@JBStone1981 While I do agree that the indie industry is, to our delight, growing awesomely, I wouldn't bet on them for a good and consistent use of the 8 controllers feature.

I do love the indies, but in a way they're a return to the previous generations time, where game development was much cheaper, simpler and quicker. That allow indies to risk more, to be more creative and try new things, alright.

However, game designing is something complicated. We, today, build games based on solid knowledge acquired and registered and discussed through decades of game-making. While indies do come with nice ideas like Bastion's narrator or Hotline Miami graphic's style and fast gameplay, those games were made improving on very old formulae. Comming up with new ways to make an eight players co-op game work is significantly harder, because it defies what we've learned about gameplay. Yes, it is possible, and yes, it was done before, but there's a very limited variety of games where we do know how to use that feature (mainly sports games, or Bomberman-like games).

One thing we know, for an instance, most game genres and styles wouldn't work on a split-screen game for eight players co-op. Our current TVs just aren't big enough for that. Coming up with ideas that surpass those limitations is akin to what happened when developers were first learning how to use 3D graphics or motion controls: it is possible, but most developers just didn't know how to make it work due to lack of references and tested models.

Also, most of the indie developers are on PC, and while they're starting to develop also for consoles, most consider PC their main platform, and we all know PC isn't the best platform for local co-op.

So, in the end, yes, you're right that we may see a few great indie games offering local eight player co-op support, but unless we see a Minecraft-like hit (which will stimulate others to make something similar), it'll be a rare experience, thus confirming my original point: a very interesting feature that we all know will be almost completely ignored.

@Bahamut50 @Grenadeh And where did you see anyone using the word "exclusives" in this particular discussion? Games, even if multiplatform, are still games. My point is: Wii U does have games. Of course it doesn't have as many games as Xbox 360 and PS3, but those are old consoles at the end of their life, Wii U isn't. And even if you take a look at the "exclusives" department, there are more exclusives announced or recently released for Wii U than the ones announced for PS4 and Xbox One (consoles that due their own very nature will share the major part of their library, with only a few exclusives - just like their 7th gen predecessors).

I agree with you that Wii U needs a new non-remake Zelda, I agree that new IPs wouldn't hurt, but if you take a closer look, things aren't nearly as bad as most people claim. It's actually nice, not "awesome", sure, but ok.

So what Bethesda is saying is: "I know this is your console, but if you don't acknowledge our greatness and don't come to ask our opinion of it when it's on the planning stage, then we won't make games for it. We're not content in only making games, we want to meddle in the console-making of others, not asking us is impolite".

@II_Exile_II @komuchen Right now? 25 released and 12 more announced. Not awesome, but also not that bad for a console with less than an year.

@GameBeaten @Grenadeh You are right, but it is still a game, and even if the "majority" got it before on other consoles, that doesn't mean there isn't a "minority" who would play it on Wii U.

@JBStone1981 Just, y'know, learning from the past and looking into future tendencies and actually understanding what were the reasons why local co-op started to decline after the 4th generation of consoles.

As was said before, Genesis and SNES and PS2, all supported 8 controllers. PS3 supported 7 controllers. Now, how many games did we have in the past that made use of those? Not many, right? And take a look at the proportion of local-co op games across all generations, and tell me, what do you make of that? Now, consider the focus of current consoles on graphics, do you think local co-op and split screen will help games made for a "graphics-first" mentality crowd?

Let's do the opposite here: what has changed, what trends do you see that will make this feature more relevant than it's previous iterations? How is "now" different from "then"? How many game developers did you see praising the 8th generation consoles capabilities for improving local co-op and split-screen gameplay? How many times did you see those words appearing on the various conferences we had until now? Actually, there is one console making clear that local co-op is a great feature: Wii U, and even it has no use for that many controllers.

@tomgas SNES and Genesis supported 8.
Make those 20 years at least 25.

Heck, finding good games that supported even 2 controllers was a pretty hard task on both Xbox 360 and PS3, why would anyone believe that finding Xbox One games supporting 8 controllers would be any easier? There will probably be less than a dozen games supporting that feature in the entire console's lifespan, and these will be mostly be sports games.

A shame, really. It's a nice feature, but we all know it'll be wasted.

@JBStone1981 Here's your cookie.:
"Sony has not yet said how many DualShock 4 controllers can be connected to the PlayStation 4 at once. The PlayStation 3 supports seven controllers simultaneously."

Now, that would be a great feature if we actually got games that made use of it. Unfortunately, those games always were pretty rare (even Genesis and SNES supported 8 controllers with multi-tap/multi-link).

A shame no games (or very, very few games) will make use of that feature, rending it useless.