14 DAY TRIAL // Nintendo has revealed that the hardware in its upcoming Wii U home console isn’t designed to compete with current generation consoles, like the PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360, and that the company will once again try to emphasize gameplay experiences over high quality graphics.
The Wii U is set to be released at the end of the year on the global market. While we still don’t know its hardware specifications, quite a lot of reports peg it to be more powerful than the current PS3 or Xbox 360.
According to Nintendo President Satoru Iwata, this won’t mean that the Wii U is going to be aimed specifically at taking down its current opponents or even their future successors.
"As we will showcase the Wii U at E3 in June this year, the detailed announcements must wait until then, but we are aiming to make a system which shall not be forced into competing with the others where the contenders can fight only with massive developer resources and long development times as their weapons," he said during a session of his Iwata Asks feature.
The Nintendo executive highlighted that the more powerful hardware was designed to satisfy third party developers that wanted to bring quality experiences to the Wii U. The Japanese company, however, will continue with its traditional development strategy, of placing a bigger emphasis on actual gameplay rather than visual quality.
"Looking at the software for home console systems, there are certainly the software titles for which very rich graphics must be reproduced on HD displays and which demand a large number of developers to spend a very long time to develop. It is one of the truths that a certain number of such software titles must be prepared, or the consumers will not be satisfied. But we do not think that any and all the software must be created in that fashion.
"When you look at Nintendo's software, extraordinary rich graphics, massive gameplay volume and astonishing rendition effects are not necessarily the appealing point. It is, in fact, important for us that our games are appealing in other ways as well."
In the end, Iwata highlights that the Wii U won’t be just a clone of the PS3 or Xbox 360 that has a Nintendo badge, as it’s going to support all sorts of experiences, besides the things that will be released for current consoles.
"What's important here is not to narrow down what we can do," he added. "Rather, we have to create the dynamic range of appeals that the consumers can appreciate."
We have recently heard that Nintendo has added quite a lot of different features to the Wii U, as opposed to the version of the console it showed last year. As such, fans will be in for a major surprise in summer, when the company presents the final version of the device at E3 2012.