| spemanig said: 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. 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. 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. |
You'd have liked Nintedo to have gone full controller with the Gamepad, and not the half-half compromise they ended up with the final product. Remember that there was always going to be a pro controller for the people who wanted better ergonomics and no screen, but I see what you mean.
The Gamepad was made for the single player, U, that's why the system was designed around just one Gamepad. The asymmetrical gameplay was used to implement the multi-player against the Wii and pro controllers. The problem with the WiiU is this, they focused on U, they limited the Gamepad to only one, mostly due to price of the controllers and hardware required to run them.
A home console second screen setup begins to be interesting when you can share the experience with at least two people and four for multiplayer. Many of us though it was possible when the WiiU was announced, but that didn't happen, Nintendo said that only two gamepads could be possible... hahaha could. Maybe a cheaper to build controller like the one you suggest could have accomplished this, with the smaller screen resolution the hardware might have been enough to stream at least to two different pads.
Another feature people requested at launch was multitasking with two gamepads. One person watching Netflix or browsing while the other could at least play VC games (playing all possible software would be better). A dual task home console with independent screens, that could have also sold some extra gamepads.
