It's fair to say that there has been quite some confusion about Nintendo's new console, Wii U, since it was first shown to the press and public at E3 last week. Nintendo themselves admitted that the confusion as to whether the new system was a hand held or a console was their fault, there were precious few shots of the new console leading people to believe that the controller was the Wii U itself. That confusion was cleared up quickly by Nintendo but unfortunately there's one other, rather important, question that has arisen from the E3 conference which Nintendo have as of yet not quashed or confirmed. Is the Wii U a single player console?
Speculation is sometimes a wonderful, if rather pointless thing. All the shots and videos of the Wii U in action last week were of a single Wii U controller being used in conjunction with the console. Does that mean that only one of these touch screen controllers will work with the Wii U at any time? Is there another multi button controller that will be compatible with the Wii U, that Nintendo are yet to announce? Or is it just that they didn't have any multi player games to show off two controllers working at the same time? whatever the reason behind it all Nintendo have confused us all yet again.
Personally the only reason i can see Nintendo only giving you one touch screen controller is simple. Cost. It's common for consoles to only supply one controller as standard these days, and with the high cost of the Wii U controller is it that hard to believe that in order to keep cost down, Nintendo will only supply one with every console? I very rarely play multi player games on the same console any more so why do i need more than one controller anyway?
From a technical point of view there is no reason why the Wii U couldn't support 2 touch screen controllers, Even if both were streaming information to their touch screen displays. PS3 has to process two seperate images at the same time in order for it's 3D games to work properly and the Wii U is as reportedly as powerful if not more so than both the PS3 and the Xbox 360. In theory it could stream both players POV's to their individual controllers, or in some games where you inhabit the same screen, such as FIFA or the upcoming Street Fighter x Tekken, you could have extra control's and information streamed to your screen instead.
Michael Pachter, an analyst for Wedbush Morgan was recently quoted by IGN as saying that Reggie Fils-Amie, Nintendo America's President claimed that Wii U would support two of the touch screen controllers if required.
"They were particularly unclear about whether the console would support more than one of their tablet-like controllers; Mr. Miyamoto said no, but Reggie said yes (to me in a meeting). Obviously, they intend to ship the console with only one of these controllers, so it is unlikely that anyone will develop games that require two, but they were not clear whether the capability exists."
So developers are making two player games for the Wii U but not games that support the use of two touch controllers? Doe's this mean that another controller, sans touch screen, will be available for the console? despite all Wii hardware working on Wii U i wouldn't want to play Tekken using the wii-mote or even the classic controller. Not enough buttons and not anywhere near as comfortable to use as either of it's competitors controllers.
Whatever the answer to this conundrum you'll find the answer here, as long as Nintendo actually know the answer...
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