Although it just recently received its public unveiling, Nintendo’s main man Satoru Iwata revealed in an interview with industry site Gamasutra that the underlying concept behind Wii U dates back to 2007, almost immediately after Wii was released.

Iwata said the company mulled over various ideas, one of which described a dual-purpose approach — having the Wii U controller work in tandem with the console, but also as a standalone system. In the end – presumably for cost reasons, it decided to leave all the processing guts in the console itself, with the controller simply receiving images through wireless connection.

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.

Well, you can’t say the Wii U was rushed! Still, it’s surprising that Nintendo locked down the basic concept behind Wii U so early. If anything, it shows the company is extremely confident from a design standpoint.

Read our Wii U impressions here.

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