Hasta La Gadget!

Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime has confirmed rumors of a fresh batch of Wii U in time for Black Friday, though demand for the new motion-tracking console is still expected to be tight. “We’ll have more available on Black Friday in retail locations” Fils-Aime told CNBC, following analyst predictions that stores were likely holding back units in anticipation of the notorious sales day.

The Wii U was “already well sold through in retail” Fils-Aime boasted, conceding that the was “not a lot of stock left until we start replenishing in a couple days’ time.” It’s unclear whether the Black Friday units will be from Nintendo’s second batch, or are simply reserved units from the first allotment that are left to see store shelves.

Demand for the Wii U was high, with retailers ceasing to accept preorders ahead of its release over the weekend after their initial stock was all accounted for. Resale action on eBay has been reasonably brisk, though has not seen the especially high opportunistic sales of some recent launches.

Earlier this week, Nintendo’s VP of marketing Scott Moffitt confirmed that the company planned to have plenty of new Wii U stock in-between now and Christmas, suggesting that the US would take priority at least initially. “We can’t guarantee there won’t be shortages,” Moffitt conceded, “but we’ll do our best to keep up with it.”

Nintendo has gradually been polishing the Wii U experience, after a shaky launch. The console arrived alongside a sizable firmware update to add backward compatibility with Wii titles, a process that at best took at least an hour to install, and at worst left some gamers with bricked consoles. Meanwhile, features such as TVii smart TV now won’t arrive until December.

[via TIME]

Wii U Black Friday stock incoming says Nintendo USA president is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

The Nintendo Wii U shipped without some of the services we’d heard it would feature, but now Hulu Plus has joined Netflix on the console. Although it’s late arriving, it does feature second screen navigation on the GamePad with several playback control options, or the ability to watch video on the touchscreen. We’re still waiting to see the TVii app next month and Amazon’s Instant Video, but early adopters should be able to take advantage, assuming they’re a subscriber or sign up for a trial membership. Check after the break for a quick demo video to see how it all works.

[Thanks, Quazie]

Continue reading Hulu Plus now available for Nintendo’s Wii U

Filed under: Gaming, Home Entertainment, HD, Nintendo

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Source: Hulu Blog

Nintendo‘s new console is an anomaly in the game console ecosystem, but not for Nintendo. The company that — in just the last decade — popularized stylus-powered gaming, microphone-powered gaming and motion-based gaming, is once again pushing game control inputs forward. And just like its previous consoles, lessons learned from past hardware build the foundation of its latest effort: the Wii U and its bizarre-looking, but conventionally named, “GamePad.”

The Wii U console itself, for instance, looks almost exactly like the original Wii. It’s longer (10.6 inches vs. 8.5 inches for the Wii), a bit rounder on the edges, and there’s an HDMI port out back, but overall it’s quite similar to its squatter predecessor. It’s enough that you’d get the two confused if they were sitting in the same entertainment center. Naturally, the beefed-up internals and Wii backwards compatibility mean you’ll likely be replacing the ol’ virtual tennis machine should you choose to pick one up.

Of course, the GamePad is the real star of the show here, bolstered by Nintendo’s ambitious “TVii” experiment. Everyone’s favorite Italian plumber looks super in HD, no doubt, but how software employs the multifaceted touchscreen tablet / traditional game controller hybrid is what really matters. So, how does the Wii U fare? Find out below.

Continue reading Nintendo Wii U review

Filed under: Gaming, HD, Nintendo

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Normally when one performs a firmware update on a piece of hardware, you generally make sure it remains plugged into the power source instead of relying on the internal battery’s charge (where possible), and you do not touch any of the cables hooked up to it until the entire process is done. The thing is, video game industry journalist Ben Fritz unplugged his spanking new Wii U during a firmware update as there was no way to cancel the download and he did not want to wait for the stipulated two hours required to complete the update, resulting in a bricked Wii U. Ah well, at least he can pick up a new one on eBay for more or less the same price.

Not exactly the smartest thing to do, but sometimes, impatience does lead us to do some pretty zany stuff. I am quite sure that one should know by now, if there is some sort of update going on, you do not turn the device off or unplug any connecting cables – just let it run its digital course, and things should be good to go afterwards. Fritz tweeted, “Wii U has stopped functioning before I managed to play a single game.I tried to stop an interminable software update and now… nothing. ”

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By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Nintendo and Rockstar remain open to the idea of Grand Theft Auto making its way onto the Wii U, Nintendo Wii U Taken Apart,

Nintendo’s marketing vice president has insisted that fresh Wii U supplies are incoming to alleviate the new console bottleneck, promising “a great quantity” though warning that shortages may still be on the cards. “Demand has been phenomenal” Scott Moffitt told Forbes, though declined to give any specific sales figures, only highlighting the sell-out presales and insisting that there will be more Wii U units than there were Wii consoles at the older model’s launch.

“We want consumers to know upon launch they can go into their stores, and there will be new quantities available there to go in and buy” Moffitt said of Nintendo’s strategy with the US launch of the Wii U. “There may be lines, and we do anticipate tremendous demand. We’ll do our best to keep up with it, but there should be a great quantity available at launch. We know that for this launch week, we will have more available than we did during the Wii launch.”

However, the prospect for holiday sales may well be mixed, especially with Black Friday approaching at the end of this week. Moffitt is ambitious about Nintendo’s ability to meet demand in the run up to the holidays. “We’ll have more replenishment during the holiday season to replenish those stocks and refill those store shelves as quickly as we can” he said. “We can’t guarantee there won’t be shortages, but we’ll do our best to keep up with it.”

It’s not solely availability that is causing some gamers headaches, however; a launch-day update for the Wii U has seen consoles out of action for several hours as they gained features like backward compatibility with the Wii, but some owners found that their Wii U was bricked in the process. With supplies so tight, getting a replacement for a broken Wii U is also a challenge. GameStop is entirely sold out of Wii U, and Walmart, Best Buy, and Target all have limited stock; there are some mutterings that they might be holding select units back for Black Friday sales, however.

Moffitt also suggests that the US will get stock priority over other locations, such as Europe and Asia, where the Wii U is launching at a slightly later date. “Since the US is launching first, you can expect there probably would be more available in the US than in other territories” he admitted. “We’re going to manufacture as many as we can to keep up with demand, and hopefully we can do that this time.”

New Wii U stock on the way with US priority says Nintendo exec is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.