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| Nintendo has been thinking of this for years. |
During the development of the Wii, Nintendo created a number of different prototype controllers and eventually settled on the Wii Remote. Surprisingly, one of the rejected prototypes was inspired by the design of the DS and featured a touchscreen, much like the Wii U GamePad.
In an interview with Kenji Hall of Business Week shortly before the launch of the Wii, Shigeru Miyamoto and designer Ken'ichiro Ashida were asked about the development of the console. Here is an excerpt about the GamePad-like controller:
Hall: The DS handheld gaming console, released in 2004, is now the hottest-selling portable video game machine. Did the success of the DS influence your design decisions?
Ashida: The DS had a huge impact on the Wii's design. We had the DS on our minds as we worked on the Wii. We thought about copying the DS's touch-panel interface and even came up with a prototype. But then we rejected the idea, since the portable console and the living-room console would have been exactly the same.
There were no further details given about the prototype and there don't appear to be any known images of it online. We have seen Nintendo struggling to convey the value of a second screen to consumers with the Wii U, and had they decided to use the DS-inspired controller for their previous console rather than the Wii Remote, things could have turned out very differently for the Kyoto-based company.
It would be interesting to see how the prototype looked in comparison to the Wii U GamePad. Regardless of any resemblance, it seems doubtful that the prototype would have had nearly as much functionality as Nintendo's new high-tech controller.
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| Mock-up based on design of Nintendo DS. No images of the prototype have been released. |
It would be interesting to see how the prototype looked in comparison to the Wii U GamePad. Regardless of any resemblance, it seems doubtful that the prototype would have had nearly as much functionality as Nintendo's new high-tech controller.
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http://www.zeldainformer.com/images/news/wii_touch_pad.png
ReplyDeleteThanks for posting a link to that image. That particular patent is for a Wii Remote add-on which was filed just last year. Here's an article about it:
Deletehttp://www.siliconera.com/2011/11/03/nintendo-patent-reveals-accessory-that-turns-a-wii-remote-into-a-touchpad/
Sounds kind of similar, but I doubt it's the prototype referred to in the interview. The prototype sounds like it was a standalone controller rather than an attachment.