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Nintendo's idea for Wii U GamePad was originally a prototype for Wii

by rawmeatcowboy
08 October 2012
GN Version 4.0
A portion of an (old) Business Week interview with Nintendo's Kenichiro Ashida...

BW: The DS handheld gaming console, released in 2004, is now the hottest-selling portable video game machine. Did the success of the DS influence your design decisions?

Ashida: The DS had a huge impact on the Wii's design. We had the DS on our minds as we worked on the Wii. We thought about copying the DS's touch-panel interface and even came up with a prototype. But then we rejected the idea, since the portable console and the living-room console would have been exactly the same.

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Well, that just goes to show that Nintendo wasn't exactly spurred on by the success of the iPad when thinking about the Wii U. It may have helped pushed them in that direction, but it was an idea they had many, many years ago.

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