New Review Tomorrow!

I know I haven't updated in a couple days, so I want to inform everyone that there will be a new review up by either late tonight or tomorrow at the normal time of 2:30 Eastern Standard Time (US).

Lately I've been trying to take my time with posts to make sure that they're high quality and easy to read, which means there won't be a post every day or every other day like back in April and May.

Sorry, and hope you guys enjoy the review tomorrow!

Is the Wii U Going to Have Branding Issues?

Ever since Nintendo announced the Wii U back at E3 2011, there has been a lot of confusion surrounding the new console. After the original revealing last year, many game enthusiasts and journalists were confused as to what it really was. It was quite common to see someone call the next generation console an add on to the Wii. Nintendo later clarified that it was indeed a new console, and instead of focusing on the actual box, they were focusing on the new controller. After that, pretty much every single person familiar with the industry realized that the Wii U was indeed a new console and not a peripheral, but the general consensus was that Nintendo needed to rebrand the Wii's successor or focus on the hardware.

One year later at E3 2012, Nintendo again only focusesd on the new Wii U GamePad and not on the actual console. While gamers and journalists in the gaming industry knew the Wii U was a new console, the masses who read and pay attention to non-gaming media outlets did not. Over the last few weeks, we have even seen a journalist from CNN and Jimmy Fallon on his television show claim that the new console a simple add on to the current hardware. It seems to be a common point of confusion for everyone who is just learning about Nintendo's next console, and it is a legitimate concern for Nintendo if they want to the Wii U to have a successful few months after launch.

So what can Nintendo do to avoid such confusion as we get closer to the Wii U's launch this holiday season? Well, the first and most obvious point of action to take would have been to change the name, but it seems a little bit too late for that to happen now. The issue with the Wii U's name is the fact that the simple addition of the letter U is not indicative of a hardware upgrade. I have seen people say that since Sony did not have an issue with branding moving from the Playstation 2 to the Playstation 3, neither should Nintendo, but the difference between the Playstation successors and the Wii's successor is that going from a two to a three is an obvious sequel and upgrade. It has been ingrained in our culture. When a better, upgraded product comes out, it usually has a new number attached to the end of its name. This is true for movies, video games, consoles, electronic devices, and so on. A simple letter does not evoke the same kind of upgrade, especially when the "Wii" part of the Wii U's logo is exactly the same as the Wii's logo.

There is also the issue that this generation has been plagued with new additions to consoles that do not require completely new hardware. The Xbox Kinect, the Playstation Move, the Wii Balance Board, Wii Motion Plus, and the Wii Zapper are just a few examples of the add-ons created during this generation of hardware. The Wii especially has had many additions and games that use the Wii's name and logo, followed by a new word, such as Wii Fit. I understand that Nintendo wanted to keep the Wii branding because it is a money maker for them, but they should have changed the font and coloring of the Wii part of the Wii U's logo or added a word that signifies an actual hardware upgrade, like a Super Wii or Wii Advance. Those kinds of changes give off the feeling that this new console is something better than a simple Wii.

It also does not help that the actual Wii U hardware looks extremely identical to the Wii's hardware at first glance. By keeping the Wii's name and logo and designing the hardware to look reminiscent of the current generation hardware, Nintendo is asking for confusion during the first few months of the Wii U's life. It would help a little bit if Nintendo actually showed off the box from time to time, but they seem insistent on associating the name Wii U with the controller instead of the box. While I think that is a great idea, they can still show the box off from time to time while still focusing most of their time on the new GamePad.

Nintendo also needs to stop focusing on the fact that you can use the old Wii Remote and other Wii peripherals with the next console. While I understand that Nintendo wants to show off multiplayer games, throwing the Wii Remote into trailers and advertisements for upcoming games is just going to confuse non gamers even more. They will see the same Wii logo, see hardware the reminds them of the Wii, and then see the Wii Remote and Balance Board they already own and come to the conclusion that the Wii U is not a completely new piece of hardware. Nintendo needs to show people playing exclusively with the Wii U's GamePad for most games in order to set up the idea that the Wii U is a completely new piece of hardware that has little to do with Wii hardware.

Of course, Nintendo can avoid a branding issue without chaning the name, design, or logo by having a simple advertising campaign that puts some focus on the actual hardware instead of only on the controller. By adding a simple phrase saying something along the lines of "Only possible on Wii U," along with a shot of new hardware at the end of each advertisement, Nintendo can help ingrain the idea that the Wii U is the Wii's successor in people's minds. However, the thing Nintendo cannot do in my mind is focus solely on the new GamePad and Wii Remote integration like they have been doing in the weeks following E3. That kind of advertising campaign would only reinforce the idea that the Wii U is simply an add on to the current Wii.

They also cannot have a standalone Wii U GamePad available around launch. By only allowing people to buy the GamePad and console together, Nintendo would avoid a countless parents and non gamers buying a controller they are not able to use. While it may be a little disappointing to people who want to play multiplayer games with two GamePads, it would be more beneficial to Nintendo during the first six or so months of the Wii U's life to not have standalone GamePads.

While I have been a little negative toward the Wii U, I do not think it will be a failure. If Nintendo really does have branding issues during the first few months, I am pretty sure that we will see a new advertising campaign or something similar to turn Wii U's sales around. Nintendo has done it recently in the past with the 3DS, so they can do it again with the Wii U. I do realize that the 3DS also had a massive price drop to help it, but Nintendo still managed to successfully communicate to people that the 3DS was not a new iteration of the old DS after months of confusion surrounding the handheld.

And certainly, no one can actually say without a doubt if the Wii U will have a branding problem when it releases this holiday season. For all we know, Nintendo could run one of the best advertising campaigns the gaming industry has ever seen, even surpassing the original Wii's early advertisements. I am only basing this post off of what we have seen from Nintendo at the E3 conferences and the general reaction from various websites and gamers.

So, what do you guys think? Does the Wii U have a branding issue or am I creating an alternate reality in my head? If it does have an issue, what steps do you think Nintendo can take to clarify the situation? Let me know in the comments!

Okami Review

Developer: Ready at Dawn Studios
Publisher: Capcom
Platform: Wii
Release Date: April 15, 2008 (NA), June 12, 2008 (AUS) June 13, 2008 (EU), October 15, 2009 (JP)

In 2006, a small, independent company named Clover Studio developed and released an instant classic on the Playstation 2 named Okami. Despite receiving praise from nearly all major publications, Okami's sales were lackluster and disappointing. When the Wii was released later that year, many fans were calling on Capcom to port Okami to Nintendo's new console due to the motion controls being a seemingly perfect match for the gameplay. In 2008, Capcom granted the wishes of fans and published the Playstation 2 classic on the Nintendo Wii. Did Okami work as well as people thought it would on the Wii, or did the motion controls ruin an exceptional game?

Okami takes place in a fictional Japan based on ancient Japanese history and mythology, providing the game a lot of material to build an interesting and compelling world on. You play as the goddess of the sun, Amaterasu, who takes the form of a white wolf in the game. One hundred years prior to the start of Okami, a legendary duo of a man named Nagi and a white wolf named Shiranui battled and sealed away a powerful demon known as Orochi. In the game's present time, it is revealed that someone has broken the seal on Orochi and the demon has cursed the land across the entire world, sapping its life. Sakuya, a wood sprite, then calls on Amaterasu to defeat Orochi and restore life to the land of Japan.

The story is exceptionally well written and will have your attention for all thirty to forty hours of the game. It is an epic tale with twists and turns around every corner, and you never know what to expect in each new location you enter. Despite being a serious story that touches on the rich history of Japan, Okami has a great sense of humor. Certain characters and scenarios will have you laughing out loud when you come across them, and you'll always have a smile on your face.

Not only are the characters humorous, they're also some of the most memorable video game characters out there. Every new character you meet has their own unique personality that you'll fall in love with. Even the villains of the game are written so well that you'll love to hate them, and you'll want to see more of them.

However, there is a lot of text to read in Okami, especially in the beginning when you're first starting out. There isn't any voice acting per se to help ease the long cutscenes either, just mindless jabbering similar to the Banjo-Kazooie series. Luckily, you can skip cutscenes if you don't want to read long winded conversations when major events occur. You will be missing out on major story details and great characters though, so be warned.

Each and every character in Okami has their own unique
personality.

Moving into the actual gameplay of Okami, you'll quickly discover that it's very Zelda like in its structure if you have ever played a Zelda game. The game has a focus on exploration and will have you going from fields to towns to dungeons collecting new abilities and items in each new location, but Okami does this so seamlessly that you never really notice that you're in a dungeon until you've visited multiple maze-like rooms. It's wonderful take on the traditional Zelda structure that breathes life into a formula that you may have gotten tired of over the years.

While the general structure of the game is great on its own, Okami really shines because of its central gameplay mechanic -- the Celestial Brush. At any point in time during the game, you can press and hold the B button on the Wii Remote and start to draw on the scenery. If you draw certain symbols on the scenery, you can change the actual landscape to help solve puzzles or defeat enemies. For example, if you draw a circle on the sky, a bright and shining sun appears, lighting up and drying anything under its glow. As you progress through the game, you learn more brush techniques that progressively become more complex and more powerful, and open up areas in the game that you couldn't access before. These brush techniques basically act like items in the Zelda series in the sense that they open up new puzzles and areas that you couldn't complete or reach before.

You can't abuse the powers of the Celestial Brush though, as there is an ink meter that limits the number of times you can use the brush in succession. Each time you use a brush technique, one section of the ink meter completely depletes, and you have to wait a few seconds for that section to refill. If you use the Celestial Brush too much and took quickly, you lose all powers you had for a short period of time while you wait for the ink meter to refill. As you move along in the game, you can expand the ink meter to let you use the brush more often than you would normally be allowed. You can do this by gaining praise, which act similarly to experience points in other games.

To gain praise, you have to go around the world helping various characters out, feeding animals, and restoring the environment to its pre-cursed state. The larger a task, the more praise you earn from performing that task. When you've saved up enough praise, you can spend it on expanding your ink meter like mentioned before, or you can expand your health bar, money pouch, or your astral pouch, which will revive you when you die if it's completely full of food. While it's not necessary to collect any praise throughout the game, you will find yourself doing anything possible to gain some, not because you want to improve your health or ink bar, but because it's genuinely fun to restore environments, help characters out, and feed animals.

Even though receiving praise is a fun distraction from the game, battling enemies on the overworld is not, and that's because of the battle controls in the game. In order to attack using your weapons and not your Celestial Brush, you have to shake the Wii Remote in a kind of rhythmic fashion. Often times you'll find yourself shaking the Wii Remote, but the game not picking up on your movements. It is frustrating, because you'll often take damage in battle because of it. Dodging, which is mapped to the nunchuck's motion controls, also doesn't work very well. You'll try to dodge to the left, but the game will think you moved the nunchuck in a completely different direction. The dodging mechanics are also rather sensitive, and you'll find yourself running through Okami's overworld only to accidentally move your nunchuck a few centimeters, causing Amaterasu to abruptly dodge in a random direction.

As you play through Okami, you can receive praise.

Luckily Okami allows you to avoid battles with minor enemies on the overworld, as they aren't present in the same sense as other action adventure games. Instead of monsters roaming the fields and dungeons of ancient Japan, there are floating scrolls that slowly move around. If you come into contact with one of these scrolls, a battle starts. There isn't any major reward for participating in battles, so you'll often find yourself avoiding these scrolls because of the wonky battle controls.

While the main story of Okami has more than enough to keep you entertained throughout, there are countless extra sidequests for you to partake in if you need a distraction from the game. Like mentioned before, there's praise for you to collect, but there are also stray beads, demon fangs, and sun fragments for you to find. In addition to collectibles scattered across the world, there are various missions, such as fishing, learning new attacks and brush techniques not found in the normal story mode, and hunting down wanted monsters. The sidequests listed are just scratching the surface, and there are many more to discover as you play through the game. Nearly all of the sidequests are extremely fun, and even if you're invested in the story of Okami, you'll find yourself going out of your way to finish some of them.

In addition to the outstanding gameplay Okami provides, it also has one of the most memorable and stunning soundtracks in gaming. Every track fits each scenario to a tee and they give you the feeling that you truly are in an ancient Japan filled with demons and gods. Even after the game is turned off, you'll be humming tunes from dungeons and fields to yourself, reliving each and every moment of the game in your head.

The art style and graphics of the game are just as perfect as the music. It's stylized in such a way that every environment you enter looks like a painting and every new location will take your breath away. Despite being originally made for hardware that's now over ten years old, Okami is still one of the best looking games out there, proving that while polygons and lighting are important, art direction trumps all.

Concluding Thoughts
Okami is a must have for any Wii owner. While there are some minor complaints about controls and long winded dialogues, the rest of the game is so outstanding that you never notice those small flaws. Okami takes a tried and true formula from the Zelda series, but changes it around enough to seem fresh and fun even to players who have become tired of Zelda games. Couple that with the outstanding soundtrack and magnificent art style, and you get one of the best games on both the Playstation 2 and the Wii.

Final Score
9.0

New Review Tomorrow

I know I haven't updated in a couple of days, but that's because I've been playing a relatively long game so I can review it. It will be up by tomorrow, and then the regular schedule should return.

Sorry! But E3 and the following week was always going to be different though just because of the amount of stuff to write about.

Where are the Third Party Games?

At least year's E3, Nintendo promised us that third party developers would be on board with the Wii U. They even managed to get the CEO of EA, John Riccitiello, on stage to show his support for the upcoming console. Fast forward to E3 2012. While there were third party games shown, the majority of them were ports of year old games that only a limited number of people are going to care about. Even after hyping up EA support last year, the only EA published game shown was Mass Effect 3.

Where were the no-brainer third party games that one would expect to be on the Wii U? Where were the EA Sports titles? Where was Call of Duty: Black Ops II? Where was Tomb Raider? Or Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance? Or Resident Evil 6? Or Bioshock Infinite? Or even Watch_Dogs? The list goes on and on, and if Nintendo really did have the third party support they said they did, at least some of those games would have been present at Nintendo's conference.

Yes, the Wii U is getting Assassin's Creed III, ZombiU, Darksiders 2, and Aliens Colonial Marines, which won't be year old ports, but those games are developed or published by Ubisoft, THQ, and Sega. Those three companies were some of the only third party companies that really supported the Wii, so I would have expected their support no matter what. I wanted to see major upcoming games from companies that didn't support the Wii, like Activision and 2K Games.

I realize that Nintendo has stated that they are going to reveal games that appeal to the Japanese audience at a later date, which might explain the lack of Resident Evil 6 and Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, but it does not explain the lack of countless other games. Does the Wii U's Gamepad make it hard to port games over or something? It's perplexing, because if the Wii U is on par with or a little bit stronger than the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360, these games should be on Nintendo's next console. Third parties don't benefit from being exclusive to Sony and Microsoft.

Perhaps Nintendo only wanted to show launch titles for the Wii U at E3, explaining the lack of certain games. But that doesn't explain the lack of games like Call of Duty: Black Ops II and EA Sports games. Those games are coming out this holiday season, probably around the Wii U's launch date. They would be perfect games to have at launch, and yet they weren't shown at all. If Nintendo is getting support from companies like EA, 2K Games, and Acitivision like they want us to believe, why weren't they at Nintendo's conference this year?

As much as you may roll your eyes at Call of Duty and EA Sports and say you don't care about those games, they're still important games to have if you are trying to get major third party support. The lack of those games is worrying to me, and I don't see any reason as to why they wouldn't be shown if they were on the Wii U. Black Ops II seems like the kind of game Nintendo would brag about if it were coming to their next console, and a random EA Sports game probably would have received a segment just to itself in order to show off how you could use the Wii U's Gamepad to call plays or something, similar to Microsoft's Smart Glass segment at their conference this year.

I also realize that some third parties have said that they want to create unique experiences for the Wii U and not port games over, but that sounds exactly like the Wii's situation. While the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 get the next blockbuster game with tens of millions of dollars thrown behind it, the Wii U gets a fun little spin off that ends up being noticeably worse and less funded than its Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 counterpart.

So far it feels like big third party companies are just taking their latest relatively big releases and slapping on touch controls and calling it a day. Nintendo hasn't convinced me that the Wii U's third party situation will be any different from the Wii, Gamecube, and Nintendo 64's third party support. You may point to all these ports now and say that it's a sign that third party support is coming, but the Wii also had a lot of Playstation 2 ports with motion controls slapped on during its first year, and look how that third party situation turned out.

I know that I may have sounded like a Negative Nancy these past few days, but the truth is Nintendo's E3 conference underwhelmed me and the lack of major third party support outside of the usuals has me worried. I want the Wii U to be successful and I want to buy one eventually because Nintendo does make my favorite games, but Nintendo has not convinced me to purchase one at all.

And it may sound like Nintendo's third party support can't win with me, but what I want to see from third parties on the Wii U is basically more companies like Ubisoft. Wii U gets major games like Assassin's Creed III, while also getting unique experiences that are exclusive to the console, like Rayman Legends and ZombiU. I realize that some companies aren't large enough to do that, and that's fine, but 2K Games, EA, Activision, Konami, Square-Enix, and many others are large enough to do what Ubisoft is doing. Those companies have proven in the past that they have the capabilities to do that by releasing exclusive and unique games on either the Playstation 3 or Xbox 360 while also supporting the other with major multiplatform releases.

My Thoughts on Nintendo's E3 Conference

Like I said yesterday, the schedule for this week is going to be off due to E3. That's why this article is about two hours later than normal. Also, no pictures with this article today.

Going into Nintendo's E3 conference this year, I think everyone had some decent expectations. The launch of a new console is always exciting, and it provides a company a unique opportunity to blow us all away. Nintendo even held a pre-E3 conference to get Wii U features like the Miiverse and online out of the way, that way they could have an entire hour dedicated to Wii U games. That must have meant they had a great lineup of games, right? Plus, Nintendo needed to redeem the Wii U after last year's underwhelming reveal. All signs were pointing to, at the very least, a decent conference with a couple big Wii U games.

Sadly, that never happened. Their conference this year started out on a great note, showing off footage of the highly anticipated and long awaited Pikmin 3 for the first time. The environments looked great, albeit it was nothing that couldn't have been done on the Xbox 360 or Playstation 3, and the controls seemed interesting enough. The next few minutes were decent too, with Nintendo of America's president, Reggie Fils-Aime, reviewing some of the aspects of the Wii U that Mr. Iwata covered in Nintendo's pre-E3 conference.

Next up was New Super Mario Bros. U. It wasn't where the show started to go downhill, but it was slightly underwhelming. There's already another New Super Mario Bros. game coming out this year on the 3DS, and it feels unneccessary to have two 2D Mario games with essentially the same gameplay come out within a few months of each other. Although, from the footage we saw of the game, it seems like there are a couple interesting ideas in the game.

And after that is where everything started to go downhill. The games they started showing were ports of games on the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3, but with a touch screen gimmick tossed into the mix for good measure. There are very few people who are going to spend the extra money on a Wii U to play a game that's coming out for a console they already own, and there are even less people who are going to buy a Wii U to play a game they've already played. As much as Reggie and the crew at Nintendo want to say these games are different and worth the extra purchase, they aren't.

I've said before that if Nintendo wants the Wii U to be as successful as the Wii, they need exclusive third party content that will attract the more traditional gamer. Unfortunately for Nintendo, they only showed one third party game that's truly exclusive to the Wii U and attractive to Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 owners, and that's ZombiU. While it may turn out to be a great game, Nintendo needs more than one game to sell their upcoming console to the more hardcore gamer.

The other third party games that weren't ports of Xbox 360 or Playstation 3 games weren't the kind of games that attact the people who buy consoles at launch. Sing, Wii Fit U, and Lego City Undercover weren't the right games to focus on when Nintendo is trying to convince the audience to buy the Wii U around launch. Those three games feel like they should be on the Wii instead of Wii U, and many gamers don't want to see certain similarities between the Wii and its successor.

Nintendo did touch on the 3DS a bit during their conference, which was somewhat of a highlight. The games they talked about for the 3DS -- Paper Mario: Sticker Star, Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon, and New Super Mario Bros. 2 -- are the kinds of games people wanted to see throughout the conference. Instead, they were relegated to an insignificant five minute section that felt like more of an afterthought than anything else. There is another conference tomorrow focusing on solely the 3DS, which is promising, but for this conference, I wish we would have seen more of it or more of those types of games.

For the grand finale, Nintendo revealed a minigame collection entitled Nintendoland. While it looks like an interesting enough game, it's not the kind of game you end a conference on. The fact that Nintendo spent more time demonstrating a random minigame from Nintendoland than they did Pikmin 3 is extremely perplexing. Nintendo had to have realized that Pikmin 3 was their biggest game shown at E3, so why only talk about that for three or so minutes, but then spend over ten minutes on Nintendoland? For the life of me, I can't wrap my head around Nintendo's thought process this year.

When the conference ended, it felt like Nintendo didn't show anything that will sell the Wii U. Sure, Pikmin 3 and New Super Mario Bros. U are nice, but two games aren't enough to sell a console, especially when one of them is losing its appeal to the type of people who buy consoles near launch. Their conference left a lot of questions unanswered. When is the Wii U's release date? It's supposed to be coming out in the coming months, and we still have no idea when it's going to hit store shelves. How much will the Wii U cost? The last time Nintendo didn't announce a release date or price of an upcoming console at E3 was the 3DS, and that ended up being 250 dollars. It's starting to worry me that the Wii U will be over 300 dollars, and a 350 to 400 dollar console isn't appealing when your only two noteworthy games are Pikmin and New Super Mario Bros.

In addition to all that, there were multiple franchises that were completely left out. Where was Super Smash Bros.? Or Star Fox? Or Metroid? Or Donkey Kong? Or a 3D Mario game? Or Zelda? Or F-Zero? Or Kirby? Or a brand new IP that appeals to Nintendo fans? And what's Retro Studios working on? I'm sure at least one of those franchises is being developed for the Wii U as we speak and is far enough along in development to be presented. Considering The Legend of Zelda: Skwayrd Sword and Kirby's Return to Dream Land were the only two big internally developed Nintendo games released for the Wii since the end of 2010, I think it's fair to expect something other than Pikmin and a 2D Mario game.

This was Nintendo's last major opportunity to sell the Wii U to gamers, and sadly, Nintendo didn't do that. Here's to hoping that they manage to show us some convincing games over the next few months.

So, what do you think? Was Nintendo's E3 conference as underwhelming for you as it was for me, or did you think Nintendo knocked it out of the park?

Nintendo's Pre-E3 Conference

This entire week is going to have posts that are early and more frequent than normal weeks because of E3. Hope you have fun this week, guys and girls!

Yesterday evening, Nintendo held their thirty minute pre-E3 conference called Nintendo Direct where Nintnedo's president, Satoru Iwata, talked about the various features of the upcoming Wii U. Of course after the conference ended, gaming websites across the internet started having healthy discussions about everything that was in the video. Opinions ranged from saying it was dreadful to people getting hyped. Here's my take on Nintendo Direct.

Let's start with some of the biggest news from the conference -- the online features. Before their conference, Nintendo had talked about how they realize that online is important and that the Nintendo Network would be better than Nintendo Wi-fi, their previous online service. With their video released yesterday, Nintendo proved that they are taking online seriously this time, by including things like video chat and a Twitter-esque application. It's great to see Nintendo providing a fleshed out online service, especially after six years of the Wii.

However, that doesn't mean everything about the online was great. Mr. Iwata kept mentioning how it was unique and different, and while there were certainly some new ideas in the video, nothing really stood out as different. Everything shown felt more like a natural evolution of services provided on Microsoft's Xbox Live and Sony's Playstation Network. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but video chat and cross game chat aren't exactly new and interesting ideas.

Their one really unique idea was the Wii U's Miiverse, which is a gathering of Miis on your TV that appear when you turn the console on. The Miis will gather around boxes that represent different games available on the Wii U and will have messages written by the Mii's real life counterpart appearing on screen. I really like the idea of Miiverse and getting to see what other people have to say, and I can see a lot of possibilities with Miiverse. For example, it could be an easy advertising mechanism for companies that don't have millions of dollars to throw at a nationwide campaign. My only fear is that people will start to spoil games that you're playing or games that you haven't even bought yet. Mr. Iwata said that they are working on preventing spoilers, so I'll stay positive about that.

The Wii U's Miiverse was the most original idea show at
Nintendo Direct.

I'm also telling myself not to be completely hyped about Nintendo Network just yet, due to the fact that we haven't seen any online gameplay yet. Although I think it's unlikely, there is still a possibility that playing games online could be laggy and downright bad. Hopefully sometime during this week or next week, we get to see what actual online gameplay looks like.

My overall feelings about the Wii U's online functionality is that while it's great to see Nintendo finally provide a working online service, it still feels like they are trying to catch up with Sony and Microsoft in that department. While some of the ideas shown are nice, it doesn't feel as unique as the DS's touch screen was or the Wii's motion controls were. I could very well see Sony and Microsoft leap frogging Nintendo in the online department once the next Xbox and Playstation come out.

But enough about online, let's move onto the other big news that has people talking. At last year's E3 when Nintendo first revealed the Wii U, they focused a lot on the new tablet like controller, and they focused a lot on it again during this conference. Nintendo is now calling the controller the Gamepad, and Mr. Iwata revealed it was newly redesigned.

The most notable revision is the change from circle pads to actual analog sticks. I absolutely love the fact that there are analog sticks now, but their placement above the buttons seems kind of strange. I know a lot of people have said that in the past, and I'm sure the Gamepad will feel comfortable when I hold it, but it is something I noticed that seemed off. There is also some form of scanner on the Gamepad that will read data from unknown objects as of right now. The concept wasn't really expanded upon, and I can't help but to feel like the scanner will be underutilized, just like the Gameboy Advance's own scanner, the E-reader.

Nintendo seems to be putting a lot of functionality into their new Gamepad. Not only can you use it for gaming, but you can also use it to change the channels on your TV. While it's a cool a feature of the Wii U, I can't imagine myself picking up the Gamepad to change the channel instead of a normal TV remote. It feels like one of those features that will be cool at first, and then you forget it exists a week later.

The Wii U's controller received a physical update since the
last time we saw it.

The Gamepad wasn't the only controller Mr. Iwata showed off; he also revealed a more traditional looking controller called the Wii U Pro Controller along with announcing that the Wii Remote will be compatible with the Wii U and Gamepad. For those wondering, the Pro Controller's button placement is the same as the Gamepad's, so the odd placement of the analog sticks remain. Mr. Iwata said the controller was for multiplatform games and people who wanted a more traditional gaming experience. I love the fact that Nintendo is providing so many options when it comes to controls on the Wii U, but I have a few questions, concerns, and comments.

First, if third parties use the Pro Controller to release a Playstation 3 or Xbox 360 game on the Wii U, doesn't that mean that the Wii U's most unique feature won't be utilized? I don't know how to feel about this, because it is great that Nintendo is finally getting some major third party support, but it seems to go against the whole concept of the Wii U. I know that if Nintendo forced third parties to use the Gamepad instead, then third party support would be a lot rarer, but it is kind of baffling to me.

And secondly, is the Wii Remote going to be included in the box? If it's not, what developers are really going to take advantage of the compatibility between the Gamepad and Wii Remote? I also have a concern that if Nintendo does include a Wii Remote in the box, it would make the Wii U seem even more like a Wii. Not only would their names and console designs be similar, but they would both come with the same exact controller.

Overall, Nintendo's pre-E3 conference revealed some nice features about the Wii U that ease my fears, but it also brought up some new questions and concerns. I do want to thank Nintendo though for getting all this information out of the way before their main press conference tomorrow, because I know if they didn't get this out of the way, many people, myself included, would be begging Nintendo to hurry up and get to the games.

So, what is your opinion of yesterday's Nintendo Direct? Did you like everything you saw, or did it turn you off from the Wii U completely? Do you share the same concerns and questions I have, or are you completely sold? I know some of my complaints and worries may seem minor, but they are still valid complaints and worries that I think Nintendo should address before the Wii U's release later this year.