The new console from Nintendo, Wii U, is scheduled to hit the market in in Japan, Europe and the United States before the end of 2012, confirms Nintendo president Satoru Iwata. Another hint about the Wii U launch date was made recently by US boss Reggie Fils-Aime who said "Wii U will launch some time between E3 - which is in June - at the end of the year so essentially the second half of the year."

In related news, the Wii U console is going to have hardware that's twice as powerful as the current Xbox 360 system, according to an unnamed source from the industry giant.

Yesterday, however, we did learn that Microsoft may be able to tackle this. There were reports that the next-gen Xbox console is going to be powered by a 2011 Radeon 6000 series graphics card, "sources close to the project" have said.