As expected, the highlight of Nintendo's E3 keynote was the upcoming Wii successor, codenamed Project Café and now officially name Wii U.
In addition to unveiling the console's official name, Nintendo confirmed our two months old report that its controllers would include a 6.2 inch HD touch screen, a microphone and a front facing camera. This also lends credibility to another old report which claimed that the Wii U console is capable of sending a different image to each controller for multiplayer games.
The controller features two analog sticks, L and R triggers in addition to ZL and ZR, dual analog sticks, a d-pad and face buttons as well a microphone, gyroscope, accelerometer, rumble, camera, and a stylus. The controller is powered by a rechargeable battery and it doesn't do any processing beyond displaying the image sent from the console; accordingly, it works only when it is within range from the console.
Wii U will use a custom Radeon HD graphics processor from AMD and a Power-based microprocessor from IBM. Earlier this week we published a leaked list of Wii U hardware specs which claimed that the console features a custom IBM Power 6 Chip "FOX" on 32nm process CPU and a custom AMD RV770 Chip "WOLF" @ 766Mhz on 32nm process - 1398 Gflops graphics processor; this info hasn't been confirmed yet but it is in line with what's been announced so far.
Nintendo showcased several demos that played on the advantage of having the controller's screen act as a secondary display such as a sniper rifle scope for example. In one of the demos a woman put the new controller on the ground as it display a golf ball in a sand trap, and then she pitched the ball using the WiiMote as a golf club.
Wii U will use a custom laser disc that is capable of storing 25GB. It will not include hard disk drive and it will support memory cards and flash memory.
Launch price has not been determined yet, but it will definitely sell for more than ¥20,000 ($250) when it launches in 2012.
So far the following games have been confirmed for Wii U:
LEGO City Stories
Darksiders II
Tekken (working title)
Assassin's Creed (working title)
Ghost Recon Online
Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor's Edge
Dirt (working titles)
Aliens: Colonial Marines
Metro: Last Light
Super Smash Bros. (working title)
