@Falco The original Wii played GameCube games, but the ones currently available in stores do not play them anymore. So there's no way that's a factor.

@BAGBOY I never played as Sheik, only Zelda. And why would they get rid of Zelda? She's the namesake of one of Nintendo's flagship series, for crying out loud. If anything, Sheik is far less relevant a character, having only had basically a cameo in one game...

@Doma You're a fool if you honestly believe the 3DS version is an adequate substitute for the Wii U version. Graphics aside, Smash Bros. is best played in multiplayer and unless you're willing to buy multiple 3DS systems or put up with the laggy online mode (which Sakurai himself lamented in the direct) you'll be stuck playing single player Smash on your 3DS. And let's hope the 3DS's circle pad holds up after a few hundred hours of frantic gameplay...

I still worry that the direct will be capped off with a delay to 2015. They're going to try to cushion the blow with a bunch of reveals and then tell us to "please understand". It's Brawl all over again...

@Action51 I think you missed the headline. It's a Smash Bros. Nintendo Direct. They're only going to talk about Smash Bros.

I can guarantee the direct will be amazing, have some awesome stuff in it, and then at the end will drop the bombshell that the game is being delayed to 2015. Mark my words.

That Sonic DLC finally convinced me to buy Lost World. Amazon tells me it'll be at my house sometime tomorrow. Let's see if it's as bad as the reviews say it is...

@ferthepoet And your point? Handhelds always outsell home consoles in Japan.

So glad Ubisoft is still releasing this on Wii U, because it looks amazing...

I'll definitely be getting both versions, but the 3DS version is clearly not the definitive one. You'll need four systems to do proper multiplayer and there's no way my circle pad is going to like being used for thousands of aggressive smash attacks...

@C-Olimar Am I the only one that hates he idea of Virtual Console Pokemon games? Nintendo would be too lazy to add a game link feature and without trading the games would be impossible to complete. That would be awful. The only way I'd even be remotely interested is if full trading and battling was still possible between linked games. Otherwise, forget it.

@Luffymcduck Oddly enough, I own an original SNES Super Scope but no games that actually use it...

Thank god. He never deserved to be playable.

@DestinyMan There's a big difference between what Smash does to series like Pikmin and Kirby in terms of scaling and what people are suggesting with Ridley. Each series stays true to scale (i.e. the Mario characters are sized proportionately to eachother, etc.). All the Kirby characters, while larger than they should be, are proportionate to eachother.
If you shrink down Ridley and not Samus, it'd look ridiculous seeing them side by side. Samus fighting a giant Ridley is an iconic image in gaming and if he suddenly shrunk, it'd look stupid...

@FireHorsePrime Because Diddy was made in conjunction with the Donkey Kong franchise and so Nintendo retained the rights. Conker and Banjo are independent series and never belonged to Nintendo.

@Xtremetdifan Because Wii U screens are prettier. They're going to show more shots from Wii U since it's in HD instead of the 3DS version, which looks worse than Brawl. Makes perfect sense.

The battle modes were incredible.

@BAGBOY I highly doubt it. There's no way those two would be chained together at this point. Sure, they were a team in one game, but they're standalone characters in every other game they've been in. Forcing them to be the same character would be like making Mario always riding Yoshi, an awful idea if you ask me...

@Ninjuggernaut Because they're too lazy to add a link function and without trading and battling Red and Blue would be garbage.
Seriously, I have ZERO interest in Virtual Console Pokemon games if you can't trade between versions. That alone would rule out Pokemon like Alakazam and Gengar, plus the version exclusives...

@FilmerNgameR Don't count on it. It's a Nintendo themed game with a couple guests from other companies. Sonic is likely all we'll get from his series.

@MAB I like that idea. It's a great way to punish those who whine for Nintendo games on smartphones.

@unrandomsam Same reason people choose to have children, I guess...

@ferthepoet You don't have to use it. Chill out.

Smart move on Amazon's part. Now I'm far more inclined to buy my games from them.

After last year, the 3DS release schedule is looking sad by comparison. This should help.

@Mahe You always insist on trashing the Gamepad, but without it, the Wii U is an underpowered, decidedly last gen console with nothing innovative in its control scheme. They need to focus on the Gamepad to differentiate the Wii U from its competition. This was great news; your rantings are the idiocy...

@Doma Dumping the Wii U now would only ruin their next console launch. Think of the people who just bought a Wii U only to see support for it dropped. It's not likely they'll invest their money in another Nintendo console anytime soon if the one they just bought is abandoned.

@K-Gamer Because it's fun and accessible. It's simple, really. What's not to understand?

@seronja So by your logic, nobody should ever buy a luxury item. All money spent on unnecessary items should go to the poor? Forget things like jewelry, movies, vacations and video games. Since you don't need them to survive, are you selfish for spending money on them instead of giving to the poor? Why don't you sell your game collection and give all the proceeds to those in need, then?

@Mahe Dropping the gamepad is the worst idea anyone has had on this topic. Without the gamepad the Wii U offers nothing new and simply becomes a less powerful version of the PS4 and Xbone with far fewer games.

Maybe if it goes on sale at some point I'll pick it up. And I'm talking deep discount...

@Peach64 @BlueGreen @Haywired

Sorry my reply is coming so late, but I wanted to research this thoroughly and cite my sources so as to have some credibility here.

So, I scoured the internet for the most accurate sales figures by region that I could find and while I was unable to find any current side-by-side comparisons of console sales by region, I did find some information that’s worth looking at.

The first piece of information I found came from vgcharts.com, which I admit has had a shaky reputation of reporting data in the past, but let’s take a look, anyway. This chart examined the holiday sales of the various consoles and here’s what it had to say:

In North America, there were 130,000 Wii U sales, compared to 913,000, the combined sales of the other four home consoles on the market (PS3, PS4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One). So in North America, the Wii U accounted for 12% of all home console sales.

And over in Europe, there were 59,000 Wii Us sold, while the other four consoles sold a total of 611,000 units, meaning the Wii U accounted for only 8% of consoles sold of the holidays.

Granted, neither percentage is mega high, but you can see that people buying a home console in North America were 50% more likely to pick up the Wii U as opposed to another console.

And if you want to talk handhelds, we can do that, too. North America saw 414,000 3DSs sold and 39,000 Vitas. The 3DS, then, accounted for 91% of handheld sales.

And in Europe? 351,000 3DSs versus 67,000 Vitas, giving Nintendo 83% of the handheld market share.

So, while I have to admit that the difference is not as staggering as I had originally thought, Europe undeniably favored other consoles more than North America did this past holiday season.

But if you’re unwilling to trust vgcharts, then we could always examine the raw numbers. First of all, Wikipedia had no specific data for Europe’s Wii and Wii U sales, so I had to do a little math here, so bear with me. Wikipedia’s sales figures for the combined total of Wiis sold were 48.03 million for both North and South America and 39.52 for the rest of the world, excluding Japan. Now, the population of both Americas is 942 million. I understand that the rest of the world doesn’t all have access to Nintendo hardware, so I did Europe some favors here (even though the bulk of Central and South America doesn’t buy games, either). I left out Africa entirely, leaving only the population of Europe, Asia and Oceania. I subtracted the obvious 127 million from Japan, and even took out China’s whopping 1.35 billion residents, leaving the “rest of the world” (which Europe is part of) as 2.74 billion people.

What does this all mean? The 942 million people in the Americas bought more Wiis than the entire rest of the world, a combined total of 2.74 BILLION people. So even with the help of the entire rest of the planet (excluding Africa, China and Japan), Europe still bought less Wiis than the Americas.

And how about Wii U? The Americas bought 1.75 million, while Europe (with the help of the remainder of the planet) only bought 1.01 million.

Clearly, then, Europe is less enthused about Nintendo than North America.

And please understand that I don’t mean anything insulting by my statement. I have nothing against Europe or any Europeans. I don’t at all mean that you’re less of a Nintendo fan because you live there, either. It’s simple numbers, really. And, in fact, I salute your patronage of Nintendo even moreso, since your region isn’t as favorable to Nintendo.

The guns ruin it for me. Road Rash was all about clobbering weapons, not shooting.

@Peach64 Source, please? I distinctly remember an article recently which stated that the Wii's lifetime sales in Europe were recently eclipsed by The XBox 360. Your figures are either outdated or incorrect.

@Peach64 If you noticed, I never mentioned the UK; I said Europe, which has a comparable population to North America. The Nintendo sales figures in North America are higher than those in Europe.
And it's not entirely about raw numbers, either; we're talking ratios here. Nintendo consoles have a higher ratio of sales compared to their Sony and Microsoft competition in other regions. Europe overwhelmingly favors Sony and Microsoft even moreso that North America and Japan.
And let's stop comparing handhelds and home consoles. Look at Europe's console sales figures (again, not just the UK) and you'll see Nintendo is lagging farther behind Sony and Microsoft there than anywhere else. And of course the Vita did better in Japan than the Wii U. Handhelds outperform everything else there.

The bottom line is that Europe has less interest in Nintendo products than other regions. You can try to argue otherwise, but the sales figures don't lie.

@Peach64 Sure, I hear ya. But compare those numbers and percentages with the rest of the world and they tell a different story. Nintendo's sales figures in North America and Japan are always substantially larger than those in Europe. Europe is the only region where the 360 has outsold the original Wii in lifetime sales, for crying out loud. You can't argue that Europe is generally less enthused about Nintendo than the rest of the world...

The vast majority of Europe hates Nintendo. Haven't we confirmed this already?

Voted for the springy ropes because it confirms the return of Zelda's oft-hilarious "farewell" taunt.

Back in my day we waited eight years between Metroid games and shut up about it.

@Chriiis No, but when they're showing off the characters for the first time it makes sense to show HD images primarily instead of low-res ones that look inferior to Brawl.

Oh, Japan. Bless your heart.

@jedisquidward True, but even if you don't find it funny, you treat it as if it were a serious comparison. Clearly this wasn't meant to be taken seriously.

@pkee @Guitardude7 They're probably saving Yoshi for the release of Yoshi's New Island.

@Expa0 That's ridiculous. Three Kirby characters is perfect, especially since Kirby is a Nintendo staple series now. Plus all three Kirby characters in Brawl play uniquely without any clones.

@MrMario02 The reason is simple. The Wii U screens are prettier. Makes sense to use the prettier of the two games to show off the characters.

@Prof_Clayton You'd rather they dump old, iconic characters just to make room for new ones? I'd rather limit the number of new characters so that they can keep the old ones in there, as well. King Dedede has a unique play style, not to mention he's the second most iconic Kirby character. I can't think of a single newcomer that would be important enough to replace him.

I pretty much only need it now for my legendaries, since I've traded for all the breed-able stuff on the GTS already. Having monsters like Feraligatr and Porygon-Z on my game makes it a little easier to wait a bit longer.

@jedisquidward You missed the point. It's a comedy video, designed to make the viewer laugh, and posting it on a Nintendo fan-site makes perfect sense. You have no sense of humor...

I can't believe all the ignorant people saying they wish Nintendo would return to cartridges. Do you all remember why Nintendo lost all of its third-party support during the N64's lifetime? Exactly, it was because they stuck cartridges. They're way too expensive and even more third parties walk away from a Nintendo console if they went back to cartridges. Come on. Let's be rational here. And which first party titles on Wii U have a long load times, anyway? Mario 3D World loads up pretty much instantaneously.