Nintendo: Wii U Sales Growth Is More Important Than Supporting Two Gamepads

Nintendo won’t be adding support for two Gamepads to the Wii U anytime soon, even though it might. That has Shigeru Miyamoto, designer at Nintendo, announced. The Japanese company would like to focus on selling more Wii U consoles for the time being.

In addition, according to Miyamoto, it is not realistic to currently expect that people will buy a second Gamepad. “Gameplay intended for two Gamepads is currently not in our plans,” Miyamoto told IGN. He said it is technically possible to add support for two Gamepads via a system update. Nintendo promised in 2012 that in 2013 dual-Gamepad functionality and accompanying games would appear.

Miyamoto calls the use of two Gamepads a very interesting feature: ”From a gameplay point of view, it’s interesting because there’s a lot you can do with two Gamepads. The only drawback is that it consumes resources and development time.” According to him, the limited development capabilities make it necessary to make a choice between creating regular games that only use one Gamepad, or games that are based on the use of two Gamepads.

Wii U sales have been disappointing since its release; In total, Nintendo had managed to sell about 6.2 million units at the beginning of May. According to Miyamoto, Nintendo is working hard to boost sales, including through new titles such as the recently announced new Zelda game. The arrival of big titles like Mario Kart 8 seems to have boosted sales, but Microsoft’s Xbox One and Sony’s PS4 are still selling significantly more.