BJQ1972

They picked a display that has very low latency for this test, so in reality it is even better than most HDTVs.

For people who are having lag issues, make sure that the input your console is connected to is set to 'Game' mode - on some TVs it makes a significant difference. Sorry if your granny already knows etc.

Well my preorder from Grainger Games didn't turn up in the shop. Annoying thing is I cancelled a very early preorder from Amazon so I could support a local retailer.

It would have been nice if they'd spent the time to make a 10 second phone call earlier in the week to save me having the day off work.

These face offs are interesting. When the PC version of a multi format game is appalling they blame the programmers. When it is one of the consoles they blame the console. As people have said the differences look fairly negligible - it's certainly not the disaster some PS3 ports have been. Not to mention the PS3 version of this has already been patched twice. What's to say a WiiU patch won't improve performance further.

Eurogamer seem very proud of this cheap PC they've built. Now if they can squeeze it into a sleek little box that people would be happy to sit under their TV with no performance/overheating/noise issues they would be on to a winner.

@adrenochrome i don't think side by side is any more processor intensive. There has been no performance hit in the XBox 360 titles that use the same method. The only downside if a loss of horizontal resolution when compared to frame packed 3D.

To clarify what I meant, with anaglyph, both the TV and gamepad will display what is essentially a monochrome 3D image. With side by side mode enabled only the TV will display a 3D image, but the gamepad will remain 2D as it is not 3d capable, in the modern sense of the term. With passive glasses this would be OK, but with active the different refresh rate of the gamepad compared to the active screen would cause an uncomfortable flickering effect with the glasses. As an example try looking at a mobile phone or similar when watching an active 3D TV.

Anaglyph is vastly inferior to the polarised 3D technology used in the cinemas from the 1950s, and the active technology on most 3DTVs today.

Apparently the WiiU version does support the types of stereoscopic content that works with passive and active TVs such as side by side and top/bottom, but it would be very uncomfortable to use these options when using the gamepad in conjunction with an active display.

@Lan it was obvious to me. In fact I suggested it myself in post 131 of this thread:-

https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2012/11/wii_u_software_storage_on_usb_devices_detailed#comments

@Rect_Pola it looks very much to me like that will be the case. The SD card menu option is still there on the Wii mode that you must switch to to play WiiWare and Wii VC. Whether the Wii u will still only allocate around 2200 'blocks' of the internal memory for the Wii mode, and the SD card menu is still restricted to 240 slots is unknown, but I think highly likely.

@Sean_Aaron I've come to the same conclusion that the SD card slot is purely for the Wii backwards compatibility. I was hoping that I would be getting a new fridge - to use Nintendo's old analogy, but it looks like I will be having to make do with the old one.

What I suspect will be possible is that if you plug the SD card into a USB reader then it will work as extra storage for the WiiU - unless the WiiU tests the write speeds of USB drives before allowing them to be used.

@Ideal_Hero The translation was spot on. What ONM did was read something that quite clearly says one thing, and interpret it as something completely different.

So ONM has now pulled the article. I don't wish to complain about the standards of journalism in the UK but it took me two minutes to find the page on Nintendo's Japanese website and translate it via Google, and then another 30 second search and I found a full, proper translation on another website. It's not rocket science.

@Assassin87 that is certainly the way it reads to me.

It talks quite clearly about USB storage being used to 'extend the main storage memory'. There is no way that ONM story is accurate.

Found this full translation of the support page - there is nothing on there about needing to keep moving data between HDD and WiiU internal memory.

http://nintendoeverything.com/104950/nintendos-full-wii-u-qa-translated/

I am waiting for clarification on which size HDD drives will work, although any USB 2.0 drive 'should'. The only file sizes to be initially aware of are the eShop downloads - Trine 2, for example will most likely clock in at around 2-3GB. Full retail games aren't on my radar unless they are heavily discounted. New releases are 60GBP on PS3 at the moment, but older games are as low as around 10.

For info, the first Black Ops game ran at 1040x608 on XBox360, and only 960x544 on PS3. Modern Warfare 3 runs at 1024x600 on both Xbox and PS3.

You all do realise that just because a console outputs at 1080p doesn't mean that the resolution of the games are 1080p, don't you? Many games released on the XBox 360 and PS3 aren't - for example Dishonored and Resident Evil 6 are 1280 by 720 native, and games like Call of Duty and Tekken Tag 2 are lower resolution.

Very impressed with Nintendo's release schedule for the next two quarters. Some cracking download software. Hopefully the Wii U fill follow suit.

A very sensible way to release some of the more esoteric Japanese games. Wonder why the 4th game hasn't been localised though.

Reminds me of Super Stardust from the few videos I've seen. It would look great in 3D - any word on whether the Wii U version will have a 3D option?

Loved the first one so can't wait for this. Vanquish 2 next?

The PS3 hasn't got enough RAM to enable cross-game chat, so how could it possibly do what the WiiU can do. Not to mention that no developers would ever develop a game that required two different machines to use.

@A-Hungry-Banker the only hope would be a similar deal with either Sky or Youview. The new Sky+ app on iOS has some similar functionality and they could integrate Zeebox into it - don't hold your breath though.

Console prices cuts are as certain as death and taxes. The PS3 was £425 at launch. The PS1 was £300 with a price drop to £200 after around 9 months.

What a lot of people also aren't realizing about the onboard flash memory is how easily and inexpensively upgradeable it is. Any of you upgraded your PS3 HDD? Xbox360 - I would guess that in a lot of cases people have gone out and bought another console rather than try it.

With the WiiU slip in a £20 32GB SD card or pop on a flash drive.

@LEGEND_MARIOID you see a £300 price and you see Nintendo ripping us off. I see a £300 price tag and I see £50 going into the pockets of the chancellor. Either way it's expensive.

More details on the i.tv service that this is based on here-

http://i.tv/

Don't forget those UK trades prices don't include VAT so you can add 40 odd pound to those. I am expecting about £280 for the basic and £330 for the premium pack.

I always believed the change was made because Nintendo knew the game was an absolute stinker and so realised that adding the Star fox branding was their only hope to recoup any of their investment.

Been reading it since the N64 days, and unfortunately it has been dropping in quality for several years now. I won't really miss it.

@Bass_X0 both chickens and ducks could happily live in a coop like that.

Did the Wii not launch in Europe about a month later than the US? What about the six month delay for the GameCube release?

It must be a slow news day.

You get very similar pricing for full retail games on the PlayStation store. Who in their right mind would pay these sorts of prices?

Typically HDTVs can introduce anything up to around 100ms of input lag, so digital foundrys analysis that it is 116ms faster than the LG TV is probably accurate - LG are probably the worst of the major manufacturers in terms of input lag.

So it seems that different people with different ISPs and connection speeds download things at different rates. Whoever would have guessed.

Transfer was very smooth - certainly less problematic than the DSi to 3DS transfer. Everything is exactly as it was on my original 3DS.

Only one panic - the XL displayed a 'connecting to the Internet' message for what seemed like an eternity - or more honestly a couple of minutes - once the source system rebooted.

@domdom87 Yes. That has always been the case.

@jtt235 I believe so.

@zdyoshikpl in that case what you would need to do is complete the transfer by putting your existing 2GB card into your new 3DS, and then, after that, use a PC to transfer the data from the 2GB card to the new 4GB card.

@tiger443 No. You need to do the transfer from 3DS to 3DS - just swapping SD cards will not work.

@ImDiggerDan I think if you watch the video at 33 seconds, a transfer of DSiware from the system memory to the SD card is part of the process.

@ThomasBW84 I got the impression from the video that there's no need to worry about what size SD card you are moving from - the 3DS transfer just seems to transfer shop info etc, and then moving your SD card from 3DS to XL completes the transfer.

@james I envy you and I don't. It's frustrating being a fan of Nintendo at times, and most of that frustration is borne out of the decisions that are made by Nintendo Japan. I think working for Nintendo, and being that close and yet being completely unable to change or affect that decision making process would be incredibly difficult. Having said that, the thought of playing games and being around hardware well ahead of release date will make it all worthwhile.

I've just been packing my old handhelds in their boxes, as they were just lying about on some shelves. I forgot just how big and ugly the original DS was.

@retroking. I'm not sure there were any DSi exclusives, but an example of a DS game that used the extra power was the Korg DS10+.

http://korgds10synthesizer.com/

@Kirk For me the subscription type approach just cannot work - I think if people were paying, say 30GBP per month for a console they would just not buy any games for it, or at least expect games to be about 1 or 2 quid - you can say goodbye to games like Zelda. I think the XBox subscription deal that they will be doing soon will prove that this pricing model won't work. If people don't want, or can't afford to buy a console outright then there are many existing places like Bright House, Catalogues etc that can fulfil the same purpose.

As for CD/DVD playback and other things like that - they are getting to the point that they are legacy formats - even Blu-Ray hasn't restarted the sales demand for physical media, so I think that as long as Nintendo provide a robust streaming service through 3rd parties like Netflix and Lovefilm then the multimedia aspects of the console are covered.

@Kirk You don't recall correctly. The N64 was 250GBP at launch.

@DogNut64 sorry, my mistake. THQ have said that Metro Last Light is not in development for Wii U, but as Nintendo Gamer has a two page preview for a game that is definitely not in development then it casts doubt on their preview of Black Op 2.

Nintendo Gamer has been going downhill for a while now. I have been intending to cancel my subscription for a while, but haven't got round to it yet.

I think this story is probably part wishful thinking and part just downright untruth. The preview on the next page in the mag is a two page preview of Metro Last Light, a game that activision have stated recently is not in development for Wii U. Make of that what you will.

Peter Molyneux has just announced a new game that will be played on TEN screens at once. Of course, as is usually the the case with his announcements, the finished game will actually only use one screen.

The king of hyperbole does actually have a point in this instance though - it did look to me like the E3 crowd were struggling with two screens at once, although then again, that could possibly say more about the typical games 'journalist'.

@Wesker Anybody with an XBox360 or PS3?

I think this might be full of hidden depth - the F-Zero mini game, for example, looked to be in addition to the 12 attractions that they mentioned.