Whatever it may cost in the end, don’t forget that you also get a TV remote for your money!
Nintendo
Amid all the talk about the Wii U and its unique touchscreen-equipped GamePad at this year’s E3, one of the main specs missing from the discussion was the controller’s huge price. The mystery surrounding that pricing remains a major concern for those considering purchasing the system, and according to Nintendo president Satoru Iwata, it was also a major concern for the company when the system was still in the design phase.
“Somewhere during that final interview [of the system’s design]we almost gave up on the idea of the extra screen,” Iwata said in an interview with London’s Telegraph newspaper. “This was due to our concerns about the expected high cost; it may not have been feasible to make and sell this at a reasonable price to the consumer.”
The Telegraph interview goes on to suggest that Nintendo has finally sorted out the cost situation, suggesting it will be able to offer the controller for that “reasonable price” at launch (at least by Nintendo’s definition of reasonable). That price could be more important than ever, as Nintendo announced at E3 that the Wii U could support games that use two GamePads at once, though no such games will be available at launch.
However, cost concerns may have limited the capabilities of the final tablet controller. In an interview with Kotaku, Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime responded to a question about the GamePad’s lack of multitouch support by admitting that “there’s definitely a cost to it”. [adding multitouch]But Fils-Aime also insisted it would have been inconvenient to put the controller in your lap to support multiple touch points with two hands (although he didn’t touch on the ability to touch the screen with multiple fingers of one hand). touch ).
It is important to note that the Wii U GamePad is not like most other tablet computers, which have both internal computer hardware and a large touchscreen. Instead, the GamePad relies on a Wii U base console within wireless range to process game data and send graphics and sound effects to the controller. While this lack of processing power should make the GamePad come in significantly cheaper than a full-fledged tablet computer, it also means the GamePad is functionally useless when taken out of the living room. That makes it significantly different from the tablets and smartphones that work with the Xbox 360 through the recently announced SmartGlass program, or the completely independent PlayStation Vita, which can work as a PlayStation 3 controller in many games.
The only semi-official hint at the GamePad’s final price right now is a listing on Swedish retailer GAME’s website listing the controller for 1,499 Swedish kronor, or about $213. You can probably take that number as a guess at this point. handle random guess; while there’s still a lot of uncertainty surrounding the GamePad’s pricing issue, we’re relatively confident the controller won’t cost more than a Kindle Fire.