2012 is finally upon us and with a new year that means new games, peripherals, devices, gadgets, and hardware, etc… Now Sony and Microsoft have a pretty decent amount of releases for this year with Sony Launching a new handheld next month and Microsoft always looking to improve upon Xbox Live and its Kinect hardware. What does this mean for Nintendo? It seems like Nintendo has the least amount of steam going into the New Year, or do they?

When you look into the future they have a ton of Nintendo 3DS releases that are up and coming and the mysterious new home console, the WII U. Now let’s take a look into what Nintendo has to offer gamers this year.

WII U Release Date and Info

There really isn’t much on Wii console front this year from Nintendo Wii besides Epic Mickey 2 which is set to release holiday 2012, which frankly could be anytime in the holiday shopping season. This brings us to the other Nintendo console that you can expect to hear a lot about later this year, the Wii U. Nintendo’s next generation console is a system utilizes a controller with a touch screen to play games. This feature also allows you to play on the screen without having to play the titles on your T.V. I think this is going to be a great piece of hardware.

The possibilities of this console are endless and with potential release of the console in end of 2012 or mid-2013, this is something that I really feel gamers should be expecting. Why is this console something one should look forward to? Well, the answer is actually very simple. It’s no surprise that the Wii was a console that was marketed toward to the causal, family oriented, and health conscious gamers. This new home console allows Nintendo to try to rectify their marketing mistakes and tap into the hardcore market.

Games that have been confirmed for the handheld include Tecmo Koei’s Ninja Gaiden 3, Namco’s Tekken, and our Game of the Year 2011 Batman: Arkham City to name a few. There is a lot of hope for these titles to do well on the Wii U as they’re great titles on the current generation systems. These games allow them to tap into the hardcore market and that’s something they are looking to improve on with the Wii U.

Nintendo 3DS Software

The 3DS has recently sold over 15million units and with that comes a lot of great things. The 3DS is shaping up to be a great handheld platform on par if not better than the previous DS. What the 3DS really has going for itself this year is its software release schedule with third party software and first party software. Next month we are treated with the release of a franchise that many gamers know, love, and hate all at the same time and that is Resident Evil Revelations on February 7th.

We were recently treated to a ton of the free games that many Nintendo ambassadors had the pleasure of playing over the past few months and now it looks like February is going to be a month where Nintendo is going to be going after the hardcore gamers as Metal Gear Solid Snake Eater 3DS is releasing a day after my birthday on the 21st. If you want to get me a birthday gift there’s an idea right there.

It seems that Nintendo is starting this year off right and if they keep up the momentum in the near future, there future is going to look bright. They have several things to look forward to from the Wii U to new 3DS titles like Kid Icarius Uprising, which according to amazon releases March 23rd. I’ll be looking out for more Nintendo information and so should you, because it’s going be a great rest of 2012.

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