Wii U games using dual-Gamepads will launch “sometime next year,” says Nintendo

Don’t break it !

Mario 3DU will prob use 2 game pads…

Good way to sell another really…

By that time a price drop on pads and a Wii play style pack-in…

Or £99.99 for another pad plus Mario 3dU…

I’ve got this Pachter shit locked!

Ironically, I know people who have put off and Sold their Vita’s for lack of similar content on release. I wonder how many of those people will hold off on this device until it has all reported functionality?

@1: Exactly.

This pad is a mistake IMO. Seems like almost everything about the Wii U needs some long winded explanation because of it.

I’ve also got a feeling that they’re not selling it separately because they don’t want people to combine it’s price with the price of the Wii U and realise how expensive the whole ‘bundle’ actually is.

Maybe they should have forgotten about fitting their entire console strategy around some radical, unnecessary ‘innovation’, and thought the whole thing through properly.

Might have been better to release a pad as an accessory…

Can’t anyone understand?

They will need extra functions to showcase when the PS4 / 720 release, that’s all.

With the Vita, Sony showcased off features as if they were going to be included in the final build… I don’t recall Nintendo saying 2 pad games were going to be available on launch?

I still don’t get why people don’t ‘understand’ this console, what are they going to say when it sells out at Christmas?

@5
Still the vita hater eh Mr. Patcher?
On the topic, 2 gamepad games can only be possible with awful graphics (probably ps2 standard)by todays standard, as wiiu will be unable to process images on 3 screens with cpu weaker than 360, still manages to have the audacity to ask double the price.

@6

Like 3D on PS3 and 360?

It will be at a compromise I’m sure, but it’ll rarely be used as it’ll split the demographic too much. Maybe a couple of years down the line ala Skyward Sword, Motionplus.

By the way, I love the Vita as a machine, just hated Sony’s treatment of it.

@6

Not necessarily to stream the game feed on two gamepads but most certainly for assymetric gameplay with at least two players.

The rumors about the lag on dual Gamepad wielding have not gone away – and it would seem, as soon as the Japanese media started running questions about the slow down on the demonstrated games, and the avoidance of Nintendo executives to talk about two Gamepad operation on the Wii-U; then a story like this appears with the usual “wait and see” comment!

I just say to Nintendo US reps – if the dual Gamepad feature dose not appear in good order then this could be a PR disaster!

I heard the gamepad should run you 120-150 bucks. My friend who is eager to purchase a WiiU is only really worried about the pad. Since replacing it will be quite expensive. His worry was the battery firstly. Can it be replaced and how good is it, bringing up his dislike for 360′s battery packs having been through 3 now that don’t hold charges. I told him that I was worried about this with the PS3 controllers back in the day, not being able to replace them. But that the batteries in the DS3′s outlast the joysticks…this is his new concern. The quality of the materials used and how well they’ll hold up to “hard-core” gameplay. Personally I’ve had my PS3 since launch and when Sony finally got “shock” back I bought two new DS3s. Some, what..4 years later, I’m only on my third controller and its in good shape. His hope is that the WiiU pad is kid tested

@9
Has anything been even demoed with two screens yet?

@10
Photos of the back of the pad show a biggish panel with screws – so I’d say the battery is likely replaceable. I’ve had problems with 360 battery packs – they seem to have a reasonably limited use time – never had problems with my PS3 pads. Though I probably used the 360 battery packs more initially.

So what if it breaks? You can’t replace it?

@12 not initially no, as they arent selling them solo.

@13 That’s utterly ridiculous.

To be honest, I really don’t understand how they decided that having a unique, 1-person only controller on a console filled with multiplayer games was a good idea.

How many children are going to argue over ‘who gets the tablet’.

Nintendo are not selling additional Gamepads commercially yet. However, they will sell consumers replacements for broken Gamepads – the consumer has to contact Nintendo customer services.

@14 “How many children are going to argue over ‘who gets the tablet’.”

Pester-power = sales.

JM

@15

But that misses the point – only one kid can use the tablet in a 4 player game. It’s completely nuts.

@12

Im guessing it’s pretty solid. Nintendo products are usually pretty hardy.

The screen can’t really crack if it’s anything like the second screen on the DS.

You’d prob have to stamp directly on it to break it, maybe im underestimating things, but if you let your children excercise that much anger and destruction when playing videogames, you prob deserve it if they manage to break it.

I suppose, it depends if you let your kids be ‘baby sat’ by the console or TV.

@16

But the other kids have a different perspective on gameplay.

If your kids really have this much trouble sharing, they’re prob a bit to young to play videogames.

It was the same back in the day too, it’s not a new problem thats been created.

Everyone would want the joystick with the autofire buttons when we used to play on the Amiga…

We just took turns

They can break in a million ways, including technical faults, accidental spills and general wear and tear. Not to mention the fact that the more complex something is, the more likely it is to break.

I must have been through at least half a dozen 360 controllers purely because the repeated left thumbstick clicking that sprinting requires in CoD eventually stops working after about 200 hours.

Having said that, I think the D-pad on my 1993 Gameboy would probably still work if I tried it…

That was back when Nintendo actually built quality hardware, though.

@16
What MG said. One of the key points of the controller is asymmetric gaming. I.e. the person with the screen controller has a different objective/perspective in the game. Like hide and seek, one person counts and the others hide.

@19

Yeah, i think your being too precious of it…

Anything can break if you try and smash it to bits.

Im sure it’s strong enough unless you go mental on it.

I can’t believe how many pads on the 360 you’ve gone through!

My original wired one is still working fine!

Hm, something people have touched on is the technical limitation – will the Wii U even be able to render three different scenes at once? (one for TV, one for each gamepad)

@21:

I only use a wired pad for the extra fraction of a millisecond advantage, or whatever, I get over wireless ones.

I was thinking that I should maybe sue Activision to pay for my new pads, because sprinting CoD definitely appears to be the culprit…

I was delighted when MW2 gave you infinite sprint. I’m pretty sure I only used one pad all the way through about 400 MW2 hours, but they changed it back again after that.

Clicking the left thumbstick every 6-8 seconds over a period of about 200 hours is bound to break something though, I suppose.

Let’s hope that for all those run-and-gunners who intend to buy Black Ops 2 on WiiU, Treyarch give you an option to change the sprint button.

@23

My weak thumbs give out before the pad does when it comes to sprinting in COD!

@22
How do you mean? A regular Wii can do four player split screen – i.e. render 4 different scenes at once. If necessary you scale back the complexity of the screens to meet the frame rate targets.

Has it got enough memory? Absolutely. 1080p = ~2m pixels. 720p = ~1m pixels. Each pad has an estimated resolution of 854×480 = ~400k. So main screen @ 720p and two pads is still less than 1080p in terms of pure pixel throughput. This is one of the key reasons the WiiU needs and has more memory than the PS3/360. It has double the memory.

I get that the one with the tablet has a different perspective on gameplay, but of course one part of the game is going to be more fun than the other.

I just can’t see this taking off like the Wii did. Will happily eat my hat if (when) I’m proven wrong.

@26
Agree this is a much harder sell than the Wii – it’s no where near clear enough as it stands. Not sure how you are still having difficulty with how this works though. It’s a pad, you pass it around the room depending on who is “it”. Everyone gets a turn – like many real world games from the year dot.

I get how it works, I just don’t think it will be that simple.

@28
Why wouldn’t it be that simple?

@28

I think the key is; making both the experiences fun.

For example, the Zelda Nintendoland minigame.

The player with the pad is the ‘archer’, long range player. He uses the pad to aim and take out enemies and threats from a distance.

The other players are the ‘melee’ players. They use the motionplus Wiimotes to attack troops on the ground. (If the controls are like Skyward sword, this will be great fun).

So, 2 play styles, both fun! And the key fact being, you have to work together to take down enemies.

As long as they follow this kind of template, everyone should be happy!

@30

Indeed, that sounds great, but then doesn’t that kind of experience limit the usefulness of the shared gameplay perspectives to minigames and party games?

How will they incorporate it into more hardcore, co-op/campaign-led experiences? Can devs make each independent gameplay type fun enough to keep both/all parties interested for the duration of a campaign?

@30
It’s a good point that it needs to be easy to switch around, but given the dev knows what sort of experience they are providing then this should be covered.

@31

Well, thats the Golden question really.

Same could be said about Wiimote, Kinect, Move etc…

Non of them provided better experiences than the pad. I think it really boils down to lazy ports and ‘tacked on’ controls. Wether the Wii U is any different remains to be seen.

At worse we’ll see a lot of minigames and map screens using the second screen, at best we’ll prob have some of the most uniques experiences yet seen in gaming.

It’s a gamble really, im just glad Nintendo like to take them. They are like the Willy Wonka of the gaming factory, although they torture less children.

Zombie U’s multiplayer sounds like a good indication of a dev thinking outside the minigame box.

@31
Party games can be as hardcore as you like. Just because it’s not a campaign or OMP it doesn’t somehow make it non-hardcore. I hate the terms hardcore/casual as they tend to mean something different to every one.

As a campaign type game which could work asymmetrically? How about Dungeons and Dragons. Players use a Pro-pad, Dungeon Master uses the game pad. That could be awesome.

@34

I thought that would be a fantastic idea too!

It could be Balders Gate style, 4 player top down with the Dungeon Master on the Tablet choosing where to spawn beasts / loot etc…

Best dungeon crawler EVAR!!!

@25

The regular Wii rendering 4-player splitscreen isn’t really relevant, it’s rendering each of them at quarter res (presumably as low as 160×120).

While you’re right (I think, I’m not fully up to date on graphics pipelines) that rendering at 1080p v 720p+2*gamepads would require less screenbuffer memory, you’re not taking the computational considerations into account. Rendering a single scene at 1080p requires more memory sure, but rendering three different scenes, one at 720, one at gamepad, one at gamepad, is far more taxing on the processor.

@36
Hence my irrelevant point prior to that . If you have to render 3 scenes it is more taxing, but no more so than split screen gaming. Each scene will obviously not be the quality of a single screen output, but it will be possible because split screen is possible. You just scale things back a bit.