I don't really understand all of the characterizations of the new controller as "novel", "risky", or even "innovative", for that matter. It's essentially an app

I don't really understand all of the characterizations of the new controller as "novel", "risky", or even "innovative", for that matter. It's essentially an application of the concepts behind the (very successful) DS, and the idea of having a separate screen for one player has been done before on a home console with the Gamecube's Gameboy Advance connectivity - which mostly only seemed unsuccessful because it was non-standard (Pac Man Vs. was great, but no one had all the hardware to play it). The concepts aren't new - the same is essentially true of the 3DS (aside from the occasional game that uses Augmented Reality, which hasn't, as far as I've seen, been heavily advertised). The bottom line is - are customers ready to shell out for a hardware upgrade, and does the ratio of price to quality/number of good games convince them to do so? So far with the 3DS the answer has been "no", but whether or not the same will be true for the WiiU is anyone's guess.