Nintendo has begun rolling out their Wii U displays for the masses. If you have yet to get your hands on the system, check out your local Best Buy or GameStop. At my local Best Buy, not only was there a Wii U setup, there were Wii U branded Wii Remotes and Nunchuks along with pre-order slips for games.
When it came to the actual Wii U interactive, it was slightly disappointing. The only game available to try was Rayman Legends, while the rest of the games simply had videos. This wasn’t too much of a problem since I had never played Rayman Legends, Wii U or otherwise. I played through it with my husband in tow and we both had a good laugh. What turned my smile into concern though was the fact that each time the “demo period” was over, which was approximately 12 minutes, was the strangely long reboot time. Check out the video below which has not been altered for time whatsoever.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXMWICCPn4c[/youtube]
Now, most would say that 2-3 minutes isn’t a long time to wait. Normally I’d agree, except the point of the display is to attract attention. Certainly there were people who came by and touched the GamePad, curious about what it was. Once they realized nothing was happening after touching it, they went about shopping elsewhere in the store. In this day and age, demonstrations need to be quick and readily available or they face the indifference of short attention span consumers.
Whether this is indicative of the actual boot times of the Wii U remains to be seen, but I seriously doubt it. Probably just a marketing SNAFU by Nintendo.
I recently got a chance to checkout a Wii U kiosk at GameStop for almost a whole hour while waiting for a friend to upgrade his cell phone at U.S. Cellular next door. I must say I was also very disappointed and a little worried the only playable game was Rayman Legends. Why would Nintendo do this….? Is Zombie U that bad that they don’t want anyone demoing it before release? I’m really kind of hoping the Pii U doesn’t do all that well so maybe Niny will wake up after this system and make a real system on par with SONY and MicroSoft. I miss the days when Nintendo consoles had as much power if not more then its competitors!
Well, I think ZombiU isn’t exactly something they can always show off at Best Buy and GameStop considering Ubisoft requires an age-gate to post videos/screenshots. Mature contents and all that jazz. But why not a first party game? Hell, how about a game that will be there on launch day?
I agree with the odd choice of the demo units. I think they should have had a Nintendo Land title in there or two for demo, and how about a level from NSMBU or something along with some trailers.
It is a little weird that a game is being demoed that wont be a launch day title. I would like to hear why Nintendo would not display other games. Unless they got payed by Ubisoft. But still i am curious.
From what I read elsewhere, they did it because Rayman Legends shows off the GamePad and controller at the same time in a decent package. Probably also to improve their 3rd party image.