The Wii U Lowdown

Sadly, I never got the chance to see this thing up close and personal and get my grubby mits on this thing. For those that want to know about what the Wii U is actually like to play, try taking a little look at this.

But that doesn't mean I'm going to be utterly useless to you.

[size=+1]The Wii U Lowdown[/size]
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So, the Wii U is coming out at the end of the month over here in ol' England.

Seriously? Where's the bloody year gone?! Have I really been sitting around, laughing at this thing and ignoring my Wii for around six months? I mean, the Wii was hardly a fantastic name but we accepted it. The Wii U compounds this problem but it's forgiveable considering that this is meant to be Nintendo's first try at a HD Console. Never mind that we've had such a thing for at least five years now, Nintendo are stepping things up again. And again, they have a weird control system for Sony and Microsoft to hurriedly cobble copies of within about three months of frantic, blinkered panic.

So, expectations aside for a second, let's get down to brass tacks. What are we getting here?

The Wii U is now Nintendo's most powerful machine, weighing in at around 2GB of RAM and a multi-core processor of indeterminate speed. Seriously, I haven't a clue how powerful this thing is because Nintendo doesn't appear to have told any one. After literally seconds of research, I can tell you that it's made by IBM again. The Wii never spontaneously exploded into a ball of flames when it was being used for a long while, so I have no problems with this. Plus, multiple cores mean multi-tasking which is fantastic news for developers as they're allowed more freedom than before. For those with next to no idea what I'm talking about, the Processor and the RAM dictate the speed and amount of calculations and decisions that can be made. The bigger your numbers, the better your computer will preform.

The Wii, in contrast, had around 88MB of RAM and a processor clocked at less than 800MHz. My phone - the Motorola Defy I used to review that Songify app once - is as powerful as the Wii.

But things aren't actually HD without a graphics card. That's what's creating all the prettifullnessocity that Nintendo are trying to make here. In the non-HD Wii, the ATI Holltwood GPU was doing all the graphical grunt work, primarily because most of the guts appeared to have come from the Gamecube. That clocked in at 243MHz. Why is that significant? Well, your graphics chip also needs a little processor in it in order to draw, and then redraw, all the little pictures and movements that appear on screen. In fact, it's your graphics card in your machine that's being sent instructions from the rest of your computer to then draw everything to the screen. Everything from the black, white and red of this blog to that rather handsome fellow to the right looking thoughtful, dashing and - above all - single. So, again, the bigger your numbers, the more stuff you can draw to the screen at any given moment.

Also, again, I couldn't find any details about how powerful the graphics card is but I did find out that it's likely similar to the one I had in my last laptop: The AMD Radeon High Definition. It was half-decent in my old laptop, Henry. It was able to play all sorts of bits and pieces like so I'm perfectly happy it can deliver the performance expected.

So, that was probably boring but the specs are vaguely important to know, I suppose, in order to have a good idea about what exactly is going on under that hood and what your paying for. Speaking of which, we should look at the bundles to choose from. You see, Nintendo is doing that thing that most newly released AAA titles are doing where they have various boxes of different things with differing prices. You pay more and you get more in the box. There's three to choose from:

Basic - For about £250, you get a normal Wii U with 8GB of internal storage compared to the half-gigabyte of the Wii isn't necessarily to be sniffed at. I mean, you get the curious white box and the bizarre tablet thingy along with it to control everything too. What's nice is that the Wii U comes with an HDMI cable too, which is a nice gesture as they're rarely cheep, unlike SCART leads. There's the usual wires to actually power the thing too. While a Wii Sensor Bar Port is present, the bar isn't included in the box but it's possible that you've got one sitting around still. The most curious addition to this is the offer of a free copy of any of the launch titles to get you started off. If it's being offered to you, I'd give a good hug. To me, that seems jolly nice of ol' Ninty. But ah! The dichotomy of choice...Batman? Mario? Rayman? What am I saying? RAYMAN! ALWAYS RAYMAN!

*ahem*

Premium - Weighing in at around £300, your also getting a black Wii U with a whopping 32GB of internal space and all the normal cables as well as the touch-screeny Gamepad thing but you also get a Wii Sensor Bar. I can only assume that they've got them to spare. Then you get a Gamepad Stand, assumingly for those times when you need to be able to look from the screen and then back at your telly. I guess you just prop it up in front of you on a table somewhere and look from one to the other. Hmm...I may need to warm up my neck before playing...Then we have a Charging Stand for the Game Pad. So, exactly the same but with a current running through it? All right, as long as it glows or something. Then there's the stand for the console itself so that it'll sit upright with support. That feels like a slightly pointless piece of extra plastic but whatever. The Nintendo Network Premium account is something rather interesting however. Any new purchases you make then allow you to receive an amount of points to spend in the new eShop on new games, like the Stars system but for games not a golden statue of Link. Doesn't sound bad at all.

Oh! And a copy of Nintendo Land. Sorry, that's non-negotiable.

ZombiU Premium - Exactly the same except you get ZombiU instead of Nintendo Land. Also, you get the new Pro Controller. Rather than looking like a food plater with buttons then finished in glossy white, we now have something that looks like an Xbox 360 controller with the positions of the analogue sticks swapped with the buttons. The Gamecube managed to get away with swapping directional buttons for analogue stick because it was comfortable to use in all other respects. The atrophied buttons were used rather sparingly anyway. On this though, I'm unsure. We'll have to see but it already looks kinda uncomfortable compared to a more traditional controller. This one is around £350 for whatever reason.

Sorry, prices are in British Pounds. Even though our economy is based on tea-cakes and marmalade, it's not that easy to figure out what it means for those across any of the ponds around me at the moment. This is England, we have coast lines galore over here. Lemme just sort that out for those with dollars or euros...errm...Carry the one...Divide by the degree of light coming from the moon...plus ten, aaaaaaand there we go.

Basic - US$299.99 or €299.99
Premium - US$349.99 or €349.99

So, there we go. That should be enough info to get you ready for when the Wii U arrives, provided you even want one.

- Extended in Part 2 -​