In an interview with Gamasutra, Satoru  Iwata discusses how development for the Nintendo Wii U started mere months after Wii released. By 2007 there where already working prototypes of a dual screened console experience, but not exactly the way we know Wii U today.

“Considering how expensive screens were then, it did not make sense to have this big-sized LCD. We would not have been able to come up with a reasonable price point. … We had not decided when we were going to launch the new console [at that point], but we knew we needed to be flexible.”

Even crazier still, the Wii U tablet could have been it’s own standalone handheld, but concerns of cost and battery life are a few reasons why the controller shows images processed on the Wii U console itself.

“During the roundtable discussions there were such arguments about should we make it capable of being a standalone system or should we make it work only with the [base console] system. We came to the conclusion that this controller is only going to show the images generated and processed by this hardware unit – and sent from the hardware unit wirelessly. That means sharper graphics. A battery couldn’t do that.”

You can read the article for yourself here. Iwata goes on to talk about Wii U third party support and continued backing of Wii in it’s twilight years.

After the E3 dust has settled, how do you feel about Wii U?