An anonymous developer discussed about the genesis of the Wii U and described its developers Nintendo as an unfamiliar corp. with console networks. This anonymous source initially described the process of working with Nintendo to develop a third-party title before revealing about Wii U’s hardware.
There are strong criticisms shown by the developer regarding the Wii U’s architecture and most of them are the ones discussed in the build up to its launch. His following comments regarding the firm are quite interesting to read:
“We got the chance to talk to some more senior people in Nintendo, via a phone conference, as they were gathering feedback on our development experiences and their tool chain,” the developer wrote.
“The discussion started off well enough and covered off our experiences with the hardware and (slow) tool chain and then we steered them towards discussing when the online features might be available. We were told that the features, and the OS updates needed to support them will be available before the hardware launch, but only just. There were apparently issues with setting up a large networking infrastructure to rival Sony and Microsoft that they hadn’t envisaged.
“This was surprising to hear, as we would have thought that they had plenty of time to work on these features as it had been announced months before, so we probed a little deeper and asked how certain scenarios might work with the Mii friends and networking, all the time referencing how Xbox Live and PSN achieve the same thing. At some point in this conversation we were informed that it was no good referencing Live and PSN as nobody in their development teams used those systems (!) so could we provide more detailed explanations for them?”
Source: Eurogamer