Most Recent: Wii U

Nintendo has published the investor’s Q&A that accompanied their quarterly financial report in July. Most of the Q&A relates to the 3DS and its recent price drop, but Nintendo President Satoru Iwata also confirmed that the price and release date of the Wii U won’t be announced until 2012:

“Since the Wii U we showed you at the E3 show in June was still in the development phase without very specific proposals on the software titles, we are going to announce the release date and the price next year when we are able to explain the specific [titles].”

So I guess those of you hoping to get a Wii U surprise at Gamescom, PAX Prime or the Tokyo Game Show will have to find other things to get excited about.

The NintendoGal spoke to Amber McCollom, Nintendo’s Director of Entertainment & Trend Marketing, at E3 and she has dropped a pretty huge bombshell. It looks like the Wii U’s online store will include GameCube games in its download offerings.

Here’s the relevant exchange from the interview:

NintendoGal: I noticed on backwards compatibility at the press conference that the GameCube was missing. Why is this?

McCollom: You know it’s interesting that you bring up backwards compatibility and Nintendo’s history usually goes back one system. The Wii was compatible with GameCube and Wii U will be compatible with Wii and that’s pretty traditional in launches from Nintendo.

NintendoGal: So the Wii U will not support the discs or accessories?

McCollom: Actually the GameCube discs will not be compatible with Wii U, but a number of the games that were playable on GameCube can be downloaded from WiiWare.

The one thing McCollom didn’t mention is how GameCube games will be made available on the Wii U. Will they be the original games running off a Virtual Console-like emulator? Or will they be HD ports rebuilt from the ground up like we’ve seen on the PS3 and Xbox 360?

Hopefully, we’ll find out soon.

Nintendo President Satoru Iwata recently sat down for an interview with the San Jose Mercury News and during the short Q&A he confirmed that the Wii U will include 3DTV support:

If you are going to connect Wii U with a home TV capable of displaying 3-D images, technologically, yes, it is going to be possible, but that’s not the area we are focusing on.

When it comes to 3-D, we already have the 3DS, and each owner of the Nintendo 3DS is capable of viewing 3-D images. However, when it comes to the home console, it depends upon the availability of 3-D TV sets at home, which, unfortunately, is not expanding enough. And rather than pouring a lot of energy into that kind of area, with the Wii U we’d like to focus more on each Wii U owner being able to have an equal opportunity to enjoy it.

So basically, it sounds like the Wii U will support 3DTVs, but don’t expect a lot of 3D content from Nintendo.

We’ve all been so excited about the third party developers supporting the Wii U that sometimes we forget about Nintendo’s own first party studios. One would hope the best of the best would be gearing up to work on the new platform, and it seems that Monolith Soft is doing just that.

The once Xenogears, then Xenosaga, now Xenoblade developer is accepting applications for nearly every position under the sun, from 3D artists to 2D artists, planners, and even office staff. Monolith Soft got some pretty nice visuals out of the Wii on its last project, it will be interesting to see what they can do with the Wii U.

Any other studios or franchises you’d like to see on the Wii U? If Nintendo got a license for Shining Force from Sega and had their own Camelot Software Planning (the original developers) make it, I would literally throw my PS3 out the window.