By now, everyone's heard of the new Nintendo Wii U console. Most of us have seen at least bits and pieces of what it is and what it is possibly capable of. Gabe Newell sees potential in the new console, and stated this morning to Joystiq that "Wii U seems to be a lot more powerful than the previous generation." Newell goes on to say that "It fits better into scalability in terms of graphics performance and CPU performance, so I think it'll be a lot easier for us to fit it into our scalability model."

What does this mean exactly? It strongly suggests that Valve may start developing games for the Wii U, which is no surprise since they've been working with consoles more and more lately, and expanding their games to the Wii U gives them a chance to appeal to a wider audience. It'll be interesting to see how Valve utilizes the touchscreen controller in upcoming releases.

This is actually good news. Nintendo has been faltering since the Wii came out as far as game selection goes. It's been more of a family oriented console with somewhat novelty games and titles that weren't taken seriously. There were a few of the bigger titles on the Wii (such as Call of Duty), but these ultimately failed, considering they weren't designed for a console that was motion based and, as I mentioned earlier, more family oriented. Nintendo did have some very fun games to play (New Super Mario Bros., Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Super Smash Brothers: Brawl), but it seemed like these titles were far too few from a company that has always been great with games. Now that the new console is announced, and Valve seems to be taking an interest, it appears that more serious games that will appeal to the hardcore gamers will be making their debut on the Wii U.