. The problem is that most are complex enough to require long, dull tutorials, and even if she manages to sit through one of those your Grandma’s still not going to know what the heck’s going on.

Leave her out and get your game-playing mates involved instead and you’ll have much more success, with Nintendo doing a great job of introducing new ways to play using the GamePad. Pikmin Adventure, for example, sees one player using the old-school Wii Controller (you did keep some of those, right?) to control their Mii on the TV screen while the other player jabs at the GamePad screen with the stylus to throw Pikmin at enemies. It’s seriously addictive fun.

There are plenty of games for more than two players, too, such as Animal Crossing: Sweet Day, which sees up to four Wii Controller players racing around collecting sweets while the GamePad player tries to catch them using two guards, each controlled with a different analogue stick. You may go cross-eyed, you may completely lose your marbles, but you’ll be laughing.

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New Super Mario Bros. U

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A Nintendo console launch isn’t complete without a proper Mario game, and New Super Mario Bros. U is about as ‘proper’ as they get. In fact, at first glance it’s so familiar you wonder why they bothered. Sure, it looks crisp and colourful and the ability to mirror it onto the GamePad so it can be played in bed is nice, but it’s essentially just the same Mario game we’ve been playing for decades, isn’t it?

Multiplayer brings it to life, thanks again to clever use of the GamePad. The entire New Super Mario Bros. U ‘campaign’ can be tackled by up to five players, four of whom control Mario, Luigi and two Toad characters while the fifth uses the GamePad to drop platforms into the world and knock out enemies. The GamePad player is encouraged to help the Wii Controller players access hard-to-reach areas and save them from falling down gaps, but the real fun comes from being mischievous. With five players this is carnage of the first order.

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ZombiU

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Thought Nintendo was all about cutesy characters and colourful graphics? ZombiU is here to make you think again. Initially easy to dismiss as just yet another zombie game, ZombiU quickly proves to be much more. Set in London after an outbreak that’s turned almost the entire population into shambling flesh-eaters, you play a survivor based at Shadwell tube station who ventures out to complete tasks set by the mysterious Prepper. What could easily just be a generic zombie FPS is transformed by two things: permanent death and the GamePad.

If you die in ZombiU – and you will, probably within the first three minutes – that survivor is dead forever. You awaken back in Shadwell as a new survivor ready to do the Prepper’s bidding, but before getting on with that you’ve got another aim: find your last character, who has now joined the zombie horde, kill them, and reclaim your bag of weapons and loot. Die on the way there and your selection of zombie-killing swag will be lost forever. Harsh, yes, but it teaches you to be careful and makes this a far more tense and thoughtful take on the zombie genre. You need to plan your moves, take zombies on one at a time, and have an escape route ready if you find yourself outnumbered.

The GamePad is used to brilliant effect throughout. As standard it displays a map of the area, and with a tap on the corner of the screen a radar pulses out and reveals anything living or undead in the vicinity. More advanced is the environmental scanner – hold the left shoulder button and you can use the GamePad’s supremely accurate motion tracking to scan the area for enemies and items of interest. You use the same functionality to aim sniper rifles and mounted machine guns.

The GamePad also comes into its own in multiplayer. Here one player controls a lone survivor using a Wii Controller or the new Pro Controller. The other player is the Zombie King, who has a number of zombie ‘units’ that can be dropped onto the map to stop the survivor capturing flags or steal them for the zombie team. With the arsenal of weapons available to the survivor it’s easy to take on the zombies, but if the Zombie King manages to surround him things get much more interesting. Endlessly good fun.

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Video

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Not only does the Wii U not play Blu-ray discs, it won’t even recognise DVD movies. Disappointing as that is you do at least get access to Netflix, Lovefilm and YouTube from the Home screen. These services have only been enabled overnight so we’ll be updating with our impressions as soon as we’ve had time to give them a thorough workout.

UPDATE

The lightly customised version of Netflix on the Wii U is lovely to use, with quick, fluid responses as you shift through selections. Start playing a movie or TV show and Netflix does its typically impressive job of automatically scaling the resolution depending on the speed of your web connection. Anything over about 2Mbps should be fast enough for HD, which looks fab, although you can get a touch of judder in slow panning shots.

In the default arrangement the GamePad acts as a remote control as well as showing the playing movie’s artwork and giving a synopsis and cast details. One tap on the icon in the top-right of the screen and the arrangement is switched, with the movie playing on the GamePad. As expected you lose a little sharpness and vibrancy but colours are still natural and the picture is more than good enough for doing a spot of movie watching when the TV’s being used for something else.

YouTube has been customised more heavily, with the GamePad’s physical buttons being used to control the menus on the TV screen. The GamePad screen is just used to give you information about the video currently highlighted, as well as allowing for easier searching via virtual QWERTY. It’s a really clean, classy interface all told, but we can’t help but think that not being able to actually watch videos on the GamePad is a missed opportunity.

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Browser

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The internet browser works on both the TV and GamePad screens. This is another feature that’s only just been enabled so we’ll update when we’ve had more time with it, but first impressions are that it’s easy to use and quick to load pages, but also rather unkind to the relatively low resolution screen of the GamePad.

UPDATE

We’ve now spent a bit more time with the Wii U’s internet browser, and as we first suspected it’s a bit of a mixed bag. The GamePad is unsurprisingly the lead device here, with pages always appearing on the touchscreen and the option to open the virtual curtains on your TV screen so that you can see a mirror of the browser.

The experience is held back somewhat by the screen, which produces slightly jagged text and lacks multi-touch, which means there’s no pinch-to-zoom or other fancy navigation tricks that Apple has taught us. Having said that, double-tapping on an image or paragraph results in an instantaneous zoom-to-fit, and the screen is responsive enough to make typing in search terms a breeze. Don’t go thinking the browser will give you access to lots of extra VOD content, though – it’s incompatible with the likes of BBC iPlayer.

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Accessories

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Given that this is a console designed primarily for multiplayer action, a single controller isn’t going to get you very far, even if it is the fantastic GamePad. If you’ve still got Wii Remotes from the original Wii you’re in luck – they’ll all still work with the Wii U. In fact, some games, such as the Metroid Blast part of Nintendo Land, even take advantage of the later, upgraded Wii Remote Plus. It really would be good if you’d kept hold of those, as new ones will set you back around £50 each.

Also, coming in at a cool £50 is the new Wii U Pro Controller, an unashamedly Xbox-like controller complete with twin analogue sticks, D-pad and the full roster of buttons. It’s a shame the shoulder buttons are still digital, but the bigger disappointment is how little support it seems to be getting from Nintendo in these early days – load-up Nintendo Land or New Super Mario Bros. U and the Pro Controller turns itself off entirely, despite the games only really needing a D-pad and two buttons to play. We suspect that for certain games (Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, we’re looking at you) the Pro Controller will be all but essential, but spending £50 on one knowing that some games won’t even recognise it seems a bit of a waste.

Far less of a waste is buying a USB hard drive. Anyone who’s expecting to delve into the eShop on occasion is going to quickly fill even the Premium Pack’s 32GB flash drive in a, er, flash, especially as core titles such as New Super Mario Bros. U and Nintendo Land will consume over 2GB each. If you want to go down the USB hard drive route there are some guidelines: make sure it’s one with its own power supply, don’t pay extra for USB 3.0 as it’s not supported, and don’t pay for more than 2TB as that’s all that the Wii U can use for now. We’d go for something like the Buffalo DriveStation, which is a glossy black match for the Premium Wii U and can be had in 1TB size for around £55.

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Verdict

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Whether you should buy a Wii U largely comes down to the kind of gamer you are. If you’re exclusively a solo gamer it’s probably not for you, especially as the launch titles are geared towards local multiplayer.

Even those who are used to playing Wii games with the family should be wary. Sure, the Wii U will still play all of those games, but the new, Wii U-specific titles are less immediate and less casual, and non-gamers aren’t going to find it easy to get involved.

However, if playing with friends in the same room is how you like your games (and let’s face it, isn’t that what got us all into games in the first place?), the Wii U is all but irresistible. The GamePad isn’t as revolutionary as the Wii-mote, but it’s a sensible evolution of the controls that adds a new dynamic to gameplay. Most of all, the Wii U transports you back to those halcyon years when multiplayer involved being mocked by the mates sitting next to you rather than a foul-mouthed 12-year-old from Arkansas.

Is the Wii U the next generation of console gaming? Nope. Not even a little bit. As developers get used to its architecture it’s possible that cross-platform games will look and perform better on the Wii U than they do on the Xbox 360 and PS3, but by that time the Xbox 720 and PS4 (or whatever it is they actually end up being called) will also be available. Whether the Wii U still has a place then will depend on what games emerge in the interim and whether developers can push the limits of the GamePad.

So it’s not an essential gaming upgrade by any means, but it is very good fun – particularly for living room multiplayer action. If you’re a Ninty fan with £250 to splurge, we recommend it. But if you’re waiting for the next big thing in gaming it’s worth holding out to see what 2013 has in store.

Review by Tom Parsons

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It provides no graphical leap, but the Wii U’s take on dual-screen gaming is a revelation, especially when gaming with friends

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It's Nintendo Wii U and Apple iMac launch day – which one will you be getting?

Esat Dedezade — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 11:49:44 +0000

Will you be cracking open your wallet to snatch up Nintendo and Apple's latest shiny toys?

Christmas has landed early for gadgeteers today as the Nintendo Wii U and new Apple iMac hit shelves and online shopping baskets.

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New video! Nintendo Wii U unboxing

Lucy Hedges — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 22:06:23 +0000

You've got three days until you can remove Nintendo's Wii U from its cardboard confines. Why not watch us do it while you wait?

Nintendo's Wii U attempts to redefine the way we play games thanks to its unique two-screen gaming experience. It's the first-ever HD Nintendo gaming system, it's fully backward compatible with old Wii games and controllers and a selection of titles can be played entirely from the GamePad's small screen. We'll tell you all about it in our full review soon. In the meantime, why not watch our unboxing video and take a peep at what's inside the box?

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Nintendo Wii U unboxing video

Lucy Hedges — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 19:50:27 +0000

The Nintendo Wii U attempts to redefine the way we play games – but will the innovative dual-screen set-up prove popular? Only time will tell. In the meantime, check out our unboxing video...

Wii U pre-orders open

Ben Griffin — Fri, 14 Sep 2012 16:15:05 +0000

The Wii's successor the Wii U, can be pre-ordered in the UK now

Nintendo's latest console, the Wii U, can now be pre-ordered from your local retailer ahead of its November 30th launch date.

A quick look at Game reveals the Wii U will cost £259 for the no-thrills Basic model that comes in an iPod-matching shade of white. For this, you get 8GB of storage and one of those fancy tablet controllers.

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Nintendo Wii U European release date revealed

Esat Dedezade — Thu, 13 Sep 2012 14:40:30 +0000

Ninty's next-gen tablet-come-console has finally been stamped with a delivery date that should keep Santa busy over Christmas

It's been a while since we heard anything from the Wii U camp but Nintendo has now given its next-gen console a November 30th European release date, perfectly timed for Christmas.

Two versions of the Wii U will be available to gamers from launch day – the White basic pack and the Black premium pack. The former console has 4GB of memory while the latter packs in 8GB of flash storage, and both will come with the all-important GamePad.

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Wii U rumoured to be landing November 18th

Sam Kieldsen — Mon, 27 Aug 2012 19:01:48 +0000

Accessory maker apparently spills beans on the release date for Nintendo’s next console

Nintendo could be dropping off the Wii U in plenty of time for the lucrative “holidays” season, if a gaming accessory maker is to be believed.

According to a post on the NeoGAF forum, a rep for peripheral purveyor PDP was making a presentation earlier today, which ended with them saying that their new range of gear would be in shops just ahead of the Wii U’s November 18th release date.

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Nintendo Wii U release date coming in September?

Luke Edwards — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 09:54:03 +0000

The long-awaited Wii U might not be here just yet, but we should know when soon

At this point it seems like everything that can be revealed about the Nintendo Wii U, has been – but we're still waiting on a release date.

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Netflix on Wii U will use Gamepad for Remote Viewing

Stephen Graves — Wed, 13 Jun 2012 08:47:51 +0000

Gamepad will double up as a second screen, so you can watch the TV while junior watches cartoons

Netflix is coming to the Wii U – of course it is, it's on every device under the sun – but it's going to be a bit different on Nintendo's multi-screen marvel.

The above image shows how Netflix is planning to adapt its interface to take advantage of the Wii U's Gamepad controller.

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Nintendo reveals Wii U controllers

Sam Kieldsen — Mon, 04 Jun 2012 03:15:50 +0000

Finalised Wii U GamePad and Xbox 360-like Pro Controller shown off in pre-E3 announcement

Nintendo has released a pre-E3 video demonstrating an evolved version of the prototype Wii U GamePad, plus a “Pro Controller” aimed at hardcore gamers.

The former looks fairly similar to the controller shown off at last year’s E3, but with longer, clickable analogue thumb sticks replacing its stubby circular pads. Its grips have been tweaked for added ergonomics, too, and there’s a button that transfers your TV’s image to the controller’s built-in screen – or vice versa. There’s confirmed NFC abilities too.

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