I think it's a little naive to think that Sony or MS can release their next consoles at a price competitive to the Wii U that absolutely destroys it. I am willing to bet money that Xbox will have an SKU that approaches $500. They may try and cover their butts by releasing a gimped XBLA set-top box and proclaim they are competitive.

There is a simple solution for those with with a nice headset with separate mic & sound plugs: an adapter cable. Just search for "Headset Buddy" on Amazon.

As far as "nice" headphones for the Wii U; since there is no optical audio out, this will affect everyone with a nice 7.1 headset (Astro A40 useless). The only way to "easily" use a headset with this system is through the gamepad. Unless you have your Wii U routed through a nice AV receiver, I don't think there is an easy way for people to get surround sound in their headsets. Perhaps 3rd parties will come up with a solution, but it won't be cheap.

Nintendo e shop has wii u downloads. I've read as of 12/1/12 you earn points for any purchase. It is suppose to last for 2 years. I'm waiting until 12/1 to buy Lil' Inferno.

calway55

You don't need to wait. The points are automatically rewarded for any eShop purchase made on or after Nov 18th.

http://ddp.nintendo.com/

I had a Basic pre-ordered at Gamestop. My Deluxe just arrived today from Walmart.com. Gamestop just called and I let them know I wouldn't be picking it up as I had secured a Deluxe elsewhere.

I am sure there are a TON of Basic pre-orders getting cancelled for my exact reason.

The amount of hypocrisy shown by the console crowd for the Wii U is astounding, yet not surprising. For the last 6 years the console crowd has attempted to defend the onslaught from the PC crowd with the response: "specs and graphics don't matter, it's all about gameplay". As the PC has shown it's superior hardware and graphics potential, the response has always been the same: "gameplay".They've used excuses like "playing on the couch" and "local multiplayer" as big enough reasons to ignore performance advantages of the PC.

Then the next generation of consoles begin to arrive and EVERY argument shifts towards performance specs....

The Wii U takes all that was "Holy" to the console crowd and now allows them to move from the couch to the toilet! AND moves local multiplayer to a whole other level....and now they cry about graphics and performance specs....

We don't know the speed of the CPU, btw.

All we know is that it's (supposedly) based on the Wii's Broadway CPU, but sporting three cores and clocked faster and with more cache memory (which is not as bad as it sounds since a higher clocked Broadway would still be more capable than the PPEs found in 360's CPU).

I also find it surprising that a whole 1 gig of RAM is reserved for the system alone but I've heard it's supposed to free-up for games eventually (I mean, what kind of OS needs 1 gig of RAM? Even Windows 7 use half as much).

nameless12345

The CPU is based on an IBM POWER7 CPU. It is nothing like the Wii or GC Broadway CPU. This was tweeted by IBM.

This would be the stupidest thing ever...

You're naive if you think consumers actually steer products. You'll buy and like whatever the marketing department tells you to like.

The gaming industry (publishers, developers, retailers) are embracing digital; physical media will be completely gone within a decade. This has already been decided. You can either "embrace" it, or find a new hobby. Our content might not be 100% cloud streaming within the decade, but physical media will be completely gone, and your games will be a mix of digital downloads and streaming. Perhaps a hybrid of both.

2011...

Opinion by one person, with no facts, yet he tried to include "charts".

I would voluntarily install and use Steam even if it wasn't "required" for my games.