Wii U: The Next SNES (by Carl B.)

June 9, 2011, by Carl B. - After a month of rumors and speculation, Nintendo finally unveiled their new home console, the Wii U, at their E3 2011 press conference. Featuring an innovative controller that sports a touch screen, speakers, microphone, front facing camera, buttons, analog sticks, and triggers, the Wii U has loads of potential when it releases sometime next year. Wii U has so much potential, in fact, that it may be the next SNES.

The Golden Age of gaming. Amazing third party support. Classic first party franchises. The greatest console of all time. These descriptions, among many others, depict Nintendo's second home console, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System.

Pictured: The Wii U console and its innovative controller.
There are a few parallels being drawn between Nintendo's current generation console, their next gen console, and two consoles of their past. The NES undoubtedly revived the gaming industry after the crash of 1983 with a slew of iconic characters and franchises; Wii brought many people who had no interest in games into the world of gaming. Both consoles sported a strong library of first party titles, and both had tons of shovelware from third parties that tried to cash in.

The SNES upped the ante considerably. It was a graphical powerhouse for its time and had the Nintendo brand name that was so popular with the NES. Third parties flocked to the system much like they did in the previous generation, only many great games were created. A lot of these games are still considered to be some of the best of all time.

Something very similar is happening with Wii U. The machine is a graphical powerhouse, much like the SNES in its heyday. Wii U utilizes a Power 7 series chipset from IBM that is clocked at 264 GFLOPs. In comparison, the PS3 features a chip that outputs at 216 GFLOPs. Nintendo's next gen console is rumored to make use of a modified Radeon HD4850, giving it much more power than the PS3. The next important factor to consider is the name. Just like the popular Nintendo brand name in the 80s and 90s, the Wii name is very powerful.

Pictured: Battlefield 3. One of the many titles coming to Wii U next year.
Judging from Nintendo's press conference, the Wii U will have fantastic third party support. Games such as Darksiders II, Batman: Arkham City, and Battlefield 3 were shown, but what will truly make Wii U amazing is the exclusive titles – the games that really make use of its hardware and its revolutionary controller. With all the power the console has, there's nothing stopping developers like Valve and Epic to develop for the platform; they're Nintendo fans too, the only problem was that the Wii was so massively underpowered compared to the Xbox 360 and PS3. Not to mention Wii U outputs at full 1080p HD, something no current generation console can do.

Exclusive titles are already starting to come in. At the third party developer roundtable last night, Ubisoft debuted an FPS game called Killer Freaks From Outer Space. It looked like a pretty standard shooter, until players took a look at what the Wii U controller did for the game. During co-op play, one player takes control of the main character to fight off mobs of aliens. The other player, however, takes the Wii U controller and uses the touch screen to spawn aliens all over the map and control them. Player number one has no idea where these enemies are being spawned since that takes place on the tablet controller.

Pictured: Concept for Killer Freaks From Outer Space. Image courtesy of GamesRadar.
The controller offers even more potential innovations beyond that example. Ubisoft also revealed last night that voice chat is possible through the controller's microphone and speakers, and all stat tracking can be displayed in game through the controller's screen. Imagine this, though: you're playing an online game with someone (Nintendo confirmed there are no friend codes for Wii U), and by using the front facing camera, you and the other player can video chat while playing the game. All the action is completely un-interrupted since the video chat takes place on the controller's screen. The possibilities are endless.

Amazing third party support is a big piece of the puzzle for Wii U, but the final essential ingredient to make it the next SNES are the fantastic first party games. After what Nintendo did on Wii, we can safely assume that Wii U will have just that: amazing Nintendo franchises that make full use of the Wii U controller. Nintendo already showed off an amazing looking Zelda HD tech demo, but what will Super Mario look like? Imagine if Retro Studios made a new Metroid Prime for Wii U. Nintendo has the studios and the developing talent to make amazing experiences. It's only a matter of time.


What are the chances that Wii U will be the next SNES? Pretty great if we look at what we saw from this year's E3. There are some problems, though. Even though it'll be easy for third parties to port their games to Wii U, will they really take full advantage of the hardware and controller? EA and Ubisoft are the two developers so far that are really high on the platform, so all we can do is hope that others follow suit.

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