Satoru Iwata has revealed that concerns over pricing nearly led to Nintendo ditching the Wii U's second screen.

“ Sometime during that final discussion we almost gave up on the idea of the additional screen.

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“ It is capable of doing whatever the other two consoles can do.

In an interview with The Telegraph newspaper, the Nintendo president admitted that the company wasn't convinced it could get the GamePad to customers at a reasonable price.They stuck with it though and, if recent reports are to be believed, managed to find a way to include the GamePad without making the console unaffordable for most gamers. Iwata also reasserted Nintendo's commitment to being a family company, and revealed the inspiration for the second screen came from domestic problems caused by occupying the living room.He explained, "The TV in the living room is shared by every member of family, and if someone wanted to play a Wii game for a long time period, other members of the family may find that troublesome. So at the early stages of the discussion between ourselves, we came up with the idea of the additional screen.""In the case of the Wii U, we have decided to make it so that it is capable of doing whatever the other two consoles can do, so games are easily portable," he claimed. "As we expand the install-base of the Wii U, I see greater opportunities for the third-parties to be able to provide the Wii U with quality software titles. And as well as the third-party multi-platform titles, we will have publishers making exclusive Wii U titles."The Wii U is expected to be released by the end of the year, though an exact date is yet to be confirmed.

Luke Karmali is IGN's UK Editorial Assistant. You too can revel in mediocrity by following him on IGN and on Twitter