I think this device got shoehorned with tablet gamepad at some point.
And then it was
oh shit oh shit this will cost too much,oh shit
cut cut cut cut cut
Well, Nintendo is done competing in the tech arms race, so it's unlikely that they were ever cooking up a powerhouse that got compromised by the GamePad. But, obviously, a platform needs a hook, moreso than
just the first party software they mostly rely on. For Wii, it was the motion controls, and that worked like gangbusters. Back when this thing was in R&D and the iPad was being announced/catching on, some sort of tablet controller just probably happened to be their best idea at a "gamechanger" that could provide the cohesive vision for differentiating this thing from whatever Sony and Microsoft would cook up.
Now, I'm not as down on this thing as a lot of people here, and actually
like the GamePad. Unfortunately for Nintendo, though, I really only see it as
kind of neat. There's certainly not anything at launch or even on the horizon that really sells what this puppy can do. But, let's be honest, I don't think that such a concept even exists. The asynchronous gameplay (and note that I feel like this is just becoming a stupid buzzword) possibilities -- like the pad itself -- merely seem to me as having the potential to be
kind of neat. I don't think there's a myriad of gameplay possibilities that the competition can't hope to replicate.
