We’ve already heard several comments from Capcom with regards to the Wii U, but this next one hints that they might have something pretty big in mind. Christian Svensson, the VP of Capcom’s US division, had this to say.

Coming to the topic of Wii U, we continue to have conversations about best to tackle that. I have nothing to confirm right now, but we’re close with Nintendo. That’s probably the best way I’d put it. You can draw your own conclusions from there.

A comment this vague could quite literally mean anything, but I have a good feeling it may be related to the earlier rumour that a Capcom character might make it into Super Smash Bros. 4.

Amazon.com has started taking pre-orders for seven Wii U games. Unlike the pre-order notification signup they’re offering for the Wii U itself, they’re taking actual pre-orders for these games now. Here’s the full list:

• Batman: Arkham City
• Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor’s Edge
• Tekken Wii Successor
• Darksiders II
• Aliens: Colonial Marines
• Metro: Last Light
• Dirt

Each one carries a price tag of just $49.99 – identical to the going rate of current Wii games. With Amazon’s Pre-order Price Guarantee, if you pre-order now and the listed price goes up, you’ll still end up paying the lower price.

Considering that the cost of retail Wii U games is expected to rise over those of the Wii, I’d strongly suggest pre-ordering now if you’re interested in any of these games at all.

It was only a matter of time before we got confirmation that a new Mario game would appear on the Wii U. Yoshiaki Koizumi, producer of the 3D line of main-series Mario adventures, did just that in an interview with Wired.com.

The game is still in the earliest stages of development, so chances are slim that they’ll have it ready as a launch title. But Koizumi did mention the possibility of simultaneous cooperative and competitive gameplay for two players, that takes advantage of the two screens available to the Wii U.

When I think about the two screens being used at the same time, it seems like an interesting opportunity to allow us to create a console game where two people are playing at the same time but can’t see each others’ screens. It’s certainly an interesting approach, but I have to clarify that it’s not something that we’re working on just yet.

He went on to mention that he created a similar two-screen game many years ago that connected the Nintendo 64 to the original GameBoy, but the sole detail he was willing to provide was that it was a feature cut from The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask. Koizumi did say that we’ll find out what this concept was, but he doesn’t “think today’s the time.”

Back to the topic of Mario U, perhaps each player could take on the role of one of the Mario Bros., and they would be able to work together to make each other’s lives easier – or miserable – like in New Super Mario Bros. Wii, but now in a full 3D environment. I can’t wait to see what direction they’ll take Mario in next. Maybe we’ll see a free-roaming open-world adventure, like an old brilliant (but totally fake) leak suggested – a Super Mario 64 2, if you will.

Nintendo is spending 16.5 billion yen, or about $200 million, on a new research and development facility based in Kyoto, near their headquarters. The aim is to consolidate all seven of their legendary Nintendo EAD teams into a single building, with the idea of facilitating easier communication between them.

The new facility will have seven above-ground floors – presumably one for every team – and a basement. Its construction will be finished by the end of 2013. No doubt at least some of the work that’ll be done there will be on Wii U projects, so increased efficiency and the easy spreading of ideas between the 1500 developers there will probably result in one of the greatest concentrations of creative power ever.

This means only one thing for the end consumer: better, more awesome games. And quite likely more of them, too.

Bethesda are well known for their beautiful open-world games like Fallout 3 and the Elder Scrolls series, and have many fans. I haven’t kept up much with them before, but I recently started playing Oblivion, and am loving every moment of it, so I’m definitely excited to see that they’re enthusiastic about the Wii U.

Our motto has always been: We want to make our gmaes available to the widest audience possible on whatever platforms that will support the game.

The Wii wasn’t even an option – we would have to make wholesale changes to the games we were making on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC to make them work on Wii.

I honestly know nothing about the tech specs of the new platforms and whether or not they are a good fit for what we are making with say Rage and Skyrim and Prey 2. If they are a good fit for the kind of games we are making then absolutely, we would look to put them out for those. But beyond that I can’t get into specifics.

Bethesda’s vice president Pete Hines was careful to not outright confirm anything; but considering that the Wii U is a more powerful machine than the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, I’m quite certain that it will, in fact, be a “good fit” for their future projects.

Bobby Kotick, the CEO of Activision, seems to be pretty confident in the Wii U’s online capabilities, even though he admits he doesn’t quite know their full potential yet.

Well, without telling you our title plans, it’s now more possible to do deep rich multiplayer games – we need more clarity from Nintendo on the online capabilities, but we’ve had development systems for a while now and we’re very enthusiastic about it.

I’m starting to wonder why Nintendo is being so secretive about the Wii U’s online system. Reggie first promised us we’d see it revealed during the week of E3, but we now know that even developers are in the dark about it, at least to some extent.

The 3DS’s launch was highly anticipated, but soon fell flat as there was quite literally only a single standout game (and even that was a port of a console title). But in a shareholder meeting today, Iwata dropped a reassuring tidbit that gives us hope for a much stronger Wii U launch. He said that “Nintendo had low software output for the 3DS launch,” but hopes “to not have this problem with the Wii U.”

This goes hand-in-hand with a previous statement from Reggie, in which he admitted that likely their biggest mistake with the 3DS’s launch was that there was no big first-party Nintendo blockbuster to kick things off.

What do you think would make for a great first-party launch title? Pikmin 3 seems like a good candidate to me, seeing as it’s been in development for a number of years and will beautifully showcase the Wii U’s graphical abilities, but I’d love to hear your own thoughts in the comments.

The period of time surrounding a new console’s launch is often a great opportunity for publishers to make their support known, as a single gem in the sea of mediocrity that such launches usually constitute, can easily rise above it all.

EA’s Frank Gibeau has pledged his company’s support for the Wii U’s launch, all but promising that they will have launch titles ready for the console on day one. Quizzed on the importance of being there right out of the gate, he said:

It served us well on PlayStation 2 and PlayStation 3. Getting in early is partly about being a successful transition company and figuring out where the hardware is going to go. With the Wii U it’s important for us to get there on day one so we can get in and build as big an audience as possible.

EA didn’t show off any Wii U games at E3, but Gibeau reassures us that they’ve got a few of them in the pipeline, and that they’ll be shown when they’re ready.

We’ve had [the Wii U development kit] for a little while, I can’t really go into the details of it. We’ve had machines and we’ve been working on games. At the E3 press conference what was really important for us was to establish the relationship and talk about a few things, what we’re thinking about and excited about, and we’ll show games when they’re looking ready, when they’re looking tight.

What exactly might they be working on? Nothing’s been confirmed, but Gibeau hinted that several of their popular franchises would be getting the Wii U treatment, noting that “it fits well” with what they want to do with FIFA, Madden, and Battlefield. He also seems pretty excited about the system’s performance, though he didn’t go into any specifics about it.

We were really blown away by the unique innovation that Nintendo brings with the Wii U controller on a high performance machine. The ability to do HD graphics and access game experiences in a completely novel way and a way that’s never been seen before, it really struck our fancy.

We were excited by what Nintendo presented to us, we thought about it and it fits well with what we’re trying to do with our franchises like FIFA and Madden and Battlefield. There’s great horsepower there, great innovation and Nintendo’s got fantastic branding. We’re platform agnostic as a company so if we find something we believe will have success commercially and critically, and has a business model that works for us, we’re in.

As great as it would be to see some big-name EA franchises on the Wii U, I hope that they don’t forget to experiment with some fresher IP’s on it from time to time, too, even though they have a reputation for playing the milking game. If they’re working on something as brilliantly original and tailor-made for the Wii U as Boom Blox: Bash Party was for the Wii, I’m all down.

Much of the Wii U already seems unusually daring for Nintendo, but a recent statement from Katsuya Eguchi reveals that they’re planning to do something which many would be quick to call downright impossible.

With the Wii, we wanted to bring in as many new users as possible and have them experience the games, but as a consequence, I think a lot of the core gamers felt that it wasn’t for them, and they started moving away. With the new console and the new controller, we definitely want to bring core gamers back and create new gamers as well. So, with the Wii U, we hope that the players who were introduced to gaming for the first time on the Wii will step it up and become core gamers themselves.

It’s true that many core gamers were turned off by the Wii’s marketing, which focused mostly on trying to push the console into living rooms that had never contained a video game console before. Even though the Wii’s library is chock-full of deep and rewarding experiences, amazing efforts like Super Mario Galaxy or Metroid Prime 3: Corruption simply never made the kind of splash that the likes of Wii Fit did.

It’s been rumoured for a long time that Nintendo is aiming to recapture this core gamer with the Wii U, and that’s no surprise – but it will be very interesting to see how they plan to convert those whose video game horizons end at simulated cycling to people who can spend their entire weekend neck-deep in a massive adventure. The new tablet controller will apparently be the key to making this happen, as it can seemingly be used for just about anything. I suppose casual gamers may be drawn in by its iPad-esque functions like drawing, web browsing, and touchscreen-based games; while core games will find use for it as an off-screen HUD or a creative extension of the TV’s screen.

The issue I see here is that casual gamers are thought of as fundamentally different from core gamers; and thus, play fundamentally different games. I’m looking forward to watching Nintendo’s plans for converting them unfold.

The studio responsible for Xenoblade for the Wii are currently in the process of developing a Wii U game. Nintendo’s first party studio Monolith Soft are currently looking for programmers, designers and artists to work on the Wii U title.

They have not shared any details about the game but the jobs that they are advertising give clues to what type of game it might be. Two of the jobs advertised are that of an effect designer to create maps and battle effects and a motion designer to create battle scenes.

Hopefully, North America will have more hope getting this game than Xenoblade which is yet to receive a release date.

Xenoblade is scheduled to release this year in Europe and released last year in Japan.