Miyamoto: Wii U/iPad "coincidence"

Shigeru Miyamoto has played down questions about Wii U's controller heavily resembling Apple's iPad tablet design, labelling it "coincidence".

Speaking during a GameSpot interview after the company's E3 conference, he was asked about whether his comments about Apple's device last year suggested that the company had looked to it when designing the Wii U controller.

"Actually it was coincidental," he replied. "Because even at this point last year at E3, we had done a lot of work on this, and it was pretty far along, and we had been working on the concept for several years. And so we felt it was kind of a funny coincidence that, while we had been working on this, all of a sudden right as we're getting ready to bring it to the public, there's this tablet boom."

"On the one hand we felt that if we were to show it off at E3 last year," he carried on, "then people would look at it and say, "Oh, it's like a tablet." But on the other hand, it may have actually helped us because it made it easier for people to understand the concept."