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There’s all the more reason to be a good little boy or girl this year as Nintendo is hoping to make it onto your Christmas wish list (and stay out of the red) with its next home console – the Wii U – which the man himself, Satoru Iwata, confirms will be arriving in time for the Yule gift buying rush.

The Japanese Nintendo CEO discussed the second coming of the highly-successful Wii gaming gadget while speaking of the company’s earnings at a conference in Osaka – Earnings which suffered in 2011 with the disappointing early sales, and subsequent price slashes, of the 3DS portable. This was a dark time for Nintendo, and the company spent twice as much as it made on saving the 3D handheld from becoming a complete fail. Looking to make up for this and target the busiest sales period of the year, Iwata backs comments made by American boss Reggie Fils-Aime who earlier stated that the Wii U would arrive between mid and late 2012.

We’re still without a firm release date but at least now the Nintendo Wii U’s launch has been spoken of officially and we’re expecting a fully finished product to make an appearance at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in June before a full scale assault on Christmas. The initial outing at last year’s E3 didn’t do much to impress and we were left wondering if a full console release was warranted. The graphics didn’t look much improved from the current model Wii (rumour suggests now that they will rival the Xbox 360) and the fun of multiplayer was overruled by the one player tablet. If the HD tablet control gimmick an the possible inclusion of an app store is in fact enough to sell the console we could see a repeat of the hysteria of 2006’s original Wii sales.

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