Nintendo president Satoru Iwata is confident that the upcoming Wii U home console will be able to offer a single experience catered both to casual users as well as experienced gamers, thanks to its unique controller as well as through the capability of displaying HD graphics.
Nintendo surprised quite a lot of people with the announcement of the
Wii U at the recent E3 2011 conference, and has been making quite a few statements about it since then.
The president of the Japanese company, Satoru Iwata, has now revealed to
GamaSutra how he thinks the console is going to continue appealing to casual gamers, just like its predecessor, the Wii, while offering new opportunities for serious gamers that want HD graphics and experiences they can get on devices like the PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360.
"We believe novice players, who started playing games as casual players (since there is no one who is inherently a core gamer), come to have a budding interest in games and spend a greater amount of time with gameplay so that they mature into core gamers," Iwata said. "What we have tried to do with the Wii U console is to create an environment where we can break down the barrier that exists between those two groups and provide, on a single console, an experience that will satisfy both types of users. Through that process we continue to expand the gaming population."
Iwata also says that the Wii U, with its more powerful hardware, will also be able to offer the same experiences that appear on the PS3 or Xbox 360, meaning there's now no excuse not to consider a Nintendo console if you want to enjoy more serious games like
first person shooters.
"Within the current environment, there are a number of the companies that are spending a significant amount to create these first-person shooters but, with the graphics capabilities of the Wii hardware, we have not been able to get them to create Wii versions of key franchises, and they have developed few games of that genre with Wii as the primary gaming console. So, some of the hardware limitations that have been a hurdle for those developers to create their games on our console, are going to melt away when we move to Wii U because it is an HD system."
The Nintendo Wii U is set to once again shake up the gaming industry, just like the original Wii, and it's going to be interesting to see just how successful it will be next year, when Nintendo debuts the device onto the global market.
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