It's quite clear to me that the Wii U Pad is suppose to mimic the Nintendo ds. A person interacts with a touch screen to play the game. However, I have watched several video of games for the nintendo ds. There weren't any games which took advantage of the touch screen of being able to play the game. . Most games for DS did not take advantage of the touch screen to the extexnt Kirby Canvas. A person draws lines with the touch screen 100% of the time to guide Kirby through the game. Most games did not used the touch screen to the extent Kirby did.

Touch Screen was used very seldomly for the most part for games or wasn't used at all.

If developers didn't care to use the touch screen for the ds, what makes a person think they'll care for the Wii U pad. The pad was a useless 150$ dollars which could had been used to update the graphics. Nintendo really did a foolish move there having a useless touch pad for 150$.

The DS Zeldas were pretty great and made near exclusive use of the touch screens.

Besides, the Wii U is great because I can play Mario Maker while I poop.

Pooping and games. This is where companies went wrong with the Wiiu. It's a great port system. I want to play Kane and Lynch on the toilet.

@laserguy: taking a Kane and Lynch?

IS now the time to have this fight?

And I actually really like it for splatoon. And Zelda games, and playing Virtual console games while the tv is playing a podcast.....

The justification you listed aren't worth it. Think of all the games that are going to be pass over Wii U over Xbox 1 and PS4 because the Wii U was lacking in fire power. Not only that, Wii U doesn't have powerful graphics compared to it's competitors. The 150$ should had been used to more firepower for the graphics.

I-is this some sort of April Fool's thing? I don't think it was a bad idea at all. I actually really love the Touch Pad/Screen for maps, inventories, party information, and things like that because it's convenient. Not every game had to rely entirely on it like Canvas Curse did. In fact, I would argue, that would have probably turned out worse for Nintendo because that just limits the possibilities.

@moywar700: the Wii U might not be able to run graphical powerhouses, but ten years from now I'd bet everyone would agree that a game like Mario 3D World looks better than The Division. A strong art-style will never age poorly; Nintendo games don't really need the extra power anyway. Also, who cares at this point? I'm happy with my Wii U library, as are many others, so why bring up a fight from 2012?

The design is so transparently "design by committee" circa 2010.

"Hmmmm....iPads are popular. Wii's was really big. Xbox 360 level graphics are apparently what everybody wants. Lets throw all of those things together and start printing our own money!"

So don't listen to the rumors. The real NX console is going to be a virtual reality headset with curved displays (think about it) built for binge streaming Netflix and playing Clash of Clans.

Nintendo is losing money on the possible games they could had gotten on the Wii U which is why extra power matters.

I think any company has to be careful about industrial design. There is always a lot of thought to be put in about HOW your system works, what they users experiences will be, and then how much it will cost.

I can only be a armchair quarterback on this, but I saw VERY few games that really used the two screen operation of Wii U as a necessity. If there were 20 games were you could say, "Wow, that second screen experiences wasn't just nice, it was CRUCIAL than I could say it was worth it." But, I think they failed to show in game uses that made that second screen crucial to play. They rushed into this gimmick without actually knowing how it would be used even for their own games or how useful it woudl be to gamers of all types.

Thus we are left with seeing the Wii U pad as an unnecessary expense and a distraction form the Wii U itself. Without that Pad Nintendo could have easily slashed the price of the Wii U and not lost money. In fact I think the lack of a useful 'joypad' controller being the standard controller made ports of multi-platform games less desirable to put on Wii U. Again this is armchair quarterbacking, but I could easily see how Wii 2 with a packed in Wand and a packed-in Pro Controller would have been cheaper to manufacture, more have been flexible in pricing, and would have been more desirable to publishers and developers.

I would even say the hints that NX might not be a straight forward console with a straight forward joypad - spells its doom. But, only time will tell in that regard.

@jaypb08: Nailed it. Art style is what lasts and I'm going to be much more likely to go back to Nintendo games in later years because of it.

And It's not like the controller added some exorbitant cost to the system and allowed for some potential interesting uses. It's about adding utility, not needing every game to use dual screens allowed for a much wider library and is what made the DS so successful. But you still did have those Canvas Curse experiences which were a very cool implementation of it.

The Wii U has been the only console worth owning this generation. IMO. The gamepad is one of the reasons why.

@moywar700: true, what the wii u really needed was more heavy ordinance.

The controls for those two games are pretty much the sole reason they're two of the only Zelda games I couldn't finish. I absolutely couldn't stand those controls, it was a needless attempt to "innovate" despite the fact that standard controls had worked great for 2D Zelda games for 20 years. Everything good about those games was in spite of the controls.

The Wii U is great because you can play games on it while you watch Netflix. It didn't really need to do a DS like thing where you use both screens. Besides, it makes SMM work so well.

Is this actually for real? There were HUGE amounts of games that used the touchscreen on the DS to great effect. But because you've "watched some videos"...... Ah forget it.

I think it could have been fantastic if Nintendo got decent third party support.

today's kids gravitate towards touch screens, in the long run controllers are probably becoming antiquated if for no other reason than today's kids aren't using them

Nintendo had the right idea, they just didn't execute it well enough.

fucking whatever. i haven't used my wiiu in over a year, but i always thought the pad was neat and always felt good to hold, considering the size.

As a PC gamer the Wii U was the console with the most exclusives I actually wanted to play.

Playing games on the Wii U pad display was my favorite feature of the console.

The Wii U was the biggest financial failure of the three consoles.

The Wii U was the only console I found worth buying.

Only one of those points dominates most conversations around the Wii U.