ITWire

Nintendo’s intriguing new, announced and soon-to-be-available Nintendo Wii U console is heading on a six-city “Wii U Experience Stores” gaming tour of five Australian cities this November.

The six cities are Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, Gold Coast, Brisbane and Adelaide, where anyone interested in playing the Wii U and a range of games is obviously welcome to come along and both see and try it for themselves in major CBD malls and locations.

Wii U, which you can see pictures and videos of and read plenty of info on here at Nintendo’s site, blends an updated Wii experience with all existing motion control and gaming accessories, blended with a large multi-touch screen tablet called the “Wii U GamePad controller”, surrounded by impressive-looking traditional console gaming buttons.

This combo enables new gaming single and multi-player gaming experiences, seeking the best of all gaming worlds in a new next-gen console and entertainment experience.

Clearly, Nintendo is doing its utmost to differentiate itself from the competition, and blending the new age of tablet gaming experiences with traditional yet improved console controls and with its existing motion control technologies – and it wants you to see for yourself before retail availability starts.

Nintendo says there will be “famous Nintendo franchises like Mario, as well as exclusives [and] new titles including Nintendo Land to try!”, with some of those titles viewable in videos at Nintendo’s site.

Obviously, the stores are also the only place to try out the new Wii U GamePad controller so, say Nintendo, so you can “discover how Wii U will change your in-home gaming experience.”

Additional details on the tour are available at Nintendo’s Events Page, promising “loads of pre-release Wii U titles to try”, along with “the opportunity to get to grips with the latest Nintendo 3DS titles, including Pokémon and Mario games!”

Indeed, Nintendo promises “lots happening at the Wii U Experience Stores so make sure you stay tuned for the details”, while inviting everyone to “pop down and see for yourself!”.

Thus far, Nintendo’s Wii U certainly does look like a bold new re-imagining of Nintendo’s version of next-gen gaming, and when it goes on sale, it’s even newer than Microsoft’s Kinect-connected Xbox and the redesigned PS3, let alone the amazing gaming experiences on iDevices, re-establishing Nintendo’s next-gen console cred while blending in Nintendo’s answer to the tablet.

See all the store details, locations and opening times for each city, with some lasting more than a month and others only a week at a time, so if you don’t want to miss a pre-launch look, check the Events page on Nintendo’s site so you don’t miss out.