The Wii U made a big splash when Nintendo unveiled the upcoming console at this year’s E3, but while the thought of finally being able to get a Zelda or a Mario game in HD was enough to whet the appetites of most gamers who felt alienated by the original Wii, the true draw of the new console was it’s tablet-like controller. But as potentially innovative as the Wii U controller could be, it had one massive draw back– only one of the new controllers could be used with each system at a time, forcing other players to use standard Wii-motes or linked 3DS’s. Apparently, that’s changed.
The Escapist is reporting that they’ve come into contact with a “trusted executive” within the game industry who says that Nintendo is redesigning the Wii U to support two, or possibly even more, of the new tablet style controllers simultaneously. Since the Wii U’s controller can stream content to and from the core system in a manner similar to cloud-computing, adding additional controller support wasn’t as simple as with more traditional systems. The newly redesigned, multiple controller-supporting Wii U has apparently received a substantial bump in both processing speed and amount of RAM in order to compensate from the increased strain of having to stream HD-quality visuals to multiple controllers simultaenously.
While I’m still not completely sold on the concept of the Wii U, and Nintendo still hasn’t given a proper demonstration of how the controller will change the way we play games, the removal of the one controller limit that previously existed is a good move that eliminates one of the system’s potential limitations before it’s release. After the hasty addition of a second Circle Pad attachment to the 3DS earlier this Fall, it’s nice to see that Nintendo is addressing the concerns of developers and fans before the launch of their next console rather than making haphazard revisions after it’s release.
