If you look back at the last generation one of the more prevalent trends compared to previous generations was the sudden success of peripherals. It doesn’t really matter whether you’re talking about Kinect, Playstation Move, the Wii Fit balance board, the Guitar Hero/Rock Band instruments or even (to a lesser extent) uDraw Studio, gamers demonstrated that they were willing to pay money to buy add-on devices to play games in a different fashion than was possible with the system’s standard controller.

To a certain extent, Nintendo’s support for peripherals using the Wiimote has offered Nintendo some advantages in this regard because add on devices could be cheaper due to the fact that they could leverage a lot of the components that were already built into the Wiimote. Hypothetically speaking, Nintendo could take this design consideration to the next level with their next generation console and build in better communication and (potentially) even build the Wiimote with its own CPU and memory to allow for more complicated add-on devices which were not prohibitively expensive.

The primary failing of add-ons in the last generation was that they were not well supported, and even games that should have shared or reused devices (to some extent) tended to release new add-ons rather than co-operate with another publisher/developer; for example, consider how RockBand and Guitar Hero are (essentially) the same game but use different devices, and developers of fitness games (EA Sports Active, Wii Fit, etc) have similar goals but tend to release new devices to obtain them rather than work together.

Iwata's recent discussion on partnering with other companies got me thinking that (potentially) Nintendo might partner with multiple publishers on particular add-ons to try to create exciting devices that were (moderately) well supported. Consider what would happen if Nintendo, THQ and Ubisoft decided to work together to create a tablet controller loosely based on the Gamecube keyboard controller and UDraw Studio:

Certainly, an approach like this might not be suited for all games; but Nintendo could (potentially) do quite well by offering a handful of "Sandard add-on" devices which were supported by third party partnerships along with an advanced Wiimote/Nunchuck combo for input devices.

That could be something they could do, but isn't Wii2 already confirmed as Project Cafe?

http://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/pdf/2011/110425_4e.pdf

"Wii's successor system" does not sound like an add-on to me.

I was referring to the controller rumors more than the system ...

Effectively that the basic controller on Nintendo's next system would (essentially) be an advanced Wiimote, but the touch screen controller is an addon.

Oh, sorry, I misunderstood.

 What would be the point? An add-on isn't going to get good support. >_>

It's not an add on, it comes in the box.

The entire point would be to create add-ons that get good support by partnering with third party publishers to ensure continued development beyond its initial release.  We have seen add-on controllers sell 20 Million units when bundled with a good game even though they were (otherwise) poorly supported, what impact could these devices had if they saw a dozen good games and a couple dozen adequate games released for them over a couple year period?

What are you smoking?

:P

Nintendo isn't going to make a controller with a touch screen that gives new ways to play and interact with the console and then release it as an add-on.

That's like  releasing Wii with a DA controller and then releasing the Wii-mote and nunchuk as add-ons later on.

I don't think it could work as an add-on. Part of the success of the Wii was giving you the exciting bit and then giving you the means to showcase it right out of the box, namely the Wiimote/Nunchuck combo and Wii Sports. Even if this peripheral were to sell as outstandingly as the Wii Fit Balance Board, not having it standard will stifle support and stifle proper development for the input device.