No dual-Gamepad Wii U games until next year

While the Japanese will be able to purchase extra Gamepads for their Wii Us come launch day (for the rather hefty price of $172), other regions will be single-only.

The reason for this, according to Nintendo of America’s Bill Trinen, is that doing this in Western countries may “cause retail confusion”, as apparently none of the currently announced games can make use of a second controller.

According to Trinen, you’ll have to wait till next year to get your hands on games which support dual Gamepads. “The launch window is all going to be single-GamePad. The dual-GamePad functionality, we expect to start seeing that in games sometime next year,” Trinen said.

“Our feeling is, we’re not going to sell another GamePad if you don’t have something to use it with. We’ll make that available as an additional accessory when there’s content to support it,” he added.

Multiplayer will still be possible using a single Gamepad and Wii Remotes, as seen in titles such as Nintendo Land. Why the standalone controllers were okay for Japan but thought to leave Americans in a weeping mass of confused Christmas shoppers is unknown, but this could actually have something to do with prior rumours that there Nintendo were having manufacturing issues with the complicated Gamepads.