gdgt

Nintendo had an opportunity to make the Wii-U a truly innovative product - a hybrid between their excellent handheld and console platforms. As a handheld, Wii-U would have been a step up to a premium pricepoint. At $350 or $400, it would be competitive with many tablets - but offer a superior interface and gaming experience. Unfortunately, Nintendo chose to anchor the otherwise excellent tablet to a slow set-top box. The augmented display is great, the combination of touch and motion and physical controls is great. Some of the new forms of interaction are compelling. But all I really want to do is take the gamepad in the car or on a plane. No, it's not too big. No, it's not too heavy. Ultimatley, Wii-U is a good incremental step forward for Nintendo when they really needed to make a quantum leap to avoid irrelevance. With Surface, MS has all the components needed to release a compelling next gen system that can go mobile. Apple already has a full portfolio of high horsepower handheld devices that can be augmented with physical controls, and which can be easily integrated with a low-cost Apple TV box. Sony will probably kluge something together to unify their home and mobile systems. It's easy to envision how the missing parts and pieces of other systems may come together in the next year or so - at which point the Wii-U's latency and lack of mobility will seem downright archaic.