Behind the Scenes of Wii U Software Development

Sockatume writes "Digital Foundry has published an article from an anonymous but trusted developer outlining the challenges of developing for the Nintendo Wii U. The piece confirms some common perceptions of Nintendo, such as their attitude to third party developers, and presents a few surprises, like networking code not being made available to outside developers until the console was almost on sale."

Comments

People actually liked the controller?

[Stormwatch]

Almost immediately after the reveal the emails starting flying asking what people thought of the new console design and specification. The almost universal answer was, "I like the new controller, but the CPU looks a bit underpowered".

Funny, when they revealed it, I was underwhelmed by the controller. I thought: this looks so pointless, it's like a tablet that you can't carry around.

Re:People actually liked the controller?

[Sockatume]

Have you tried one? It's really nice, having the controls separated like that is much easier on your wrists and posture in general.

Re:People actually liked the controller?

[Moryath]

Funny thing: I liked the old DC controller and the original Xbox controller. As long as you didn't hold them improperly, they were great.

The trick is, you are supposed to actually hold them in your HAND, not your fingers. That prevents finger strain and a lot of the RSI problems people get into with awkward hand positioning. The side of the controller goes into the crease between thumb and forefinger and across your palm, and your thumbs are free to use the buttons while your index and middle finger operate the triggers.

The Xbox controller was the first one I ever had a marathon gaming session with and felt no pain after. Couldn't say that about any of nintendo's controllers, nor the silly Playstation controllers that jab your hand with a too-short flange underneath each side and force you to curl your ring and pinky fingers in to try to hold it up.

It's ergonomics 101.

The other feature I "like" about the WiiU's controller is the theoretical ability to play a game on it while someone else uses the TV. Not enough to buy a WiiU, but I like the concept of the feature. The problem with it is that from what I hear, most companies don't really take advantage of that - they assume you have the TV running the game, and the pad screen available for some other form of readout, and so going to single-screen mode hurts your gameplay options.

I guess that's kind of like with the Wii's controller. There were a few games that used it really well, and a lot of third-party games (looking square at Activision here) where they implemented shitty controls to "show off" the motion-sensing features when there was no good gameplay reason to bother with motion-sensing anything.

Article has been refuted from multiple sources

[JImbob0i0]

Following this 'anonymous developer' this article ended up being refuted by multiple developers ...

More bad blood and FUD by EA perhaps?

See more details here and here.

Re:Article has been refuted from multiple sources

[Sockatume]

I don't think you can call a collection of offhand tweets and casual remarks from developers a "refutation" when the article's about specific technical and toolchain issues.