 Horsair Raptor K40 keyboard and M45 mouse are designed to provide best in class features and performance for gaming. Click now to learn more. Hey guys, welcome to my Wii U overview. If you're not interested in what's in the box and you're not really that interested in FAQ, there will be a timestamp below in the description just to jump you towards more thoughts and conclusions about Wii U. If you are interested in the other stuff, stay tuned, we'll jump into that right away. One extremely common misconception is that this is the Wii U. This is a Wii U gamepad and is one of the big, very unique things about the Wii U, but it is not the Wii U. Another thing is that people think this is the Wii U. This is the Wii. Wii U isn't just like a big Wii or a small Wii or anything, it is actually not a Wii. It is a Wii U. This is a Wii U. It is different. It looks quite similar, but it is not the same. And while it's not the Wii, a lot of accessories and cables will actually work from a Wii to a Wii U. So the Wii U sensor bar is the same as the Wii sensor bar, so they're interchangeable. The component cable from your Wii will work on your Wii U, although I do recommend using the HDMI cable in the box. Many Wii games, as long as you have the disc, will work on your Wii U, and Wii controllers will work on the Wii U as well. You can technically play up to six players in different games, but finding games that support that is going to be a little bit of a pain. My favorite over four player game that I've played so far is Super Mario Bros U, or I might have got that name slightly wrong, but whatever. And what it is is four people will be on screen playing, and then you can have a fifth player in a sort of, they call it boost mode, but it's like a god mode, which interacts with the environment in different ways. So you can put blocks down if someone, like if it's four players, so it actually increases difficulty because you bump into each other so much. So someone jumps and someone jumps on their head and it throws them down, you can kind of catch them with a block, and there's a few other ways you can interact with the environment as well, which is actually a pretty cool way of doing it. So if you say you have a bunch of kids and there's a dad, he can kind of play with the Wii U gamepad and interact with them while they're playing, but he doesn't have to actually jump in and take over one of their spots, which is actually kind of cool. I like that a lot. It also supports many games, it will also support off TV play. So say your mom is watching her favorite TV show, you can still play your Wii U wherever the heck you want because you can just play it on the gamepad as long as you're within vicinity, which is, again, very cool. There's some foresight into that and there's some good ideas in the Wii U, there's also some terrible ones. Another good idea is that you can actually expand the storage via USB, so external flash drive or hard drive will work fine. You can transfer things like downloaded games, save data and Miis and more from your old Wii to your new Wii U, although this is a one-way street, it can't be transferred back, just don't forget that. Now for some things it can't really do. It will not upscale Wii games, they will be showed in standard definition. You cannot use your gamepad for Wii games, you have to use Wiimotes, which is probably fine because if you have Wii games you probably had a Wii and you probably have Wiimotes, but still. You cannot watch Netflix or do anything like that on your gamepad while you're playing games because it's not separated like that. It has to be used for one thing, although if the TV is being used for something else, like I said before, you can still play games or watch Netflix on it somewhere else in the house. Many games are going to be 720p upscaled to 1080p, although there will definitely be some games at 1080p. It's not always at 1080p, but we've seen that with next-gen hardware from other brands as well so this isn't too surprising. Now as PC enthusiasts, you guys are not buying this for its crazy, blazing, fast hardware. That's not what's happening here. This thing's hardware is not specifically impressive at all, even a little bit, so why would you possibly be interested in this and why am I interested in this? Because I have a fairly high-powered computer myself. I'm interested in this because of what it can do, not what it is. I'm not interested in the hardware power of a Wii U at all. I'm interested in it because it can play Nintendo games. It can play stuff like Zelda Wind Waker HD, Pikmin 3, Wonderful 101, Super Mario 3D World, and in the future it'll be able to play stuff like Mario Kart 8, Hyrule Warriors. If you haven't heard of Hyrule Warriors, look it up. It looks really interesting. Super Smash Bros. and like where the hell is Mario Party 10? There's no news about it at all, but hopefully that in the future. What I'm not interested for Wii U is stuff like Watch Dogs and Call of Duty and Assassin's Creed and much heavier stuff because I'm just going to go play that on my computer, especially big multiplayer games. The Wii U online support is very weak, so if I'm going to play something online with all my friends, I see myself doing that on a computer, not a console. The console, Wii U console, I expect to play when kind of more friends come over and don't feel like hauling their PCs that time. So it's an interesting position. There is stuff to be interested about and there's a lot more exclusives than other consoles like Xbox One or PlayStation 4. There's a bunch of other stuff that's kind of really confusing as well in terms of what the heck is going on. Nintendo is an interesting company because they're very locked within their own ecosystem, but like why aren't they more locked within their own ecosystem? In my mind, other people are like, no, open up. Nintendo is never going to open up. They're never going to release a game on mobile. They've said that more than once. What I don't understand is like, why doesn't the 3DS or 2DS work with your Wii U? Why can't I use one of those as a game pad? That's what they essentially are anyways. They're just much smaller. Why isn't that a thing? Why can't I play Pokemon X and Y on my Wii U? Why isn't there a mainline Pokemon game like Pokemon X and Y on my Wii U that doesn't make a ton of sense? What will hopefully make sense is a price point at some point in time. We saw a surge in popularity with 3DS and 2DS when the price took a drop. Now the Wii U has fairly recently had a price drop down to $300. You can get a $300 one with Super Mario Bros U and Luigi U. That price is subjective to 10 billion things. That's usually why we don't say prices in videos, but still. But I see it being a lot more attractive at say like a $200 or $250 range with those games in it as well. I hope these kinds of things happen because I do want Nintendo to succeed. Sorry, succeed. I grew up on Nintendo and I do still really enjoy these games. I wish they were on other platforms, but they never will be. So there's a lot to think about. Nintendo's stock keeps kind of going like this lately. I know a few days ago it tanked really hard, but then I think last night it skyrocketed again up like $2 or something which is actually a huge movement. The whole industry doesn't really seem to be decided on the whole Nintendo thing. So what is your thoughts? What do you think about Nintendo? Post on the forum, post in the comments below, either one. Also, what do you think about these kind of format videos? I recently did an Oculus video that was somewhat like this one and now there's this one. What do you guys think? Again, post on the forum, post in the comments below with the like and dislike button, propose your alignment and as always, please subscribe to Linus Tech Tips.