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Concerns over the cost of producing the Wii U’s GamePad tablet controller almost led Nintendo to drop the idea altogether, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata told the Telegraph at E3 last week.
“Sometime during that final discussion we almost gave up on the idea of the additional screen,” revealed Iwata. “This was due to our concern over the expected high cost, it may not have been feasible to create this and sell it at a reasonable price point for the consumers.”
The Nintendo president also explained that the initial idea was simply to provide an alternative screen to use when the TV wasn’t available.
“We had been discussing what we can do with a successor to the Wii since 2008,” says Iwata. “One way to highlight the shape of its successor was how do you make advancements on the Wii, the other way was to highlight the issues of the Wii. We wanted to further motion control, but doing that alone wouldn’t be attractive to the consumer.”
“It was very fortunate for Wii that a lot of households around the world decided to connect the Wii to the living room TV,” Iwata said. “On the other hand, we felt something was lost. And that is that the TV in the living room is shared by every member of family, and if someone wanted to play a Wii game for a long time period, other members of the family may find that troublesome. So at the early stages of the discussion between ourselves, we came up with the idea of the additional screen.”
It was only later that the functionality we now see was discussed.
Wii U will launch this holiday.
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