Not a good week here, my friends. Behind-the-scenes shenanigans in both my personal and business life. That's what's been keeping me so busy late at night, explaining the lack of EoD posts. Things seem to be calming down now, hence the EoD return! With that said, I hope you all are having a great week! See you in a few, short hours.
As with any piece of new Nintendo hardware, I am super excited for the Wii U. To think of how little we know now and then pair that with the fact that the system comes out this year, it boggles my mind! In just a matter of months we'll go from knowing very little to a wealth of information. E3 cannot get here soon enough!
While I have a lot of excitement for the Wii U, I can't help but be a little worried as well. I'm not bothered by the power of the system, the tablet controller's design or the software that will/won't come to the system. I'm worried about one tidbit that was announced last year, and it all has to do with local multiplayer gaming.
From what Nintendo said last year, the best we can hope for when it comes to Wii U controller support is two per system. Keep in mind, that's the best-case scenario Nintendo mentioned at E3 2011. We still don't know if the system will be able to hit that two tablet goal. I don't know about you, but the idea of two tablets at most is something that makes me nervous.
I know you can use Wiimotes and Nunchuks along with the Wii U, and I do happen to think that backwards compatibility is great. The issue comes up when you have a group of 3 or more people playing. If you're play a game like Smash Bros., who uses the tablet and who uses Wiimote/Nunchuk? Isn't there going to be a bit of an unfair advantage one way or another, depending on how you look at things?
I'm sure Nintendo will think of some unique ways to pit tablet against Wiimote/Nunchuk, and those experiences surely dazzle. When it comes to more traditional local multiplayer experiences found in games like Mario Kart, Super Mario Bros., StarFox and others, I'm not resting easy. That's not to mention third parties, which don't exactly have the best history of innovating and building for Nintendo platforms.
Is this something about the Wii U that bothers you, or am I just fussing over nothing? Leave a comment and let us know.
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Nintendo should just start selling Classic Controllers that don't hook up to a wiimote. Then they've got not problem. I really don't see what the big deal is. The devs could easily make it so who ever has the upad doesn't have an unfair advantage. Or you know, you yourself makes sure no one has the advantage by choosing to use normal controllers.
It's no different than with PC gaming with normal controllers or with using a headset on Xbox live. Some people have them, some people don't.
The thing is, Nintendo looks at the Upad as something only for adults, while the children use wiimotes. And look on the bright side, this basically means that Nintendo is focusing on online multiplayer. They have to now. And it will probably force a lot of the internet shy people to check out outline gaming.
I'm glad you posted this RMC as its something that always been bothering me. I live for co-op/ local multiplayer. And while yes it does allow for local multiplayer with say the touch controller and a couple of wii remotes, I'm much more interested in games that could see the benefits of multi touchscreen controller play, for local multiplayer co op and the like. Right now with recent rumors flying about wii u's power not being all that has me worried that if its at worst only slightly better or merely 2x to 3x better then current gen stuff, there is no way i can see them getting a second touch screen controller up and running on that thing without some SERIOUS issues. :/
Wii U just needs to bring back freaking Wavebirds, create a new model of those and BAM, problem solve, IMO. Something that simple would quell a lot of my doubts, personally. I love the concept of the tablet, but resting easy on the knowledge that I CAN just use normal, functional controllers for more traditional multiplayer games would be nice.
Wii U + every player (including 1st) using 3DS systems.
Problem solved.
What's that? You don't have a 3DS? Then stop pretending you like video games.
I can see how it could hurt local multipayer. Mainly due to the lack of extra buttons and second analog stick on the wii-motes. Several control schemes means more effort for devs, and we all know they can be lazy.
I dont really care about advantage for the one playing on the wiiU controller. I think the WiiU needs to support at least two tablet controllers. That would solve lost of issues for local multiplayer. For the occasions more people like to join, wii-motes could be sufficient.
Usually Sakurai is a traditionalist. Brawl used the Wii Remote, but it didn't have motion used in there. The only motion ever in that game was just a smash attack. So with the tablet, they probably won't do much with it.
I live for local multiplayer too. Me, my sister and our respective partners usually play on Mario Kart Wii, Timesplitters 3 and SSBB every other day.
Now, in the case of SSBB, the other two usually use the GC controller, whereas myself and my sis' bf use the Wii-motes.
I think if having two UPads works like the above [AKA no breaking advantage, just a different control scheme] then I don't think we have much to worry about.
Nintendo are the only ones supporting local multiplayer anymore [them going full-throttle on 'modern online' doesn't mean this should change]. I think it'll all balance itself out, I'm sure!
At most I think the Wii"U" will pull off at least two Upads. The rest could be 3DSes or if a friend buys a Wii"U" that supports two Upads then they could bring theirs over and hook up both system if this turns out to be Nintendo's solution for local multiplayer. They did it with GCN if I recall for Mario Kart if you bought the GCN LAN adapter thing. :p
If all else fails Nintendo should just go ahead and embrace full online multiplayer, and say bye bye to local multiplayer.
Well, it will really only hurt local multiplayer for games which absolutely require either touch or two screens simultaneously. We are led to believe that the latter will not be the case for most titles, due to the obvious reason that if there were two mandatory screens, the premise of flipping the display down to your tablet wouldn't make any sense.
As for touch, that's more likely to be needed, but I can hardly imagine a situation where, for a multiplayer mode, the game will be unplayable when shifting that control over to buttons/analogue sticks.
Just stock up on those classic controllers, and you should be fine for anything. What I'm most excited about are all the opportunities for asymmetric multiplayer that the tablet will bring. It's quite exciting, whether or not multiple tablets are in play.
I just want the system to always support 4 controllers because it's an amazing idea and jealously issues will surely arise. I remember back in the day when similar issues came from third party controllers or even broken controllers if you didn't have one/forgot to bring your own. I assume the experience to be delivered from it to be amazing and if games develop multi with it in mind everyone is going to want the same powers. I enjoy motion controls, preferably WM+ and it's untapped goodness but I'd like the ability to not be gimped or my friends not being gimped when they could have the foresight to make the system strong enough to include the ability to support more than four. With the ill-suited choice of not including a second Circle pad, if they released the system with only support for only 2 Nintablets what would that then tell consumers? Especially when it was a heavily requested feature.
I really don't think it's going to be an issue. There's the asymmetrical multiplayer that they seem very excited about, but that doesn't exclude standard local. I fully expect a wireless Classic Controller to be released to replace the Gamecube Controller support for more standard multiplayer. The obvious solution to making this fair is to limit the use of the tablet screen during games like these. I don't think this is a waste of new tech: different design for different games. There shouldn't be a one size fits all solution.
Its always about the hardware in the end. With better specs, the U could easily have two or four tablet controllers with complex images each. But not as many would pay for that (I would though), so thats why nintendo will offer two at most.
Two is a good number, but the specs, so far based on rumors (that may or not be true but at least indicate that system can have two tablets), can't do anything amazing or next gen with that (expect lots of wii looking games like the e3 "experiences" if two controllers are used as second window)
Allowing for the use of a 3DS as a Wii U controller should solve this problem.
If a Gamecube and 4 GameBoy Advances can display 5 screens playing the same game, then how much harder can it be for the Wii U and 4 3DS's to do the same thing? I think the 3DS just needs a hardware revision to bring it up to Wii U controller specs (circlepad pro features).
Not really concerned with local multiplayer as much as I was in the N64 days as a youngster. Being 28 now and friends having their own lives far away from me, i'm more concerned with linking up with them online to game. Nintendo seems to have this area covered as a main focus this time around, which is fine by me.
Even in the height of my Wii Sports gaming days with a room full of family members all playing together, we just passed around 1 or 2 wiimotes and shared those between the 4-8 players playing at once. It's not an issue in my mind if they can nail down 2 tablet controllers per console.
Plain and simple, no. The Wii-U accepts the tablet controller, Wii Remote Plus, Nunchuk, and the Classic Controller Pro. If devs can't find a way to make local multi-player work then the devs are doing something VERY wrong.
Only if the 3DS somehow manages to render the game's view on its own screen without draining the U's power, otherwise its just the same thing still limited by the WiiU's hardware, but more expensive and with less buttons. Is not that easy.
Hmm.. never thought of this issue before. That said, I think Nintendo will come up with some good solutions. I do think they could easily create a stronger more gamecube mimicking control scheme for smash bros with the classic controller pro. I has a similar set up. And really that's the only game I'd be worried for local multiplayer.
Perhaps an accessory that could help the Wii-U use more than two controllers? It would be just like buying a multi-tap from the old days. I wouldn't mind that too much. This won't personally be a problem for me because in most multiplayer games me and the family would be interested in we prefer the motion controls to traditional controls, or at least enough of us do that only two tablet controllers won't be a problem.
It bothers me so much that I would rather have the system support 4 controllers even if it meant cutting the power of the system in HALF as the cost of business.
Just plug the Classic Controller/CC Pro into your wiimote for games like Smash, etc... Problem solved.
You don't have one/enough? BUY ONE/ENOUGH.
This is also something I've been worried about, but again it all depends upon factors we simply don't know yet.
How many tablets will be supported? What controllers will be included with the system? (developers will be more inclined to develop for the Classic controller pro if they know everyone has at least one)
This system will change multiplayer for sure, which is why I'm so excited, but what I'm worried about are the traditional multiplayer games like Smash Bros. as RMC said.
Well, the Wii U does support Classic Controller Pro's as well as the Wiimote and Nunchuck so I don't think it'll be that big of a deal, on the flip side, I don't like the fact that I won't be able to use my GC controllers and while I personally think they should come out with new CCP's that don't require you to plug them into the Wiimote.
I only like local multiplayer, and since most people my age don't play on Nintendo consoles anymore, I hardly do multiplayer at all.
Sorry to hear about your personal and business issues. I hope they get resolved positively soon.
As for the tablet. I would be pretty upset if they did not support two. More than that is just icing to me. Of course it would be nice, but I don't expect more than two.
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