Nintendo still makes great games, but that is not enough.

Seriously, just open-mindedly play Mario Kart, Smash Bros, Splatoon, Yoshi's Wooly World, Super Mario 3-D World, and others, and you'll find that they are well designed, fun, and rich in content and game play. Unfortunately, kids, particularly teenage boys, want to play M rated games just like they want to watch R rated movies. It makes them feel more grown-up. Worse yet, there is a very vocal number of them that promote the idea that Nintendo is for little kids. That, however, does not lessen the quality of Nintendo games. They are still fun, still very high quality.

Nintendo compounds their kiddie image issue by trying to retain a family friendly stance that negatively restricts the options for a more open western audience. Specifically, Nintendo has restricted online options, particularly options involving communication, that, in the end, hinders game play. This happens not only in Nintendo's own software, but also in their hardware as they have no standard for 3rd parties to utilize. Case in point: the Wii U gamepad has both a microphone and speakers and could have easily been utilized as a standard for online communication, but Nintendo never created the libraries or support for such a function. They are too afraid of users abusing such functions and endangering minors. Nintendo's stance is admirable, but there is no doubt that it has an effect on game play.

Nintendo has two options to fix this:

1. Trust parents to monitor their children

or

2. Split their focus and create two systems. One for the standard family friendly audience, and a different system that can play games in a contemporary way.

In either case, Nintendo needs a system that has the chops to play games designers want to create, and allows game companies to port their games to the system in an inexpensive way.

WHAT WE WILL GET INSTEAD:

A powerful handheld system that can stream to a TV and connect to a wireless controller. It will both use cartridges and store downloaded games on USB hard drives allowing syncing to the device. Online gaming will still be limited, but there will be a large library of downloadable games at, or around, launch.

Pre-ordered for $48 on Amazon with Amiibo. Have it for the Wii, but wanted to replay it without motion controls and cleaned up graphics. Definitely looking forward to it.

Yep, just preordered through Amazon for $48. Its one of my favorite games of all time. Will definitely enjoy playing it again.

I think its silly to expect Nintendo to be like Sony or Microsoft. Those two are enough like each other as is. Why would we need three consoles that play the same games? Why would we need more of the same?

People always seem to criticize Nintendo for being themselves, but when they get it right its magic. I'm glad Nintendo does their own thing because I don't think we need more generic online shooters, or open world crime games. While most developers are seeking ways to be more realistic, Nintendo does their own thing.

Realism in games to me is boring, I want fun. Mario Kart is a great racing series because its fun, not realistic, Smash Bros is a great fighting series because its fun, not realistic, Zelda and Metroid series are great adventures because they are fun, not realistic, etc, etc.

Metacritic lists 111 pieces of Wii U software as having scores of 75 or above. The argument that the Wii U has no games is ridiculous. If you want to purchase a Wii U, there are a lot of games you can play. If you feel you want to wait for the next Nintendo system, you can do that too.

If you think you only want games that will come out in the future, then the Wii U makes less sense, but there are more good games available for the Wii U then most people will ever play on whatever their preferred system is.

Now, I understand that personal taste in games narrows the list of games significantly. I still don't have enough interest in either the Xbox One's or PS4's libraries to justify purchasing those systems, but if you find enough games to push your gaming desires over the tipping point, any system can be worth the purchase. So, no one can tell you if a purchase will be worth it. You have to look at the games available and see if your interests are strong enough to justify the purchase for you.

We will never really know if it would have made a difference, but I am doubting that a shinier screen with multi-touch would have helped the Wii U sell better. We do know that such a screen would have made the system more expensive to make and likely more expensive to buy. I suppose that more games could have been ported from iphones, but I doubt those games would have attracted more people to the Wii U.

Most 3rd party developers chose not to support the Wii U because it wasn't as next gen as the other two consoles, was difficult (or at least different) to program for, AND had a touch screen that they didn't want to incorporate into their games--regardless of the tech behind the screen.

Consumers didn't steer clear of the Wii U because it had a resistive touchscreen, but because of fears that it was less capable than the other systems, and because its game library was limited.

NX sales will be dependent on how much developer support it gets, and how impressed the consumers are with it. To me, next gen graphics and a good performing controller will make more difference in sales than a touchscreen will. In fact, a robust online interface and infrastructure will make a bigger impact on sales than a touchscreen will.

I don't think Nintendo will be focusing on touch screen controllers. That said, I don't think that the Wii U would have sold better with a capacitive gamepad, nor do I think it would have been much of an improvement.

This conversation is too casual for me.

This, but perhaps the home console will be released even later in 2017. I don't think there would be many games ready for launch by midyear. Even Nintendo needs to clear out its Wii U pipeline to focus on NX, and they still have some things for the Wii U we don't know about yet.

In the end, this game looks great (yes, even though it doesn't have true dynamic lighting or real dynamic weather, and even with the pop in), runs buttery smooth, never loads while exploring the world unless you fast travel or enter certain buildings, and, unlike what someone said earlier, is filled with a wide variety of enemies and things to do. In fact, it is probably too crowded--nowhere close to being empty. The system may not be the most powerful, but the game is very impressive.

That is the point. It doesn't matter if older systems could have run it, no one made a game this clean and beautifully presented on those systems. Every other open world game I have played glitches or looks worse--including GTA, Skyrim, Fallout, Ass. Creed, etc. The game is so well crafted that it runs and looks better than every other open world game I have seen even though it is on the Wii U.

And please don't lecture me on the graphical shortcomings of the game or the Wii U. It matters little to me if the shadows are not as accurate as they could be, or if the reflections aren't technically as good as they could be. What matters is what the game looks like as you play it, and it looks great, better IMO than games like Fallout 4. I know Fallout has more polygons and renders more realistically, but rendering ugly graphics more realistically doesn't make them look pretty.