Product Features
- Genre
- Accessories
- Publisher
- Nintendo
- Release Date
- November 30, 2012
- Available Platforms
- Nintendo Wii U
Related Items
Nintendo Wii U Pro Controller Black
Nintendo WII U PRO CONTROLLER BLACK 2310866 NINTENDO
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George Orton October 04, 2013 WIIU
It's not often that I'd feel moved to write about a piece of hardware, but Nintendo's Wii U Pro Controller is such a perfectly-designed accessory that I wanted to point it out - especially to those gamers who haven't yet taken the plunge and invested in the firm's latest console.
How do you review a game controller? Well, I guess the most important things are that it's comfortable and easy to use, responsive, looks good, and has a decent battery life. And in all of these categories, the Wii U Pro Controller scores highly.
In terms of being comfortable and easy to use, the controller's rounded shape means it fits in your grasp tightly but snugly. It's not big and unwieldy, but it's large enough to fit all of the necessary buttons, control sticks and D-pad in without feeling too cramped. The best feature of its design is probably the placement of the analog sticks, which is far more comfortable than some other controllers I've used.
This is because the Wii U Pro Controller situates the analog sticks up towards the top of the controller and places the input buttons on the inside towards the middle, rather than the other way around (as you'd see on, say, the controllers for the Xbox 360 and PS3), with shoulder buttons on the very top. The reason for this choice seems to be that it fits the relaxed pose of your hands much more naturally (to see what I mean, hold your hands out in front of you in a relaxed pose as though you're about to grasp a controller, and you'll notice that your thumbs - which you use to control the sticks - default to facing forwards and upwards, rather than inwards). The result is a controller that sits perfectly comfortably in your hands, and has everything exactly where you'd intuitively expect to find it.
As for being responsive, well, it seems to transmit my commands to the games I play pretty much instantly, with all of the buttons and toggles engineered to be as smooth and free of stickiness as possible. And the aesthetic look and feel of the thing is striking too: the top has an attractive shiny black surface, while there's a matte finish underneath which helps to prevent scratching when it's put down on a hard surface, and also works to stop it from slipping around in your hands.
Finally, the battery life is pretty impressive as far as controllers go. It fully charges from a USB connector in less than four hours, and supposedly lasts for 80 hours from a single charge (I only use it semi-regularly, but I can only remember having charged it two or three times, and I've had a Wii U since Christmas).
So why haven't I given it a perfect score? Well, my only real problem with it isn't with the controller itself, but with the support it has from the selection of games that are available for the Wii U. Notably, it doesn't actually work with two of Nintendo's biggest releases so far: New Super Mario Bros. U and Nintendoland. That's because they were designed to be played with the primary gamepad controller that comes with the Wii U console (the touch-screen/tablet display controller), and not with a more standard controller like this one. It's a shame that it's not possible to use the Pro Controller with all games, because I really prefer the feel of it to the heavier and chunkier touch-screen controller, but I guess you'd be sacrificing a lot of the unique features of those games if you played them without the touch-screen components.
But aside from those specific games designed to exploit the touch-screen controller specifically, the Pro Controller is the input device that I'd choose for the majority of my gaming. If you want to play standard multi-platform console titles, this more conventional controller design is a godsend, making those games far easier to play than they are with the Wii U's primary controller. And if you want to play two-player games, it's a must, as the Wii U doesn't yet support two touch-screen controllers (and it's unclear if it ever will).
In short, the Wii U Pro Controller's ergonomic design, lightweight build and excellent battery life make it one of the best console accessories I've ever invested in - and hopefully it'll also go a long way to helping convince people that the Wii U can function just as well as a "serious" console as its Sony- and Microsoft-branded competitors.