One of the bigger announcements at Nintendo’s Press Conference was the fact that the Wii U will in fact be able to support simultaneous use of two GamePads. This means asymmetric gameplay between you, a friend, and the television screen, and of course, new ways to play video games.
However, Nintendo hasn’t demoed any of this kind of content yet, and they’ve even said that it won’t be ready at the launch of the console. It seems to us that this feature was so heavily requested in the past year that Nintendo has announced the functionality before any real major development work to get it done. Sure, they’ve probably been thinking about this for a while, but with so many experiences on the show floor to take a look at, why didn’t they design just one that would utilize more than one GamePad?
Reading a little farther into this, dual GamePad support means that the Japanese gaming company will indeed be selling additional GamePads in stores when the console launches or shortly thereafter.
Other news out of Nintendo says that the Wii U GamePad will only last about three to five hours on a single charge, although the batteries are built-in and rechargeable with a cable similar, if not identical, to the Nintendo 3DS AC adapter. More information to come as we get it from E3 2012!