14 DAY TRIAL // The Wii U has been confirmed as being able to deliver High Definition graphics when it launches, presumably in the summer of 2012, and the executives at Nintendo are saying that one of the main motives for the upgrade to its capabilities has been the need to get some first-person shooter games to the new gaming platform.
Satoru Iwata, who is the overall president of Nintendo, has told analysts that, “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.”
When the Wii U was announced during the first day of the E3 2011 Nintendo press conference, a number of third party publishers, from Electronic Arts and Ubisoft to SEGA, Warner Bros and Namco Bandai, was confirmed as working on video games for the Wii U, some of them heavily relying on graphics to succeed.
One of the highlights was the appearance of John Riccitiello, who is the chief executive officer of EA, who confirmed that shooters from his publisher and the impressive line up of sports simulation, like Madden NFL and FIFA, will benefit from the better hardware.
The currently available Nintendo Wii has lagged behind the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360 in terms of graphics power, but this has not stopped it from becoming the best-selling home console of its current generation, mainly because of its motion tracking capabilities that were there since it launched.
Microsoft and Sony made up motion tracking ground with Kinect and the PlayStation Move and now Nintendo needs to match the graphics power of their consoles in order to remain in the hardware game.