Earlier this week the successor to the Nintendo Wii was announced – the Wii U.

The Wii was needing a replacement because, although popular at first, sales have slumped. The Wii was always behind the Xbox and PS3 in terms of processor and graphics capabilities but I think the lack of media capabilities drove more people to find consoles such as the PS3 a more tempting proposition – it’s recently come down to £200 and that includes a built in blu-ray player as well as iPlayer, ITV Player and 4oD built-in.

So, rumours with rife before the launch at E3. It had already leaked that the controller would have a built-in screen – I could image a small colour LCD that could display useful information. Further rumours including a hard drive, Blu-ray player and 4GB memory. None of these were scoffed by followers as they seemed eminently practical.

However, now we know the details I’m left deeply, deeply underwhelmed.

The console itself looks like a more rounded version of the Wii. It uses it’s own optical disc format – they appear to be Blu-ray capacity without being so. So no movie watching. Still. No hard drive either. The processor and GPU specs don’t appear to be definite but it looks like it may be as good as the PS3 and Xbox (hardly next generation) – at least it’s HD now. It’s backwards compatible with the Wii but not the Gamecube. And that’s about it.

The controller, on the other hand, is huge. It’s not a small screen built in, but a large one. Quite how this is to be used I’m not sure – I’m not sure how you concentrate on a game on your main screen and look at this at the same time.  It looks like a tablet and will probably feel heavy after a while. It does have a camera built-in though, so that could be interesting.

However, there’s not talk of the Wii U using a sensor bar so one of the revolutionary things about the Wii has been lost – indeed the controller doesn’t have a pointing device in it.

But here’s the big rub… you only get one controller with the Wii U and, because of the price of them, Nintendo say that they won’t be available to buy separately. I’m assuming Wii controllers are compatible, but where’s the fun of creating a new type of controller for a “family console” and restricting it to one each. Indeed, Microsoft Kinect in particular and Sony Play to a lesser extent are shifting away from the controllers and getting the console to do the work – that way you can have lots of people using it with a minimum of cost.

It will be out mid-2012. I’m not excited.

It’s been a week of trying out tech, with a recent visit from Microsoft promoting their business “goodies” particularly giving me a chance to try some new products out!

Microsoft surface

The highlight, for me, was trying out Microsoft Surface, the tabletop multi-gesture surface (or, probably more accurately, it’s a smoked glass touch sensitive coffee table). The one I tried was their original £10 model but with Samsung now manufacturing these the price has already come down to £5k. Once it hits around £1k they think the home user may be interested.

But this isn’t just a large table-top tablet. The abilities of the Microsoft Surface are really quite amazing, which it’s able to implement using IR sensors below the table top to detect levels of heat.

Two demonstrations of what it could do stood out. First, a transparent pass card was placed on the surface. Embedded in the card, but not visible to the eye, were the user credentials. Upon seeing this the Surface, below where the pass card was placed, showed a keypad and allowed the user to enter their password. This means the card itself became the pin pad.

The other demonstration used a combination of physics and graphics. Balls dropped down the screen to settle on one side. You were then able to pick a number of disks and place on the surface, each performing different tasks – one could adjust the gravity, another would be seen as a solid object, etc, etc. So the gravity one, when turned, would cause the balls to realistically tumble around the table depending on where you’d pointed it. A simple demo but powerfully showed what the table was capable of.

I’d say the only thing about Surface that I wasn’t keen on was the slightly matt finish of it – I’m guessing to reduce finger prints, etc.

Windows Phone 7

I’m ashamed to admit that I’ve not tried out Windows Phone 7 before and, thanks to a nice man from Microsoft, I was able to try out his personal HTC phone (which I believe was an HTC Mozart). As a die-hard Android fan, I have to say that I was quite impressed. The interface looks very nice and is very smooth in use.

I’m still not sold, however, due to various shortcomings of the OS (lack of apps, 3rd party apps can’t fully multi-task, etc).

I’m told that at my place of work, who currently use Blackberries, will shortly also be offering managers the option to use Windows Phone 7 instead. I’d go for the Microsoft option.

Nintendo 3DS

Also, a few days ago, I had my first opportunity to try out the Nintendo 3DS running Pilotwings. It was only a brief try-out, concentrating on the game and the 3D camera.

The 3D is, it has to be said, impressive – it has a real feeling of depth. It takes a second or so to adjust your eyes to it, though, and there is my main issue – after playing for a few minutes my eyes struggled to adjust back to normal. A colleague of mine started to get a headache.

Ignore all the tat in the papers at the moment about massive returns as that’s not the case. However, BBC’s Click programme recently reviewed the 3DS and said that pretty much everyone that tried it in their office switched off the 3D after a few minutes. If the 3D is all you’re buying it for – try first!

If, though, you’re happy to turn off the 3D then you’ll instead have a powerful games console. The graphics are vastly improved and the improved controls are easy to use.