Wii U Tablet Will Support NFC, Microtransactions

At this year's Consumer Electronics Show, Nintendo wasn't lying when they said they would be unveiling a lot of new information throughout the year for the Wii U leading up to its highly anticipated launch this fall. Well, news about the Wii U came sooner than expected as Nintendo's president made a few announcements regarding the new console.

In the recent quarterly results for Nintendo, president Satoru Iwata revealed a few things about the upcoming Wii U, including the new Nintendo Network and that the WiiPad or Wii U tablet, will support microtransactions and near-field communication.

According to Yahoo! News, Iwata stated that..."it will become possible to create cards and figurines that can electronically read and write data ... to expand the new play format in the video game world."

It will also use the NFC functionality for things such as the Google Wallet or PayPal, enabling gamers to make purchases for products from the comfort of the tablet. The figurine or card idea is also pretty cool because it means Pokemon trading cards could be used for a new RPG on the Wii U console. I imagine there will also be added NFC support for wi-fi enabled Nintendo products for multiplayer or trading support. The possibilities are endless, but then again we also thought the same thing about the EyeToy for the PlayStation with games like the Eye of Judgment.

Anyways, while microtransactions are a possible functionality of the WiiPad tablet Iwata shot down when full games would actually become available on the Nintendo Network, however, he did confirm that fully featured games would be available for purchase from Nintendo's new online service for the Wii U.