people are complaining about the gamepad battery life, and the 3ds battery life, but i see nothing to complain about! just place the piece of crap on a charger when you're not using it i've noticed absolutely NO problems with battery life for both the gamepad and 3ds!

The gamepad is always using up a tiny bit of power for the remote control. Gamepad on or off, you can press the TV button and the menu pops up immediately for it. Maybe that's what is draining some people's batteries?

Agree.

Also I wouldnt be surprised if these game companies use batteries with short life spans to you know cause people to do other things than sit in front of a video game all day. Honestly when my 3DS goes dead that's a signal to me that I need to do something else. As far as the Gamepad goes I have sat and watched my son play FIFA 13 on if for a few hours straight before it dies out at that point he points it on the charger and goes outside to do something. If it wasnt for that he would probably be sitting on the game from sun up till sun down if I allowed it.

Guys! Quit complaining! Nintendo will see it and make a new controller I feel like I'll have to buy! lol jkjk The battery life is kinda sad. Hasn't really been an issue to me though since I have my gaming setup like a PC one. My TV and Wii U are on a desk and my chair is right up to the desk. Probably not good on my eyes.. but I can't see how it's any worse than starring in a computer monitor.

I can see complaining about a 3DS battery as it's portable, you take it on trips, etc. But the Wii U should ALWAYS be next to an outlet(you can't play it without an outlet) then the GamePad life doesn't matter, as you can charge it whenever you want to.

Leave it on the dang cradle while plugged in and quit griping about it

Ya 3DS has some bad battery life when it's up on full blast, but I can usually get 8 hours off of the lowest brightness and wireless off. All the way up, it shoots more to around 2 1/2 hours. I agree with 3Dash though, there should be no excessive complaints about GamePad battery seeing as it's required to be near an outlet to play Wii U at all.

I don't think it's completely unrealistic for some people to want more battery from their gamepads. Not everyone has the charging cable within reach to play while powering the unit (my apartment is almost Japanese-small). I've done 4 hour gaming sessions and had to plug the thing in, so there's definitely a market out there demanding more battery life.

And Nyko has the solution. In fact, the excessively spacious battery compartment in the gamepad hinted that Nintendo knew fully well that people might want more time with the gamepad between charges. Why they didn't include the biggest battery possible was probably more a factor of hitting the target weight than of cost cutting. They must have figured that most people would prefer a lighter controller, and be fine with ~3.5 hour gaming sessions. They're probably right.

Still, great that everyone can be happy now.

Well they could go to a store like Walgreens and get a nice cheap extension cord