As part of an interview with NowGamer, TT Fusion’s lead dev on Lego City Undercover, Loz Doyle, says that the company has no interest in creating a Skylanders-style Lego game that uses toys and the Wii U GamePad’s NFC chip. The Wii U controller has a built-in NFC chip which allows toys and cards to be scanned into a game. Skylanders uses the same technology with its mini figures and its portal peripheral.

Speaking to MCV recently Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot stated the obvious: the Wii U needs to sell more units. The topic came up because Guillemot was talking about all the resources his company has green lighted for Ubisoft Montreal - the studio developing Watch Dogs. That game will also be coming to the Wii U, amongst other platforms.

"We think Wii U is a great machine. But it just has to sell more," Guillemot said.

Update: We didn't have to wait long to hear Vblank Entertainment's thoughts on WiiWare. Speaking to Nintendo Life exclusively in an interview to be published in full over the weekend, Brian Provinciano called the WiiWare release a $20,000 gift to Wii fans. He asks everyone to go buy it so he can recoup some of those costs.

Rayman creator Michel Ancel and staff members from Ubisoft Montpellier have joined fans in protesting the delayed release of Rayman Legends on the Wii U in order to simultaneously release the former Wii U exclusive on the PS3 and Xbox 360. Apparently the Wii U version is ready to go, but parent company Ubisoft wants to keep it locked down until the other versions of the game are done. Our pal Andrew Eisen shared his thoughts on that yesterday in this amusing video...

To paraphrase that Fresh Prince song, "there's no need to argue gamers just don't understand..." the Wii U. So says Xavier Poix, Managing Director of Ubisoft's Annecy, Montpellier, and Paris studios. Speaking to GameSpot, Poix says that the reason the Wii U has had such a slow start is that gamers don't get what the system is really capable of.

Here's a story I can get behind - and if I owned a Wii U - I likely would have thrown my .02 in the mix. For years North American gamers have been begging Nintendo to bring another Earthbound game to our shores. For no real reason Nintendo has refused to do so, despite releasing multiple titles (it's called Mother in Japan) in its home country - Mother on NES, Mother 3 on Game Boy Advance, and various sequels.

Earlier this week we reported that the Chinese government was considering lifting a 13-year ban on game consoles in the country. While there's plenty of black market devices and software for Chinese consumers, there's no way to legally buy a PS3, Xbox 360, or Nintendo device in the country. The story from a few days ago was based on a China Daily report that quoted an anonymous source inside the Ministry of Culture.

Nintendo has cut its hardware sales forecast after a less than stellar performance in the fourth quarter. Projections for the Wii U have been revised down to 4 million by the end of the fiscal year that ends on March 31 - from 5.5 million. Nintendo also says that it now expects to sell 15 million units during this fiscal year - down from 17.5. The Nintendo DS will sell 2.3 million units during this fiscal year, down from a previous forecast of 2.5 million.

Video game retailer GameStop revealed that sales for the last nine weeks of 2012 came in at $2.88 billion, a 4.6 percent decrease from the 2011 holiday shopping season. The retailer blamed a lack of in-store traffic as the primary cause. Second-hand sales were also down 15.6 percent because of limited inventory, according to GameStop. New game sales were also down by 5.1 percent, while hardware numbers were down 2.7 percent.

If you didn't get a Wii U under the tree but don't have enough money for the more premium retail version of Nintendo's latest living room console, then this tweak from Best Buy might entice you a little. Best Buy is now offering the 8GB basic Wii U bundled with the game Nintendo Land for the same $299 as the basic set costs on its own elsewhere. The premium version retails for $349 and includes a charging cradle for the gamepad, a 32GB storage drive, and the Nintendo Land game.

The results are in, the votes have been tallied and the sole light in my mom's windowless, basement bathroom burnt out while I was taking a shower this morning.  It's time to reveal which of the current consoles GamePolitics poll participants think has the dumbest name!

A report on the Japanese site Rocket News reports that there is a catch for bringing a Wii U controller to another region for use. For example, using a Wii U controller from the West in Japan may not "region lock it" (bar you from using it) but it will not allow you to apply any firmware updates. Earlier reports suggested that the controller could not be used with a console that might be from a different region.

A particularly light and fluffy question for this week's poll, GP faithful:

Which of the current crop of video game consoles do you think has the dumbest name?

Is it the Wii?  It's the Wii, isn't it?

Yeah, it's probably the Wii.

While we're not sure if it will ultimately sway the publisher and developer of Dark Souls II, we applaud the efforts of the people behind a petition on Change.org, who managed to get 10,000 signatures on a petition asking From Software and publisher Namco Bandai to bring the game to the Wii U.

Well, the Wii U has been out in the States for a few weeks now and many of you have gone hands-on with it.  So, how do you think Nintendo’s new console stacks up to the competition from a graphics standpoint?

Nintendo of Europe has finally explained the odd restrictions on 18+ content (which includes reading information, looking at screenshots, and watching video) in place on the European Wii U eShop. It turns out that German law is affecting when everyone (adults and children) can look at mature content. Last week Eurogamer found that it could not look at information on the eShop during certain times (11pm to 3am). This included info on the 18+ rated games ZombieU and Assassin's Creed 3.

Apparently taking cues from 'Cinemax' or 'Showtime After Dark,' Eurogamer has discovered that the European Wii U eShop prohibits all consumers from accessing mature-rated games and content during the daytime hours.

This is sure to put analyst Michael Pachter on someone's naughty list: Recently he said that Activision needs to start charging a fee for the multiplayer portion of its Call of Duty games. Wedbush Securities industry analyst Michael Pachter made his comments during the Digital Game Monetization Summit in San Francisco, California (as reported by GamesIndustry International). During his presentation he said that Activision made a serious mistake when it didn't implement a subscription-based model for Call of Duty multiplayer.

Nintendo of America Reggie Fils-Aime is pushing back against complaints aimed at the Wii U. Speaking to Gamasutra, Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime said that the Wii U's launch hiccups - mostly tied to the system's mandatory day-one patch - was a requirement to ensure the "very best product" for consumers.

No matter what you think of Uplay (PC gamers know it as a future digital distribution platform and as facilitator of horrible always-on DRM masquerading as something else - particularly for PC gamers), what Ubisoft is trying to do with it on Wii U is interesting because it adds a number of features to its games on the platform.

Online retailer Amazon has apologized to UK customers who purchased a premium Wii U bundle but didn't get a copy of the game Nintendo Land. The retailer blamed supplier error for the omission of the game and said that the error only affected a small number of customers.

"It's been brought to our attention that a small number of orders for this item may have been delivered without the advertised game, Nintendo Land, due to supplier error," an email to customers confirmed.

Nintendo President Satoru Iwata says that he is very sorry for the problems people had on launch day with the mandatory Wii U Day One firmware update. Speaking to IGN, he said that the length of time it took to download the update was not acceptable.

According to Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime, the Wii U has sold 400,000 units in the United States. Speaking to CNET, Fils-Aime said that 300,000 Wii consoles and 500,000 portable devices also sold during the same period, for a grand total of 1.2 million hardware units sold in the US.

While Hulu Plus didn't make the content cut on Wii U's entertainment channel on launch day, it appears that the app for the popular movie and TV streaming service is available for use today, according to this Destructoid report. In case you didn't know, the Wii U Gamepad offers some enhancements to the service above other platforms - it serves as a second screen. It's hard to deny that these types of features are cool...

After a few days of not being able to use the "@" character in passwords, Netflix has said this morning that the problem is now fixed. The problem relates to the new Netflix app that was launched this weekend alongside the Wii U's retail release in North America. Netflix subscribers that used the "@" character in passwords were forced to change them because the character was not allowed in the Wii U app. Now Netflix says that everything is fixed.

In an interview with NowGamer, chief technical officer at Metro: Last Light developer 4A Oles Shishkovtsov said probably the most disparaging thing you can say about a brand new console: it has no power. When asked if the new game would be on the Wii U, Shishkovtsov said that it was not possible because Wii U's processor was "horrible and slow." Not exactly what the folks at Nintendo headquarters want a developer to say...

All it will take for the Wii U to be profitable will be the sale of one game with the system, claims Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime. Fils-Aime made the comments in a recent interview with Mercury News. Without having that one-game attach rate the Wii U is selling at a loss. Fils-Aime's comments would suggest that the console is very close to breaking even if all it takes is the sale of one game - we assume he means a first-party title developed and published by Nintendo...

While there has been a fair share of bad news related to the Wii U's North American launch on Sunday, today we offer a story that is good news for anyone that wants to play some of those older Wii titles on the system: they look better on Wii U. According to the video to your left - pointed out by this NeoGAF forum thread - the Wii U appears to upscale Wii games.

In Episode 29 of the Super Podcast Action Committee hosts Andrew Eisen and E. Zachary Knight discuss the shaky launch of the Wii U console over the weekend, Sony perma-bans for PS3 'hackers,' and the good and bad side of Electronic Arts. It's a show to remember unless you stopped that Wii U firmware update - then it's a painful reminder that getting your brand new console 'bricked' kind of sucks! Download it now: SuperPAC Episode 29 (1 hour, 19 minutes) 73 MB.

Speaking to IGN UK, Frozenbyte marketing manager Mikael Haveri says that Nintendo is being very flexible with titles being released in its freshly launched Wii U eShop. The company released Trine 2: Director's Cut over the weekend on the Wii U's virtual storefront. Haveri says that the new eShop leaves core decisions to indie developers publishing games on the platform - including the prices they set for their products and when they have sales.