Nintendo's debut of the Wii U last year was enough to show off the concept of the device, but the real test comes when third parties start dreaming up applications. Tekken series producer Katsuhiro Harada has spent some time with Nintendo's next system, and thought up ways it could benefit the fighting genre.

"I've often heard about or seen fighting-game players playing with a strategy guide open at their feet," Harada told Nintendo Gamer (via IGN). "So it would be useful if we could, for example, distribute an enhanced digital version of the guide that the player could see while playing, and even touch to have a live preview on the main screen." Harada also suggested users could customize a character by drawing or painting on the touch screen.

And as a fighting game creator, latency is key. "The speed of the image transmission feature from the screen to the controller is impressive," he said. "The first time I saw Wii U, I thought 'isn't the delay longer than one frame? If it is, it's going to be difficult for fighting games' But when I heard that the latency actually isn't more than 1/60th second I was really happy." His goal for Tekken is 60 FPS, but he says it's difficult to promise since he doesn't know all of the system's capabilities yet.

He said that arcade stations have actually been using two screens for years, with a "live monitor" at the side of the machine displaying ranking information and showing videos of other matches. So the Wii U, with its second portable screen, isn't entirely different from the capabilities already present for the series.

Nintendo has historically struggled with winning over third parties. One impressed publisher isn't enough to declare victory, but it is a hopeful sign that this generation will see more third-party support on Nintendo's platform.