In a couple of weeks, TechStuff is going to cover the story of Nintendo in a two-part special. The company is over 100 years old and managed to succeed in an industry that, after a disastrous crash in 1983, most people thought was finished. But this same company, which many considered to be an unstoppable juggernaut a few years ago, seems to be floundering. Sales of the Wii have flagged and the Nintendo 3DS didn’t take off like the company had hoped.  Fortunately, Nintendo isn’t turning a blind eye to criticism and the company appears ready to take action to win back gamers’ loyalty.

Case in point: at E3 2011, Nintendo unveiled the Wii U. This next-generation console takes many of the design elements of the Wii and added a new component — a controller that contains its own touch screen. The Wii U’s controller looks like a tablet device. Players will use the touch screen to interact with games in new ways. The action will play out both on a television and the controller’s screen. Some games may use the second screen to show secondary data. Others might include mini games that you’ll need to complete in order to progress through the main game. It’s like combining the DS handheld gaming system with a full console system. The applications for such a tablet device are practically endless.

But many E3 attendees balked when they heard that the Wii U would support only one controller. While social gaming has taken off and services like Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network prove that people enjoy playing games with other gamers around the world, there’s still something to be said for a game played against opponents who are sitting right next to you on the couch. To create a system that would support only a single controller seemed to be a big step back.

But yesterday, Develop reported that after speaking with an anonymous source it now sounds like Nintendo will add support for a second controller. I think this is a wise move — single-controller consoles have a very limited appeal. No one wants to sit around and wait for an older sibling to finish playing a game just to be told you have five minutes to play before you have to go to bed. For Nintendo to go up against Microsoft and Sony it needed to address the single-controller issue. If Nintendo can solve this problem, it might stand a chance in a very competitive market.

On a side note, this isn’t the first time we’ve seen the marriage of a handheld gaming system and a console system. The Sega Dreamcast had controllers that could accommodate special memory cards that had their own screens. Some games allowed you to play out mini games on this screen while others would use the screen to display data like health meters or ammo reserves. And Nintendo has supported integration between older consoles and its handheld gaming devices for several years. Assuming the company gets its act together and supports multiple tablet controllers for a single console, do you think the technology will be innovative enough to give Nintendo the boost it needs to compete in the market?