New Nintendo Wii U Offerings Include Smartphone Browsing for Miiverse

The company will also make two “significant” system updates, one this spring and the other in the summer, Iwata said. They are “in response to some” of the requests that Nintendo has been receiving “for a variety of improvements that they would like to see with Wii U” since the console shipped late last year, he said. The updates will introduce a wide range of new functionality to the Wii U, including Virtual Console capabilities and shortening the time it takes users to launch software or return to the menu screen, it said. “We recognize the time it takes to launch software and to return to the menu screen is one of the biggest issues,” Iwata said. “We are going to improve it incrementally in two stages” as part of the two updates, he said.

The spring update will add Virtual Console software to the Nintendo eShop for the Wii U, said Iwata. Virtual Console, previously made available on the Wii U and 3DS, allows gamers to play titles from older game systems. The Wii U Virtual Console service will launch on the Wii U right after the spring update and features will include the ability to play titles on the GamePad, the Wii U’s tablet-like controller, Iwata said. Initially, it will only include a selection of Nintendo Entertainment System (Famicom in Japan) and Super NES games that are enhanced for the Wii U, he said. But he said Game Boy Advance titles will be added in the future. The prices for NES and Super NES Virtual Console games for the Wii U will be the same as they were for the Virtual Console on the Wii, he said. But he said consumers who already bought the Wii version of an NES or Super NES Virtual Console game and transferred it to their Wii U console can buy the enhanced Wii U version of the same title for the reduced price of $1 for NES games and $1.50 for Super NES games.

To mark the 30th anniversary of the release of the Famicom in Japan, Nintendo will make one NES or Super NES game available each month through July at the discounted price of only 30 cents, Iwata said. Each title will be available at that price for 30 days, starting with the NES game Balloon Fight that was made available Wednesday at the Nintendo eShop for the Wii U. Iwata was a developer on that game, he said. The last title to be offered at 30 cents will be Donkey Kong in July, he said.

Iwata apologized to Wii U gamers because Nintendo won’t be able to release any new titles for the console in January or February, he said. Nintendo opted to spend a little more time developing certain Wii U titles to ensure their quality, he said.

Coming Wii U games include two Zelda titles: An enhanced, HD version of The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, coming by this fall, and a new title that Iwata didn’t name or give release timing for. Wind Waker was released for the GameCube in late 2002 in Japan and early 2003 in North America. But the GameCube “didn’t have [a] very big installed base,” said Iwata. The completely new Zelda title is a “bigger development project” and it will “take some time” before more details can be provided for that game, he said.

The Nintendo Entertainment Analysis and Development Tokyo Software Development team that created the Super Mario Galaxy games for the Wii and Super Mario 3D Land for the 3DS is also working on a new 3D Mario action game for the Wii U, Iwata said. A “playable” version of the game will be shown at E3 in Los Angeles in June, he said. Nintendo is also developing a new Mario Kart game that he said will also be playable at E3. The development team that created Nintendo’s Kirby’s Epic Yarn for the Wii, meanwhile, is creating the first console game to feature Yoshi as the main character since 1998’s Yoshi’s Story for the Nintendo 64, Iwata said.

New features coming to the exercise title Wii Fit U include the ability for players to create user communities on Miiverse from within the game, Iwata said. Community members can discuss exercises, body mass index or weight changes and other health topics with other players as a way to encourage each other to reach fitness goals, Nintendo said. Similar functionality for other games is also planned, it said.

The coming Wii U game Pikmin 3 will include a feature that lets players use the GamePad as a camera to share the same perspective as the character Pikmin and take close-up pictures of landscapes and creatures in the game and share them in Miiverse, Iwata said. A new entry in the Wii Party series will be released this summer, including a new feature that lets both players compete head-to-head using only the GamePad, it said.

An example of one of Nintendo’s “new approaches” is a partnership between Nintendo and developer/publisher Atlus to create a game for the Wii U that features elements of Nintendo’s Fire Emblem game series and Atlus’s Shin Megami Tensei franchise, said Iwata. Tetsuya Takahashi and the development team at Monolith Soft that created the game Xenoblade for the Wii are also working on a new game for the Wii U, Nintendo said. Nintendo will release The Wonderful 101 and Game & Wario for the Wii U in the first half of 2013. Other coming games for the console include Bayonetta 2 and another Super Smash Bros. title, but Nintendo said it “will need more development time before details can be revealed.”