Reggie Explains Why The Nintendo Wii U Didn't Utilise Dual GamePad Support

I still remember a kid around here that thought just because Nintendo announced that dual gamepad support was technically feasible and a possible option for a future project, that Nintendo had confirmed it was going to be happening.

I believe he was still insisting that was going to be the case even in the early days of the Switch, lol.

Dual gamepads would've been much more feasible if the console was:

A. Cheaper than (or worth) $299 and $349
B. Didn't use the at-the-time dying Wii branding
C. Included multiple gamepads in the box or cheaper gamepads that could be sold separately
D. There were good commercials for the Wii U
E. Game & Wario never released
F. During the first few months of release, Shigeru Miyamoto walked into your house thanking for buying a Wii U and gave you a free Wii U gamepad for being an early adopter.

Honestly: Nintendo noticed how bad the Wii U was selling, so they never decided to sell separate Wii U GamePads or make games that required (more than one) gamepad. I think Nintendo went very quickly to develop the Switch / NX after the first year of the Wii U.

If only. Such a great system but it couldn’t find its audience.

Wii U Gamepad idea was interesting and bad idea at the same time.
The good part it was like console version of NDS.
The bad part, the battery still depleted quickly even if you don't play Wii U for long time.

nintendos always had this "go big oh go home" mentality with games. they mustve wanted a game that takes full advantage of dual gamepad play and not just as a novelty option

reminds me of why they never want to make a new f-zero unless they have a brand new idea to go with it, which i get to a degree. we've had many case where a series returns after so long just for people to be underwhelmed at how little its changed or evolved

I enjoyed my Wii U, remember getting it day one as with all Nintendo consoles N64 and onwards.
Got these games day one as well and thought not a bad launch day line up.
New Super Mario Bros. U
Nintendo Land
Sonic all star racers transformed.
ZombiU
It also came in handy if you wanted to play off the tv.

Amazingly my daughter purchased one only 3 months ago for £60 with about 6 good top end AAA games and she’s really enjoying it.

I liked the gamepad but the display quality was unfortunate. Even the Switch Lite fixes that problem now, but similar to the original GBA, I wish it had come with a good screen to begin with. But that’s Nintendo for you

The GamePad should have been sold separately in the first place. Yes, it was a good concept with lots of potential, but basing the entire console around it was a terrible move on Nintendo's part.

It should have, honestly. Not saying it would have saved the console, but imagine playing that one starfox wii u minigame with co op gamepads. It would have been mondo fantastico!

It still could have potential if we can get the switch to be compatible with the Wii U to become an extra gamepad.

Dual GamePads is not a good idea. The point of the Wii U was asymmetric multiplayer. Nintendo builds game consoles around new types of gameplay. This is the company philosophy.

For the Wii U, that new gameplay concept meant that one player gets his own screen, while the other players watch the TV and use traditional controllers. This is the core concept, and it is a strong one. Nintendo Land showed how fun and unique this idea was.

Perhaps had it released during the Switch (current) era where indie games could have fueled that creativity and risk taking, something like the Wii U could have been successful. As it was, AAA 3rd parties looked at it and were not willing to take the financial risk to develop unique software that could take advantage of that core concept of asymmetric multiplayer.

More RAM to hold render targets, rendering to said render targets, and having to stream another video signal would limit what devs might want to do on a system that was already pretty limited.

The only reason dual GamePads was a good concept was just to level the playing field for certain games; fortunately, Nintendo opted to just release the Pro Controller, because most games didn't need that asymmetric functionality.

The Switch could have enjoyed similar functionality to this if only it had Download Play like the DS/3DS before it rather than leaving developers with no other option but to make a separate piece of software in order for players to be able to play together asynchronously without having to buy multiple copies of the game, and I feel that this is one of the biggest missed opportunities with the Switch.

No unique games is the big one. This is Nintendo in a nutshell: giving their products a unique feature, but it won't be used, or is actually more useless than how they wanted you to believe. Kuch HD Rumble kuch, IR laser on joycon kuch kuch.

@KazooieTooie : HD rumble is used quite often, even by third parties, but the IR camera? I'm only aware of maybe 3-4 major games that actually use it.

I loved my Wii U, it really was under appreciated. I'd love Nintendoland and ZombieU to come to switch

I think the Wii U more than any other console launched in a real limbo-era in terms of technologies. WiFi, hardware accelerated video decoding and LCD screens were good & cheap enough to make streaming low-latency 480p to a controller screen feasible in a way that wouldn't have been possible a couple of years prior. But on the other side flash and mobile hardware was well short of making a reasonable spec portable machine

Go back in time and put yourselves in that position of what to launch to follow the Wii. Do you launch a straight up "Wii HD", literally what the Wii U was minus the GamePad and hitting the Wii's $250US launch price. Or do you go Switch early and instead of the 3DS and Wii U release a portable Wii+, i.e. basically the Vita but with Skyward Sword on day 1. Or do you try to do both and make the Wii U

..... in hindsight? Wii HD would probably have been the best bet. But it was also the safest bet and the least interesting. Personally I'm glad they gambled on Wii U, I had fun with it. I would've liked it if they had made the controller a bit more sleek but

@Atariboy the Wii U (Miiverse) really brought out some curious types, didn’t it? what a generation..

Is there enough of an install base for Switch to utilize the IR camera? Can it give proper pointer controls in Metroid Prime games? I hope there is a grand reveal of unused functionality. So far, games emulating IR pointer controls with motion have been trash.

Enjoyed the WiiU very much, loved the intro tune of Nintendoland until the OS got quicker and the tune was shortened.

On the gamepad: what I consider a missed opportunity is to be able to download small games to the gamepad and be able to run them standalone, without the base station.

@skywake I think the Wii, and by extension that particular era of gaming, was always going to be a tough act to follow. The Wii was actually more like a storm that blew in a went, than an act or typical console generation up to that point. Nintendo really needed to produce a fine wine to follow on from the Wii (the Switch was eventually just that), but the ageing process was not there and Nintendo had to issue the Wii U. No doubt it was a compromise of what Nintendo’s R&D had probably envisioned about a hybrid design

@NinChocolate The Miiverse artists were often amazing. Also I actually still keep in touch with quite a few people I met on Miiverse and even have three Monster Hunter buddies I met on there. 😎

The only downside to the Wii U having multiple controller options is that it felt like someone got screwed over when they are handed some off brand third party Wii Remote.

Let’s be honest didn’t we already know this?
Did he also mentioned the hardware compatibility?

@TowaHerschel7
Yeah I kinda like Miiverse, they could have build it out to similar concept like Discord. But I think Nintendo doesn’t have the interest linking there players over internet. Not yet!

Lol so that was just a very roundabout & misleading way of saying "the Wii U didn't have the CPU & RAM performance to fully drive two GamePad's at once" (aka the ACTUAL answer for why this never happened, regardless of what Reggie says).

Hell, it BARELY even had enough CPU grunt with its ridiculously ancient, underpowered, & underclocked IBM PowerPC 775 based CPU (aka, basically just a slightly beefed up [bigger & faster caches] GameCube CPU, but then lazily copypasta'd together 3x times to match the Xbox 360's 3x CPU core count w/ the absolute littlest effort, though w/ ONLY HALF as many CPU threads bc no SMT support!) to drive a SINGLE GamePad while also running a late period, AAA 7th-gen HD game on the main display! (And usually running worse than on said Xbox 360 despite the Wii U's WAAAAY faster/newer GPU + 4x the RAM). Let ALONE having to do the former part LITERALLY TWICE!

Reggie can lie out his ass by deliberate omission by pretending this was a core feature that was only never used because of the system's popularity (aka total lack thereof), but anyone with even HALF of a basic technical understanding of how the Wii U works would immediately know this is COMPLETELY technically unfeasible while running a modern HD game. 🤷‍♂️

Having to drive even ONE GamePad during a AAA HD game was hard enough on the drastically underpowered Wii U hardware and barely even worked as is, let alone trying to drive two GamePads!

I remember at E3 2012, Nintendo showed that dual GamePads could be used in their presentation, so this is something I was always waiting for.

@MattyBH85 But the games are good on the Wii U, compared to the “through anything on the Switch” Library.

I felt certain that eventually the Wii U would get two gamepad support but I can understand why not. I liked the functionality and robustness of the gamepad but it was a bit it felt unnatural and large in the hands even if it didn't play that way.

The first question ppl used to ask me about the Wii U is if you could take the Gamepad pit and about or even to another room. That was in launch year as well. The Switch's foreshadowing concept loomed large even back then.

Personally have a soft spot for it.

@TowaHerschel7 Nice! I didn’t make any lasting connections on MV but it was sure entertaining!

Another case like the vitality sensor. Nintendo made the mistake of announcing something, when even they didn't know how to implement it.

Damn someone asked Reggie a new question!

Makes sense. The WiiU barely got any shelve space at shops. No shop would waste shelve space trying to sell second gamepads, so your option would either be to order one online or do the almost impossible task of finding a second person that owns a WiiU. Any game that would require a second gamepad would be DOA.

@Silly_G You're so right. Download play and Streetpass were two of the coolest features of the DS family. They made traveling with a 3DS so much fun. I love my Switch, but I really miss those features.

@Madao I think this is the crucial factor here. Any game that leaned on multiplayer with a second gamepad would have had a severely limited pool of customers. They did a few things like that in the Cube era and it was disastrous in terms of sales. Now that games cost so much more to develop there was no way they were going to take that chance.

If they'd kept selling the Wii U long enough, we might have seen those games come out. But it was fait accompli when the console tanked so quickly.

The only time dual Gamepad use was mentioned (to my knowledge) was if you were selecting plays in Madden ‘13 so it wouldn’t display on the TV like it normally does. But like Reggie said, not a big enough install base plus I’m sure I’m one of the very few who bought the game.

I'm still waiting for hackers to get mobile devices and tablets to work as gamepads for the Wii U.

@JasmineDragon : Good times travelling with my 3DS. The "always on" local wireless multiplayer of Pokémon X & Y was responsible for an encounter that I had with somebody on the train one day, and he helped me evolve my Seadra.

StreetPass was an awesome concept that was often underused, and one of my more memorable experiences was that I encountered somebody, and then inadvertently encountered them again about 200km away some months later. We never met in person though.

Download Play also sold me on a lot of games that I probably would not have considered otherwise. While the Switch's tabletop mode makes up for its absence at times, it's not quite the same.

Never mind two GamePads: There weren't enough games that offered compelling use of one GamePad. That, and marketing, were where Nintendo dropped the ball.

When the Wii U first came out (and I didn't get one on launch, for the first time for every Nintendo console since the N64) I thought you needed four GamePads for four-player games, and was pretty confused that nowhere seemed to sell them.

Honestly, while it seems hip and trendy to bash the Wii U, which is more or less the easiest target in the history of gaming, it restored my interest after several years ignoring new stuff and playing classic consoles, and I have fond memories of it for that reason. The fact that it worked with Wiimotes and anything that plugged into them made it a great party machine given you already had all the controllers.

It wasn't a bad machine as a concept and wouldn't have been anything like the flop it was if it had ridden the crest of the WiiWave and come out earlier with some must-have launch games and maybe a pack-in HD remaster of some kind. But Nintendo were busy with the launch of the 3DS, which they botched too. I think the hybrid approach of the Switch was something they wanted to do for a long time and dang if they didn't pull it off.

Multiplayer Scrabble.. there's your game.

I turned my WiiU into a monstruos retro machine, i love it to bits🤩

No unique games for such a feature? Yeah right I was there during the Wii U era and kept discussing how a new Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles and Zelda Four Swords Adventure would work perfectly with dual Game Pads multiplayer. Nintendo just throw those ideas out the window for some reason and skipped on the opportunity.

Perhaps this may explain why Crystal Chronicles sucks so much on Switch and PS4 cause the game was meant for second screen multiplayer, instead Square Enix goes with online play which would had work just fine if it give the same benefit as local multiplayer like what the GameCube did, a system that doesn't support second screen gameplay but got one anyways via GBA.

My only theory why they never did it was cause it may had been expensive for them to produced a standalone Game Pad since the thing is literally a handheld just with controller and remote functions.

The only games I can think of where two gamepads would have been a benefit is if they'd added multiplayer support to the original Super Mario Maker, or for the local multiplayer mode in Splatoon 1. Whoever uses the Wii U pro controller on that game plays with a massive handicap due to the Wii U pro controller not having motion controls for aiming and no map screen.

BillShut 😂

It's pretty much what @Cooe said. Someone high up at Nintendo admitted this years ago after Nintendo said it would be selling extra Gamepads in Japan after launch but never did. There are several mini games in Nintendo Land that felt like they would have been better w/ multiple gamepads, Zelda and Metroid off the top of my head. With the TV being used by another person every couch co-op game would be better, Smash, Mario Kart, it would be local wireless multiplayer. No games is a cop-out, they just couldn't get them to work, and/or maybe justify the cost. But they sold the Balance Board for $90 for basically 1 game so...🤷

@mereel The problem is most games don't need a second screen. Asymmetrical multiplayer? This leaves out ALL single player games. The reason the Switch is successful is because it's selling point can be applied to ALL games. Even now, you can do asymmetrical multiplayer on trh Switch, there are over 7,000 games, and you can't go on one hand how many games use that feature.

@Rosalinho I agree that being compatible with the Wiimote is a strength of the Wii U. Even in single player.

This year I found by mere coincidence a Wii Classic Controller (the original, not the PRO version) and it's been a blessing for the Wii U Virtual Console. When I use it with the Game Boy Advance games I have on the system, it feels as if you play them as the Game Boy Player on the Gamecube originally intended.

As for the GamePad topic, I'm gonna say I'm baffled that both Nintendo and Bandai Namco wasted the opportunity to bring Pac-Man Vs. to the Wii U.
Granted the latter company did it on the Switch, but it requieres 2 systems. At least to make up for that, if you play with Gamecube controllers on a docked system and a Switch Lite, you can get an experience close to the GC/GBA original.

Another idea where I can see the use of 2 GamePads is if they had made a Pokémon Stadium-style game and had a screen for each player for their commands.
Maybe also in something like a multiplayer Project Giant Robot, the TV would show a third person view and each GamePad a first person view of each player. Though the question is if the Wii U can handle something like that.

Regardless, the Wii U is still a solid system despite its shortcomings.

@Cooe This is literally the only comment I've seen where someone knows what they're talking about.
Totally agree, reggie is full of crap.

The only technically plausible scenario I can see is if it is used strictly as a controller with the screen off, or the gamepads have identical screens.

Even as a dev back then, the extent of knowledge about gamepad communication was severely limited, and was basically "here's how to push something to that video output" and nothing about it was being handled.

I would be willing to bet that the gamepad screen was an AD-HOC closed connection tied to a gamepad device key and not able to work as a multicast. I don't think a firmware update would be able to change that either as I don't there was ever a gamepad update, which I suspect would be neceasary

@Hask I pretty much thought that the Gamepad itself should have been a 3DS connectivity, just like the Wii with the DS & the Gamecube with the GBA.

@HotGoomba The commercials were the stuff of cringe nightmares. and the wii. how come they did not saw the declining sales of the wii.

@PtM The stuff of nightmares!

@Kawaiipikachu It would have been preferable to have a controller designed specifically for use with the Wii U. If you were using the 3DS, you would have to deal with the lack of a right analog stick (at least on older models), lesser resolution, shrunken screens, and less ergonomic feel. It would have been a nice option to be able to send the GamePad's signal in a downgraded form to the 3DS, but I still think that the GamePad should have been released as an accessory for the Wii U.

@Silly_G Tbf Ring Fit Adventure is one of those games and it has sold a lot.

Hi.

I love Reggie. Saw him speak once, really high energy, really sincere. I also know people who worked for him, and they all said he was a great guy.

But he left Nintendo like 3 years ago. About half the traditional life cycle of a console. It's ... kinda silly that we get 100 times the articles about Reggie then all other Nintendo CURRENT executives put together.

I also want to be careful in how I say this. Reggie isn't LYING. He's not misleading us. He's not making stuff up. But as the he worked for NOA, he would have next to no access to the actual decision making process around hardware development. That would been conversations happening exclusively at Nintendo, and he, as the President of a (I can not stress this enough) independent subsidiary that BY LAW can not be directly involved in or party to day to day operations of it's parent company, would have been getting fact sheets every few months that were only slightly higher level then press releases.

So this isn't even high level insider information. This is him recalling what Nintendo told him at the time, and adding what he's learned after the fact to fill int he narrative.

I just hate to see an article knowingly ignore the genetic fallacy, and the rest of us just completely eating it up. If you want to talk about Reggie 24/7, maybe focus questions around the operation of NOA exclusively, the thing he is actually an expert on. If you want to talk about hardware design and high level decision making at Nintendo ... I don't know, maybe ask someone who works at Nintendo?

Our Wii U the was technically powered on more then our tv. It was our family entertainment for several years. Yes, has a ps3/4 and used them for the occasional games Wii U missed and I could play on those. However, for what it was, a supplement tv/gaming console, it has a great library of 1st party and indies, some random decent 3rd party games, Netflix, YouTube, browser, et…. It was the entertainment center piece for my wife and kids as well as my 300+ games. I was so happy botw still came to it so I didn’t have to share my new switch.

Today, we have 4 switch’s, 2 vr headsets, and then there is our Wii U, still sitting next to the Xbox 1, which I have to swap hdmi cables more often then you’d think so my kids can use it between my occasional elder ring gaming.

@HeadPirate Good luck finding anyone who works at Nintendo that is willing to spill the beans. They've got secrets locked up tighter than the Disney vault in Fort Knox.

I'm currently playing my Wii U but don't think the Gamepad itself was a good idea. Most of the games I play on a different controller and the Gamepad sits there unused. Playing for longer periods on the Gamepad gets uncomfortable too. I still love the Wii U though.

Controller was just too expensive to be sold alone and with Wii U owners only ever likely to own one, it's like he said, it wouldn't have made sense anyway.

Plus the video encoding chip on the system (that encodes on the fly the feed streamed to the controller) is what it is, a brilliant piece of kit for its time to be able to do what it does with no meaningful lag, but it was only ever really meant to output 848x480p60, and no more than that. It probably could have done 2 848x480p30 streams, or maybe half resolution 60Hz refresh or something and even that seems tricky cause you're forcing the encoding to not rely on frame persistence or frame difference from the previous one to speed up encoding so it would have been a nightmare to implement anyway.

Technically feasible yes, but I can't imagine any multi gamepad experiences would have been anything more than having different 2D information displayed on different controllers, no high-end different 3D scenes displayed on 2 different gamepads at the same time and running well if you know what I mean.

It’s a shame the system wasn’t more popular. I bought it as soon as it was released, and never ran out of memorably good first person games to play on it.

For some reason, all my favourite systems are the ones that were not popular. My least favourite are Sony or Microsoft consoles.

@mrMike Agreed! The Wii U walked so that the Switch could run.

We still like Mario Maker 1 over Mario Maker 2. The gamepad + TV combo is the best way to design and play-test levels.

@PAAGaming i got mine when the Wind Waker Bundle launched. No regrets!

Because the WiiU pad sucks. You can't take it more then a few feet away from the TV.

They don't sell replacements or batteries so you're doubly screwed if something goes wrong with it.

The charging thing for it sucks.

And it's too big and unwieldy to hold comfortably.

It's the worst controller Nintendo has ever made. Yes even the crappy joycons are second to the gamepad. I wish it had been a secondary controller or accessory, and not the primary way to access your WiiU.

@HotGoomba I own Game & Wario Physical on Wii U.

I got Wii U at launch and never regretted it. Bought nearly 80 physical games, and ~160 eShop games for it.
Connected a external HDD, so i could have everything installed at the same time.

Switch is still missing several of the best Wii U features.

I wish they sold Wii U Gamepads on stores, they would be less expensive now, that a gamepad costs more than the console, and you need one to go to settings and they never bothered to make a firmware update so you can use the Pro Controller for this.

@EriXz
Me too. Nintendo's best console! With Bloopair I am using a Switch pro controller, Switch online SNES controllers, and I use GameCube controllers with it via the official adapter. It plays 6 generations of games, and the latter three are run natively. Even a modded Switch can't do all of that.

@PAAGaming
I played the heck out of my GameCube. I didn't realize until recently how poorly it sold. It only sold a little more than the Wii U. I honestly don't understand how so many people missed out on such a great console.

@Atariboy

https://www.destructoid.com/wii-u-dual-gamepad-support-coming-well-after-launch/

“Games need to be built that can take advantage of the two GamePad controllers,” said Nintendo of America’s president to Gamasutra. “It’s going to be well after launch for those game experiences to come to life.”

Well, Reggie basically confirmed it back in the day, it doesn't sound very ambiguous to me.

@NatiaAdamo

Can I ask what it is exactly you're basing that on?

Nintendo dose pretty revealing Japanese language interviews all the time. There is still a pretty huge base of magazine over there on monthly release, and your cover article needs to be an exclusive, generally with someone high up at Sony, Nintendo, or someone developing a hype game.

Having been to press events in the US and Japan, I wouldn't say Japanese companies are more tight lipped ... they are more likely to tell you "I'm not saying anything" then give you some run around non-answer, but that's about it. In fact Nintendo generally provides hands on stuff, trained PR people, and face to face time on a level well above anyone else. Miyamoto has spoiled tons of details about unreleased hardware, generally while talking about how the new dies can do music and sound processing even better ...

The information is out there, we're just not getting it ... likely because they would have to pay someone to use one of their print articles or send a reporter to Japan, when it's free to just write an article anytime your "Reggie said anything" google alert goes off.

A fantastic console with some bad decisions and poor marketing. Better than Switch under certain aspects.

I couldn't even replace my gamepad, come on Nintendo, it should have been sold separately.

@crudfish an absolute dream of an emu machine indeed

@sanderev just like the Switch Pro has been in development for a while now

@Atariboy I bet he's pretty eireate about that....