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Former Nintendo of America boss Reggie Fils-Aimé has explained why the Wii U, Nintendo’s ill-fated console, didn’t support dual GamePads.
Speaking in an interview with MinnMax, Fils-Aimé said:
“What was interesting is that with the Wii U, there was a full development plan for all of the interesting interactions and all of the interesting capabilities that the system could do, and so in that case, technically could multiple gamepads communicate with a Wii U? Answer was ‘yes’, but the install base never got large enough that that type of implementation made sense.”
Fils-Aimé also explained that it wasn’t just the consoles low install base that kept Nintendo from allowing dual GamePad support. It was also that Nintendo never had “a game where you needed another GamePad in order to have a great experience.”
Fils-Aimé added:
“In order for those initiatives to come to life (at least from Nintendo’s perspective) there needs to be a game that drives that implementation that enables the player to see why you would need a second gamepad as an example, and that game creation process is just so critical.”
So there you have it. The Wii U may not have set the world alight in sales. But the reason that you couldn’t play it using two GamePads also had to do with the games. Of course, if the sales were a lot better, then that game may well have come along. So the issues are hardly inseperable.
Fils-Aimé also recently explained the reason for the lack of a Western port of Mother 3.
