Valve are known for their awesome multiplatform hits like the Half-Life and Portal series. They’re all about great games, so the news that they’re looking into the Wii U is probably going to be welcomed by just about everyone who reads this blog.

Speaking to Joystiq, Gabe Newell (the head of Valve) had the following to say when asked about his thoughts on the Wii U:

Wii U seems to be a lot more powerful than the previous generation. It sort of fits better into the scalability in terms of graphics performance and CPU performance, so I think it’ll be a lot easier for us to fit it into our scalability model.

We’ve always loved Nintendo. Now it’s a lot easier to look at Wii U and have it fit within that framework.

They haven’t announced that they’re working on anything, but we might as well start speculating. Portal on a gyro-equipped touchscreen controller, anyone?

G4tv, the world’s largest TV station dedicated to video games, was on the bleeding edge of E3 this year. As part of their coverage of Nintendo’s press conference, they put together a pre-show that aired before the conference began.

Part of this pre-show focused on the Wii U – or as we called it then, Project Café – and featured a variety of mockups of the console and the controller. One of the show’s producers, Ben Winter, got in touch with me to help him round up a few artists who would be willing to have their work shown on TV, after seeing my massive mockup gallery (which is, to my knowledge, the largest one on the web). Continue reading…

The stunning “Legend of Zelda HD Experience” demo Nintendo showed at E3 got many of us (including myself) drooling at the possibility of seeing the masterful gameplay of the Zelda series finally combine with some high-caliber hardware. However, Nintendo made it very clear that it was only a demo, and not necessarily a real game in development.

Today, Miyamoto confirmed that there really will be an HD Zelda game on the Wii U. Was it inevitable? Of course – but that doesn’t make it any less exciting.

This is an HD system, our first HD system, and we want to create a real HD Zelda game for it. You will see a lot of these in-depth and deep experiences in terms of visual style. You will also see some play styles that are fun and interesting because of the play structure.

So there you have it. Miyamoto didn’t specifically talk about whether their Zelda game for the Wii U would be made in a realistic (Twilight Princess), cel-shaded (Wind Waker), or impressionistic (Skyward Sword) style, but I’d put my money on realistic, seeing just how good the Wii U can make it look.

Amazon’s US division has finally caught on to its German counterpart, and has opened a Wii U page of its own. You can now sign up to have them notify you as soon as the Wii U is available to pre-order.

Are they jumping the gun? Maybe just a little, but it’s not as crazy as the Swedish retailer that started taking pre-orders a few months ago.

Speaking to Gamasutra, Satoru Iwata dropped a few hints on what we can expect the pricing of Wii U games to be like. From the sound of it, there will be a much wider range than the $50 standard tag we’re used to, with the price of a game hanging on the value of its name.

When you consider some of the most popular franchise – such as Call of Duty or Madden – the publishers can afford to affix a rather expensive price tag on that because the franchise has a premium value. On the other hand, … without an established franchise, they cannot afford to keep that expensive price tag. I believe there will be a wider price range.

I suppose this is good news for smaller developers trying to bring new or relatively unknown IP’s to the Wii U, as most people would be more willing to spend $20 on a game they’ve never heard of as opposed to $50. But if you’re a sucker for big-budget AAA games…well, it might be a wise idea to start saving.

Will we be fighting slimes on the Wii U?

I know I’m probably not the only person in the world who’s looking forward to Dragon Quest X. It’s one of my highly anticipated Wii games along with Skyward Sword, Kirby Wii and a few others. Unfortunately, not much is known about the next in the Dragon Quest series. In fact we’ve had barely any news since it was announced for the Wii in 2008.

Now it seems that Dragon Quest could be coming to the Wii U as well. Earlier today, Square Enix held an investor’s meeting where CEO Yoichi Wada spoke about the possibility of making Dragon Quest X compatible the Wii U seeing as the Wii’s successor is close to being released.

However, it could be that it will be a Wii game that will have special features if used with the Wii U rather than a a separate Wii U version. I guess we will just have to wait and see.

Would you like to have an enhanced Dragon Quest X for the Wii U or are you fine with a Wii version?

It’s a possibility that the Wii U will get Street Fighter x Tekken, as Yoshinori Ono mentioned that he would like to get it on other platforms than the ones already being considered.

When asked about whether the Wii U could get a version of the game he said, “Well, we’ve already gotten started with PlayStation Vita version, of course, but we’re anxious to take on all sorts of other platforms if the opportunity arises.”

He also went on to talk about what he would like to do with the Street Fighter Franchise that hasn’t been done yet.

Taking these characters — like Ryu, Chun-Li, Abel, and Juri — and having a game where users could customize them to a high degree. I’m not talking about their costumes or something like that, but actually customizing what moves they use — the timing of them, their strengths, their weaknesses — so that my Ryu could be completely different from your Ryu. In addition to our skill sets being different, our characters themselves would be different.

Would you like to see this game make it to the Wii U? I sure would.

While our image of the Wii U’s exact tech specs is still rather vague, Miyamoto dropped the bomb in an interview with GameSpot that Nintendo is not aiming to crush the competition with vastly superior graphics, citing price as the reason they’re once again going to sell the Wii U on its unique controller instead.

We’re very sensitive, of course, to trying to do all of this at an appropriate price. So I don’t know that we would be able to sit here and say that it’s going to necessarily dramatically outperform the systems that are out now. It’s part of the balance that we strike in terms of trying to find entertainment that is new and unique.

The console is still going to be more powerful than the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, but Miyamoto’s really just warning us that it won’t be by a wide margin.

Still, I’m not gonna complain – even if it turns out to be “only” as powerful as a PlayStation 3, the current-gen HD console’s graphics can’t exactly be called bad. And if an attractive price point means Nintendo will sell more Wii U’s, and therefore have more money to make awesome games, I’m all down for it.

This is one of those rumours that just won’t go away. Some sources say that GTA V will be on the Wii U, others point in different directions. Now we have a new set of rumours from sources apparently close to Rockstar, who have told Gamespot that Grand Theft Auto development is well under way and that they are actually putting on the finishing touches.

The disheartening thing about this rumour is that the source has made no mention that the platform that the game will be coming to will be the Wii U. All we have to go on is the fact that the source mentioned that a 2012 release was very likely and previous rumours that have said the game will be coming to the Wii U.

The source did say that “It’s the big one,” and that the game’s scale would be vast.

Series producer, Katsuhiro Harada was unable to confirm whether the Tekken game coming to the Wii U would be new or a port of a previous game but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t thought of what some online features of the game could be.

In an interview, Harada suggested that the Wii U controller could be used to create custom stages which players could then share online. Another interesting feature that he suggested that Tekken Wii U would have is the ability to draw on your opponent’s face if you win. This idea came about because of how easy it is to draw using the Wii U controller’s touch screen. The embarassing picture that you draw on your opponent’s face could remain there for a whole year.

Carry on reading for the whole interview.

Continue reading…