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Wii U Gamepad: User Feedback & Distance Limitations

I mentioned in the Wii U launch thread that when I first set up my system I had it right next to my TV and was getting a range of about 1 ft. It would completely drop if I didn't have the pad right next to the system. I thought the antenna wasn't hooked up or something and I'd have to return it, but I moved the system a couple feet away from the TV and it worked fine. I get about 25 ft like everyone else.

The bottom line is the system is extremely sensitive to interference. If you're not getting a good range try moving it a slight distance away from any nearby electronics.
 
I live in a pretty old yet small apartment. I've actually had some success getting a signal through two walls the latter being right behind the unit and the other being 10 feet behind the unit. It's been hit or miss and I'm still not sure if I can lay back in bed and play. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.
 
I really wonder if this will be an issue for enough people that some 3rd party manufacturer sees a market for it and creates some sort of relay or signal amplifier for the console to increase distance?
 
Haven't tried the distance test in my home yet. Great to see that a lot of folks can take it around their entire home.

Speaking specifically about the Gamepad does everyone else's Gamepad suffer from light leaks on the sides of the screen? I've noticed it on my Gamepad and wondering if it is just mine or it is a issue. It's not a deal breaker or anything just distracting when gaming, especially in the dark.
 
Allforce said:
I really wonder if this will be an issue for enough people that some 3rd party manufacturer sees a market for it and creates some sort of relay or signal amplifier for the console to increase distance?
Click to expand...

I believe in an interview with a chap from Broadcom related to their partnership with Nintendo for the gamepad tech, it was claimed that this could be done. Supposedly possible without introducing further input latency for the user, it only requires a software update to make it happen.

Whether Nintendo will authorize it, or make a repeater themselves, no way to tell. But I'd kind of be surprised if they didn't. It would be very appealing, allowing people to take the pad all about the house.
 
It's disappointing hearing all these responses of people able to take the gamepad all over the place, while for me, literally 3 paces away from the system to the door, turning 90 degrees, and walking 3 paces into the hallway the signal is starting to drop. Another 5 paces into the doorway of the bedroom and it's long since dead.

Honestly considering moving the system into the hallway at the midpoint between the room with the television and the bedroom, and running a bunch of HDMI cable to get the connection to the television, and seeing if having it at a central location will allow the gamepad to be usable in both areas. My wife has resisted the idea so far though, she thinks it's silly. But, I think I may end up trying it anyway.
 
I have been testing the gamepad around my pretty small one bedroom apartment

The only place I have lost reception is my bathroom (lol), and it fluctuates, sometimes I can get signal there, sometimes I lose it...

I have a lot of electronics with wireless capability going all over the place, could be interference
 
I tried taking it to my washroom, and it's JUST too far away. If I hold it at arms length to my left while on the john, it works, but in a normal position, no. So close. . .
 
Small 1BR/1BA apartment here, and my console is placed fairly centrally. It can go to my bedroom which is separated by a single wall. However, it has difficulty maintaining signal around multiple corners and a closed door, so I can't maintain a strong signal while relaxing in the bathtub. :[
 
Loving this thing. Woke up this morning at 8 a.m., but I don't work today since it's the day before Thanksgiving. Walked downstairs, grabbed my Gamepad, and went back upstairs and crawled back in bed with my fiance and played Trine 2 for about an hour and a half before switching over to NSMBU for thirty minutes. At 10 a.m. I finally got up when my fiance got around and I went downstairs in the living room to play a little longer on the TV. Nice, lazy morning. I love having the option to play these games elsewhere in the house.

Edit: I posted about my distance/limitations on page one, but I just realized this morning that if I don't leave my bedroom door open I can't get a signal at all. Also, over these two hours, I noticed that I get a hiccup about once every ten minutes when in bed, but I'm pretty far away from the Wii U. Most of those just came from me moving a little bit
 
Short version: I have 2 Wii Us. The first Gamepad has severe limitations where it will work. The second Gamepad works everywhere but the farthest rooms of my house. Thus, either the first Gamepad was defective or there is simply a large variance in working range among Gamepads.

Long version: I got a launch day Wii U from Target, and also had a Best Buy preorder shipped to my house as insurance, in case I couldn't get one at launch. My Target Gamepad worked perfectly fine within the room the Wii U was in. It also worked fine in the adjacent room 15ft away, with a line of sight between the Gamepad and console through the doorway. Simply turning my back to the console would trigger the "unstable connection" warning, while closing the door(which is just a standard hollow interior door) or walking out of sight behind the wall dropped the connection. It wouldn't connect at all anywhere else in house.

My Best Buy preorder, which I intended to return since I got my launch-day unit, arrived yesterday. Out of curiosity, I decided to pair the new Best Buy Gamepad with my already hooked-up Target Wii U to see if my results would be any better. It was! I could use it anywhere in the adjacent room with the door closed, and more importantly I could use it all the way in my upstairs bedroom. It only failed to reach the farthest rooms on the opposite side of my house, on either floor.

I didn't notice any posts in here, where people had 2 different Gamepads to test. So, if my experience is any indication, people with poor Gamepad range/penetration might find your Gamepads at fault, and I would try to find a way to test out another 1 or 2 before accepting that you'll never get a good working range within your particular living space.
 
Good thing my living room is adjacent to my bedroom, There's like 9 feet max and wood/Sheetrock wall between my bed and the system. That should work no problem, right?
 
Works fine in my bed, which is about 60 feet in a near straight line from the Wii U (wall-free). Can't have my legs up in bed blocking the signal though.
 
What tech does the Wii U use to get game pad play. I wish Sony could do this with Vita and PS3, yeah I know it works with some games but I'd like it with every game as well being as user friendly like Wii U. I'd love to play a game like Dragons Dogma in bed.
 
So for people that have distance problems.
Correct me if I am wrong. If you dont need to connect your Wii U on your TV.
Cant you place the Wii U in your room or near the place where you want to connect to play it on the gamepad ?

You dont need the TV to navigate or to bootup the game. So I dont really see the problem...
 
Smoothice65 said:
So for people that have distance problems.
Correct me if I am wrong. If you dont need to connect your Wii U on your TV.
Cant you place the Wii U in your room or near the place where you want to connect to play it on the gamepad ?

You dont need the TV to navigate or to bootup the game. So I dont really see the problem...
Click to expand...

Then you wouldn't be able to play the games that require both screens.
 
KAL2006 said:
What tech does the Wii U use to get game pad play. I wish Sony could do this with Vita and PS3, yeah I know it works with some games but I'd like it with every game as well being as user friendly like Wii U. I'd love to play a game like Dragons Dogma in bed.
Click to expand...

A modified version of Miracast developed in cooperation with Broadcom. Polygon had a fairly thorough article up about it recently.

Remote Play works over IP, right? It couldn't work in the same way. Maybe it could become a standard feature next-gen if Sony reserved some CPU juice in the PS4.

ETA: I forgot that Sony bought Gaikai. Maybe they could do something with Gaikai's tech to implement system wide Remote Play in the future.
 
Then you wouldn't be able to play the games that require both screens.
Click to expand...

I understand that, but people are so fixated to place the console on 1 specific spot.

OFF-TV play; Move the Console
On-TV; Play it on your TV.

Its that simple haha..
 
Smoothice65 said:
So for people that have distance problems.
Correct me if I am wrong. If you dont need to connect your Wii U on your TV.
Cant you place the Wii U in your room or near the place where you want to connect to play it on the gamepad ?

You dont need the TV to navigate or to bootup the game. So I dont really see the problem...
Click to expand...

you're more likely to want to play on TV than occasionally play on the toilet.

But you can always buy a longer HDMI cable. It'd be a bit weird to have the console away from the TV for putting discs in etc, but if you have a lot of digital releases it wouldn't matter much.
 
I need to experiment with mine a little more I guess.

It worked great for about an hour, then my game froze and the only way to get it to respond to anything was to unplug the console. I started it back up and the gamepad immediately said it had an unstable connection. Unplugging the cord from the console for about 10 minutes seemed to work a bit.

So here we are 2 days later. I'm sitting less than 10' away from the console in a pretty wide open living room. Simply putting my finger on the volume adjustment slider on the gamepad causes the controller's audio to fade out and the video to stutter. Leaving my finger on the slider for more than 5 seconds causes the connection to go away entirely. Also, tilting the gamepad upright loses connection too. I'll try moving the console around in the morning, but for now it's super frustrating.
 
It's pretty poor really. I can't get more then about 15ft from the WiiU and it cuts out.

In the bedroom. I can use my macbook pro, iPad etc... via wifi, the router being in the living room, but the WiiU Gamepad doesn't even get halfway.

I live in a bungalow with brick walls.

Is there anything I can do.
 
Tmdean said:
I mentioned in the Wii U launch thread that when I first set up my system I had it right next to my TV and was getting a range of about 1 ft. It would completely drop if I didn't have the pad right next to the system. I thought the antenna wasn't hooked up or something and I'd have to return it, but I moved the system a couple feet away from the TV and it worked fine. I get about 25 ft like everyone else.

The bottom line is the system is extremely sensitive to interference. If you're not getting a good range try moving it a slight distance away from any nearby electronics.
Click to expand...

By a few feet do you mean just stretching to the maximum length of the power cable? My performance is whacky it works fine between floors if I'm in the room directly above or below the console but 70 feet down the hall and behind the door in our bedroom no dice. If I just sit in the hall without going in the door it works great.
 
Haven't tried it, so I wondered if Wii's power chord would work with Wii U? It would make moving the system far more convenient to me.
 
I'm really surprised of how well it works. The response time is impressively fast, switched my TV into gaming mode and noticed that my TV is actually more "laggy" than the gamepad.

Oh I've been around in a different room with it without problems. That's like ten feet or something behind a wall.
 
Wii U in lounge with line of site down hall. Works OK down hall for about 8 metres then as soon as I turn corner into room it stops. Wooden walls, uninsulated.

Real bummer.


I'll add that my GamePad rattles when shaken or tilted back towards me. The buttons or their housing isn't seated correctly. Same with two other machines in the store I checked. And my friend's one. Anyone else have this. I hate shit like that. Makes things feel cheap.
 
cyberheater said:
It's pretty poor really. I can't get more then about 15ft from the WiiU and it cuts out.

In the bedroom. I can use my macbook pro, iPad etc... via wifi, the router being in the living room, but the WiiU Gamepad doesn't even get halfway.

I live in a bungalow with brick walls.

Is there anything I can do.
Click to expand...

It doesn't seem to like brick walls. I have it set up in an extension room above a garage and as soon as I move away with the brick wall in between, it cuts out. There's a bathroom opposite about 25ft away with a thin wall and it works great there.
 
cyberheater said:
It's pretty poor really. I can't get more then about 15ft from the WiiU and it cuts out.

In the bedroom. I can use my macbook pro, iPad etc... via wifi, the router being in the living room, but the WiiU Gamepad doesn't even get halfway.

I live in a bungalow with brick walls.

Is there anything I can do.
Click to expand...

It doesn't use wifi, so no, nothing you can do if that's the type of range you were expecting.
 
I have a roundabout corner for where the living room is and my bedroom and if I place the console in the living room, I can get a Gamepad signal in my bedroom even if the doors are closed. Put the console in the bedroom though, and I can't even get a signal 15 feet away.

I'm just happy both console positions are good enough to take the Gamepad to the crapper.
 
cyberheater said:
It's pretty poor really. I can't get more then about 15ft from the WiiU and it cuts out.

In the bedroom. I can use my macbook pro, iPad etc... via wifi, the router being in the living room, but the WiiU Gamepad doesn't even get halfway.

I live in a bungalow with brick walls.

Is there anything I can do.
Click to expand...

It's really unfair to expect the same of it as your other devices. None of those are streaming a real-time feed instantaneously alongside the TV; all of them would have problems too were they even capable of such.
 
I guess I am lucky. Able to take it everywhere within the house due to the lounge room being the central room within the house.
 
I live in my parents' house in the upper floor, the living room is exactly below me. The Wii U is in my room. I can play games in the living room no problem.

Bonus: I can also play while "doing my business". This is just too good.
(For reference: Our bathroom is ~10m away from my room, also on the floor below my room)
 
cyberheater said:
It's pretty poor really. I can't get more then about 15ft from the WiiU and it cuts out.

In the bedroom. I can use my macbook pro, iPad etc... via wifi, the router being in the living room, but the WiiU Gamepad doesn't even get halfway.

I live in a bungalow with brick walls.

Is there anything I can do.
Click to expand...

I'm in the same boat as you, live in a bungalow and the Pad doesn't really work at all if you take it out of the same room as the console itself.

Kind of disappointing, though playing stuff on the pad was more of a novelty than a selling point for me anyway. My gaming set up is in my bedroom to begin with, so I've been playing consoles in bed for years :P
 
The gamepad itself is a cool idea, but I would have prefered a capacitive touchscreen and a bit higher resolution.
Using smartphone, tablet or vita is so much better.

Only downsight would be no painting with a stylus, but at least the comfort would be much better.

Distance isn't that good, but at least I can play in my bed.

But not on toilet :(
 
Made some experiments today. Was surprised that it even worked two rooms away. Found out that your own body can make a difference. Also, when moving the pad it will start complaining but after holding it still for a while, it will eventually work again.
 
range for me is perfect. I can use it in the spare room next to mine (it's an office / spare bedroom), in the toilet and downstairs. I have some interruptions when moving around the house, but that stops as soon as I stop moving the gamepad.

oh and maybe I'm crazy, but does anyone else think the sound the gamepad makes when it disconnects is eerily similar to the xbox 360 achievement sound?

Cosmozone said:
Made some experiments today. Was surprised that it even worked two rooms away. Found out that your own body can make a difference. Also, when moving the pad it will start complaining but after holding it still for a while, it will eventually work again.
Click to expand...

this is what I found as well. moving around makes it stutter and issue warnings.
 
Can use it in the Living room and my bedroom so can't really complain about range.

It has taken a little while to get used to, but its fine now. Just want some games which will take complete advantage of it now.
 
Ein Bear said:
I'm in the same boat as you, live in a bungalow and the Pad doesn't really work at all if you take it out of the same room as the console itself.

Kind of disappointing, though playing stuff on the pad was more of a novelty than a selling point for me anyway. My gaming set up is in my bedroom to begin with, so I've been playing consoles in bed for years :P
Click to expand...

Yes. Mine basically only works in the room that the WiiU is in.

I'm just going to move the console into the bedroom when I want to play in bed.
 
I'm really disappointed with the ergonomics, how light it is, and the lack of battery life.

When playing it last weekend it just wasn't comfortable more than 10-15 minutes for me.

The weight thing I just know I'm weird, but I hate super light controllers, they just feel wrong to me no matter how silly I sound.

The battery life thing is just unacceptable to me and can't imagine recommending a wiiU to anyone until there is a solution.
 
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