Wii U will have day one games

By
Cieran Douglass
– November 9, 2012Posted in: News

Also requires an “always-on” access to power.

In an unprecedented and controversial move which shocked the games industry and media, Nintendo have announced that the Wii U will feature “day 1 games” – that is to say, users purchasing their console at release on November 18th will have access to a small but significant library of games – a new feature on Nintendo consoles and one more usually reserved for its rivals.

Journalists from across the gaming media have reacted angrily towards the revelation that Nintendo are actually supporting their console within its first six months, with Kotaku’s Brian Ashcraft complaining that “without comment pieces on “where Nintendo went wrong” wherein we opine that the issue is games, what are we going to fill our website with? Oh yes, scantily clad women and Mike Fahey reviewing Twinkies. But they’ve taken out at least a third of our weekly articles! They’re so inconsiderate, the games media needs a whipping boy, and Sony’s just too damn competent these days to take it out on them.”

Nintendo themselves have been quick to defend their launch line-up, with Reggie going on record to state that “the Wii U has been in development for several years now, and in that time we realised that the face of the gaming world has changed now. People actually expect to be able to play games on their consoles as well as using them for Netflix and Hulu, so we’ve spoken to our publishers and made sure that, come November 18th, you’ll be able to play games on your Wii U.”

The idea of “day-one games” for a new console has drawn criticism from “gamers’ rights groups”, with some angry that Nintendo seems to actually be listening to their fans for once. One particularly irate gamer claimed that he’d “been with Nintendo since the SNES, and while I buy every one of their consoles at release I still badmouth them on Internet forums. If they’re actually providing games for me to play, what can I do now? I suppose I’ll just have to apply for that job at Kotaku…”

About Cieran Douglass

Cieran built this website in a cave with a bunch of scraps. Actually no that's not right at all, it was with Wordpress and middling Photoshop and design skills. He often plays video games and his favourites are Paper Mario TTYD, GTA San Andreas, Portal 2 and Minecraft. His display picture is not an accurate portrayal. He currently works for a much bigger website at the University of York, but if you'd like him to write something for you he can be contacted at cieran@pixelgrater.com.