Nintendo wants to bring the 3DS experience to the living room using the Wii-U

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wii u and 3ds game platform

Nintendo had two successful products, the DS/3DS  and the Wii, with each one of them provides its own benefits. The Nintendo 3D/3DS offers a two screen gaming experience and focuses more on hard core gamers. The Wii, on the other hand, is focused on the broader demographic and has provided more social experience when using its motion controls. As we reported earlier this month, Nintendo introduced its new gaming machine, the Wii-U, at E3. Nintendo presented a peak into the new console capabilities, but left us with many questions regarding the gaming experience we might get.

Nevertheless, if you watch the press release closely, you will see that they seed many clues on their plans and intentions. They started the presentation of the Wii-U by asking how can we bring the 3DS experience to the living room. Later on they showed the 3DS and the Wii-U side by side when discussing the intention of several game developers to develop their future games for the 3DS/Wii-U platform. When looking at the platform side-by-side, the Wii-U looks like a bigger version of the 3DS. Last, EA Sport said that finally Nintendo will have a console in the living room that can fit the hard core gamers needs.

Therefore, it is safe to expect that we may get the 3DS experience in the living room using the Wii-U, but in high-definition. On the other hand, the Wii-U has some advantage over the 3DS console: (1) it can work with the Wii controllers, (2) it can work using the Wii-U screen only (no TV mode) and (3) the two screens are not attached together. It will be interesting to see how the game developers will use those capabilities for their games, while it means that those games won’t be compatible with the 3DS. How the game developers will take advantage of the new platform, your guess is good as mine. What do you think?

5 thoughts on “Nintendo wants to bring the 3DS experience to the living room using the Wii-U”




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  2. First of all that’s not a picture of a 3DS, it’s some photshop Frankenstein. Second of all The Wii U is not capable of 3D presentation. So Tell me how that means that the Wii U will bring the 3DS experience to anyone’s living room?

  3. Nintendo Wii U, 3DS connectivity is awesomeness. Petera the full specs of the Wii U are yet to be delivered wait and be amazed.

  4. The Wii U will be “king of all trades.” The most creative and innovative gameplay of the big three consoles and enough hardware “teeth” for the hardcore gamers. The new Wii U controller and Wii remotes will be awesome for Zelda and EA Sports games while the hardcore gamers can get off with the Wii’s Classic Controller. Both parties will have fun playing the system. My big question is how long till we get ‘Kid Icarus’ on the new machine!!??? A new Killer Instinct or ‘Soul Caliber’
    would be nice too!! 😉

  5. I’m waiting for any review on the use of Wii controller on Wii-U. Having many controller laying around is a headache. Especially when I have to switch with different controller on different part of the game and on menu.

  6. The final specs of the Wii-U haven’t been released yet. Unlike with the Nintendo 3D/3DS, with the Wii-U Nintendo uses your TV as one of the screens. The question is, if the TV is 3D capabile, if the Wii-U will offer 3D games…
    As for common development platform, it is similar to developing for iOS devices platform. While the iPad is differnet from the iPhone, there are shared API, so the same applications can run on both devices. So while the Wii-U is different from the 3DS, there are shared API which makes it easy to port games from 3DS to the Wii-U or co-develop them for both machines.

    As for controlling the menus, it will be interesting to see how it will work. Will the Wii-U controller will become the main controller for the menu selections? Will it be used even in games that can work without it?

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