| TomaTito said: Easiest and less risk solution would have been to do a WiiHD with pro and wiimote compatibliity, but we return to the Gamecube, hence the risk decision Nintendo took to try and go with the Gamepad. You think a WiiHD would have sold better? Could be, we will never know. But the WiiU also feels to me like a test, a transition between handheld and home consoles. They had to try. |
WiiHD would have obviously sold better, but that's not what I'm getting at. The Wii U, with absolutely nothing changed but a gamepad that actually looked and felt more like a standard controller, would have done better.
I liken the gamepad to Nintendo having a digital conference at E3. The first one wasn't really that good, but that's not because the idea was bad. The execution was bad. With the Wii U, the problem isn't that their controller has a screen. The problem is how they excecuted that concept. It was done poorly.
The following year Nintendo had their Digital Event. Same idea, much better execution. The Wii U gamepad was and still is a great idea, but it was executed terribly.
Criticisms to the gamepad aren't that the second screen is a bad idea, it's that the gamepad is big, bulky, not as comfortable as a standard controller, and has a terrible battery life. That's poor execution. If the gamepad was smaller, designed to look and feel like a controller instead of a tablet, had a better battery life, and could be ignored when you were playing a game that didn't use the screen, the gamepad would be a much easier sell.
No one complains that dual analog sticks get in the way of playing 2D side scrollers. That's because the exacution of analog sticks on controllers have now been perfected so that when you're playing a game that doesn't need them, they're basically invisible to the experience. When someone plays Smash 4 on the Wii U gamepad, that screen is not invisible to the experience. It feels completely different and less comfortable because it wasn't executed to feel invisible for games that don't use that screen.
Look at the DS4's touch pad. You can argue all day about whether it's implemented well in games, but when strictly talking about it's execution on the actual controller, it's executed perfectly. No one has a problem with the touchpad being on the DS4 because it doesn't compromise the erganomics of the DS4. It's completely invisible when not being used. The gamepad doesn't do this, and is a less attractive controller because of it.
With their next console, I think they'll keep the second screen, but they need to execute it better, just like how they executed a digital conference better with the Digital Event. It needs to feel like an upgrade to an existing controller, with new features (the screen) that become as transparent as possible when not in use, rather than a completely different type of controller.
