Five things we wish we knew about the Wii U

As many of you will undoubtedly know, Nintendo have announced their successor to the immensely popular Wii console, the Wii U, which is set to launch this later year. With it's innovative touch screen tablet controller, known as the Wii U GamePad, it looks set to revolutionise the world of games all over again. With fancier graphics, revamped social features and an awesome looking line-up of games, we can't wait for what's essentially the grown-up lovechild of the Wii and the DS to hit stores – but wait it seems we'll have to, as Nintendo are keeping pretty schtum about the details.

But we've never really been the patient sort, especially when there were other ways of getting what we wanted - and so, in the absence of any real news about Nintendo's upcoming Wii U console, we decided to entertain ourselves with a bit of animal testing. Before you all leave disgusted and up in arms, we want to stress that no cats were harmed in the making of this feature – although she may have been mildly irritated.

So without further ado, meet our victim – Bessie. Adopted from the local Cat's Protection League as an older cat because it's 'hard to place the mothers' of kittens, she settled into her new cushy life rather quickly. A lover of laps, men's armpits, cheese and onion crisps and garlic bread, she's often mistaken for being as thick as two short planks - frequently falling off things, jumping at windows to get the birds as they fly past or getting herself shut in wardrobes as she does. But little does everyone else know that her ditsy persona is nothing more than cover, for Bessie, in reality, is psychic, with a mental capacity beyond that of her peers - and many humans, too. After all, Einstein was famously forgetful, always misplacing umbrellas and losing track of people's birthdays. Perhaps our cat has a brain bigger than Einstein, and it's just full of untapped potential. Or perhaps she really is just a useless lump of friendly fur.

With five questions about the Wii U to answer, and a myriad of potential ways to annoy a cat we set to work, crafting a series of highly scientific experiments to help determine what the future of the Wii U, including the release date, price and potential launch titles. We're feeling quietly confident in our furball's abilities - or at least, at our skills at creating experiments with more flaws and bias than your average drug trial, but only time will tell how accurate Bessie's been. Step over Mystic Meg - here comes Mystic Mog.

How much will the Wii U cost?

So, for our first experiment, we went for something a bit simple - something that's not too ambiguous, but with enough reward that Bessie doesn't get upset with us for insulting her intelligence. Setting up four saucers, each with a selection of cat treats on (Dreamies - she goes mental for them), each saucer also had a label on saying which price it represented - £0-99, £100-199, £200-299, and $300+. No sooner had we let her go than sped across the room, thinking Christmas had come early, and...  went straight to the £300 dish. That's actually not too far off double the Wii's launch price of about £170.

Despite assurances from Nintendo that consumers will be pleasantly surprised by the Wii U's retail price, £300+ doesn't seem like a price point any of us would be too pleased about - so, rather than write off our cat's psychic powers one experiment in, we're going to write off her eyesight instead - and presume she got a tad confused with the currencies. 300 Euros would make it around £230, which seems more on the reasonable side, while 300 dollars translates to a much more wallet friendly £190. We'd imagine it'll be somewhere between the latter two options - so maybe or psychic cat isn't too terrible after all? On a side note, if you have a cat you really should try out the Dreamies cat treats if you haven't already – ours can't get enough of the cheese flavour, even if they do smell like unwashed feet.

What month will the Wii U launch in?

Setting up a series of boxes, each labelled with a different month, we dug out one of Bessie's favourite toys – a ball of kitchen foil - and plonked her in the centre. Looking rather disgruntled, she just sat and stared up at us, probably wondering when the next dose of Dreamies was coming. So we did what any good cat owners do when they want their cat to do something – walked off and left them to their own devices. It's been scientifically proven that a cat will lie on whatever you don't want it to, as if by magic – and, while we weren't initially aiming for her to sit in any of the boxes, it would at least have given us something of an answer. Upon our return, however, she was still just sat in the middle of the floor, staring at us - but after a period of the silent treatment, she somewhat reluctantly batted the ball around, before it ended up in the November box. Perhaps it was a sign she wasn't 100% sure - or maybe she'd just rather be out sunbathing in the strawberry patch.