Dianna Online

LOS ANGELES – Nintendo of Japan unveiled a prototype of its next video game console, the successor to the Wii, here Tuesday at the annual E3 convention.
However, two days before, in extreme secrecy and security measures, I’m going to try for myself. My initial verdict: Nintendo has another hit on their hands, an innovative new system that has a chance to shake electronic entertainment.

First, some basic facts. The new system will be known as the U Wii, and the company plans to launch between April and December next year. Be compatible with Wii games and controllers, so that consumers do not necessarily have to replace the software and accessories you already have (unless you want to leverage the capabilities of the new system). And unlike the Wii, which was trapped in an era of low resolution, the new console generates and displays graphics in 1080p HD.

So here’s the problem: a handheld wireless controller for the new display system includes a six-inch wide touch there in his hands. No longer play a console game at home means watching TV all the time. Instead, the display controller can supplement or replace what is on television. If, for example, a person at home is playing a game in the TV room, and someone else wants to watch TV, the player can change the controller to play completely, whereas TV sets out to present other

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The implications are far-reaching. In a rare joint interview with Satoru Iwata, president of Nintendo, and Shigeru Miyamoto, president of the prominent design firm (inventor of Mario and Zelda), Mr. Iwata suggested that the new system could usher in an era when television remote controls come with their own screens, allowing you, for example, see list of channels or read information about the program you are watching, without off the picture on the screen.

Despite the superficial similarity, the new controller as the popular compressed new Apple iPad, Mr. Miyamoto said he had not used and that his team had arrived with the initial concept for the new system about four years ago, much before the debut of the iPad. (Mr. Iwata, meanwhile, said it was basically an Apple fan.)

Nintendo and Apple at the top independent in the search for new ways to use technology to entertain and inform. And both companies really putting technology second in their design process. What comes first is the consumer experience, because those companies the technology is only useful because it allows people every day to have new experiences.

Nintendo’s new console, certainly provides. The private preview show – in a huge sealed metal box in a room designed to repel all monitoring and external interference – shows how the new system can offer new types of game.

First there was something called Chase Mii. (The Miis are the little animated avatars Wii players create to represent themselves.) In a maze, up to four players make the chase, while a player is pursued. What is interesting is that hunters, using the normal Wii controller, watch the TV screen, while the quarry is in the hand controller display. different players in the same room are receiving and responding to information from different game at the same time.

Then came Battle Mii. One of the players, with the new controller, flying in a kind of hovercraft laser, while the other two players are on TV as they try to overcome. The player with the handheld screen can hide and even surprise the pursuers, he can not see the small screen. The new controller is also motion sensitive, so you can turn and aim simply turning and rotating the screen. Do you really want to stand so you can turn full circle. Sometimes I was back on television as I focused on the new driver, while the other players, watching television, tried to hunt me down. Very funny.

Some games, however, require players to switch their attention back and forth from TV to display in their hands. In the next demo, pirate ships were shooting arrows at me, and I endured the driver to lock. So I’d like to see the arrows fired from ships on TV. Then I raise the controller and see the wooden arrows without damaging the “shield” that had arisen.

After a segment filmed in the streets of Kyoto (home of Nintendo) that allow me to move the controller like a chamber of 360 degrees and up and down, the event concluded with a high definition representation of a scene Battle of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, in which the hero, Link, is facing a huge spider creature. After having overcome the initial shock of seeing Link in HD (after decades of performances blocks), I realized that the new system allowed me to decide for myself if I wanted to show a map on the main TV or touch screen. In other words, players with the new system can be configured to use the games of the two screens (television and touch screen), as they please.

Mr. Iwata and Mr. Miyamoto also showed me a video on some other features of the new system. The new controller includes a camera pointed at the user capacity for long distance video conferencing on the Internet was not a huge surprise. The video also showed the driver used to play a kind of board game Othello similar (though obviously without the board).

In another scene the driver, showing a picture of a golf ball in a sand trap, placed on the floor. The player, standing and holding a Wii wand as a golf club could look down at the ball instead of just imagining that, as in other golf games.

The executives were clear, however, that the driver does not process any information about the game itself, that is all done by the base of the console. So the new driver is not a portable game machine, Nintendo DS-style line.

As with the Wii, the words in fact convey the visceral reality of the new system. You can not really “do” until you try it yourself. But the combination of high definition graphics with the new enhanced display driver Nintendo should put it back in the thick of the home console wars with Sony and Microsoft.

However, because all I saw was a clear indication, the real question is how Nintendo and third party developers who use the system to create games that consumers can not even imagine right now.

Millions of players are looking forward to next year to find out.