By its own admission , Nintendo's reveal of the Wii U at this year's E3 was less than ideal. There was the initial confusion over whether the Wii U was a new console or merely a new controller for the existing Wii, there was the lack of any real technical specifications revealed, and then there was the fact that the gameplay demonstrations appeared to exhibit a level of graphical quality that merely matched the standards of current generation Xbox 360 and PS3 games rather than exceed them.

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During a recent interview with IGN AU, Gearbox Software co-founder and chief creative officer Brian Martel weighed in with his thoughts on Nintendo's next hardware offering."Right now we're still finding out what kind of final tech specs the Wii U is going to have," said Martel."But we like the system a lot; we think it's going to be a really cool stop-gap in between this generation and the next generation. We think it's really smart of Nintendo, and the fact that as a platform it's a lot more capable for hardcore first-person shooter-style gaming – for us that's fantastic."Martel went on to talk about how the Wii U hardware and controller could potentially benefit Gearbox's upcoming Aliens: Colonial Marines "We've got the [ Aliens: Colonial Marines ] engine running on the Wii U, and as far as the console goes, you're going to see textures at a resolution that you haven't seen on [the current] generation," said Martel."But the thing we're most excited about is: what can we do with the controller? So the obvious thing for us is that we can do the motion tracker [on the controller screen], or the sentry gun information – all that kind of stuff. That stuff is really sexy for us. Getting the information off the screen and onto this device is a fantastic idea, right? So can we have a HUD-less environment? Yeah, probably. That would be fantastic, right?"So what do you think? Will the Wii U's unique control interface usher in a true revolution in gaming, or will Nintendo's new machine indeed serve as a mere stop-gap before we see more radical leaps from the next Sony and Microsoft consoles? As usual, sound off in the comments section below.