Yesterday Nintendo had some sort of planned information exchange, no big deal (the faked nonchalance is obvious here, right?), and it turns out they decided to finally provide a real release date and price for the upcoming Wii U console. Here's what you need to know!
Release date: November 18th, 2012 (U.S.)
Price for Basic Model: $299.99
-white system
-8GB of storage
-one game pad
-game pad stylus
-game pad AC cable
-console AC and HDMI cable
-sensor bar
Price for Deluxe Model: $349.99
-black system
-32GB of storage
-Nintendo Land
-one game pad
-game pad stylus
-game pad AC cable
-console AC and HDMI cable
-sensor bar
-a digital promotion program that translates
purchases to points for the eShop
-console stand
-game pad stand
-game pad (charging) cradle
Both systems will be backwards compatible with "most Wii games and accessories". Which games wouldn't be? I find that very perplexing. I appreciate Nintendo's dedication to backwards compatibility; titles last much longer this way. The $350 price tag for the deluxe model is more than I had anticipated, but considering the greater amount of memory, the included game, and all of the additional accessories I can see that easily adding up to at least fifty extra dollars. For those that aren't interested in the accessories or in owning Nintendo Land but you want additional memory, know that you can get more space via external USB drives.
Other big announcements during today's presentation included a plethora of games, Nintendo TVii, NFC inclusion, and more information on the games in Nintendo Land and the Miiverse.
Interestingly, some Wii U games will support up to five players.
A lot of the newest features look promising enough, but their applications still seem few and far between. My skepticism is on the rise after watching the video for Nintendo TVii. It seems that Nintendo is attempting to reinvent the way people watch TV, but services like TiVO and Hulu already do that. There are almost too many options at this point. Also, all of the football features seem nice, but since I don't care about football I found myself wondering why I should care about the sports specific game pad features.
The Wii U will be pre-orderable at a variety of retailers including GameStop, Best Buy, Walmart and more, as well as Amazon.com.
Did anyone watch the live presentation? I received my information via the Nintendo of America twitter feed. What do we think about the pricing and the games? What about Nintendo TVii? If anyone is excited about the applications, I'd love to hear it!
-MJ
*All images are property of Nintendo, and were borrowed from the Nintendo of America twitter feed or the Nintendo website.
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