Wii U prototype is literally a Wii duct taped together

Nintendo's president revealed this early prototype of the Wii U, which literally tapes together two Wii Remotes and a monitor.

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Noteworthy game developer Chris Hecker generated quite a bit of controversy when he famously described Wii as two Gamecubes duct-taped together. While Wii's graphical prowess has become less of a point of contention over time, similar debates seem to be rising over Wii U's equally-underpowered specs. This time around, it isn't an outspoken developer that's bringing the duct tape--it's Nintendo themselves. In the latest edition of Iwata Asks, Nintendo's president revealed this early prototype of the Wii U, which literally tapes together two Wii Remotes and a monitor. Not only was the early GamePad prototype conceived in such a practical way, Nintendo's Tatsuya Eguchi noted that early software simulations for Wii U simply used two Wii consoles. Takayuki Shimamura from Nintendo's EAD studio revealed that "about 30" software prototypes were developed using this prototype device. Some of those games eventually led to the development of Nintendo Land's various mini-games.

Wii U's precursor

The GamePad was inspired by yet another odd prototype: a Wii Zapper with a screen attached to it (seen above). The genesis of this concept was the desire to have gameplay using both a small screen in your hands and the television screen. According to Eguchi, that was "the start of two-screen gameplay" for Nintendo's internal teams. "We tested gameplay that involved moving the Wii Zapper and having images from the Wii move in sync on a monitor in your hands. It was fairly well received," Shimamura described. "Thanks to this prototype, however, we were able to explain the structure of Wii U—having a screen in your hands—and it became more compelling." Given Nintendo's success with the Wii U so far, perhaps duct tape isn't such a bad thing after all.

Andrew Yoon was previously a games journalist creating content at Shacknews.

From The Chatty
  • reply
    December 7, 2012 11:30 AM

    Andrew Yoon posted a new article, Wii U prototype is literally a Wii duct taped together.

    Nintendo's president revealed this early prototype of the Wii U, which literally tapes together two Wii Remotes and a monitor.

    • reply
      December 7, 2012 11:34 AM

      http://i.imgur.com/xRAg5.jpg

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      December 7, 2012 11:35 AM

      [deleted]

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      December 7, 2012 1:56 PM

      Yep, and Wii Fit started with two bathroom scales.

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      December 7, 2012 2:05 PM

      I love seeing prototype Nintendo hardware. I remember reading an issue of Nintendo Power were they showed a picture of the prototype n64 controller. It was pretty much a snes pad with a very crude analog stick stuck to the bottom of it.

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      December 7, 2012 2:10 PM

      Oh man, that's great. Also that the Wii U was prototyped on two Wiis, haha.

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      December 7, 2012 11:59 PM

      "Wii U's equally-underpowered specs"

      I'd like to know what you're basing that statement on, considering we neither know the specifications of the Wii U nor the slightest tiny detail of the entirely hypothetical and unrevealed consoles you seem to be comparing it to.

      You may think I'm making a big deal out of nothing here, but if games "journalists" ever want to be taken as seriously as real journalists, you can't just pull stuff out of your ass like that with absolutely nothing to back it up besides what? A personal hunch? A vibe you got from a chatty thread? Please.

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        December 8, 2012 12:07 AM

        My bigger issue is that a prototype of the controller - which does basically no processing - is irrelevant to that discussion in the first place.

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          December 8, 2012 12:08 AM

          I mean, really, doing prototyping with equipment on hand is hardly noteworthy, even if the image is cute.

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            December 8, 2012 12:17 AM

            This article smelled to me like they're vaguely trying to make Nintendo look foolish but they couldn't find anything decent to back it up, so they ran with this.

            I'm usually the one defending the artcles from the here-for-the-chatty critics, but I was dissapointed with this one.

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        December 8, 2012 1:58 AM

        If you believe the leaked specs the next Xbox is "only" clocked at 1.6gz with one more core than the WiiU.

        So I guess that will be under powered and a huge fail as well then.

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        December 8, 2012 2:24 AM

        I think he's comparing the Wii U to other current generation consoles that have been on the market for 7+ years. Information about its specs are outlined at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wii_U#Technical_specifications

        Eurogamer also has articles like this in addition to what was listed as a source in the wiki:

        http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-09-21-a-chat-about-the-power-of-the-wii-u-with-the-developer-of-a-wii-u-launch-title

        So I think it's fair to say that we at least have some idea of what's going on in that little box, it isn't a complete mystery.

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          December 8, 2012 4:12 AM

          If he's comparing to the current-gen consoles, then he's certainly wrong, because the Wii U is confirmed to have significantly more RAM and a better GPU than either the Xbox 360 or PS3. CPU is more vague, but judging from the other specs you could estimate the ballpark performance range.

          I'm sorry for ripping into Andrew Yoon over this, but really, can't we wait until we actually have some idea of what the competition even is, before we start ripping the Wii U as woefully underpowered? I don't think that's too much to ask.

          Anyway - I've never claimed the Wii U is a technological powerhouse or that the third-party support is going to be great, or whatever. I'm just pushing for the Wii U to be given a fair shake around here and evaluated on it's merits rather than on some preconceived disappointment with Nintendo.

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            December 8, 2012 7:13 AM

            [deleted]

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              December 9, 2012 7:11 PM

              What? No it doesn't. The two main things that determine graphics quality these days are the GPU and the amount/speed of RAM. The CPU is mostly for AI, physics and general game logic, and the WiiU can do out-of-order execution which makes things a lot faster.

              The ports probably have bad performance because the engines haven't been properly optimised for the WiiU just yet. These are launch titles, give it time.

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