Nintendo is thinking about their customers, but not in the way we have been hoping for–their wallets. In an interview with Diamond Online, Nintendo’s President mentioned that “there’s a cost” to making multiple controllers available for consumers, as they would be expensive for them to purchase, considering all the features.
The Wii U is technically capable of supporting more than one fancy new controller, but it appears that developers will not put effort into supporting more than one Wii U controller in their games as extra controllers will likely not be for purchase. At least not for a while, I would assume, considering kids do break things.
Now this of course does not mean that games will not feature mutiplayer support as you can still use four Wii controllers in conjunction with the Wii U controller. It simply means you can not play head to head with someone while someone else is using the TV to watch their Soaps. Admittedly, that would be an amazing use, split screen mutiplayer split to each Wii U controller, no more screen watching.
Perhaps in the future Nintendo will rethink this and motivate developers to introduce features that are only available to those that have the money to shell out for an extra, screened controller.
