I think I've finally figured out why Nintendo seems to get the vast majority of criticism in the media for at least a good 2 decades now. Sony and MS are gigantic corporations, they control a large part of the entertainment industry and as such, they also influence the media a great deal. They pull a lot more strings than I think people believe. It wouldn't surprise me one bit if they influence or even dictate what they say to an extent - either indirectly through advertising dollars, or even outright paying them under the table to critizice or exclude Nintendo in discussion, the same way advertisers and certain corporations regulate and restrict what mainstream news media can say by threatening to cut advertising. I've heard stories of developers treating gaming media to fancy hotels and nice meals days before a review of their upcoming hit game hits store shelves. Lots of shady shit probably goes down that we don't know about. Nintendo, being a smaller company, probably doesn't have this kind of influence. This is why the gaming media tends to sling mud at Nintendo far more than the others. Money is power, and Sony and MS simply have far deeper pockets than Nintendo.

You just gotta take everything they say with a grain of salt and realize the gaming media - much like media in general, is little more than bs propaganda.

In response to your last sentence specifically, WiiU's rumored tech does indeed offer a bit more than a "retread" of the existing generation - you should know this better than a lot of people on this forum.  

More to the point though, I think you might be surprised if ANY of the 8th gen consoles offer what you're referring to as true, high-end next gen tech.  Epic, for example, has already expressed their disappointment in Durango and Orbis regarding specs relative to their expectations, and has pretty much stated that people who want top tier next gen are going to go with PC.

If true, the gap between WiiU and its competition may not be as big as you think, unless they launch much later than 2013.

The way Nintendo is handling this, with the games they're planning on being announced at the next E3, is a risky move, but I think their attempt at creating hype mid-September with a media event, might get them out of that ditch.

Nintendo has always been the butt of jokes with the "hardcore" gamers even when Nintendo was successful (see: SEGA).

If it weren't for the expansion to the casual market with the Wii, Nintendo would've died as a hardware and software company (which is terrible but true imo). Hardcore gamers somehow saw this as betrayal when they themselves bought a PS2 (who didn't?), the weakest console.

Their problem has always been trying to find the older audience, but there's already been a negative stigma attached to them.

The gaming media (which is pretty pathetic right now) is adding fuel to the hate for several reasons.

For one, they would garner the views of angry Nintendo fanboys. Not only this, but Nintendo's influence in media (as said above) is much less than the others.

For another, it brings in the hardcore who are willing to watch how Nintendo will fail yet again. Whether it's because they purely hate Nintendo, or simply because they are curious about Nintendo.

The positive news is very stifled; rarely do you see positive news on anywhere but Nintendo fansites first thing. That's pretty bad.

In short, the Nintendo tradition (surprise = hype) leaves a lot of the media frustrated. Not only that, lack of news leads to possible rumors. Bad rep among the hardcore damages their products' image. The E3, while not as bad as people exaggerate (the hype was too intense), still left people with a bad taste in their mouth.

All of this combines into reason for the media to sling mud at Nintendo. I wouldn't be surprised to hear that the bad anonymous sources were indeed media created bullshit.

I think you guys should be excited for September 13th instead of being anxious for the Wii U. If they can manage to get the hype back with the price + launch date released and maybe some specs or future products announced, it should be fun to watch as the media would backtrack more than likely.

It seems illogical because it is based on the personal bias's which are generally caused by people who live vicariously through other videogame consoles, and have a jealousy of Nintendo's innovations and massive success. Ultimately, that is why all of the negative statements of the Wii U sound somewhat ignorant, because they're being made by ignorant chuckleheads.

Weird thing is though, that the media have no problems giving Nintendo games high scores! Mario Galaxy 1&2 got really nice reviews, as did Zelda SS... Howcome?

Any Way, I think that the whole media reports surrounding the gaming business has turned in to something more like a gossip tabloid!

Ah journalists dont you just love em, technically i should be blind now going by various media reports about the 3DS. "DONT BUY A 3DS NINTENDO ARE EVIL IT WILL BLIND US ALL AND GIVE US HEADACHES"

Yeah, the anti-3DS thing was incredibly lame; and clear evidence of the stupidity of these anti-Nintendo chuckleheads.

I think many of these people do honestly believe Nintendo is somehow evil because most of their games don't feature a man with a gun. They think that they can be like little Sparticuses, and through their crusade of ignorance they can somehow topple Nintendo's "evil" domination of the industry. So that everyone might one day know the joys of playing mostly games about a man and his gun.

The other group of the anti-Nintendo chuckleheads is even more ridiculous; the ones who are somehow fans of all the imitation brand stuff that comes out, but yet won't touch the original versions of the hardware/software that Nintendo releases.

Apple is secretive, Apple is on the top. Media is ... favoring them.

This is all very interesting but we're only mainly talking about the English (USA & UK) speaking world right? Where XBox happens to be a huge deal...

I wonder how the WiiU is being perceived in it's native Japan, where Nintendo (3DS) regularly outsells everthing else combined and the Xbox is frequently outsold by the 12 year old PS2?

People won't be attracted to the Wii U for performance reasons, the fact that the games thus far aren't breaking many visual milestones makes the performance advantage over the current generation moot and the next generation from Sony and Microsoft whilst they aren't likely to be as extreme as the current generation were, they ought to be reasonable.

I don't see it making a huge splash with people whom are already invested in current generation HD consoles, however from the perspective of someone entering into the console market now it probably represents the best value given the fact it is likely to be supported for longer than the 7 year old 360. The tablet could be a good idea but Nintendo doesn't seem to be willing to do much promotion of it at this point. What I was explaining was the disdain or disinterest of the 'hardcore' not forecasting the success of the system.