Nintendo goes tablet, Sony flexes mobile muscle, Microsoft innovates in immersion

Nintendo unveils Wii U tablet

Converting regular folks to gamers is traditionally Nintendo’s turf, and with the company’s newly unveiled successor to the Wii, called the Wii U, Nintendo hopes to broaden gaming’s appeal yet again — and maybe even get you to kick your iPad out of bed.

The Wii U controller, best described as a tablet with buttons, boasts two analog sticks, all the standard buttons and triggers, internal motion sensors, a microphone, speakers, a camera, and, somewhere in the middle of it all, a 6.2-inch touch screen.

With the Wii U, you’ll be able to transfer games from your TV screen entirely to the controller, freeing up the tube and letting you take the tablet back to your bedroom for a nightcap of video chatting and browsing the Internet. The Wii U also offers a new window into a game, so to speak; holding the controller straight in front of you, you can look through the tablet’s screen at your TV to aim a baseball — or sniper rifle. Additionally, the tablet can be used for TV-free gaming — set it on the coffee table for a group session of Othello — and, of course, for drawing. A “Tekken” demo showed someone scribbling eyebrows and tattoos on a fighter, then beginning a match with him.

In addition to “Super Smash Bros.” and “Pikmin” installments developed in-house, the Wii U will host, the Wii U will host the open-world “Lego City Stories,” “Batman: Arkham City,” “Darksiders II,” “Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Online,” “Aliens Global Marines,” “Metro Last Night,” “Ninja Gaiden 3,” and “Battlefield 3,” along with new entries in the “Assassin’s Creed,” “Tekken” and “Dirt” franchises. Not to mention “Madden,” of course, with the promise of picking football plays on your own private screen.

Great as it looks, one potential concern is that as Microsoft and Sony release their own new consoles in two or three years, Nintendo will again be left behind technologically and support from outside developers will dry up.

Also troubling is that Nintendo didn’t name a price. It’s nice that the system will be backward-compatible with Wii games and controllers, but it’s easy to imagine buying a new system and three extra tablets for your family could break the bank. We’ll find out soon enough: The Wii U releases sometime next year.

In the meantime, the House of Mario hopes to catch your attention with its recently released 3DS, which delivers 3-D graphics without the annoying glasses. At its press conference, Nintendo touted “Super Mario 3D,” which sees the welcome return of the raccoon suit that lets Mario fly, shooters “Kid Icarus Uprising” and “Star Fox 64 3D,” two “Resident Evil” games, “Mario Kart 3D,” which outfits your karts with gliders and propellers for underwater and way-over-water racing, and “Luigi’s Mansion 2,” in which the other Mario Bro pretends he’s a Ghostbuster with a vacuum cleaner and flashlight.

And we mustn’t forget what could be the last great game for the original Wii, “The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword.” Employing the Wii MotionPlus for realistic swordfighting, “Skyward Sword” will release later this year with a gold Wii Remote, in homage to the original “Legend of Zelda’s” gold cartridge.

Sony’s Vita loca

Just when Nintendo thought its 3DS could run away with the hand-held market, Sony unveiled the PlayStation Vita. “Vita” means “life,” and this device will blur the lines between games and life. Or something. Good thing the hardware is better than the marketing pitch.

The House of Walkman pioneered mobile joysticks with its PlayStation Portable, and is adding a second stick for the Vita, along with internal motion sensors, front and rear cameras, and a 5-inch touch screen. As an added, ahem, touch, there’s a touch pad on the back of the device, so you can push up the landscape from below to get a marble to roll, for instance. This might be a good idea for Nintendo to “adapt” for its Wii U tablet.

The Vita will release this holiday season in two models: Wi-Fi-only, for $249; and, for no apparent reason, 3G, in partnership with AT&T, for $299.

Good thing the games make more sense than the payment plans. Vita owners will be able to control an upcoming “Uncharted” game with either the touch screen or buttons, “ModNation Racers” players can use one finger to draw a racetrack, then design its surroundings, and “Little Big Planet,” with its easy game-creation tools and massive variety of user-generated content, will join the touch-screen party. If there’s one thing Nintendo and Apple should envy, it’s this “Little” dynamo.

On the PlayStation 3 front, Sony showed off “Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception,” the next installment in a series known for its uncompromising production values. The demo had Drake fighting his way through a sinking ship, and the water bursting through the hull and tossing the interior around was 100 percent spectacular. PS3 owners can look forward to that Nov. 1.

And to lower the price barrier to playing all the 3-D games exclusive to its PlayStation 3, Sony is shipping upcoming shooter “Resistance 3” with a 24-inch, PlayStation-branded 3-D TV and a set of glasses — all for $499. Even cooler, this may spell the end of split-screen multiplayer. If you’re playing with a friend, the TV will show two images — one for you, and one for your friend — and your glasses will filter the images so both of you see only your own point of view on the screen.

Microsoft takes over your TV

The House of Gates had the unfortunate distinction of being the only member of the Big Three with no major hardware announcement this year, but it’s aiming to make up for what it lacks in mobile gaming with a living-room experience no one else can deliver.

A the crux of this effort is Kinect. No, it’s not a social networking site for cousins, it’s an array of cameras and microphones that looks like WALL-E’s head. The Xbox 360 add-on tracks your body motions for controller-free gaming, and, less spectacularly but perhaps more importantly, packs sophisticated voice recognition software.

The question is: Feel like talking to your Xbox 360?

Microsoft is combining the Kinect’s voice recognition software with its search engine Bing. So, if you were in the mood for something X-Men-related, you could say, “Xbox, Bing, X-Men,” and every X-men movie, game and animated series would pop up on your TV for you to browse and purchase.

Or you could say, “Xbox, live TV,” and flip channels, or “Xbox, YouTube,” and watch the “Smooth Criminal” music video. The idea seems to be that your Xbox would serve as a sort of “home page” for your TV, from which you’d explore a universe of media options. It’s a cool concept, and may be a milestone as the funnel narrows toward a universal console-TV-computer-digital wallpaper setup, but it feels a little “Star Trek”-y and forced.

But Kinect owners still have reason to be excited: Microsoft is opening the Kinect game-making tools to the masses. Kinect Fun Labs, available right now for free, is sure to brim with cool designs from gamers like you, and right off the bat, there are impressive features like an Avatar generator by which Kinect uses its cameras to create a convincing little in-game homunculus of you, down to the pattern on your shirt.

In addition, several major-studio Kinect games were unveiled, and it’s no surprise the most promising among them is the sequel to the best Kinect game thus far. “Dance Central 2,” which will ship with 100 songs, allows two players to perform routines simultaneously, literally doubling the fun.

Somewhat troubling was “Kinect Star Wars.” Set in a galaxy far, far away, it featured controls that were far, far away from satisfactory. A well-done motion-controlled “Star Wars” game has been every hard-core gamer’s dream for years, but, whether fighting with a lightsaber or pod racing, what happened on-screen and off-screen had a tenuous relationship at best. A scene that should have been exciting — the player picking up a ship with the Force and throwing it off a cliff — was marred by the fact that the guy demonstrating the game onstage had to try multiple times, after the ship mysteriously fell from his grip. This game needs huge improvements before it releases this winter.

Rounding out the games specifically for Kinect, industry legend Peter Molyneux disappointed with a lame-looking on-rails shooter based on his “Fable” franchise. (What happened to the future shock-inducing “Milo and Kate” demo he showed two years ago?)

More exciting is the promise of using Kinect’s voice software to control the action in traditional Xbox 360 games. The story-driven sci-fi shooter “Mass Effect 3” will let you speak characters’ lines rather than simply selecting them from a list, and the prospect of giving verbal commands to your computer-controlled teammates is immensely exciting to anyone who’s ever fumbled through command menus.

On the traditional gaming front, Microsoft announced the original “Halo” is being remade as “Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary,” and, as expected, E3 2011 gave the world its first glimpse of “Halo 4.”

All in all, though Microsoft had a mixed showing this E3, the company still has the most user-friendly console out there, the Xbox 360, and if it manages to live up to the promise of the Kinect add-on, it will indeed transform the living room. Developments like Kinect Fun Labs are a step in the right direction.