If you are one of the many gamers fortunate enough to own a Nintendo Wii U this Holiday season, you might have already noticed something about the battery life of the included WII U Gamepad.
Once gamers opened their new Wii U systems and started gaming, complaints began to appear online about the battery only lasting between 2-4 hours. And to make matters worse, it doesn’t matter if you’re playing a game or watching a movie on Netflix — the limited battery life remains the same.
Gamers have been able to beat the battery life issue by disabling the controller’s rumble feature and decreasing the screen brightness to three, but even then the results are marginal and do little to cushion the upset making the rounds in the gaming community.
Online communities like Gamefaqs.com are rife with complaints about the Gamepad’s battery life. A current discussion about this topic can be found here.
Some argue that Nintendo’s Wii U firmware update may contain a bug that prevents the system from conserving battery power while in sleep mode. This could very well be the case, but there is no way of knowing until Nintendo comes forward with a statement. And until they do, Wii U gamers can scratch 12 hour marathons of Call of Duty Black Ops II off their to-do lists until a better battery pack is released.
