When the Wii U was officially announced at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in 2011, Nintendo shared its hopes of winning back the hardcore gaming community by taking its up-and-coming console back to basics, compensating for the alienation caused by the Wii’s motion controls. While the Wii holds the record for the most sales of seventh-generation consoles as of Q1 2012, there was still a large number of gamers who had lost almost all interest in the console. It was painful for many longtime video game enthusiasts to witness the once dominant Nintendo promptly dethroned.

Eventually, details about Nintendo’s successor to the Wii began to surface. The Wii U would come equipped with a new and revolutionary “GamePad” in place of a traditional controller. It would use an additional touch screen similar to the Nintendo’s DS handhelds and could be put to use in ways that would allow the player to feel more immersed within the game. This seemed to be the main marketing point for the console as Nintendo showcased its ability to innovate and bring more interaction to games. The GamePad generated quite a bit of excitement among the gaming media and community, who were looking forward to experiencing what the Wii U and its new tablet-like controller had to offer.

There was, of course, a rather tight niche of critics and gamers who looked to the GamePad with a sense of anxiety rather than optimism. From this point of view, it seemed as though the expectation was for the controller to unintentionally facilitate the Wii U’s downfall. If gamers felt alienated by the Wii’s motion controls, which prompted Nintendo to revert back to a more traditional setup, would the GamePad really do the job? Or would it have been more beneficial to trust in the tried and true style of controllers similar to those used by Nintendo’s competitors? It was difficult to predict at the time, and the majority of spectators sat in waiting.

The Wii U finally released in November of last year, kicking off to an immediate success in sales. The new console also went over well with critics, who praised its audio and visual specs as well as its GamePad, debunking any doubt in the controller’s potential.

So where is the Wii U now? For the first month or so after the console’s release, it thrived on success and positive publicity. Now, early into 2013, the buzz of launch has worn off for most, and it appears as though the console has almost gone dormant at such an early stage in its life span. Why is this?

First of all, aside from the handful of successful launch titles — including New Super Mario Bros. U and Scribblenauts Unlimited — the console’s catalog has largely fallen flat. Since the initial release wave, various other titles have come out for the Wii U, but most of them are already available on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 (Darksiders II, Tekken Tag Tournament 2, and a handful of others). Apart from these few, there seems to be almost no sign of any major releases in the near future, much to the dismay of those who spent their hard-earned cash on the console. This is similar to what happened with the Wii.

A display of the optimism targeted toward the Wii U upon release.

That brings us to the upcoming Bayonetta 2. The highly anticipated title has been announced as a Wii U exclusive, sparking outrage among gamers: those who are without a Wii U will be unable to play the game on their PlayStation 3s and Xbox 360s, like they did the original.

This may point to the number of gamers who passed on the Wii U and are still without ownership of one. Even with all of the publicity and praise, it’s possible that many people felt little need to spend their money on a new system when their existing ones were viable for another year or so until the next round of console launches. The fact that the Wii U’s release was early in comparison to what Microsoft and Sony may have planned also works against the Wii U to a certain extent. To some, a year may not seem like a long enough time to be salvaging every last bit of life out of seventh-generation consoles, but in this day and age, a single year of saving money makes all the difference.

I’d like to point out that I personally have no hatred toward the Wii U and was in fact anxious to see what became of it upon release. Unfortunately, since then, the gaming community hasn’t heard much of anything from Nintendo’s new console. It’s almost as though it has fallen off the face of the Earth.

Many may be disappointed by the lack of attention shown to the Wii U, and it really seems as though many developers are unwilling to take their chances and release games for it. Others may have already seen this coming. For one reason or another, the Wii U might have failed to capture our attention beyond its first few steps out the door, much like with the Wii.

For those who were uninterested to begin with, this situation may likely fly past their radars undetected. But for those who feel let down, we can only hope that the Wii U will make its deserved comeback in the near future. After all, it’s still early, and it’s never too late.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Nintendo is once again out to prove that it is totally serious about supporting its various online platforms, as you can download new content this week for not just the 3DS and Wii U but the DSi and original Wii as well. Yep, it’s one of those “something for everyone” updates, which should hopefully help clear out the boring taste of last week’s Pac-Man port and YouTube app.

First up is the 3DS eShop, which is getting loads of new content today, including a demo of two-screen-platformer Fractured Soul, two more Coin Rush DLC packs for New Super Mario Bros. 2, a port of the NES’ Mighty Bomb Jack, and an adventure game called Murder on the Titanic. I don’t want to spoil anything, but I’m pretty sure the iceberg did it.

Also, Nintendo has apparently put on its rooster hat and written “full version of Scribblenauts Unlimited” into its magic notebook, as you can now download that and the full versions of Harvest Moon 3D: A New Beginning, Classic Games Overload: Card & Puzzle Edition, and Lego The Lord of the Rings on the 3DS eShop.

Finally, dubstep artist Skrillex brings the wub wub to the Nintendo Video section with a video for his song Breakn’ A Sweat, which also features The Doors. I can only assume that classic rock fans are very happy about that pairing.

Moving on to the Wii U, the system gets one of its first demos: FIFA Soccer 13. Adding more demos like this should bode well for the console going forward, especially since Nintendo shows no signs of decreasing the amount of full retail games it adds to the eShop. Speaking of, this week you can download Family Party: 30 Great Games Obstacle Arcade, Ben 10 Omniverse, Marvel Avengers: Battle for Earth, and Rise of the Guardians: The Video Game.

Wrapping things up with the DSi and the Wii, the former gets hidden object/minigame collection Christmas Wonderland 2 and role-playing game Crystal Adventure, while the latter finally gets a Virtual Console title that isn’t an old SNK brawler: the arcade classic BurgerTime. It’s still no Earthbound, but at least you get to kill pickle monsters.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Since the release of 5th Cell’s emergent puzzle game in 2009, players have taken joy in testing the boundaries of Scribblenauts’ built-in dictionary. The recently released Scribblenauts Unlimited (for Wii U, Steam, and Nintendo 3DS), the fourth title in the series, pushes the Objectnaut engine even further by allowing players to attach multiple objects to each other and add adjectives (such as rocket-propelled scared mouse), and that’s where the horrible brilliance begins.

You can imagine the possibilities: If stumped on a puzzle where you have to keep kids off your lawn, imagine the difference a crazy forty-cat lady — instead of just a lady with a cat — could make.

GamesBeat reached out to 5th Cell for some of its favorite and wildest creations. You can see one of my personal favorites above and a few more in the gallery below. We were also interested to know some of the more absurd words the game would transform into objects, and we weren’t disappointed. Apparently, Scribblenauts Unlimited now knows everything from urinal cakes to keyboard cat.

The Wii U version sports the ability to save 900 different created objects and exclusive cameos from characters in the Mario and Zelda universes while the Steam version allows users to share custom objects via Steam Workshop.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Nintendo wants the Wii U launch on Nov. 18 to be the video game event of the holiday season. Scott Moffitt, the company’s executive vice president of sales and marketing, is the man in charge of making that happen.

The Japanese giant has a lot at stake when it comes to the Wii U, which some have criticized as a not-quite-next-generation console that is about as powerful as Sony’s six-year-old PlayStation 3. Nintendo began advertising the system in earnest last week to convince gamers otherwise. We spoke with Moffitt about Nintendo’s approach, the ad campaign, and its timing.

Here’s a transcript of our interview.

GamesBeat: Tell us about what’s in motion right now. What’s happening as you lead up to the launch?

Scott Moffitt: We’re in the final countdown stage. We’re watching the imports every day, when the boats come in, to make sure we’re getting the product we’re anticipating. We started our marketing in earnest a few days ago. We’ve been building interactive kiosks in stores. We’ve got about 5,000 of those, so people can experience the system for themselves. That’s important for a complex product like this. We went live with advertising last week in social media and really in earnest over the weekend with some cinema. There’s a lot going on.

GamesBeat: The ad campaign seemed like it came late. What’s the thinking behind the timing of the ads?

Moffitt: The timing is almost to the day the same as we used for Wii. We weren’t trying to copy that plan exactly, but it just happened that way. We put a media plan together. We wanted to build awareness quickly, so it’s multi-touchpoint. There will be messages coming at people from every direction. We thought that Wreck-It Ralph was a good place to have some cinema. That’s where our advertising premiered over the weekend.

It’s not like a hardcore game where you need to release your advertising five weeks ahead of a game launch. For us, it’s fine to be closer to the launch. I think that makes more sense. The other factor, candidly, is that with an election campaign this year. There was less media available prior to when we bought, and it was much more expensive.

GamesBeat: Being virtually sold out added complexity to everything, right? If you convince more people to buy something this week, they’re not going to get it. They can’t even order it, right?

Moffitt: Right. Frustration can build up. That wasn’t really part of the plan either, though. We buy through an up-front process like a lot of big advertisers, so we committed to these media buys long before we knew that we were going to have a sold-out situation to pre-sales. We hoped we would be sold out, that pre-sales would be brisk. But we didn’t have the luxury of waiting to see that to know what our major plans would be.

GamesBeat: Have you guys made any projections on sales? I remember some analysts saying 4.5 million sales would be likely for the holidays.

Moffitt: What we’ve said is we’re capable of shipping 5.5 million units between Nov. 18 and March 31, the end of our fiscal year. That’s a global number. We’ve not broken it out by time period, so how much of that is week one, how much is holiday, we can’t say. Similarly, we’ve not disclosed how much of that will be in each region. The U.S. will clearly have the longest selling period, because we’re the first market to launch.

GamesBeat: If I tried to place an order, supposing some retailer had pre-sales still open, how long would it take at this point before I might get one? Is it well into the new year?

Moffitt: No, not at all. We’ve been through these processes before. We want product to be available on day one in stores throughout the country. If you line up or get there early, you should be able to get product on day one. GameStop has not sold all of their day one allocation. They’ve sold what they were making available for pre-sales. Those are two different numbers. Now, a lot of what we gave them, they’ve sold to pre-sales, but, like every retailer will, they’ve held some back so they have product on day one for consumers that come in the door.

We have said that we’ll have more Wii U units on store shelves in week one than we did for Wii in 2006. We’ll also have replenishment much more frequently during the holiday than we did for Wii. Having said that, though, we’re guessing there could be shortages. It won’t be there every day. Shipments coming in each week could sell very quickly.

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This morning, Nintendo finally announced the price and launch date for its upcoming Wii U video game console as well as its new TVii feature that lets you use it as a Netflix/Hulu/Tivo/whatever box. Of course, you can also play video games on the Wii U, and we have the complete list of the system’s launch window games, as well as screenshots of many of them.

The Wii U console is in stores Nov. 18, with the basic version costing $300 and the deluxe $350; for specifics on each package, see our story from this morning.

Now, the system’s “launch window” extends from when the Wii U comes out all the way until March of next year. That means a few of these might not actually be available in 2012, but Nintendo still includes them in the “launch window.” It makes sense if you try not to think about it too much.

Either way, check out the list and gallery below to see all of the games you’ll be playing on your hot new Wii U … at some point within the next six or seven months.

• Funky Barn
• NBA 2K13
• 007 Legends
• Call of Duty: Black Ops II
• Transformers Prime
• Wipeout 3
• Skylanders Giants
• Cabela’s Dangerous Hunts 2013
• Rapala Pro Bass Fishing
• Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate
• Rise of the Guardians: The Video Game
• Ben 10: Omniverse
• Family Party: 30 Great Games Obstacle Arcade
• Disney Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two
• Mass Effect 3
• Madden NFL 13
• FIFA Soccer 13
• Trine 2: Director’s Cut
• Runner2: Future Legend of Rhythm Alien
• Zumba Fitness Core
• Jett Tailfin
• Tekken Tag Tournament 2 Wii U Edition
• Tank! Tank! Tank!
• Nintendo Land
• New Super Mario Bros. U
• Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor’s Edge
• Sing Party
• Lego City: Undercover
• Wii Fit U
• Game & Wario
• Pikmin 3
• The Wonderful 101
• Aliens: Colonial Marines
• Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed
• Nano Assault Neo
• Warriors Orochi 3 Hyper
• Darksiders II
• Wheel of Fortune
• Jeopardy!
• Toki Tori 2
• Assassin’s Creed III
• Just Dance 4
• Marvel Avengers: Battle for Earth
• Rabbids Land
• ESPN Sports Connection
• Your Shape: Fitness Evolved 2013
• ZombiU
• Rayman Legends
• Scribblenauts Unlimited
• Game Party Champions
• Batman: Arkham City — Armored Edition

The gallery is below, but if you prefer your pictures to move and have sound, take a look at these Wii U launch trailers.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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NeoGAF, one of the Internet’s most popular video game message boards, received over 16,000 posts during the three major Electronic Entertainment Expo press conferences. Now that E3 is over, we can take a look back at how these hardcore gamers reacted and draw interesting conclusions on what they thought of the industry’s biggest trade show of the year.

We’ve already seen how NeoGAF reacted to Microsoft and Sony’s press conferences, but what did the gaming community think of Nintendo’s? The below chart scores the members’ reactions, as posted in real-time:

Click for a full-size version. For a more detailed explanation of how we analyzed this data, please see the explanation at the end of this article.

What NeoGAF liked about the Nintendo press conference

Only three games registered as positive. The forum members received Pikmin 3 very warmly, and they gave it the highest reaction score of the press conference, while New Super Mario Bros. U and Scribblenauts Unlimited received largely positive comments for a very brief amount of time.

Otherwise, NeoGAF absolutely loved Shigeru Miyamoto, Nintendo’s legendary game designer, and Reggie Fils-Aime, president and COO of Nintendo of America.

The only other item that received a positive score was the announcement that the Wii U will support two GamePad tablet controllers at the same time.

What they didn’t like

NeoGAF reacted poorly to just about everything else. Posters lambasted established franchises such as Paper Mario and New Super Mario Bros. They dismissed revitalized and new intellectual properties such as Luigi’s Mansion and ZombiU, respectively. They outright destroyed any talk of motion-controlled games such as Wii Fit Plus and casual titles like Sing and Just Dance 4.

In fact, after Reggie Fils-Aime acknowledged the popular meme “my body is ready” in the 34th minute (which everyone thought was good fun), Nintendo did not generate a positive score for the rest of its morning press conference.

The worst individual minute occurred during the trailer for Sing, reaching a score of -117, which is extraordinary. To put this in perspective, I performed this same study in 2009, and the infamous Wii Vitality Sensor introduction scored only a -80. Sing’s lowest point was the worst E3 2012 press conference moment, beating out even Sony’s Wonderbook (though that scored lower overall due to it being a much longer demo).

Perhaps more interestingly, while the scores for the other conferences went up and down and back up throughout, Nintendo started very strong and then steadily went down from there. One could argue that this was just a result of what they showed and when they showed it. The 6,000+ posts of the NeoGAF thread on Nintendo made it clear that, as the press conference progressed, gamers were becoming increasingly disillusioned by the Wii U. By the end, the majority had lost faith.

This may have major ramifications for Nintendo. The Japanese company lost a big opportunity to court hardcore gamers during this press conference with a console many hoped would engage that very audience. With predicted new console launches next year, Microsoft and Sony could learn valuable lessons from Nintendo’s conference if they want to get core gamers excited.

That could be a big “if.” Video game consoles are much more versatile entertainment devices, engaging a much wider audience. Perhaps, as many members of NeoGAF fear, E3 is not for the hardcore gamer anymore.

Next year’s E3 press conferences should prove very interesting. With the possibility of new game systems, will Microsoft and Sony seek to please hardcore gamers? Or will they continue their momentum in search of more casual audiences?

The most valuable lesson they can learn here: Don’t try to appeal to gamers — as Nintendo repeatedly claimed to do throughout its 70 minutes on stage — and not deliver. As we’ve discovered, hardcore gamers are very hard to impress.

For more on how NeoGAF reacted to the E3 press conferences, check out the Microsoft and Sony studies.

How the scoring works

NeoGAF hosts a single message board thread for each press conference, where dozens of members comment throughout each show. I graded each comment as positive or negative, giving them scores of 1 or -1 respectively. Then I totaled the sum of these reactions for each discrete minute and plotted in the above chart. A high score means that the NeoGAF community liked what they saw; a score close to zero represents mixed reactions; and a low score means that they were not enjoying the show at that moment.

Some notes on how I scored each response:

• I made no distinction between really positive or somewhat positive comments — likewise for negative comments. Each was given either a score of 1 or -1.
• While I made every effort to understand the various memes and inside jokes that make up a large part of the responses, if I could not understand a response, I would not score it.
• In the event that a comment employed obvious sarcasm, I scored it to reflect the original intent of the commentator. If the sarcasm was not clear, I relied on the literal meaning of the comment. Fortunately, the very expressive NeoGAF community rarely employed subtle sarcasm.
• When comments included positive and negative observations, I accounted for the more immediate reaction to preserve a more real-time response. An example: “I liked the game that was shown at the beginning of the show, but this game now is bad” would have a negative score.
• Many comments weren’t scored as they offered no opinion. These included clarifications, questions, discussions between members unrelated to the press conference, and inquiries into whether one game or another would be shown at a later time.

GamesBeat 2012 is VentureBeat’s fourth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. This year we’re calling on speakers from the hottest mobile, social, PC, and console companies to debate new ways to stay on pace with changing consumer tastes and platforms. Join 500+ execs, investors, analysts, entrepreneurs, and press as we explore the gaming industry’s latest trends and newest monetization opportunities. The event takes place July 10-11 in San Francisco, and you can get your early-bird tickets here.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Each year, during the various press conferences surrounding the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) game-industry trade show, people applaud. Some of it’s polite (some guy we don’t care about is getting on stage). Some of it’s fanfare (yay, a new Zelda!). Some of it’s fake rah-rah (come on, we know you’re employees trying to pump up the crowd).

But once in a while, it’s pure, legitimate wow.

An extended, genuinely enthusiastic ovation awaited the conclusion of publisher/developer Ubisoft’s demo of Watch Dogs, a new modern-day drama/action/adventure game with a touch of cyberpunk. It’s stylish. It’s violent. And it’s oh-so-pretty. Of course, it’s way too early to judge whether this upcoming (date: TBD) Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC release will be any good or not, but read our quick-look preview and peep the gameplay video below to see why we picked Watch Dogs for GamesBeat’s E3 2012 Game of the Show.

Ubisoft’s thriller wasn’t the only star of E3. Here are the final top-threes by the rest of the GamesBeat staff who were in attendance at E3 2012. (To check out more coverage of any of the games, just click on the tags below the article or follow our E3 tag.)

Dan “Shoe” Hsu, GamesBeat editor-in-chief

1. The Last of Us (PlayStation 3)
2. Watch Dogs (multiplatform)
3. Dishonored (multiplatform)

Dean Takahashi, GamesBeat lead news writer

1. Beyond: Two Souls (PlayStation 3)
2. The Last of Us (PlayStation 3)
3. Watch Dogs (multiplatform)

Sebastian Haley, GamesBeat culture editor

1. Metro: Last Light (multiplatform)
2. Watch Dogs (multiplatform)
3. The Cave (multiplatform)

Omri Petitte, GamesBeat writer

1. Watch Dogs (multiplatform)
2. Assassin’s Creed III (multiplatform)
3. PlanetSide 2 (PC)

Mike Minotti, GamesBeat writer

1. Assassin’s Creed III (multiplatform)
2. Disney Epic Mickey: The Power of Illusion (3DS)
3. Rayman Legends (Wii U)

Jacob Lopez, GamesBeat writer

1. Watch Dogs (multiplatform)
2. The Last of Us (PlayStation 3)
3. Scribblenauts Unlimited (Wii U)

Stefanie Fogel, GamesBeat writer

1. The Walking Dead — Episode 2: Starved for Help (multiplatform)
2. Borderlands 2 (multiplatform)
3. Quantum Conundrum (multiplatform)

Rob LeFebvre, GamesBeat writer

1. Watch Dogs (multiplatform)
2. Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch (PlayStation 3)
3. Gravity Rush (PlayStation Vita)

Rus McLaughlin, GamesBeat writer

1. Watch Dogs (multiplatform)
2. The Last of Us (PlayStation 3)
3. Tomb Raider (multiplatform)

Eduardo Moutinho, GamesBeat writer

1. Star Wars 1313 (multiplatform)
2. Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance (multiplatform)
3. Injustice: Gods Among Us (multiplatform)

Please vote for your own favorite in our poll and explain your vote in the comments.

GamesBeat 2012 is VentureBeat’s fourth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. This year we’re calling on speakers from the hottest mobile, social, PC, and console companies to debate new ways to stay on pace with changing consumer tastes and platforms. Join 500+ execs, investors, analysts, entrepreneurs, and press as we explore the gaming industry’s latest trends and newest monetization opportunities. The event takes place July 10-11 in San Francisco, and you can get your early-bird tickets here.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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The team of heroes that make up the GamesBeat squad have disassembled after conquering another Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles. If you’re looking for full coverage, head to our E3 hub. For now, we’ve returned to our families who have asked us for our thoughts about the show.

Here is the list of GamesBeat’s ten favorite family games of E3 2012:

Nintendo Land
Wii U – Nintendo
Holiday 2012

When the Wii launched in North America, Nintendo included Wii Sports with the system and marched in a golden era of family gaming. The big publisher is hoping that Nintendo Land will have a similar effect. The minigame collection will feature Zelda and Animal Crossing themed events that showcase the functionality of the Wii U GamePad.

In Luigi’s Ghost Mansion, for example, four players control ghost hunters while the person holding the GamePad controls a specter. The hunters try to weaken the ghost with their flashlights, while the ghost tries to weaken the players by sneaking up behind them. The rest of Nintendo Land follows this same pattern of asynchronous multiplayer where the player with the GamePad takes on an entirely different role in relation to the others with standard Wii remotes.

Game & Wario
Wii U – Nintendo
Holiday 2012

Not content with a single minigame collection, Nintendo is also working on Game & Wario. The yellow Mario villain is bringing his warped sense of style to the Wii U with a horde of small games that take advantage of the GamePad. Events like “Arrow” will have players firing a bow from the touchscreen at enemies on the television.  In “Shutter,” gamers will use the GamePad to take pictures of on-screen criminals before a timer runs out.

If you like your minigames with a bit more quirk, then your family may prefer this over Nintendo Land.

Dance Central 3
Xbox 360 – Harmonix
Quarter 3 2012

Everybody dances. Sure, maybe your dad shouldn’t (Pops, we don’t want to see you do the alligator again!), but everybody loves getting down. Which explains why so many people love controlling their music games by busting a move. Dance Central, the Xbox 360 Kinect’s marquee game, returns for a third attempt. This time, developer Harmonix is including a story mode which will have dancers traveling in a time machine to fix historical dance steps. Does that sound crazy? Well, free your mind and your butt will follow!

Just Dance 4
Xbox 360/PlayStation 3/Wii – Ubisoft
October 9, 2012

Want to shake your money-maker but don’t own a Kinect? Well, Just Dance 4 is available on Wii, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360. The sound track will feature over 40 hits. Confirmed songs include Nicki Minaj’s “Super Bass,” The B-52′s “Rock Lobster,” and Will Smith’s “Wild Wild West.”

New Super Mario Bros. U
Wii U – Nintendo
Holiday 2012

A new Nintendo system used to guarantee a new Mario game. While that is no longer a certainty, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that the Wii U is launching with a followup to one of the Wii’s best-selling games. Four players control Mario, Luigi, two toads, or their own Mii with the Wiimotes while a fifth player aids by creating blocks and stunning enemies using the GamePad’s touchscreen. Although, reports from our team on the E3 floor suggest that they had more fun when they were using the GamePad powers to impede and annoy the other players.

Rayman Legends
Wii U – Nintendo
Holiday 2012

Many fans and critics consider Rayman Origins to be one of the best games of 2011. This Wii U sequel will bring a lot of the same platforming elements into an equally colorful world. Legends ups the family friendliness by including a fifth playable character controlled with the Wii U GamePad’s touchscreen. While up to four other players can run and jump around the side-scrolling environments, the GamePad player can tap on the screen to activate objects and mop up collectibles.

Scribblenauts Unlimited
Wii U – 5th Cell
Holiday 2012

The main character from the previous Scribblenauts has a new world to explore. This time, instead of a bunch of self-contained levels, the magic-notebook wielding Maxwell will have a much more open world to explore. For the unaware, Scribblenauts allows players to summon a seemingly endless variety of creatures and objects simply by typing in the word. Unlimited allows players to combine multiple objects into one hybrid. Just be careful. I’m pretty sure that combinations such as “winged bears” and “walking snakes” are harbingers of the apocalypse.

LEGO City: Undercover
Wii U/3DS – TT Games
Holiday 2012

Lego has locked itself together with TT Games and publisher Nintendo to make a Grand Theft Auto clone based on the building-block company’s most popular play set, the city police station. Players will take the role of undercover cop Chase McCain who will be busting criminals all across Lego City. McCain can swap out his own parts to become other characters and gain new powers.

Disney Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two
Wii/Xbox 360/PlayStation 3 – Junction Point Studios
November 18, 2012

Disney’s world-famous Mickey Mouse returns for a second adventure on the Wii. This time, the classic character is expanding his digital presence to Microsoft and Sony’s consoles. The first game suffered from a poor camera and a complete lack of voice acting. Lead developer Warren Spector claims that they’ve fixed the camera and that the game will be fully voiced.

Since the end of the events in the first game, Mickey has teamed up with Oswald The Lucky Rabbit (who was a villain in the first game) to help save Wasteland, which is Oswald’s home. If Spector’s tam at Junction Point has truly fixed the camera, then this could be one of the best family games of the year.

Epic Mickey: Power of Illusion
3DS – Dreamrift
November 18, 2012

Disney will release a portable adventure starring the round-eared rodent for the 3DS on the same day as the console counterpart. The title will be a tribute to the Sega Gensis game Mickey Mouse: Castle of Illusion, which many fans believe is the mascot’s greatest video game. Power of Illusion will be a side-scrolling platformer that takes place after the events of the first Epic Mickey. The “illusions” of other Disney character will make an appearance including Captain Hook, Peter Pan, and Beast from Beauty and the Beast.

Please vote for your favorite in our poll and explain your view in the comments.

GamesBeat 2012 is VentureBeat’s fourth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. This year we’re calling on speakers from the hottest mobile, social, PC, and console companies to debate new ways to stay on pace with changing consumer tastes and platforms. Join 500+ execs, investors, analysts, entrepreneurs, and press as we explore the gaming industry’s latest trends and newest monetization opportunities. The event takes place July 10-11 in San Francisco, and you can get your early-bird tickets here.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Even Scribblenauts creator Jeremiah Slaczka of (developer) 5th Cell is surprised at some of the things fans have come up with while playing his game. With the new object-creation feature and the possibilities it leads to, he calls Scribblenauts Unlimited for the Wii U “the definitive version of Scribblenauts.” It adds many of the features he’s always wanted.

With each iteration, the series has added increasingly more. “The first one [Scribblenauts], obviously, is just write anything, the second one is adjectives, and the third one is now object creation,” said Slaczka. “We’ve always wanted to do all those things at once, but in game development it’s just too much. You have to learn and stuff like that. So I wanted to do something where, literally, you could write anything, and share with friends, all this.” That’s part of the reason 5th Cell chose the name Unlimited for the latest Scribblenauts game, “because you have unlimited objects now.”

Object creation isn’t a new idea to the developer. “We’ve kind of had this in the pipe for a while,” said Slaczka. “For a couple of years I’ve been wanting to do something like this, and the Wii U is also really, really powerful—Oh, that’s cool,” Slaczka said, pointing at one displays on the show floor as he was momentarily distracted by a demo unit in which the game showed a rolling wave of water that submerged the lower half of the screen, “I haven’t even seen that. There’s so many objects—I think that’s like tsunami, or something.”

Getting back on track, Slaczka said, “With the Wii U we’ve been able to make the game way bigger, because with the object creation—putting all that stuff together—the DS just can’t handle all that stuff…even the Wii couldn’t handle it, but the horse-power of this can really handle it.” The increased resolution of the high-definition console also means that the developers can fit more information and objects onto the screen at once.

With Scribblenauts Unlimited, the Wii U gamepad mirrors what’s displayed on the screen. While previewing the game, I caught myself watching the GamePad and almost completely ignoring the television screen. Asked whether he felt it was a problem, he said it’s something he’s actually asked quite often.

“People say, ‘Well I should be looking at the screen,’ and I’m like ‘Well, why? Should you?’ Are you having fun either way?” he explained, saying that he doesn’t feel the player should be confined to either of the screens.

“What’s cool is your friends can all look at it, so while you’re writing, that’s why we don’t have the write-mode up. We just have a little bar.” The write mode Slaczka was referring to is an onscreen keyboard that pops up and covers the screen when the player wants to type a word. It shows on the Wii U GamePad’s touchscreen, but the television screen only shows a yellow bar with the letters popping up as they are typed, allowing onlookers to see the onscreen action.

Slaczka feels that he got just about everything they can in the game. “I just had a journalist, he was trying to stump it, so he wanted to make a unicorn that’s metallic and can shoot lasers.”

“I hadn’t thought about something like that before,” said Slaczka, going into detail about how they made it happen. “And it worked.”

Interestingly, Slaczka himself wasn’t at first sure it would come together correctly. “That even surprised me, because it was like ‘Uh, hopefully this works,’ I’d never tried something like this. I’m not trying to be PR and say we have everything in the game, but in the object creation, we have a lot.”

“See that?” he said pointing to the screen, “That’s a giant plant tank that shoots hippies—a hovering plant tank.” Sure enough, on the screen was a giant tank made of plants floating around the screen.

“That’s what Scribblenauts is all about. It’s just absolute wackiness, like, do whatever you want, and I want it to be like that, so I’m happy to see that people are doing all kinds of crazy stuff,” he said.

What’s more? With the online features of the Wii U, players will be able to share their creations, and that excites Slaczka, because he will be able to see what players create. “[That] is going to be so fun for me,” he said.

Scribblenauts Unlimited is set to release on the Wii U this holiday season.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Nintendo took a few minutes during its Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) event in Los Angeles, Calif. to talk about 3DS games. The Kyoto-based company showed new gameplay for New Super Mario Bros. 2, Paper Mario: Sticker Star, and Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon. Additionally, the company introduced a handful of high-profile, third-party software that will hit the 3DS in the coming months.

Scott Moffitt, a Nintendo executive vice president, didn’t speak at great length about any of the games, but he announced a extended look at all of the software that will broadcast from Nintendo’s E3 website on Wednesday at 6 p.m. PDT.

New Super Mario Bros. 2
August 19

This handheld platformer is wholly separate from the Wii U’s New Super Mario Bros. U that Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime showed during the Wii U presentation. This version focuses on collecting gold coins. Throughout the video, Mario and his enemies were turning into gold. Powerups included a golden (surprise) Fire Flower that produces powerful fireballs, a blockhead that spits out coins while Mario wears it, and the return of the Super Mario Bros. 3 raccoon tail.

Paper Mario: Sticker Star
Holiday 2012

Super Mario’s role-playing game series is returning with a new strategic “sticker” mechanic. Stickers will be placed around the world. Mario can peel them off and collect them to use as battle commands. The decals appear to be limited use and include jump commands, fire power, and the hammer attack from Donkey Kong. Paper Mario will be available at retail and in Nintendo’s 3DS eShop this holiday.

Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon
Holiday 2012

Mario’s often neglected little brother, Luigi, returns to the starring role he first held in Luigi’s Mansion for the GameCube. This adventure title pits Luigi against the things that go bump in the night as he tries to solve puzzles and trap ghouls. Dark Moon will feature multiple mansions for Mario’s frightened sibling to explore and a heavier emphasis on catching ghosts with the vacuum.

Nintendo also showed a quick montage of third-party software that will be further detailed on its webcast tomorrow.

• Castlevania: Lords of Shadow — Mirror of Fate
• Disney’s Epic Mickey: Power of Illusion
• Scribblenauts Unlimited
• Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance

Castlevania is a 3D-looking side-scrolling adventure set in the same world as the recent console games. Epic Mickey is also a side-scroller that channels the feel of the classic Sega Genesis titles. Scribblenauts Unlimited is the sequel to the Nintendo DS titles that allowed users to create almost anything simply by writing the word. Kingdom Hearts 3D is the return of the RPG collaboration between SquareEnix and Disney.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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