Reggie Fils-Aime, President of Nintendo America, has revealed several new details about the companies plans for Wii U.
Wii U GamePad
“When we went through the building of this and, given some of the functionality, we thought that single-touch was a more appropriate option, especially when you’ve got other button configurations. Certainly there’s a cost to it. Again, we envision this as a controller that you’re putting in your hands and you’re doing a two-screen experience. The concept of putting it in your lap to do multi-touch for us just feels unwieldy.”
- Final design has charging port on the bottom instead of the top
- Ability to play a game on the GamePad instead of TV is there, just up to developers to use it.
- This feature is called Off-Play TV and will most likely be tagged on boxes, like controller-inputs
“I have to say that, as a company, we are amazingly c.onservative when it comes to giving guidance on things like battery life. If you go back to the 3DS discussion on battery life, the numbers we gave before launch vs. the reality of launch were very different. So what I would tell you is that Nintendo is absolutely committed to making sure that the battery life for the Wii U will not get in the way of the gaming experience.”
Miiverse
“The way to think about how we will ensure a positive consumer experience with MiiVerse… first, there are parental controls. As a parent you can choose for your child not to have any MiiVerse conversation. You can do it only with friends. You can do it with everyone. The second level is going to be essentially a technology-driven scan to make sure that inappropriate words and inappropriate pictures don’t make it onto MiiVerse. The third level is going to be the community that will police and flag items. The fourth level is for a human review at Nintendo.”
- If you get past the quick scan for no bad words, your message will be fast-tracked.
- Nintendo employees will step in when messages from a specific user are constantly flagged.
Achievements/Friend Codes
“Once you start getting into game-specific [Achievements/Trophies] that’s developer driven. That is not our philosophy.”
“There are friend codes, but it’s not the existing friend code system. What do I mean by that? Here’s what I mean: you will be able to identify people as friends and have a certain level of interaction vs. a different level of interaction for the more general population. The method by which you identify someone as a friend is a lot simpler than what’s happening today with Friend Codes.”
Storage
“The main message we’ve communicated is that it’s got USB ports so you can keep adding storage to your heart’s content.”
Miscellaneous
“It was last year that we talked about a new Smash Bros. that will have some interoperability, some linkage between Wii U and Nintendo 3DS. Obviously [Smash Bros. lead designer] Mr. Sakurai, having just finished Kid Icarus, hasn’t made a ton of progress on that game, but that’s going to be the one where we talk about how the two systems could work together on one game.”
“We don’t have a policy surrounding used games. We have not put in place any technology to go after the used game business.”
No finalised plans for launch colours.
