THQ have now released the prologue and part one of the gameplay trailer that was shown at E3. There are two more parts to go with the second part being released on the 28th of July.

Where's our BioShock, Ken?

While speaking to IGN, Ken Levine made it clear that Irrational Games has nothing in the works for the Wii U. Even though, he was quite impressed with the console and appeared in Nintendo’s Wii U third party software video back at E3. He did say that it was a possibility but that they were not working on anything at the moment.

“Just to be clear, there are no plans. I’m not saying it can’t happen, but we have no plans to do any games for that platform.”

Levine does seem to believe that the Wii U will be able to offer a ‘core’ gaming experience.

“The fact that the Wii U has got two sticks… I feel it’s like… It’s a great year for the core coming back and saying, okay, have your touch screens, have your motion control, we’ll try to make that work, and if you can pull that off it’ll be really good.”

This is slightly disappointing as PlayStation 3, PC and Xbox 360 will be receiving BioShock Infinite and the PSVita is getting a BioShock game “built from the ground up”.

Metro Last Light’s prologue trailer from E3 has recently surfaced. The post-apocalyptic title will be making its way to the Wii U, PS3 and 360 in 2012. Unfortunately, it seems to end just as it starts getting good but I guess that’s the nature of a prologue. However, it does give a fair idea of what the visuals will be like.

The creator of the Angry Birds phenomenom has said they are looking into bringing new Angry Bird experiences to consoles. Though they haven’t specifically looked into the Wii U, vice president of franchise development, Ville Heijari has said that Angry Birds and the Wii U are quite a good match.

“We really haven’t looked into the Wii U specifically yet – we haven’t announced anything for Nintendo consoles yet. But if you look at the control methods, if you look at the Wii U, I mean that’s a really, really natural match, so obviously we’re very interested in developing there as well,” added Heijari.

As of June Angry Birds has been downloaded 250 million times.

Crysis creators, Crytek are hoping for a core gaming market on the Wii U

Crytek are hoping that there will be a core gaming market on the Wii U. In an interview with NowGamer, Carl Jones said that the Wii U is a platform that they are really interested in and that they hope there is a market for a core gaming experience on the console.

When asked about core gaming on the Wii U, Jones was optimistic but sceptical because of the approach the Wii had to gaming.

I really hope so but I don’t think it’s a necessary part of their strategy. The Wii is great at the games people like playing on it. I’m not sure yet what Nintendo’s strategy might be for hardcore. I don’t know if we’ll see flagship core titles on that platform – as a fan of Nintendo I’d love to see it personally, but I also enjoy playing the non-core titles a great deal. Whether or not we need core titles as well, we’ll see. That’ll be up to the consumer. But if you can get the same visual quality from Wii U as from other platforms, then why not?

Jones also shared why they couldn’t support the Wii.

It’s something we’re really interested in. There are a load of Nintendo fans at Crytek, right up to the top of the company. We were unfortunately unable to support the last generation of Wii because it would have been quite an engineering effort to take the engine down to that level of hardware,” said Jones. “So we were quite excited to see a new level of hardware come out that we think we can support, do some good stuff with, and it’s something we’re currently experimenting with.

Hopefully Crytek’s interests will manifest in a game for the Wii U.

Gearbox Software’s Randy Pitchford believes that the script for their upcoming game Aliens: Colonial Marines is so good it could be made into a TV series.

“We could make a whole TV series out of the material they crafted for us,” said Pitchford. “You gotta be careful with it, though. You can imagine when the characters belt something out and it doesn’t work… it’s delicate and difficult so we’re being very subtle.”

Randy Pitchford also explained what they were doing to please fans of the sci-fi saga. “There are so many neat, fun things we get to do. Like, what happened to Burke? What happened to Hudson? They’re there, somewhere. They’re all fun play spaces that you get to visit after these events unfolded.”

Aliens: Colonial Marines is one of the many third party titles coming to the Wii U. It will also be making its way to the PS3, Xbox 360 and PC.

Justin is impressed but not that impressed

Uncharted developer, Justin Richmond has shared his thoughts on the Wii U in an interview with NowGamer. Though he admitted his interest in Nintendo’s newest home console he said that there was nothing the Wii U had that the PS3 and the Vita didn’t.

“To be honest with you, the idea of it is very, very cool. But there’s nothing that the Wii U has that the Vita and PS3 doesn’t,” Richmond told NowGamer. “You know, it’s an interesting piece of technology, and I’m interested to see how people use it.”

Sony are looking into allowing players to play games on their PSVita and then continue to play games on the television using the PlayStation 3.

Richmond also shared a few more opinions on the Wii U. “I’m not completely sold yet. That the screen isn’t multi-touch, that’s a little weird,” he added. “It seems there are some very strange holes in it, but to be fair, last time I was sceptical of the original Wii, and look at how that did. I’m sure that the games they make for Wii U will be amazing.”

Nintendo’s first-party studio Monolith Soft (responsible for Xenoblade) is currently developing a Wii U game. The only thing we know about the game is the information from the job listings posted; for an effect designer to create maps and battle effects and a motion designer to create battle scenes.

However, in a recent interview, the programmers working on the game shared what they would like to achieve with it. They began the interview by saying that even though this would be Monolith Soft’s first HD title, they were constantly doing research on other companies, including HD machines.

The main programmer on Xenosaga,  Toshiaki Yajima, assured that they were having no problems on the technical front. He also said that because now they can use physics and shaders, the potential expressive ability of the game has gone up, so this is where they can show their skills as programmers.

One of the other programmers working on the game, Michihiko Inaba, expressed his interest in the Wii U’s controller. He liked the idea of showing different things on two different screens and is keen to try it out. He also went on to say that because this was Monolith’s first HD title they wanted to create something that would surprise everyone. He wants to make something that shows Japanese technology does not lose out to America. His target is to be at the level of Fallout 3 maker Bethesda Softworks, although he joked that maybe he’s going too far.

The game sounds promising so far. Hopefully we’ll get more information on it in the coming months.

The Swedish retailer Cdon has put up a listing for a Wii U game by the name of ‘Legend of Paper Zelda’. This is actually the second time we’ve had a Swedish retailer list something odd – the first was when Webhallen started taking pre-orders for the Wii U back when we still referred to it by its codename, Project Café.

I’m 90% sure this Paper Zelda listing is fake, but it’s a slow news day and it’ll make for a good discussion point. How would you feel if Zelda and Link were re-imagined in cutout 2D form, à la Paper Mario?

Via: Zelda Universe

This is quite an old story, but I somehow missed it completely when it first ran, and I know that I’m not the only one that did – there was some discussion on the forums about it earlier this week.

You won't be playing this or any other Wii games in HD on the Wii U.

It’s right up there in the title – the Wii U will be fully backwards-compatible with Wii games, but it won’t enhance their graphics in any way. No forcing them to run in HD, no anti-aliasing in games that didn’t use it, no improved texture filtering – not even simple upscaling. They’ll play exactly as they did on the Wii (except when a game offered the control option of a GameCube controller – that’s gone, too).

Nintendo may choose to re-release some of their bigger Wii hits like the two Super Mario Galaxy games or the Metroid Prime Trilogy as enhanced HD ports (possibly taking advantage of the Wii U’s new controller, like the New Play Control re-release of Pikmin did with the Wii Remote), but it’s certainly disappointing that we’ll have to pay the price of admission for these games a second time – if Nintendo even choose to re-release their games at all.

You may be aware of the emulator Dolphin, which is famous for its ability to run many Wii and GameCube games in HD. I took the above screenshot with it, and we have a thread on the forums dedicated to gathering more of them. Browse through it if you want to get a look at what could have been.