I asked the Activision guy who was playing Call of Duty: Black Ops II at the Nintendo World Store to roleplay with me for a moment.

He'd be the gamer.

I'd be the person coming into the living room saying I needed the TV. This is how I discovered my new favorite Wii U stat.

Black Ops II, like New Super Mario Bros U and other upcoming Wii U games, you see, supports a feature called Off-TV Play. It lets you move the graphics of the game you're playing from your TV to the screen on the Wii U GamePad controller. This feature was designed, in part, to increase the peace in households where a gamer who is hogging the TV is getting in the way of other family members who'd like to watch the TV.

Way back at E3 2011 I saw this feature work with a Zelda tech demo. The graphics snapped from the TV to the controller as fast as you could yank a window shade. But that was a tech demo. It wasn't a full-fledged game like Black Ops II.

I took out my iPhone and launched its stopwatch app. We were going to time this.

He was playing on the TV. I was stomping into his proverbial living room.

"Hey, I want to watch some TV," I said (or something to that effect).

He reached for the + and - buttons on the GamePad, pressed them both. The graphics from the game moved down to the GamePad (which previously had a map, customization and perk options on it). He was now playing on the controller.

My stopwatch app indicated that 6.5 seconds had elapsed.

But he'd fumbled.

We tried it again. 3.5 seconds... and that was with me being slow to stop the stopwatch, so probably more like 3.0 seconds.

Most of those seconds were taken up by him reacting to me. The machine itself moved the graphics to the controller right away.

The Activision guy made a good point, though. The Wii U is fast, but that kind of transfer would probably not be that quick in real life. Why? Because no gamer is going to surrender the TV that quickly.

If there's something the Wii U stands to change about how we game in our living rooms, I think this is it. Good thing the tech is good enough to support it.

http://kotaku.com/5952245/my-favorite-new-wii-u-stat?tag=wii-u

Tv hogging isn't a problem for me as I game in my bedroom. I have been disinterested in this feature from the moment I heard about it.

Interesting stat... nice work lilbroex!

Was this for some sort of press event, or is the BLOPS II demo standard at the Nintendo World Store? Because I've been wanting to get over there since last week when I heard they had Wii U demo units set up there. I didn't think they'd have BLOPS II though... would love to try it out using the new gamepad to see how it feels and plays with it.

The first two comments on the Kotaku page

Any port in a storm for battered fanboys, I guess.

I have two views on this. The first is sweet. I could buy a Wii U for my dorm and not need to buy a tv. The system would be tucked under my desk while I gamed on my bed or the futon.

My second thought is impossible! Either this feature will fail or the Wii U experience will fail. Games like Zombiu try to use the screen for more than maps so how can those games be played without a tv? This feature either turns the Wii U into a handheld proving a second screen is a gimmick or this feature is not supported by most games.

Don't think you can consider the controller a handheld if you can't take it outside of your house.

There will be a balance with the games. Like you mentioned ZombiU will need the TV and the controller, but other games will be playable with the controller only. To my knowledge, most games on launch can use this feature, only excluding the games that used the gamepad heavily (like ZombiU and Scribblenauts).

I don't know. My dad has his TV (that the rest of the family uses) and then I have my TV. I don't even have cable there, it's basically a TV for gaming (and watching movies through the PS3). So this feature is 100% useless for me (:

Had this existed when I was a child, my brother would still be able to walk without a limp.

Sounds great to me. About the same time required to switch to classic mode in Halo: CEA!