At the Nintendo press conference two weeks ago, tons of new details were given about the Wii U including the bundles the system would be packaged in and the games being put into the launch window. Yesterday, even more details were given to the launch lineup with 23 titles being confirmed for day one. This looks to be one of the largest launch lineups of any system in recent memory with lots of big name games in it.

Aside from bundling the Deluxe system with Nintendo Land to show off the Wii U’s unique capabilities, Nintendo made sure to back the system with the support of major well known franchises for both the casual and hardcore gamer.

For the Nintendo gamer, the system will launch with New Super Mario Bros. U which is the first time since the Nintendo 64 where a Mario game was made available day one for a home console.

Thursday morning, Nintendo had a press conference in New York City where they revealed the important details that everyone has been waiting for about the Wii U. Let’s cut to the chase and talk about the most important details.

The Wii U will launch in the US on November 18th.

There will be two SKU’s on launch.

The Wii U Basic Set will launch at $299.99 and contain a white Wii U, 8 GB of internal storage, one white GamePad controller, AC adapters for both the console and controller, a sensor bar and an HDMI cable.

The Wii U Deluxe Set will retail for $349.99 and contain a black Wii U, all the components of the Basic Set, a copy of Nintendo Land, an increased 32 GB of internal storage, a console stand, GamePad charging cradle and a vertical GamePad stand. They will also be enrolled in the Deluxe Digital Promotion.

The online community will be called the Miiverse.

Using the Nintendo TVii application, players can use the GamePad controller to control subscription services like cable and satellite channels, Netflix, Hulu Plus, Amazon Instant Video, YouTube and their recorded TiVo files.

The launch window which goes from November 18th, 2012 to March 31st, 2013 will the 51 games listed below (sorted by developer).

There are two prime ‘seasons’ on the Box Office calendar, summer and holiday. Both represent times of the year where most people like to go watch movies, and as a result, most of the best films get released in those windows. During these seasons there are single weekends that are the marquee slots, reserved for the films most likely to draw in the biggest audiences, the fourth of July and Christmas.

If you want some idea of how much faith Paramount has in their new Jack Ryan reboot, you have only to look at its freshly minted release date for an answer. Kenneth Branagh’s CIA thriller reboot will be hitting screens December 25th, 2013. The new potential franchise starter stars Chris Pine as the titular analyst, Keira Knightley as his love interest, Branagh himself as the villain Kevin Costner in an important but as yet unidentified ‘key’ role.

One of the most interesting developments for this film is the way Paramount is setting the franchise up. They don’t seem content in just developing a new franchise in the style of the Bourne films or James Bond, instead Paramount thinks that there is a whole shared universe of Tom Clancy characters that they can develop like Marvel Studios has done with The Avengers.

So the development of this film has turned into a rather interesting experiment, stay connected to The Flickcast for any future updates.

Black Friday, the biggest shopping bonanza of the year. Virtually everyone has the day off and with retail stores doing sales on top of sales, going out to the store can be a mad house, especially if rumors are to be believed.

Go Nintendo has it from GameStop sources that the console will be launching the week of Black Friday. Based on Nintendo’s release pattern, that should put the Wii U in stores Sunday the 18th of November. Which gives Nintendo almost a full week and a half of mad house sales for their new console.

This release schedule makes sense both in Nintendo’s historical context, as well as in relation to third-party rumors that have been cropping up since E3. The major question that needs to be answered now is how well will the new system do, can the Wii U match the hysteria created by the original Wii?

It is had to guess with out the price point information just yet, but it is a safe bet to assume that the Wii U will sell out of its first shipment pretty quickly. What made the Wii such a phenomenon was that it couldn’t stay in stock for months. In January it was still hard to get a Wii, which was due in large part to a pretty genius strategy by Nintendo. Most stores would only get shipments of three or four systems, perpetually keeping shelves bare.

To recreate that Nintendo had better hope they can keep the Wii U price point low, and the demand high.

Stay connected to The Flickcast for any new updates on the launch of the Wii U.

One of the many considerations to be made in the wake of a horrible tragedy is how do certain studios remain respectful to the situation without knee jerk reacting to heightened public outrage. It is a fine line that Warner Bros. now has to walk in the aftermath of the Aurora Colorado shootings.

Gangster Squad is a film that was supposed to have a trailer play in front of The Dark Knight Rises. However, due to a specific scene in the trailer of gangsters shooting up a movie theater it was rightfully pulled. Now Warner Bros is taking things one step further and are scrambling to re-shoot the scenes involving the theater shooting altogether.

This of course will push the release of the film to a potential January slot as learned by The Hollywood Reporter:

One date the studio is looking at is Jan. 11. Before making a final decision, though, the studio is currently looking at several factors, according to sources, such as how quickly the cast can be reassembled for the reshoot, concerns about cast availibility to do press in January and the competition on the calendar. 

Here is the fine line for Warner Bros, moving the release date is respectful, re-shooting a climactic scene that parallels the tragedy might be going to far. It is hard to say sight unseen, but hopefully the integrity of what seems like a good movie remains intact.

Stay tuned to The Flickcast as news on Gangster Squad solidifies we will keep you informed.

Blizzard is historically slow with their releases and World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria has been in extensive beta testing for months now. So the wait has been excruciating for WoW fans the world over, with the release being so close but also potentially so far. Many fans have been waiting for this day.

That is because on this day Blizzard officially announced that the fourth World of Warcraft expansion will be released September 25th. It might seem odd to some that a simple release date would be such an important bit of news, but when it comes to Blizzard games, it is a big deal.

You see Blizzard has a tendency to move like a glacier in regards to their new releases and expansions. It took over a decade to get sequels to Starcraft and Diablo, and both of those titles languished in a mostly completed form for a long time leading up to their eventual releases.

So there was never a guarantee that because Pandaria was in extensive Beta testing that the game was nearing imminent release. Especially in light of rumors that stated Blizzard would only release one more title after Diablo 3 in 2012, and there is another near complete Starcraft expansion also needing an eventual release.

But it looks as if that Starcraft expansion will just have to wait for 2013, and all the WoW faithful can recreate their favorite Kung Fu Panda moments this fall.

Every year there are certain cinematic trends. This can manifest in a couple different ways, one such way is the return to popularity of the Bow and Arrow this year. Another way this manifests is two movies with similar core concepts get released in close proximity.

Like Dante’s Peak & Volcano or Armageddon & Deep Impact, these cousin films share a lot in common on paper. 2012 looks like it might have finally found it’s pairing, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter & Lincoln.

Deadline is reporting that Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln biopic has finally set a release date, just in time for the award season push:

The Abraham Lincoln movie starring Daniel Day-Lewis as Honest Abe will get an exclusive release November 9, 2012, and expand wide November 16, Disney just announced

A relatively ballsy spot to place this movie on the calendar. A Spielberg biopic about Abe Lincoln starring Daniel Day-Lewis could very well be a financial hit as well as a critical darling, but opening limited on the day Skyfall is released and wide the same day as Twilight: Breaking Dawn Pt. 2 seems to really limit its potential audience.

It is true that the winter season is loaded with high-profile films, but this seems like a bad move on the part of Dreamworks. Unless of course all they care about is Oscar posturing. In that case this is a potential smart move to let this movie’s quality seem even greater by comparison of the big blockbusters it is up against.

In any event, we now know when Lincoln hits the screens in the states, and truthfully we here at The Flickcast are eager to see it.

There are times in life where you want to do your best Darth Vader from Revenge of the Sith impression and just yell ‘NO!’ as goofily and as loudly into the air as you can. Right now is one such time, as one of the most highly anticipated games of the year has been pushed to next year.

Irrational Games has posted a statement on their website from BioShock: Infinite director, Ken Levine:

When we announced the release date of BioShock Infinite in March, we felt pretty good about the timing.

Since then, we’ve come to realize that some specific tweaks and improvements will make Infinite into something even more extraordinary. Therefore, to give our talented team the time they need, we’ve decided to move the game’s release to February 26, 2013. We wanted to let our loyal (and very patient!) fans know this as soon as possible.

This is equally horrible and great news. On one hand we have to wait four more months for a game we have already been waiting so long for. On the other hand what is four more months if we end up with a much better game. That conflicted feeling is no doubt running through many video gamer’s minds right about now.

The statement also mentioned BioShock: Infinite will not have a presence at the big summer gaming shows, so the next time we see the game it will be pretty close to done. Let the slightly longer wait commence.

Once the marquee mascot for the XBox generation of gamers, Master Chief has taken a step back in recent years. In hopes to regain the original glory of the FPS, Microsoft announced last year that they were moving a head with a brand new numbered Halo game.

Today Microsoft set Halo 4’s official street date, November 6th, 2012. This unsurprisingly puts one of the most anticipated games of the year in the middle of the juiciest video game release window. The real question now is can this 4th installment recapture the magic of the original trilogy?

FPS games have grown leaps and bounds since Halo: Combat Evolved rejuvenated the genre. Added to that, one of the original Halo’s greatest strengths was it’s story, and it will be hard for the developers to come back with a compelling and authentic Halo story based on where the franchise currently sits.

Of course that is all doom and gloom from a registered PlayStation fanboy. The truth of the matter is, if Master Chief is truly an iconic mascot in the same way Sonic, Mario, Link and Crash Bandicoot Kratos are than Halo 4 will be a rousing success, at least commercially. Heck, I will be rooting hard for this game myself, if for no other reason than to wash away that grimy layer of muck that is Gears of War being the 360s marquee exclusive.

The recent trend of Fairy Tale re-imaginings is going to be around for at least a few more years as Disney announced today that one if its most intriguing in-development projects is moving full steam ahead.

Maleficent is a live action re-telling of the Sleeping Beauty story, but from the perspective of Maleficent herself, played very appropriately by Angelina Jolie. Originally the movie was being developed by Brad Bird and there was even a time when Tim Burton was attached to direct, but recently the project had been rather dormant.

That was until today’s announcement of course. Disney has confirmed that Robert Stromberg will be making his feature debut with this film, which is now set for an March 14th, 2014 release date. Stromberg is a production designer that was a major contributor on Avatar and has worked with Tim Burton and Sam Raimi in the past. With a resume like that it is a safe bet that the film will look stunning, and with Angelina Jolie still perfectly cast in the title role this film has much going for it.

There was a time when this project looked dead in the water, but this new niche sub-genre has been gaining a ton of momentum as of late. Even the poorly marketed Mirror Mirror ended up gaining some admirers. Hopefully re-done fairy tales has some more creative heft to it now that the Twlight aesthetic has grown so stale.