Wii U won’t upscale Wii games; another failure for Nintendo

Wow.  I honestly don’t know what else to say.  I was fairly optimistic when Nintendo announced the Wii U.  Hey…it finally looked like Nintendo had figured it out.  They were dumping friend codes for games.  They were going to also target the hardcore gamers.   They were going to put out a console that was as powerful (if not more powerful) than the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.  What more could gamers want?

So what happened?  We started asking questions.  First….we found out that Wii U won’t play GameCube games.  Okay…I’m somewhat okay with that.  I’m not happy, but I could deal with that.

Then, we found out that only one Wii U touchscreen controller will be usable per console.   Hold up.   So the coolest thing about the console is now pretty much pointless when playing multiplayer games locally.

Now the latest thing to upset me about the console is that it won’t upscale Nintendo Wii games to a higher resolution.  Why?  Let’s let Reggie Fils-Aime answer that:

"That's really driven by the hardware, and the original Wii games were built for a specific type of hardware. There's no mechanism to quote-unquote 'up-res' that unless we launch a brand-new game."

Really?  I’m calling bullshit on this.  I’ve run the Dolphin emulator for Nintendo Wii games.  I’ve seen it upscale the old Nintendo Wii games to look beautiful at a high resolution.  This really is extremely lame.  Then how about you, at Nintendo, add a setting to the Wii U firmware to allow running all Wii games at a higher resolution?  Surely your Nintendo Wii U, which is as powerful as a PlayStation 3, can easily upscale an older Nintendo Wii game, right?

Come on Nintendo…stop shooting yourself in the foot!  I’ve been a fan of Nintendo since NES.  A completely LOYAL fan!  There will be a time when the fact that you are Nintendo and your 1^st party titles won’t be able to keep you in the console wars.