The secret developers: Wii U

This Eurogamer article on the trouble launch of the Wii U has been passed around for a few weeks in gaming communities. But especially in light of Nintendo’s poor financial results and their need to shake up their business, it’s worth revisiting. This particular passage was flat out shocking:

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? My only thought after this call was that they were struggling – badly – with the networking side as it was far more complicated than they anticipated. They were trying to play catch-up with the rival systems, but without the years of experience to back it up.