Here's what should've been the ideal Wii U launch IMHO. What about you guys?

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Fall 2012 was a good time to launch.

I think unfortunately they were pretty much hell bent on trying to repeat the Wii formula to a tee, even if its unrepeatable.

They probably capped the system at a horsepower just slightly above the 360/PS3 on purpose and focused their on making the machine small and energy efficient instead. Because that was the same formula the first Wii used.

If they had eased their power usage to 55w-60w and were OK with a system more along the size of the original NES or Super NES, they probably could've gotten a much more powerful chip in there for probably not a whole lot more money either. The expense of the Wii U chipset probably largely stems from Nintendo wanting an insanely low power draw, which requires a lot of R&D spending and a completely custom chip design.

If there were willing to use something like a modified 7750 GPU, they probably could've gotten that chip at a similar or maybe even lower cost as it's a more off-the-shelf part. Just tweak it to be more game centric.

The should've prepped for the launch better though. NSMBU should've had the tea table overturned early in development. The launch title for the Wii U cannot recycle old art assets and have crappy music, but some real production value and effort in things outside of just the level design.

I probably would've pulled some late gen Wii projects off the system and moved them to the Wii U -- The Last Story with redone graphics, probably would've been a nice Wii U launch title instead of a wasted late gen Wii game.

Another game for the launch window, like Wave Race, should've also been green lit. And maybe one more third party deal ... like say Soul Calibur game with Link/Zelda/Ganon and some Zelda based stages in there.