Why U Might Want to Buy U a Wii U

The Nintendo Wii had a surprising control scheme. That surprise all-too-quickly settled down into a sense of soul-evaporating inevitability. While the motion control is used in interesting ways on occasion, the platform hasn’t proven itself a bastion of gameplay innovation.

Here’s the problem: Once people understood what motion controls meant, the applications became obvious. Everyone knows the drill: point to shoot; swing to swish your racket; point and click to… well, point and click. I’m getting bored just thinking about it.

There was little appetite to experiment, especially when the target audience didn’t demand it. To the casual gamer, it’s just a toy. They’d probably be surprised to find out that anyone wanted more.

With the Wii U, Nintendo are at it again with a weird controller. That’s bound to invite cynicism and comparisons will be drawn by Nintendo fans who feel abandoned by the Wii. But perhaps this is misguided: we might do better to look at the Nintendo DS for comparisons. It’s often forgotten that at first the DS was largely perceived as a pointless gimmick. Now it’s well-loved, thanks to the strength of the games.

The Wii U, like the DS, is a console with two screens, one of them a touchscreen. It’s similarly designed to make traditional style controls possible. The biggest difference is that the new controller can be moved around and interact with what’s happening on the TV.

The most interesting similarity isn’t in the functionality, though. Exactly like the DS before it, this new controller has people nonplussed and it’s hard to predict what sort of ideas will emerge. A huge part of the controller is almost literally a blank slate upon which designers are invited to paint their ideas. I’d call that exciting in itself.

One problem with the Wii Remote for a designer is that unless your controls are simple enough to turn the wand on its side and use it like a NES (or you’re counting on people having the Classic Controller peripheral) then you’ve no choice but to figure out how to make the Remote/Nunchuck combo work with your game. That’s a pretty big demand to make of a designer up front and pretty much rules out straightforward ports, even before we get to the last-gen graphics.

The creative life of the Wii depended on developers engaging with these new controls and thinking up clever ways of using them. The third parties have spoken, and what most of them have said is: “we’re not really interested, sorry.” The major developers we associate with Sony and Microsoft simply haven’t embraced the Wii; it asked too much.

By comparison the new controller has everything that a regular game controller has: analog sticks, triggers and the face buttons. They’re laid out weirdly, true, but they’re present and correct – and initial rumblings seem to be that it’s more comfortable than it looks. The possibilities of the controller are exciting but by making them optional, it’s instantly more attractive.

It may seem weird that I’m saying one of the good things about all the cool, innovative stuff is that you don’t have to use it, but hear me out. If a designer wants to use the extra screen for nothing more than to convey extra HUD-style information, that’s an option. If they just want to use it for a minimap, that’s okay too. DS owners know that plenty of good games have taken this approach.

BUT!

If they want to go crazy with your gyroscopes or make a game that could only work with two screens or touchscreen functionality, that’s also an option. When you start looking at the breadth of options the controller is giving to the designer, that E3 soundbite of it being a “wider and deeper” experience starts to sound a little less like bullshit. A little.

Still, let’s not get carried away here. There are a number of hurdles that Nintendo will need to jump before we can embrace a brave new future of screens-in-controllers.

If I’m reading Nintendo right, their target seems to be every single person who has ever lived, past and present. Quite ambitious, I’d say – and this time losing the interest of third parties is not an option. One of the major reasons for the success of the DS was the relative low cost of development, and they may find themselves having a harder time persuading publishers and developers to come on board for bigger, flashier and harder-to-make games.

The timing, too, is questionable. We’re not sure of Sony and Microsoft’s plans over the next few years, or even when they’re likely to start making announcements about the next generation. But unless the Wii U hits big, it runs the risk of ageing prematurely when they make their move. I don’t care how many times Reggie Fils-Aime can say “candidly, no” when asked if he’s worried about the competition: they matter.

If Nintendo play it smart, these hazards can be avoided. A strong launch in 2012 would attract more major developers to the platform. Taking online functionality seriously (for a change) would go a long way to getting smaller developers to make interesting titles available for download. You know – like a real console. Because that’s what we all want, isn’t it?