@Angelic_Lapras_King
Well for comparison the Wii VC launched one month after the Wii's launch with 17 games in the EU. Compared to that 7 VC games almost six months after the Wii U's launch seems pretty average.

At this rate it'll be E3 2014 before there's 100 VC games on the Wii U VC......

Wow, that's pretty weak for the Wii U VC in the second week. Not saying those aren't great games but I was kinda hoping for them to really push the early VC. Get at least three or four out every week so that by the end of the year there is a sizable collection....

Apparently not

They've literally had this up for months at my "local" JBs with that same price, same box and everything. EBs have the same but with a $108 price. The only promise they make is that when the product launches you'll pay the lower of the two prices (if it ends up being cheaper).

All this confirms is that they assume it will cost less than or equal to $99AU at launch. Presumably all the people pre-ordering this are also pre-ordering the console so if it ends up being bundled they'll just combine the two deposits. Confirmation of nothing really.

Things don't change as fast in computing in terms of actual gains from more power as much as they used to. If in 2002 you had what was a mid-to-high-range computer from 1998 (which'd be like a 1Ghz Athlon with 64MB RAM) and wanted to play, I don't know, Halo on PC you'd have some headaches. Try that in 2012 with Mass Effect 3 on a 2008, 2.5Ghz C2D and 4GB system and you'd be pretty fine.

It's not like you hook a gaming console upto 5x 1080p monitors with 3D and then stop to encode a 1080p video while browsing flash heavy webpages and talking to someone over HD skype. They're one use devices with a single screen which is currently limited to 1080p and viewed at from a couch. You're not going to get that much out of more power....... or at least not quickly.

A tiny bit? Sounds like the sort of latency you'd expect to experience ... when there isn't any but you assume there must be some given it's wireless. Like the latency introduced by WiFi that people panic about despite it being less than the lag introduced by most screens.

Nintendo don't make any money from the grey market and I doubt they are producing that many new cartridges especially of some of those old games. The way I see it it's pretty much pure profit if they did this. There's also the benefit of being able to get the obscure titles, some which go for a bundle, with little to no effort.

Win-win-win

How will it be able to tell the difference between the sensor bar on the controller and the one on the TV? The sensor bar is just IR dots.....

There aren't that many things on this list that I'd be surprised with. Aside from the cross platform "HD console" games and a slightly better selection of top-tier exclusives this looks pretty much identical to the 3DS launch. What launch would be complete without Ubisoft milking the early game drought?

@billy-beauts iPads and Wiis aren't exactly identical products... infact they're entirely different. If you had said DS/3DS and iPhone/iPod Touch then sure because why buy a gaming machine when you already carry one with you? but iPads and Wiis? Not by a long shot.

A few things
1) External USB2 HDDs are ~4-5x faster than DVD drives and about as fast as a modern Blu-Ray drive when the disks are running at full speed. That's only after optical disks have spun up to full speed.
2) HDDs are cheap as chips and I'm sure many people have a spare one lying around.
3) Not all games will be ~10GB, some will be more but many will be less.
4) At 10Mbps, a standard-ish BB speed, you'll be able to download 4.5GB/hour. At 10Mbps you could start downloading a "Super Mario Galaxy HD" at 5PM, have tea and it'll be waiting for you at ~7:30PM.
5) The ability to download overnight does not mean you'll HAVE to download overnight it just means that that will be an option. It's a great option if you have peak/offpeak quota or don't want to annoy everyone by hammering your 'nets when everyone is using it.
6) Lastly... many ISPs have partnerships with various companies. In Australia my ISP gives me iTunes, XBox Live and ABC iView (Australia's version of BBC iPlayer) off quota. Other ISPs do similar things and I'm sure it's the same in other countries. I wouldn't be that surprised if Nintendo follows...

When I first heard about the 3DS a New SMB that looked as good as New SMB Wii was the first thing that came to mind. I've been looking forward to the idea of a 2D Mario in full stereoscopic 3D for a long while it seems. It's that prospect of that sort of game which got me interested in the idea of the 3DS even if games like Kid Icarus and OoT were what eventually won me over.

Having said that, and maybe this is a double standard, but the idea of New SMB on the Wii U doesn't excite me at all. When I first heard about the Wii U it was HD gaming and the DS style gameplay of having a tablet there that got me interested. RTS games and similar as well as the idea of having your items sitting there ready to use in a Zelda or Metroid. New SMB does nothing exciting on the Wii U.

...... I'll probably get it on both but I'm much, much less likely to get it on the Wii U.

All I want from a WiiU version of a new Bit Trip game is the ability to play it with the TV turned off if I want to. Not radical crazy idea but... it's something I'd really want. Boring me.

A story about Angry Birds and Waltz getting the rant machine going. What a surprise.

There is no reason why it couldn't have worked on a Nintendo machine. I disagree with Miyamoto about it being possibly better on the (3)DS but it wouldn't have been horrible. There are a couple of minigames in New SMB on the DS that have a similar sort of idea, they work fine. It would have worked. WiiWare would have also worked but the real system to put it on would be the WiiU.

Think about it, bird on the touchscreen and the whole scene on the TV in full 1080p glory. The best way you can possibly play that game, a tablet, combined with a full display of the damage on your TV. Perfection.

@mastersworddude Except that the anon devs saying it wasn't very powerful were contradicting the named developers who were saying it was. Making it look a lot like professional troll-bait used to get ad-revenue.

This story? It's on price. There's not much to gain from saying it'll cost $300US and therefore presumably about $400AU. That's pretty much as expected. The low cost of the tablet? Not a surprise either. Those components are in everything these days including the excluded gyros. You get more tech in a $30 burner phone these days.

@Kafei2006 You can create stili that work with capacitive screens. They aren't standard plastic ones (I think they have a rubber tip or something) but you can buy them for your iPads and so on. Look it up.

This is nothing more than their tech-specs version of "we do not comment on rumour and speculation". Nothing more.

@NeonSh3llz exactly

On a PC you'll typically have a media player, browser and virus scanner running all at once all the time. On top of that it's not crazy for people to want to do things like edit video which chews up a heap more system RAM than a typical game. 750MB of video RAM with 512MB of system RAM? That'd be one hell of an upgrade and more than enough by itself. Could they go further? Definitely.

Get ready for high-res texture heaven.

It's strange, I remembered the game from the demo I played before the 3DS launched. Remembered the controls being pretty awesome and not having any trouble holding the 3DS. Then the previews and reviews come out and everyone was bitching about how impossible it was to control.

Get the game because it still seemed like a unique game... no problems with the controls. I play using the screen, holding the 3DS in my left hand. No special technique, stands, circle pad pros or anything. It works pretty damn well. I have no idea what people are talking about.

On top of that the online modes surprised me with how great they were. Free-for-all is worth getting this game for alone. It really is a must have game for "core" gamers who own a 3DS.

@Zero123 The Australian Club Nintendo isn't as great as some of the others but it isn't that bad. You seem to forget that the blooper fan is a fairly new item (the first two fans were Animal Crossing and Mario) and that some items have dissapeared from the store. There was the Kirby pouch a while ago for example and the SNES Classic Controller before that.

Oh, and the Zelda Posters and G&W2 are both very recent additions.

As some have said this is not the same as the hard people are thinking. In a nutshell it's possible to quickly verify whether a level is possible to be finished if someone has finished it regardless of how complicated. At the same time it could potentially take billions of years for a computer to prove either way whether it's possible to finish.

The million dollar prize is about something a bit different. That's about whether it is possible to solve these hard problems in the same time it takes to verify them.

@Waltz
I think you really have to look at Pachter as a personality on a show designed to get views more than a professional analyst giving investment advice. Who do you think the target audience of that show are? I wouldn't be taking his views on that show too seriously.

To the point I was making this is an unpredictable market. The 3DS was pretty much DOA and look what happened there. So really the best approach to this sort of news should be "meh". At the end of the day we're buying consoles to enjoy the games we like so if there are games you like... buy the console to enjoy the games. Simple as that.

I gave up trusting predictions on what would happen with Nintendo consoles after the 3DS. People had it dead before it was out because of iPhones and iPads and it's future looked horrible before I got mine. Then I got it anyway because of OoT and Mario Kart..... and all of a sudden it's doing ridiculously well.

I think it's best just to ignore whatever people say and stop trying to guess how long a console will live. If it launches and it looks crap wait, if it has the games you want jump on board. Enjoy it for what it is. If it fails like the Dreamcast at least you can be one of those smug barstewards in 2025 who will say "I owned a Wii U, it was great".

@jibberldd5 Learn to science. Candles emit a whole range of light from Thermal IR all the way through the visible spectrum. That's why fire both emits heat and is visible. The Wii sensor bar LEDs emit a very limited range of light between TIR and Red which is why you can't see them AND they don't emit much heat.

You know what? I almost never played the multiplayer modes on Donkey Kong Country Returns or New SMB Wii so I don't see how this would've been much different. It's not a good thing that it's missing but it doesn't bother me nor does it surprise me that it didn't make it.

Now if there are framerate issues or less levels.... then I'll be annoyed.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say they might even be currently working on a 3DS Zelda, a Wii U Zelda and a 3DS port of Majora's Mask. I mean, that's what happened with Skyward Sword, OoT3D and Spirit Tracks.

@Jfilesguy Every GB game we need? No way! Still don't have Dr Mario here and even if we did there's no Donkey Kong Land yet.

..... and surely some more obscure ones I can't remember or don't know about

... and the Link dies timeline is the bit after a Game Over screen in OoT

I'm pretty sure this means the updates to the Ambassador games are coming soon (if not really, really soon). Hopefully this means multiplayer options.

I'm not surprised....

@31 oh yeah, forgot about that. I've already tried it with Pullbox but should be interesting to try out with a lot of downloads at once.

@21 damn straight. So far we have Zelda 1 & 2, OoT, Spirit Tracks, Phantom Hourglass, Link's Awakening, Four Swords. Now there's Minish Cap AND the chance of Majora's Mask and Seasons/Ages is pretty high.

Not much missing.....

Kirby's closer to their fifth pillar.... sixth maybe... is pillar even the right word? Kirby is great but do people BUY Nintendo consoles for Kirby? If Nintendo didn't make a Kirby game for five years would people say "where's the next Kirby?"

I haven't played Spectre's Call yet so these Star Wars comparisons are kinda freaking me out a little bit

When I first heard about Rhythm Heaven on Wii months and months ago I thought we'd get it this year.... good to see it's not forgotten

I don't understand how people could say the controls don't work or were worse than the controls of other Zeldas. What game were you guys playing?

I know this whole thing is subjective and "fanboys going to fanboy" which, given I'm posting on this article, I probably am. Still, I don't get it. Kinda like those product reviews you see for things that say stuff like "worthless product, performed horribly, will never buy this brand again" next to "worked as expected and was a pleasure to use"...... you know someone's talking out of their ass.

I noticed that the screenshots on the eShop page for Pullblox (Pushmo) are in 3D. I think that's a first and a small but important improvement from not having any with 3D screenshots.

While they're at it more games, retail games also, should have 3D trailers on the eShop.

I'm in two minds about this. On the one hand they pushed to get it to launch on time AND Retro had a hand in development (woot!). On the other hand they pushed to get it launched on time.......

@Cipher Well, if "that's nothing" I guess Australia got the worst deal. We got Skyward Sword late on the 23rd and only because the street date was broken........ but we have it now and we get Mario Kart on the 3rd so, all is good!

@Usagi-san
It's fairly standard fare and it's purely so you can work out what people are coming to your site looking for. It's so you can work out what topics/posts are generating the most traffic and why.

...... and the why is sometimes really, really strange

Oh wow, I was at EBs today (hunting for streetpasses) and was kinda tempted to ask about Super Mario 3D Land. Knew Gametraders had broken release which also happened for OoT 3D and EB was fairly quick to follow.

I guess I'm not that annoyed, I wasn't planning on getting it at launch...... if it was Skyward Sword I'd be annoyed....

I'm surprised that people are complaining that it seems to be getting all of the major 2011/2012 cross platform titles. Personally I'd be pretty worried if that wasn't happening.

Think about it, next year we'll end up wanting it for some cool first party title. Then we'll see 2012's Skyrim or Arkam City and have the option to get THAT on the Wii U. If that option WASN'T there then why did they bother? That's where and what the Wii is.

@sillygostly
Well the Australian store has the Kirby Pouch now, G&W 2 is on it's way finally. Also there have been some pretty awesome EB Game pre-order exclusives here recently so I wouldn't complain too much.

Looks pretty damn good and the 3D really adds a sort of atmosphere. Not sure if I'm that interested in this sort of game though....... so will wait for reviews (and possibly bargain bins)

Some things should remain forgotten..........

It's a real shame that the VC games don't have the Super Gameboy enhancements............

@Splat
Red Steel 2? Great? .... Good definitely, decent controls and fun but it was buggy, repetitive and from memory fairly short so I wouldn't call it great. I wouldn't even say it's the best use of Motion Plus I've seen either and the only Motion Plus games I own are Red Steel 2 and Wii Sports Resort!

On topic! pointer controls are awesome for FPS so I, like most here, strongly disagree. Gyro aiming, which is what Motion Plus can do, isn't too bad either. Infact it was so good in OoT 3D that I used it exclusively. Clearly this Tony Key bloke is either doing it wrong or is simply trying to spin something for the audience (Kinect owners) he's talking to.

The SNES Mario Circuit track at first glance looks most like Mario Circuit 1......

Why do they have to release this on the same day as Skyward Sword?

Could have at least launched one of them.... now... ish...

I was kinda hoping we'd see more stuffs from smaller animation studios. Like Animal Logic maybe. I kinda have a soft spot for Animal Logic......

blame my spontaneous sense of patriotism for that

@Adamant oh wow. We're kinda missing out then

........ but it's not like what we're missing out on is that much really. There aren't.... well only really three.... four... maybe five good games in there I'd want to see in 3D. Ok, I guess we're missing out.

They have spotpass notifications built in now like they do for the ambassador certificate and they're not the same trailers. Also, TBH, the E3 trailers are what I used to demo the 3DS so it's good to have them outside of the eShop.

plus they have cool looking icons now........ even if there is a huge delay before the video to show rating information