Topic: Nintendo's (Non) Reaction to Wii U Rumours

[Stogi]

Why? The controller.

Unlike the PS2, where you could develop for it then transfer your goods to other systems with relative ease (keyword: relative), the Wii actually needed developers to think outside the box and use a fascinating new controller. Instead though, we had shoe-horned games, games that didn't resemble the original at all, or nothing.

[Chozo Ghost]

Work arounds did exist, though. There was of course the classic controller, and the wiimote with chuck can be used to some effect as a standard controller.

[broodwars]

I agree that the controller was the culprit as well.  Developers were still trying to wrap their head around motion control, and with much fewer buttons and a wonky control layout the Wiimote was probably considered more trouble than it was worth to try to work around.  The Classic Controller was available, of course, but Nintendo seemed to emphasize early on that this controller was made for the Virtual Console and little else.  Splitting the market by not making the CC a pack-in accessory certainly didn't help its cause.  The nunchuk certainly helps, but there's still the troublesome issue of the really bad and nonstandard button layout on the Wii Remote.

So you have these complex games you could focus on working on for the HD consoles, or you could try to somehow dumb your design down to fit within the technical abilities of the original Wiimote.  Some developers tried the latter, and some of them succeeded.  Most didn't, so developers stuck with platforms that had a standard control interface.  The Wii becoming the mini-game party machine early on in its life cycle probably didn't make the Wii look any more enticing for developers on the fence.

[Ian Sane]

The PS2 may have been the weakest of it's gen (well I guess technically the Dreamcast was) but it wasn't nearly as big of a gap as the Wii had.  The Wii was like if the N64 was going against the Gamecube and Xbox.  A developer could make a PS2 game and port it to the other systems and it could "pass".  You could make a Gamecube or Xbox game that looked like a PS2 game and had the restrictions on AI programming and the size of environments that the PS2 would enforce and no one would really notice otherwise.  The difference in hardware just isn't comparible.

It's also worth noting that no one gave the Wii a chance in the first place and had commited to PS360 games which had a multi-year development cycle.  Then once they were ready to start a new project the Wii had established itself as the casual shovelware console and then why bother?

[Adrock]

Considering how amazing games still look on current hardware, if Wii U graphics can "pass," there's nothing to worry about.

[famicomplicated]

The Wii U controller isn't as "off-putting" as the Wii one was, so we shouldn't have any problems there.
It's just whether Nintendo can garner enough support from 3rd party devs (of all shapes and sizes) to help sell the system, rather than relying on the 6-12 first party games trickled out every year.

If word gets around that it's hard to program for (whether that's true or not we don't know for sure yet) then smaller devs aren't even going to attempt to make games for Wii U.
Unless they make the dev kits cheap and accommodating, the online store something akin to Steam, fair profit margins etc etc, but history has shown that Nintendo are NOT good at these things, which makes things worrying.

For Xbox/Sony fans, the main thing they have to worry about for their next system is the price.
However, for us Ninty fans it's; will it have decent 3rd party games, will online work well, will it have enough core gamer games etc - a lot is riding on this E3 and we all know they're going to screw up at least one thing.

The best thing they can do is get people excited for it's final unveiling, not have its fans petrified at what could go wrong and the non-fans ignoring them outright - all thanks to bad rumours!

[Podings]

I still don't think any of us are in a position to say that Nintendo don't know what they're doing, when they're outpacing the competition (except for Zynga and Apple) profit wise.

We CAN look to answer why they're doing as they are, which I think is more interesting, rather than assume that they're out of touch. They have an enormous marketing department, so whatever they do regarding rumors like weak hardware, they must have thought it the smartest move for some reason or other.
  Personally, I don't really doubt that the Wii U in some regards may be weaker than PS3/360. The Wii didn't handle shaders quite as well as the first Xbox, and I'm sure if the development kits still run on NintendoWare, shaderprogramming will STILL be an issue to some degree.

The thing about the negative rumors is that it's such a small amount of people who circulate them, and such a small amount of people who care. If Nintendo open their big corporate mouth about the issue, EVERYBODY will have their attention drawn to it. Every fan, every investor, every news site, every potential future costomer.
  Better not call attention to the discussion at all, as Nintendo at the moment seem confident that people will be pleased with Wii U's graphical prowess come E3.