Nintendo have been struggling against rising competition in the last year, citing Apple as an upcoming threat in the gaming market. They will be launching their Wii U console with a dedicated ‘Super Mario' game for the first time in 16 years.

Mario is an iconic gaming figure, and audiences in the Far East are sure to purchase the new console, especially with the game included as part of the bundle. Nintendo President Satoru Iwata spoke at the E3 entertainment expo in Los Angeles.

Iwata said “The device has to win support from within the family. So we have to show the benefits of the Wii U device from different angles in order to reach the mother, the father and the children.”

The Wii U will be able to work with two GamePad controllers and will have high definition graphics capabilities. The two controllers look almost like a tablet computer, offering much more than a standard controller.

The Wii U will also be able to stream content from Netflix, YouTube, Hulu and Amazon.Com Inc. The console will also ship with a social gaming network called ‘Miiverse'.

Shigeru Miyamoto, the famous Nintendo game designer said that the best way to tackle ‘casual gaming' from companies such as Apple, is to make their games deeper and more involving.

Nintendo were coy about the pricing, with no fixed numbers being announced yet. It will need to be competitively priced to shift units, however the cost of the controllers alone may make this impossible.

Company shares have dropped by almost 15 percent since January, so the success of the Wii U is paramount to company profits in the coming fiscal year. Nintendo announced their first annual operating loss this year.

Ubisoft are already interested in developing games for the platform, saying that the two screen option (main screen and controller screen) opens up new doors.

Xavier Poix, studio director of Ubisoft France said in an interview “The Wii U is really interesting in terms of asymmetrical game play, with one player doing something and one other player doing something at the same time.”

Kitguru says: Will the new Wii U console revitalise the market?

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