In Episode 52, hosts Andrew Eisen and E. Zachary Knight talk about female presenters at Microsoft's Xbox reveal event this week, EA's continued abuse of the Wii U community, The new S.H.I.E.L.D TV series, Wreck-It Ralph, sushi, and other topics and tangents - mostly instigated by Andrew! Download Episode 52 now: SuperPAC Episode 52 (1 hour, 12 minutes) 66.7 MB.

In an update to a story on Friday over at Eurogamer about Madden NFL 25 not coming to the Wii U and a decision about the fate of FIFA 14 on the platform, an unnamed rep from the company confirmed that the latest football title from EA Sports would be a no-show. This is not news to anyone who paid attention last week when EA said it had no games in development for the Wii U currently. Obviously that also includes every imaginable EA Sports title.

Last week EA confirmed that it didn't have any Wii U titles in development. As if that wasn't enough of a slight against owners of Nintendo's console a developer's comments over the weekend dumped a whole can of gasoline on an already raging fire.

Nintendo has a novel way of getting gamers (who do not already own a Wii U) excited about the games it will be showcasing at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles next month. At participating Best Buy stores consumers will be able to get hands-on time with pretty much the same game demos as the press gets access to from the E3 show floor. The announcement was made by Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime today during a Nintendo Direct presentation.

Say the name of an Electronic Arts title you'd like to see come to the Wii U. Okay, now let me break the bad news to you as gently as I can: There are no games from Electronic Arts coming to the Wii U in the foreseeable future. Not one title. Not even a Sims game.

"We have no games in development for the Wii U currently," company spokesperson Jeff Brown told Kotaku yesterday.

A group of developers have released a video showing the results of reverse engineering the Nintendo Wii U GamePad. The little experiment shows how the GamePad communicates with the main console system and notes that it isn't a very secure device. Speaking at length with Eurogamer's Digital Foundry one of the developers involved in the project - Pierre Bourdon - says that "The GamePad is actually not a very secure device...

In an interview with Siliconera, Q-Games President Dylan Cuthbert says that Nintendo needs to create a new "super IP" to put the Wii U on the map once again, just like it did with the Wii (for example, Wii Sports, Wii Fit, etc.)

"If they are going to win they are going to have to figure out the games," Cuthbert told the publication. "They probably need like new super IP, a special IP that makes people really interested."

If a majority of EA's upcoming games use DICE's Frostbite Engine 3 and the Frostbite Engine 3 doesn't support the Wii U then it doesn't take a genius to come to the conclusion that a whole lot of upcoming EA games will not be coming to the Wii U.

This story begins with a recent tweet from DICE technical director Johan Anderson, who responds to a question about the company's Frostbite 3 engine running on the Wii U.

Andrew Eisen obsesses over all the games that aren't coming to the Wii U in his latest video. Will he be able to name 50 games not coming to the Wii U (that are coming to other platforms)? Will his sister be able to name just one title that is coming to the Wii U and one other platform and not on another? Will Andrew's head explode by the end of this video? Watch it and find out!

Here's some more bad news for Wii U owners that might also be Madden NFL game fans: you won't be getting the popular football franchise on your platform of choice this year, according to this Ars Technica story. More importantly, what does EA's decision not to support the Wii U with one of its biggest sports franchises say about the current perception of Nintendo's struggling console system?

A hacking group is claiming that it has managed to circumvent the copy protection on Nintendo's Wii U. Nintendo is not commenting on the story publicly. According to the group who seems to have no formal group name, they were able to bypass the Wii U's copy protection and play pirated games via USB media. The team claims that it has "completely reversed the Wii U drive authentication, disk encryption, file system, and everything else needed for this next generation key."

Nintendo today revealed details on just how many Wii U users are connected to the Internet. According to the data collected by Nintendo, about 80 percent of its world-wide customer base is connected to the Internet, while the 3DS hand-held has an even higher average connected rate of 83 percent. That's 80 percent of the 3.45 million Wii U consoles sold worldwide are connected. Nintendo says that this is the highest number of connected devices the company has ever seen.

Nintendo will not be hosting a big press conference at the Electronic Entertainment Expo this summer as it has in the past, according to an announcement made by the company earlier in the week. Instead the company plans to host something that is in line with its Nintendo Direct online broadcasts. Instead of its usual press conference and show presence, Nintendo says that it will host smaller private events for media and distributors, and that its E3 presence will be limited to showing off software this year.

Nintendo released its earnings report for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2013, revealing that it had taken a loss much like it did in the last fiscal year. Nintendo recorded a 36.4 billion yen operating loss ($366 million) for the fiscal year, with less than expected sales of the Wii U continue to have a "negative impact on Nintendo's profits." Thanks to a depreciation of the yen, Nintendo's net income was 7 billion yen ($71 million). Net sales for the year were forecast at 635.4 billion yen ($6.38 billion), down from the year before.

You may recall a digital protest in the Wii U's Miiverse way back in late January concerning Nintendo bringing Earthbound (or Mother 2 as it is known in Japan) to territories outside of Japan. Well Nintendo apparently paid attention, announcing today that the game would finally be making its way to North America and Europe via the Virtual Console sometime later this year.

Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter said in a preview note sent out to investors late last week that not even a price cut to Nintendo's Wii U will help it sell more units. He also predicts that Nintendo will report another month of weak sales for the console later this week.

Nintendo announced today that it will discontinue five channels on the Wii in June due to what it calls a "very low participation rate" of its customers. It will also kill one service that apparently very few people use. A handful of original Wii channels and some network services are soon to be no more. Nintendo announced today that due to a "very low participation rate," the company has decided to discontinue the following applications beginning June 28, 2013.

Is your Wii U running too slow? Well the video to your left from Nintendo UK shows that the Wii U Spring system update speeds things up considerably when you exit a game and the system menu loads.

The video shows the Wii U's system menu loading after exiting New Super Mario Bros. U. It takes about seven seconds, compared to the current load time of 17 seconds.

Source: GameSpot

Remember those ridiculous age restrictions on Wii U eShop content in Europe because Nintendo of Europe is based out of Germany and subject to German laws about content? Yeah, well those silly restrictions have been removed much to the delight of our Wii U owning brothers and sisters in various regions throughout Europe including the UK, according to Daily Joypad.

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!