Eguchi on Wii U

An excerpt of an EDGE interview with Katsuya Eguchi from Nintendo...

EDGE: How important was it that Wii U was related to the original Wii, and that ‘Wii’ was in its name?

KE: There are actually several reasons for us wanting to make Wii U part of the Wii family, to make that connection. in hindsight, looking at Wii U and its features we realised that there were also things [with Wii] that we weren’t able to accomplish with that system, that we would have liked to see in it. Wii U is kind of the natural progression in looking at what we did, how we changed gaming. This is the next logical step for us and we wanted to convey that in the name. in addition to that there are many Wii users out there – and we are very appreciative of this – who invested in lots of peripherals, such as more Remotes, balance boards, Classic Controllers, and they can continue to use these peripherals with Wii U as well. We wanted to make sure they understood that.

EDGE: Do you expect the first round of Wii U games to be based on new IP or established characters and series?

KE: Of course, with those fan-favourite IPs, we’ll continue to offer games based on those characters, in those worlds, with the Wii U. but if there are opportunities for us to come up with new iPs that work well with this new system we’ll jump on those as well.