Aaron Barton

It's easy to assume that a new system will support multiple connections of its controller for multiplayer.  But I slowly grew wary as I realized here that Nintendo has shown no specification for this, nor have they shown the system being used with more than one Wii-U controller.  They have shown only one Wii-U controller with up to four additional Wii Remotes at once.   See this quote from an interview:

Miyamoto: Right now I'm planning that people can still be able to use their Wii Remote controllers that they already have, which means this time you now have five controllers to play with. Iwata: You mean this new controller, and four Wii Remote Plus controllers for a total of five. Miyamoto: Right. Five controllers. And we have people play in many combinations.

They don't exactly confirm it either way, but I don't like the sound of it.

Consider that the Wii-U console needs to process the video for each screen to be transmitted wirelessly, and you see just how dangerous it is that they allow only one Wii-U controller for processing or wireless bandwidth limitations.  Not to mention cost limitations, as it's clear that this would run higher than your typical 360 pad.  They may have designed this whole setup so that they don't really expect you to have any more Wii-U controllers than the one it comes with.

If this is the case, I'm extremely disappointed.  You couldn't even make the four swords concept work on this system as it existed on Gamecube.  All of the obvious applications such as having your plays in a football game on your personal screen are suddenly a lot more gimmicky.  It's not going to keep anything secret in multiplayer -it's just going to clean up the TV interface.

I need confirmations before jumping the gun, but I'M NERVOUS.