Wii U Pro Controller designed to secure Call of Duty

NewsPublish Date 16/07/2012 - 3:43pm GMT+1

Activision said they wanted a conventional controller or else their titles would not appear on Wii U.

Nintendo only created the Wii U Pro Controller because of pressure from Activision, Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter told an audience at Develop last week (via Edge).

"I don’t get it," he said. "I think that essentially this is a solution in search of a problem. I mean, somebody had an idea - 'let's make the controller a tablet' - and there aren't many games that are going to take advantage of that.

"Activision never said anything to me, but I know that [for] big games like Call Of Duty they said, 'No, we're not putting it on there if you don't give us a conventional controller'. So they gave in."

Given the popularity of Call of Duty and the franchise's relative non-existence on the Wii, Nintendo clearly wants to avoid missing out once again.

However, Pachter doesn't think Nintendo can repeat the success of the Wii with its follow-up.

"[Wii] worked, they got lucky, [but] I don't think they're getting lucky with Wii U," he claimed.

"I don't think they suck - I just think that they really believe that, 'If we're still novel, everything we do will work'. This isn't going to work."

New stuff to check out

Comments

To add your comment, please login or register

User Comments

Woffls @ Lew3107

Pachter doesn't express any bias against Nintendo, and I say this as a Nintendo fan - a proper fan, not the kind that like totally like loved Nintendo in like the early 90s but they like so lost me, k'now?

Pachter knows more than we do, and he has conversations with lots of very important people about exactly this kind of thing. I don't doubt for a second that someone from Activision said to Nintendo "look, give us a proper controller and we'll do it", but I do doubt that this was the deciding factor in Nintendo's decision to make a traditional controller for the system.

Other publishers will have said similar things, but let's not forget that Wii actually had its own traditional controller as well! It's really not a surprise that this controller exists, and I think Nintendo would have done it anyway. This news story is more about the context of Nintendo's relationship with third parties than what made them make a controller.

Posted 10:55 on 17 July 2012

Batmamerc

Why would Nintendo take pressure from cod they don't need cod it's a franchise that can't last for ever gaming is changing and and cod is becoming middle age with its mid life crisis kicking in now going for a different setting, cod is something they got lucky with just like wii did. wiiU is going to be a success cos it's Nintendo it's different and everyone is afraid of it fed up of ppl saying its not as capable as Xbox or ps3 but either was the wii and that didn't do go down to badly did it. You stick to your boring franchise every year leave wiiU to the innovators.

Posted 09:18 on 17 July 2012

MJTH

I fairly doubt this the case, I mean Activision ported pretty much all previous COD games (except MW2) to Wii with the pointer control scheme. And there are like four COD games on the DS (not saying they were much good), they will make a COD for anything that sells pretty much.

The Wii U Game Pad whilst having a touch screen and gyro sensors, is still in the end technically a normal controller, with a regular layout and a regular amount and types of buttons. Nintendo have also said that the default thing on the second screen is what is on the TV, for the whole playing without needing the TV experience, so they wouldn't need to even program much for it.

The traditional pro controller was just made to better accommodate, two player/ split screen multilayer. Most 3rd party multi platform, split screen games probably won't use the game pad much apart from the odd novelty game mode so one person can have the gamepad and the other can have a pro controller.

If anything I would say it was probably EA pressuring them to make it easier to port Fifa and their other sports game onto the console. I know for a fact that Fifa has pretty big local multiplayer following.

Posted 17:44 on 16 July 2012

Hooded

Michael Pachter, a washed up piece of trash. He either makes up the most outrageous allegations and is always wrong, or the most simplistic, so much so I'm sure his grandchildren wrote some of his posts.

Posted 17:24 on 16 July 2012

Wido

On what grounds, evidence can Pachter speak about this? I'm very sure Nintendo didn't bow down to Activision's demands of a conventional controller to secure Call of Duty titles for the Wii U.

Conventional or not, if other developers have came out and said their pleasure of the new controller, Gearbox Software, why should they be any dispute over this? Besides, would any exisiting Call of Duty player on Xbox, Playstation or PC opt to be play on the Nintendo to play Call of Duty? No, a big fat sodding no.

The online infrastructure and the downloadable content will come into play. so Nintendo have already lost out! Open your eyes Pachter, you great big piss for brains.

Posted 16:32 on 16 July 2012

Lew3107

This loser needs to go and get a real job. I swear, every time I'm on the internet, all I see is this pathetic excuse of a person either bashing Nintendo or advertising his own crap. Someone really needs to sort him out.

Posted 15:50 on 16 July 2012