Video Game Reviews 4 You

Posted September 8, 2011 by James Brightman

Wii U was obviously in its very early stages when Nintendo unveiled the new console at E3 this year (it's why they used game footage from 360/PS3), but the extent to which Nintendo has been struggling to get the hardware architecture just right may be even greater than we thought, according to a source at French website 01.net.

Although the report should certainly be taken with a grain of salt, 01.net has proven itself to have a solid track record, including most recently reporting the Nintendo 3DS second analog add-on before Nintendo confirmed it. The report maintains that Nintendo "rushed" the Wii U architecture "through the door with undesirable consequences."

This has led to problems with the tablet controllers, "which still don't work properly." Apparently, the controller's streaming and wireless functionality are "inadequate" and developers have resorted to working with the tablet controller tethered instead.

The report also said that Nintendo may be suffering from its desire to keep costs down (as it always has for hardware) and that the main chipset in Wii U may be "a tad too cheap."

If all of this is true, it's a bad sign for Nintendo, as “Many developers are feeling lost, their progress impeded by a distinct lack of visibility, their working hours by the quasi-paced daily software updates. In those conditions, many feel unable to properly exploit the system's most innovative and promising features."

The report also claims that developers have been "quietly expecting" a launch date of June 2012 for Wii U, but Nintendo may have to push the console back to September or into the holiday period to iron out the problems described above.

James Brightman has been covering the games industry since 2003 and has been an avid gamer ever since the days of Atari and Intellivision. He was previously the EIC of GameDaily Biz.