About the history of the controllers throughout the different dev kits, potential hints toward a classic controller for Wii U ?
1 - Surprisingly, it seems
the very first dev kits, that developers used before E3 2011, didn't support the DRC, that yet defines the Wii U.
2 - It could be from the absence of a port to plug it (not sure) and for certain (100%) the fact that
the SDK versions that came with those V1 dev kits didn't managed the DRC at all, maybe even not mentioned them.
3 - Therefore,
studios were building their games with classic controllers (plugged in an adapter on those boxes), and apparently wii-motes were supported on those first dev kit also (with the presence of a sensor bar port).
4 -
Only very big developers or close enough to Nintendo were aware of the DRC existence, it seems it wasn't documented before E3 2011.
5 - With these infos, we can narrow the supply date of V2 dev kits, introducing the real Wii U controller, at around E3 2011 as:
--> Vigil could have worked just a few weeks prior to the show on dev kits supporting very early iteration of the DRC, like they explained in this
interview:
"The last version of the controller we had was literally a giant Game Boy," Donald said. "It was very clunky. The shoulder buttons were really high, so they were out of reach, so you had to shift your hand to use a shoulder button. In the middle of combat that's just not an option.
"The controller we saw at E3 was not what we had."
It could means that they were one of the very firsts to receive v2 dev kits (or that V1 could have supported a weird DRC prototype but it's very unlikely), and it's partially confirmed with this
statement:
"The Darksiders team was one of the first teams to get dev kits. We've had dedicated engineers on it working seven day weeks leading up to the show.
"I've got all the emails. We now have it running with the controller. So we could have shown it."
This VIP treatment of Vigil in regard to dev kits could indicate the faith, the hope Nintendo have in Darksiders 2, their intent last year to prove their re-orientation toward more "core" gamers by showing this game as quickly as possible. We know that they decided to not demonstrate it on the showfloor in the end but still, this information is interesting.
--> Ubisoft Montpellier declared in another
interview:
Amazingly, the E3 2o11 demo was built using unfinished machines. The Killer Freaks team worked with the early Wii U dev kits before E3, but even we hadnt seen the actual device until a day before the show, Brunier tells us.
Maybe they were stuck with the v1 dev kits then, and developed Killer Freaks with classic controllers/wii-motes (in fact, they used a CC on their
roundtable, skip to 45min mark). The little control problems here & there could reveal this "last minute" implementation of the DRC in their demo. But as they showed intricate padlet applications (single player mode, as seen in the video i've just linked + asymmetric multiplayer mode) involving the touchscreen, the additional display, the gyro & other features of the padlet, that obviously couldn't have been developed in just a few days before E3, it means that they either planned in advance the content while waiting for Nintendo to supply them at the last moment the DRC, or more certainly that they had access themselves to those "clunky gameboy" prototypes/V2 dev kits supporting DRC.
6 -
What's also interesting is that even once the padlet was officially supported, the classic controller adapter remained on the dev kits up until now if i'm not wrong, whereas one could think that the DRC could play this role, having all the required sticks/buttons.
--> It could just be a matter of homogeneity across all dev kits, allowing developers to have as the sole input device to work with the classic controllers in the very first version, then remove this possibility after could have been problematic.
--> As we know the Wii U will support Wii peripherals (so CC), it's just a way to directly plug those in the dev kits even after the DRC arrival, to avoid using the wii-mote & sensor bar, for convenience of development.
-->
It may also hint toward the existence of a "Wii U classic controller", as even if the real & proper Wii U controller are supported, wired or wireless, since one year (less for wireless models), they keep this adapter. And it's rather plausible to have refreshed, shiny new CC/CCPro, tailored/adapted to Wii U, on the shelves, rather than selling Wii peripherals until 2017. It's a necessity for the asymmetric multiplayer mode,
if a maximum of 2 players can use DRC's, and the content for the other players without padlets requires more traditional input method (so no motion controls, no wii-motes).
Note that these infos come from a variety of sources, different from the ones i'm referring to in most of my posts.
There's a lot to speculate about in regard to this controller situation, do you expect Wii U classic controllers, how do you think they will look, for what kind of games they would be more interesting that the DRC, what's your ideas of asymmetric/symmetric multiplayer mode involving combinations of DRC, Wii-motes, and classic controllers, etc ?
