In Spain last week there was this woman who thought it was up to her to 'restore' a wall fresco in a church that was starting to deteriorate. As the Art Academy box-art joke shows, she messed up (yes, that's what she actually did with it while thinking she was a genious artist), people got pissed.

Wasn't very spectacular news anyway, so I'm not surprised people outside of Europe haven't heard of it.

Two GamePads and four wiimotes or wii u pro controllers.  But the point of the four swords games is that everyone can go off into dungeons  and buildings by themselves with the main screen showing the overworld.

Yes, that is what they're saying.  I'm saying that what they're saying doesn't make sense, though.  It doesn't make sense to completely deny the option of four pads.  Think of it this way: When games have four-player splitscreen, performance is usually lower than it is when playing the same game in single-player or two-player.  Usually the graphical level is downgraded and the framerate is lower.  It's a similar situation with the Wii U's GamePads.  From what we know about how the system works, there shouldn't be any problem with four GamePads if they sent each one a lower-resolution image and cut back on graphical detail in four-player mode.

Yes it would. It's already affected with 2 pads.

The thing is most heavy multi-player games really don't need four pads. Because most are focused on action and changing out weapons etc can be mapped to the buttons of the Pro controller. Two I can see. But the only type of game that would benefit from four player pad local play is an MMORPG type of game where inventory management is heavy. Things like maps it is fine to have only one and the person with the best communication/leading skills can use it and talk to the other players.

As for people being on, I guess since there has been several releases in the past few weeks people are playing games. (Gasp and shock) ;p And that is whay I'm about to do. (Have several things to get through before the winter season is upon us to get some of the back load gone. Plus I'm going to the Escapist's expo this month so I want to get things in order for that. Kind of hoping the Wii U will make its appearence in some form. If it does I"m trying to get my mother nice $2000 digital camera to share pics while I'm there.

That's true of most games we have now, but only because the kinds of games we have now were designed around the controllers we typically use.  The GamePad opens up possibilities for new types of gameplay that we haven't thought of yet.  We'll still see plenty of cool games designed with it in mind, but we can't say for sure what awesome multiplayer stuff devs would have thought of if it could use four pads.

I still think that they should have designed the WiiU with four Upads in mind...

My multiplayer game-time has been mostly co-op with two, I can count the times I've played with more than 3 in my hand (it hasn't been until last year when I finally got my fourth wiimote). So two gamepads are fine, framedrops from 60 to 30 are reasonable and those obviously depend on the type of game.

I'm more interested in the assymetrical co-op than four local multiplayer games, but that's the way I play. And they can still give it as an option, as thekitchensink says, the developer would just need to tweak the performance for multiplayer just like they have done previously.

poll: "Two is fine for my family and friends."

I don`t think not having more than 2 controllers will hurt Wii U. The fun of it`s multiplayer vision is that there is a difference between what one can see and what others can`t. If everyone can do the same than it`s the same old thing.

It's not controller its support for the Pads there are a few launch games that support 5 players at launch (1 pad, 4 controllers), Rayman Legends being one of them. (Rabbids Land probally supports 5)