Nintendo gave up doing things by the book a long time ago.
This goes for hardware, and it goes for hardware reveals.
Announcing the Wii's successor a month before the games industry gathered in LA for E3 2011 gave its conference a real buzz: undercutting earlier Microsoft and Sony events with a murmur of speculative excitement.
TechRadar has put together a video of what you need to know about the Nintendo Wii U:
But when Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime took to the stage last Tuesday he wasn't armed with the machine itself, but a controller and a radical proposal for a new framework of play.
The Wii U controller introduces a second screen into the traditional gaming setup. A 6.2-inch resistive touchscreen mounted in the shell of a wireless dual analogue stick controller. A hybrid of traditional pad and tablet PC. Unlike a tablet, however, content is streamed from the Wii U base unit.
For the gamer, it's both TV supplement and replacement. A second screen for displaying maps, inventories and objectives or a place to continue the game, should the TV be needed by someone else. Make the call and the game streams to your hands, lag-free.
More interesting is the potential for the two screens to work in direct tandem, an extension of ideas tested on DS. A touchscreen interface enables play types that have escaped buttons and analogue sticks.
Likewise, inbuilt gyroscopes and accelerometers act as a third set of analogue control inputs, allowing gamers to physically move the device to adjust their aim or orientation on screen.
This is a gaming experience selfishly honed for the holder; explaining the addition of a loner 'U' to the pluralistic 'Wii'.
The spirit of Wii lives on in more than name. Wii U is compatible with all former Wii software and hardware: the remote, nunchuck, balance board and classic controller. Some are obvious fits: controlling a Wii Fit weigh-in session with a handy touchscreen makes more sense than the rigmarole of setting up the living room.
Others are more experimental. The potential for novel multiplayer experiences – four pals sharing a TV as a fifth creates mischief on the tablet screen – are explored on the games page of this review.
But if Nintendo is forthcoming about *how* we'll play, it's less open on *what*.
Bar a 25 GB proprietary disc format and HDMI output supporting 1080p, little is known of the base unit itself. An ambiguous IMB Power-based multicore CPU and AMD Radeon GPU continue Nintendo's hardware relationship with the two companies, but neither suggests how Wii U stacks up against 360/ PS3.
Leaving memory to SD cards and USB HDDs is a typical Nintendo move, continuing its Wii/ 3DS approach to cost cutting.
Cost is a similarly murky issue, with Nintendo president Satoru Iwata hinting Wii U will be priced higher than 20,000 yen when it goes on sale next year (Wii U will hit shelves by the end of 2012).
In many ways, Wii U's debut raised more questions than answers. What is the range of the wireless pads? How will Nintendo tackle online gaming? What will the games look like? We await Nintendo's answers.
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