The Wii U generation left us with many unanswered questions. And, knowing the secrecy with which Nintendo usually treats its products and franchises, many of these will never leave the company. However, there is one Wii U feature that was announced before its launch but was never implemented. In a recent interview, Reggie Fils-Aimé, former president of Nintendo of America, has resolved this dilemma once and for all.
What happened to multiplayer on Wii U?
It's been 11 years since the Nintendo Wii U was unveiled at E3. And it seems unbelievable that Nintendo had one of the biggest flops in its history on its hands and didn't realize it until years later. The Wii U presentation was poorly executed. It was confusing, and this mistake overshadowed the entire generation of this first attempt at a hybrid console. By focusing on the gamepad and not showing the console itself, viewers thought the Wii U was simply a controller. In fact, many media outlets even went so far as to claim that the Wii U was nothing more than a controller with a screen for the original Wii.
But even those who fully grasped the concept would ultimately be disappointed by the Wii U. One of the first questions fans asked Nintendo was whether this innovative gamepad could be used in multiplayer mode . In other words, whether two of these controllers could be used to play on a single screen. Nintendo said yes, but this feature was never implemented.
13 million consoles sold? It was not worth implementing
According to Reggie, the Wii U had a very interesting development plan, of which we probably never saw even half. Technically, the console was capable of communicating with multiple gamepads simultaneously . However, Reggie Fils-Aimé says this feature was never released due to the console's low adoption rate . From this, we can assume the possibility existed, but it required considerable work to implement. And, faced with low sales, Nintendo decided to scrap it.
In the same interview, Reggie defends his position by saying that Nintendo never created a game that needed another controller with a screen to maximize the experience. However, we disagree. Mario Kart 8 itself could have significantly benefited from this feature. However, we had to wait until it arrived on the Nintendo Switch to be able to play this way.
According to the former president of Nintendo of America, for a system to reach its full potential, it needs a large user base. Developers started with such low expectations for the Wii U that they never even considered the possibility of playing with two Wii U controllers simultaneously. This, combined with the console's short lifespan, created the perfect storm. Fortunately, the Nintendo Switch is turning out to be exactly what Nintendo envisioned for the Wii U. However, we'll never know what might have happened if Nintendo had been able to effectively communicate to the public what that generation was all about and how far they could have pushed the hardware.