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Rumor: Devs Expecting June 2012 Wii U Release, Struggling With New System
Back at E3 2011, I was rather excited to go hands on with the Wii U, Nintendo's HD successor to the Wii. Unfortunately, a new rumor suggests that developers may not having as much fun with it.
According to an article from French site 01.net (via Destructoid), an unnamed Nintendo insider has accused the system of being in "development hell." According to the leak, the Wii U's current chipset is too weak (and possibly too cheap) to handle video streaming and wireless correctly, so devs are stuck using tethered controllers and struggling to make things work properly.
The source also says that developers are expecting a June 2012 release for the system, though he or she notes that Nintendo may be discussing delaying the release to September. Previously Nintendo has only listed a broad release window of sometime between April 2012 and the end of that year.
With Nintendo's recent struggles with the 3DS, it's easy to get a bit doom-and-gloom and assume the worst, but keep in mind that these are only rumors, and despite 01.net's track record of being generally trustworthy with this stuff, there's good reason to be skeptical. For example, if the system's chipset is too weak for proper wireless and video streaming, why did the Wii U demos I checked out at E3 have fully functioning wireless controllers where both of those things worked perfectly?
It's totally feasible -- likely, even -- that Nintendo has mastered its hardware while other devs are struggling to pick it up, but I'm hesitant to make the leap to calling it "development hell." Here's to hoping we can find out more soon.
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