Nintendo Wii U Arrives in Spring or Summer of 2012

The Nintendo Wii U is set to appear in the spring or summer of next year, with Sega confirming that the new console might be released early in 2012.

Nintendo presented the successor to its Wii console at last week's E3 2011 conference, but declined to offer many details about it, sticking to just presenting the unique controller that will be used by the new Wii U console.

In terms of a launch day, the company revealed to the media and its fans that it would be arriving next year, but didn't go into any specific details.

Luckily, Sega's Executive Vice President of marketing, Alan Pritchard, talked to GameSpot about the release of Sonic Generations on the Wii U, and let slip a more accurate launch schedule for the new console.

"The timing just doesn't work," he said. "Generations releases this November, and the Wii U is coming out next spring/summer."

Pritchard also goes into a few more details, which tease the release date of the new Nintendo console by comparing it with the launch date of Sonic Generations.

"To bring out Generations on a platform six or eight months after we release PS3, 360, and 3DS probably won't be the best strategy," he said.

Seeing as how Sonic Generations is out in November, the Wii U's intended release date might span the period between May and July, 2012.

Considering the regular financial year rules of Nintendo, it's possible that the company might deploy the new Wii U console after March 31, at the end of the 2011 financial year.

As of yet, however, the release of the Wii U is still shrouded in mystery, as is its price and plenty of other details, including hardware specs, online capabilities and many other things.

Nintendo promised last week to release more information in the near future, so fans of the Japanese company are going to have wait it out.