Apparently, the Wii U ‘has nothing going for it’

Wii U Logo

An article was recently published over at The Examiner in which a writer stated that the Wii U “has nothing going for it” besides the touchscreen controller. The article reads like a classic piece of sensationalist troll bait, so I’m not going to link to it directly, but I wanted to take this opportunity to clarify a few misconceptions about the Wii U.

“The touchscreen is the Wii U’s only special feature.”

While the touchscreen controller has certainly been the focus of everything we’ve seen of the Wii U so far, to say it’s the one and only novelty of the system this early on is jumping the gun. Nintendo are intentionally being coy with Wii U information to try and retain interest in the Wii as long as possible. Just because we haven’t seen anything other than the controller doesn’t mean it isn’t there. It’s especially noteworthy that Nintendo have promised us an intuitive online system, among many other things, so it’s safe to say that there’s still a lot left to be learned.

“There are no games in development for the Wii U.”

Yes, the actual list of confirmed Wii U games is rather slim. But weren’t we at the same stage with the 3DS just over a year ago, before its E3 unveiling left us awestruck with a mind-boggling outpour of first- and third-party support? With all the developers’ rave we’ve been hearing lately, I’d honestly be more surprised if we didn’t see a list like that next E3 than if we did. Once again, Nintendo and their partners are holding their Wii U cards close to their chest as their focus for the holidays remains to push as many 3DS and Wii U units as possible.

“The Wii U is ‘slightly’ more powerful than the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.”

We have few facts I can base a response to this one on, but in addition to it once again being too early to judge the Wii U in this respect, basic logic dictates that a CPU or graphics card purchased in 2011 will noticeably outperform a 2006 part in a comparable price range. And honestly, even if the Wii U’s GFlops pale in comparison to Microsoft’s next console, I’ve seen enough of the E3 demos to convince myself that the graphics are beyond “good enough.”


These are just a few of the more prominent pieces of Wii U propaganda going around – there’s a surprising amount of negativity surrounding Nintendo’s next console out there – but you can already see a common theme here: it’s too early to make any judgments yet.

Give Nintendo some time, peace, and let them finish developing it. Iwata himself told us that they aren’t planning to show the console to us in its final form until next E3 and we’ve heard nothing but good things from developers working on games for it.

The Wii U might not turn out to be the greatest video game innovation since the joystick. I will admit that even I’m a little skeptical of it. But trying to talk it down before we’ve even seen what it can really do is nothing less than ridiculous.

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Comments, Reactions, and General Hooliganism

  1. Wow

    The person who wrote that article is either a troll or a fanboy, and just to tell him that “The Wii U is ‘slightly’ more powerful than the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.” comment is wrong because the under clocked dev kit is 50% more powerful and the final system will be way more powerful (I heard 3-5 times more powerful.)

    • Jikayaki

      The rumor of only fifty percent more powerful is complete crap. It seems to originate from a misinformation. The leaks and rumors leading up to the second gen dev kits already explained the issue regarding system power at least up that point.

      The alpha dev kits seemed to of been a tri-core processor with possibly up to a 4870 and 1.5 – 2 GBs of ram. These early dev kits then had to be down clocked from work load issues and over heating.

    • dylon

      i agree and if you read one of the past articles nintendo said they would show there final form at e3 it could be even more powerfull then we think

  2. FL767

    Ugh. That’s all i can muster out. The problem is that people actually believe troll bait, and if someone who was impartial on the console read that, it’d leave a nasty impression on them that the Wii U is just a Wii DS 360.

  3. Andy

    Error!
    “Once again, Nintendo and their partners are holding their Wii U cards close to their chest as their focus for the holidays remains to push as many 3DS and Wii ‘U’ units as possible.”

  4. nintendofan8887

    Seriously?!?

    “The touchscreen is the Wii U’s only special feature.”
    ONLY?! Are you kidding me?! Watch the trailer again, but this time carefully…

    “There are no games in development for the Wii U.”
    Oh, really? The Wii U will launch next year! Its completely normal not to have 1000 games like they want. -_-

    “The Wii U is ‘slightly’ more powerful than the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.”
    SLIGHTLY!?! Oh, so the Wii is “slightly” more powerful than the NES. And the Empire State is “slightly” taller than a normal building.

    Anyways, its too soon to say this kind of things… This proves that this has been written by a fanboy or a troll. 🙁

    • Okami

      It’s a little bit excessive to compare NES-Wii to the PS360-WiiU though. Yes of course the Wii is more than slightly more powerful than the NES – that is because it’s 4 generations and 23 years between them.

      The PS360-WiiU are only 6 years apart, and before the WiiU we have the Wii, which was, in fact only slightly more powerfull than the consoles of the generation before.

      What is worthles with the “it’s only slightly more powerful than the PS360”-statement however, is that this far, the only things we have seen is two graphic-demos and some gameplay demos, running on unfinished hardware, and not designed to show the maximum power of the console, rather than a glimpse of what it can do. And some game footage taken from the PS360 versions.

      It was a rushed show, with rough, unfinished materials. I don’t understand what pleashure people fin in judging the WiiU prematurely based on that.

  5. Biohazard

    In other words, this guy is basing his opinion on very information we have. By that logic, the PlayStation 4 will be the worst console in the next generation because we don’t have any information other it will be the weakest.

  6. crackkat

    no offense but why do we need to see this? why is this being published? its like pachter, why does his opinion mean so much that it should make a headline on this site? this is not a rhetorical question, i want to know why this is getting exactly what it wants, attention for stupidity. people researching the wii u will come across this site and its not good to show them this 🙁

    • Waller

      @crackkat.

      As the article said, Feld0 just used that article as a means to clarify the most common misconceptions.

  7. miiworld2

    Ugh… who’s the asshole who said it? Michael Pachter?

  8. Mariomaster1

    Ok, that’s it…..where’s the person who wrote this article? I ask because I just want to give them a big “hug”! (And by “hug”, I mean something that will burn with the intensity of a thousand suns >:D ) Only people who have watched Yu-Gi-Oh the Abridged Series would get it what I did there.

  9. dylon

    troll!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  10. RockD79

    Still getting it day one. Don’t give a crap.

  11. Mariomaster1

    That tears it! And by it, I mean this Jason Hammerbacher fellow’s spinal cord >:D Ok, that may sound cruel, but this guy’s totally asking for it >:( My good friend Melvin shall be paying him a visit in his near future….

    • crackkat

      haha that cracked me up

    • Mariomaster1

      @crackkat
      Thanks, I try to amuse people anyway I can 😛 But on a side note, Melvin will be cracking the guy who wrote this up if you get my drift >:D Bwahahah, Melvin YES!

  12. D2K

    Let these morons amuse themselves. It’s sad that their lives have so little meaning that they can find nothing better to do than to come up with meaningless drivel about how the Wii U will fail based on nothing more than hear-say and conjecture from fanboys or people whom are too stupid to know any better. Those of us whom have brains already know the truth and that’s all that matters. Wii U will be just fine. If it’s the Lord’s will, I’ll have mine on launch DAY ONE.

  13. How about this, news media–just wait and see what Nintendo brings to the table, before you go putting your foot in your mouths?

  14. Max Mouse

    Isnt it too early to start thinking up a new console.. and people are saying this is just a attempt to compete with the PS3 and XBOX 360 so apparently it might not even be better than them… Why do they need a touch screen Controller when we have that already on the 3DS.. How much is the controller gonna cost? because I would hate to spend over 50$ just because the Touch Screen won’t turn on or Thumbstick messed up… By them releasing a console too early they are only gonna get owned by the PS4 and Xbox 720(whatever) again…