Show Pros

No sales figures period - Focus on Third Party Developers - Wii U Revealed

Show Cons

Wii U Information is vague - No Last Story or XenoBlade - Maybe a little too much focus on 3rd Party Developers

Last years show was a total pep rally. It was new game after new game, and the 3DS reveal was so exciting. When it was said and done, I was left with so much to be excited about. This time around I'm left with more questions than answers. How much is the Wii U and its controllers gonna cost? Where are the first party games for it? Will we ever get Xenoblade and The Last Story here in the states (Please)? Is that controller going to be even remotely practical for traditional games? Is the Wii Remote going to be a legitimate option or an inclusion for the sake of being included? Is it gamecube compatible?

Meanwhile we didn't get much in the way of new games from Nintendo--Luigi's Mansion 3D and Smash Bros. (Though with no concrete information whatsoever) being the only real surprises. Seeing Super Mario 3D footage for the first time was easily my favorite part of the show, but we've known about the game for a year. Everything else they showed us for the 3DS was more info on games that were announced at last year's E3, making this feel like E3'10 part 2. Still, the Mario Kart 3D footage looks promising and I'm as excited for these games as I was last year at least.

With that said, Nintendo was obviously pushing third party support over even its own, so for the most part I guess the exciting game reveals are going to have to come from them this year. So what managed to catch my eye? I'm looking forward to playing Batman: Arkham City; Tekken and Ninja Gaiden are maybes. That's it. A lot of what was shown are the same games I have no desire to play on other consoles. With all the focus on third party developers, I would have liked to hear from Capcom, Square Enix, and Konami.

Obviously the biggest part of the show was the Wii U. Graphically it's pretty much what I would want and expect, so no complaints there. With basically no information on what else it has going for it, that leaves us with the controller. To be honest I'm not so sure about this one. When everyone was wondering what the Wii controller was going to be like the idea of a touchscreen was thrown around a lot. At the time I thought the idea was unoriginal (Considering the newly released DS, oh how time flies) and impractical. A generation later, and here we are.

Of course, this generation has shown me that no matter how much the naysayers naysay, Nintendo can make pretty much anything work. I'm confident that Nintendo (and to a lesser extent, 3rd party developers) will find exciting and appropriate uses for their new controller, and I LOVE the idea of being able to play console games on the controller itself, but I do worry about more traditional games and the fate of Motion Controlled Gaming. I'm not gonna lie, the idea of playing Wii Sports with a tablet controller instead of a Wii Remote seems silly at best, terrifying at worse.

So really I don't know what to think at this point. All I can really say is that I hope Wii Motion+ and maybe even the cIassic controller remain viable alternatives. Really though, the only Nintendo system out of the DS, Wii, 3DS, and Wii U to really excite me at the reveal has been the 3DS, and I love me some DS and Wii, so I'd say I'm cautiously optimistic. We all have lots of questions, so here's hoping Nintendo doesn't keep us in the dark for too long.

Also, very cool of them to sneak in two Kirby game reveals at the end.