Parksey wrote:Whilst it is debatable whether Nintendo have fulfilled the gamepad's potential, I am glad that they at least tried something different. It did offer new experiences, though perhaps it didn't prove as revolutionary as you would hope.
Still, out of the three companies, they are the only ones pushing new control schemes and new ways of interacting with games. The other two are more progressive in other areas - online infrastructure for one - but it is important that we keep trying new things in games and not just accepting that the 360 pad or the GC controller is the pinnacle of gaming controls and nothing will surpass it. We might get failures (though I wouldn't call the gamepad a failure; it is just a control method that is part of a failing console, so never saw the attention or innovation it deserved) but it is important to keep trying.
Besides, the Wii U offers more control options and methods than any other console, so it is a bit much to complain on that front. Only the PC offers more.
Do Nintendo push new control schemes or do they just release new controllers? When E3 rolls around it will have been four years since Nintendo showed the Wii U concept to the public. Since then how many unique games has the Wii U control scheme enabled? If you look at their biggest games last year I can't think of any that would only be possible on Wii U. They seemed to launch with a handful of neat ideas in Nintendoland but they haven't done a huge amount since. At this stage the Gamepad could be filed alongside the Playstation Move and second gen Kinect as technology that could have enabled new types of games but only led to a handful of fun curiosities. Probably most like the second Kinect as MS/Nintendo both pushed up their console prices to include these controllers in gambles that didn't work out all that well.