Nintendo's Coming Game System, Wii U LOS ANGELES - Six years ago, while much of the video game industry continued to obsess over explosion-addled young men in basements, Nintendo had the gumption to move in a different direction with the introduction of the Wii. It was built around a vision of families having fun together in living rooms. And it worked. Since its release in 2006, the Wii has far outsold its more powerful yet less approachable competitors: Sony's PlayStation 3 and Microsoft's Xbox 360. But personal lives and entertainment habits have been reshaped by smartphones (the original iPhone was released seven months after the Wii), social networks and tablets. Wiis that once brought families together now sit largely unused. Today many of us are familiar with the disturbing mise en scène of a family or friends sharing the same room, yet each person is wholly, silently absorbed in his own screen - a phone, a tablet, a laptop. Sherry Turkle, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology social scientist, described the phenomenon most succinctly in the title of her 2011 book, "Alone Together." That is also the phenomenon that Nintendo hopes to alter with its next game system, the Wii U. (Pronounced "We, you." Get it?) The top executives at the company - Satoru Iwata, the company's president, and Shigeru Miyamoto, essentially its creative director - were quick to evoke Ms. Turkle's work in both a recent Webcast and in a rare, wide-ranging joint interview here before this week's Electronic Entertainment Expo, the game industry's most important annual function. Beyond all of the technical parameters Nintendo's most expansive goal with the Wii U, expected this holiday season (no price has been announced), is to persuade family members to put down their disparate gadgets once in a while and play together again. In a counterpoint to "Alone Together," one of Nintendo's tag lines for the Wii U is "Together. Better. "We now want to expand the social nature of video games," Mr. Iwata said in the interview. Game playing is always more fun when you play with others rather than playing alone. The social nature of video games is real, and we've been putting a lot of energy into expanding the social nature of our games and products. As an interactive medium successful video games and systems must be conceived and delivered with an understanding of how people engage with them in the real world, far from the production studio. To Mr. Miyamoto, the godfather of essential game franchises like Donkey Kong, Mario and Zelda, the original Wii's popularity has lapsed in part because it, like most home game systems, remains tied to the living-room television. "One of the things that we decided very early on was that we wanted the next system after the Wii to be one that people would use more regularly," Mr. Miyamoto said. With the Wii we have users who, even if they have it in the household, they sometimes stop using it after a while as much. One reason is maybe because you have to turn it on and also turn on the TV and change the input, and if someone else is watching the TV, you can't use it because the TV is already in use. By contrast the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 are aimed more at hard-core gamers, so those systems appear less likely to face electronic competition within those homes. Microsoft and Sony are not expected to reveal plans for new consoles before next year. "For many years I have said that traditional game systems are too reliant on the television, or are even a parasite on the television," Mr. Miyamoto said. Its reliance on the television has helped keep the price of a console down over the years, but we felt we were too reliant on the television, and because of that I wanted to put forward the idea of a home console system that can be played without a TV. The important new element of the Wii U is a wireless, motion-sensitive controller called the GamePad that weighs about a pound and incorporates a touch-sensitive screen roughly six inches wide placed directly between the user's hands. That screen can mimic the images on a television connected to a Wii U or can display different graphics and gameplay. Because the Wii U will support two separate controllers, two people can play together without using a television at all. Perhaps even more intriguing is Nintendo's new concept of "asymmetric gameplay." That means that players looking at the television might have a different experience than someone looking at the GamePad. For example, a player using the GamePad might take the role of a ghost chasing four other players who are looking at the television. Because the first user is, after all, a ghost, the "human" players watching the TV can't see the incorporeal player. But the ghost, who has the GamePad screen to him- or herself, can see all of its flesh-and-blood prey.