Can we set this up somehow, irc, live chat someplace? i'd love to watch.

Okay, done reading, and really i feel like i wasted a fair few minutes it's mostly wishful thinking and ignoring basic facts.

Firstly, the HD remake of Silent hill games only looked bad until a patch was released, it wasn't that the fog wasn't there but that the density was wrong.
If the original game hadn't needed fog to reduce the rendered area, then it wouldn't have needed to cut off the terrain at the point illustrated - thus wouldnt have ended where it did, so it's a stupid argument.

Secondly, given the similarities between the ps4 and 720, being much closer than the ps3 and 360, development costs of third party games which are almost always multi platform, will be much cheaper because they don't have to make two inherantly different engines, saving time and money on development cost of engines allows them to unify the development with PC as well - saving more money, not having to adapt game assets for each system and allowing all three to use the same assets, again, saves costs, so development costs for third partys is actually lower than this generations games when all is said and done. so that also makes no sense.

Third point is, more power doesn't mean that the only benefit is 'prettier' games - yes more aa, better filtering, smoother graphics - but the additional power can be used for better lighting (hello atmosphere), better physics, better fluid dynamics and a smoother experience.

"everyones obsessed with the tablet controller" they've given lots of attention to the controller" - That might be because the lack of games gives them nothing else to talk about - and when you add new hardware to something, expect it to be a talking point if theres not much new software wise - Look at the vita, the touchscreen and rear touchpad were a big talking point, doesn't mean the vita did well.

"Time is on the WiiU's side" - Come again?, as time passes the WiiU's being-dug grave gets closer and closer to completion - at this point in time it's getting close to a point where not even a gaggle of first party titles will be enough to save it - and if the ps4/720 launch before the WiiU claws some of it's users back, it will be left for dead in the swarm of news and coverage of the new consoles, and frankly speaking right now it's doing terrible - third parties don't want to touch it and that won't change any time soon.

You can post pictures of developers 'supporting the community' by wanting a game they've made to be released, but you miss a crucial point - until their game ships they don't make any money - if you did a months work and your boss was holding off on payment, would you be happy to sit around and wait to be paid or would you hound your boss to get the pay you've earned?, they made a game - it's complete - it's only natural they want it on store shelves so they can make some cash from it.

Wii-WiiU link is laughable - Wii did well because of it's quirky controls - fact of the matter, even if you hate to accept it is that an extremely large portion of the WiiU userbase is actually kids who saw it on TV commercials or in stores and wanted one - a few kids get them and then their friends want what they have - end result is lots of children with games consoles, lots of broken consoles, lots of children getting 'the new red one' 'the new black one' repeating the cycle, those kids are now grown up (sort of) and playing black ops on xbox, ps3 and pc, and the kids of today aren't interested in the Wii, or the WiiU, they want iphones, ipads and furbies they can interact with on their idevices, they don't give a crap about the latest mario anymore, unless it's an app - which nintendo won't ever allow.

And the few kids that are still interested in games consoles are most likely going to want the latest and newest - that'll be the PS4 and 720 then. - You need to accept a fact that the decline of the Wii may well have nothing to do with the torrent of spamware games drying up, but the larger portion of it's audience outgrowing the machine - I can tell you hands down that my relatives kids who only a few years ago would be all over the latest film-to-game release, or mario, now wouldn't be seen dead flailing about in front of the Wii, because all of their friends are now plaing more 'mature' consoles - A childs desire to fit in with his friends is more powerful than people give it credit - And lets face it, another large factor of Wii's sale base (parents and elderly wanting to be hip and connect with their families and kids), will see the WiiU as 'more of the same' much like many of the now growing-up kids that begged their parents for the latest games console back in 2006, and frankly unless they can add their friends on psn or xbl they won't give a hoot - Wii's online system was archiac, the WiiU's isn't much better at all, friend-codes should be abolished and put to rest for good for anything other than mobile games.

WiiU fans can harp on and write posts longer than a harry potter novel, unless they go out and buy themselves 100 WiiU's each and a 100 of each game, the WiiU is going to flop - end of story.

I think the Wii U is in a whole different place than the 3DS was back in 2011 for a numbers of reasons:

Wii U will be facing heavy competition from the PS4 and Xbox720 this holiday - around the same time when either, or both, of 3D Mario and Mario Kart is released. 3DS had only Vita to compete with, and it was only released in Japan with a hefty price tag - so it wasn't much of a competition. If either MS or Sony prices their new console at $500 I can see Wii U doing better.

3DS has plenty of games, whereas Wii U doesn't, and it doesn't look as if it'll be getting much 3rd party support either.

And you forget that GameCube and N64 had Mario Kart, 3D Mario, SSB and Zelda as well but those games didn't do much to help Nintendo except to keep them afloat.

I'm not saying that Nintendo is doomed or that Wii U can't be turned around, but you can not rely on those titles to make the console blossom and flourish. No one in their right mind would say that GC and N64 thrived. Wii thrived without 3rd party support, but it's also THE ONLY console to do so without heavy 3rd party support.

1) Nintendo has a strategy, and it's apparently a bad one since Wii U is performing very bad at the moment. Looking at the weekly sales tells us there really is a low interest in the product. Is that what Nintendo was hoping for before launching the console?

2) Wii U did well upon it's initial launch, but the sales of 2013 has been VERY disappointing. Both Xbox360 and PS3 did much better numbers during their first January on the market. There's no way you can spin that.

3) The first point you're making is very true. Wii was something of a gamble, and it paid off. Wii U isn't. It's not a phenomenon that has captured the interest of the casual market, and I very much doubt it ever will.

saving

A plan that relies on all of your competition failing, when you don't even know what they're doing, is not a strategy. It's just gambling.

Nintendo is not that desperate. They are troubled, but not desperate.

1) Sales are bad maybe, but that's because Nintendo has not realease a game for the thing since its launch to drive the sales sofar  in 2013. When Nintendo releases its next game for the Wii U sales will jump drastically. And remeber the race is not for the swift, so Nintendo does have a plan to release games for the rest of 2013 not just the first part thereof.

2) Similar to the above, Nintedo specifically said they will not release any games Jan and Feb 2013, hence the low sales in 2013 so far. Tough, but that is what they chose to do, and I hope it means that in March to Dec 2013 they will have lots to show which will also drive sales of the console. They already annouced some hits to come out in 2013, so let just wait and see how 2013 sales turn out later on in the year.

3) Nintendo already expanded the market to now include casual players, so while those same gamers might not picke up the WiiU as fast as they did the Wii, they will eventually, which means that WiiU will sell slower but stay longer on the market than the Wii. So being a phenomenon is not really what Nintendo is after, and I don't understand why people keep judging the WiiU only against the Wii - why not measure it against 360 or PS3 also?

1 & 2) So would you call not releasing games a GOOD strategy? Because, evidently, it's not. The Wii U is selling so bad it hurts me - and that cannot be considered a good strategy on any level, unless the goal is to go terrible. Then ok. So, no games=bad. And the question remains HOW MUCH the Wii U will jump in sales once it gets Mario and Zelda. Keep in mind those games will be up against two new consoles competing for attention and the consumers money. I doubt it'll do more than 10m this upcoming December. I think sales will be more closer to xbox360 in December 2006; 6m. Having a game drought is simply terrible for a game console. Just look at 3DS.

3) Nintendo expended the market alright, but are they still there? So far 3DS is selling on par with the original DS, but I doubt that will be the case at the end of 2013. 3DS will do fine, just not as good as the DS did in its 3rd year. And why is that? Is it because a lot of the expended consumer base has moved on? I think they have, and it'll take something special to bring them back. And why don't we compare PS360 with Wii like you want us to do (and indirectly also to the Wii U). PS630 has had a much longer life than Wii did, why? Because of better specs. That might not be the WHOLE answer, but it's definitely part of the reason why Wii totally died in 2012 and PS360 sold a helluvalot better. The same thing will PROBABLY happen to Wii U. Wii U will not be able to compete with PS720 specs wise, and therefore will be outdated long before PS720 is - which means that PS720 will have a much longer life than Wii U. And keep in mind Nintendo stops supporting their own consoles after about 3 years, cutting EVERY consoles life short.

The fact that you think that was the point of the argument shows me that you really didn't comprehend what he was saying.

It's not the fact that the HD remakes had bad fog resulting in worse atmosphere. It's that, in the original game, the plan was for less fog than what was there. The reason for there being so much fog in the original is that the hardware didn't have good enough draw distance to go beyond that - the fog's original presence was due to necessity, not atmosphere. But it added to the atmosphere, and that's why they chose that particular solution. They came up with a great solution, fog, because there was a weakness in the hardware. A similar effect is used in the Endless Ocean games on the Wii.

In other words, you seem to be focusing on the "look at Silent Hill HD" part, when the point was "look at the original Silent Hill". The observation of what the game was like in the HD remakes was merely a matter of contrast, demonstrating how the fog contributed to the atmosphere.

The fog was present in the game anyway during development, in early alpha versions the fog wasnt as thick and the distance at which fog cut off the view distance was much higher, developers played around with the color, density and distance of the fog until they were happy with the atmosphere, "you don't really comprehend what he was saying", i comprehended it, but since it was wrong and based purely on what reviews of the day assumed was the reason for the density of the fog, i figured there was no point dipping in to it, but since you want to make a point of it there you go.

If you go grab yourself a debug console and the alpha version thats floating around the internet, or even just a gameshark, i'll gladly dig through my dads old archives and pull some memory address for switching between the various 'modes', and you'll see for yourself that the original console hardware was happily capable of running with the fog settings toned down.

Very early versions of the game didnt actually have fog at all and used the same textured geometry fade-in as Tenchu Stealth Assasins.

Incidentally the game switched to a different fog present during some of it's cutscenes for scenematic purposes then switches back when the effect of closing the player in is more suited to a denser array, so again, his point about how technical limitations effected the eventual atmosphere is just wrong.

Draw distance for later gamers (hd remakes, hello) was delibrately cut knowing the fog that had become a trait of the game would hide the geometry load-in.

Fact of the matter is the cull distance is 25% less than the hardwares limited because of the developers preference, not because they were forced to.