Can you believe that E3 is only a few weeks away? The most magical time of the year for gamers is almost upon us and I couldn’t be more excited. One area of the excitement comes from the mystery that is the Wii U. Nintendo has stayed tight-lipped so there’s not much to go off of and there have not been many leaks either. One leak this weekend, however, proved to be most fascinating.

GamesRadar was perusing the Twitterverse when they found the account of Traveler’s Tales Q&A Tester @MATTYBOOSH. The now defunct Twitter account posted a picture of what appears to be the new Wii U controller. How do we know it’s new? Just look at it: the controller has analog sticks instead of the circle pads that were on last year’s model. That’s a change for the better as the circle pad on the 3DS is great for handhelds, but wouldn’t feel right with a core console game that required analog sticks for twitch-based shooter titles.

There are some other minor changes from the original controller as well. You’ll notice that the start and select buttons have moved from the bottom of the controller to the side. This makes the Wii U controller look more like a DS. This could be fitting into Nintendo’s strategy of making the Wii U a giant DS with the TV being the top screen and the controller being the bottom screen. You’ll also notice that the controller now has the Wii U logo on it. Unfortunately, that makes it look like that’s going to be the final name. Many gamers, myself included, were hoping that Nintendo would name the console something else to remove itself from its Wii identity, but I guess that’s not going to happen.

Outside of changes, there are some additions as well in the form of little white unmarked square buttons. Nobody has any idea what they do, but one is beneath the d-pad while the other is on the bottom right next to the Power button. The squares are different sizes too which only adds to the mystery of their function. My best bet is that the button near the Power button is for syncing the controller with the Wii U console. As for the big square button underneath the d-pad, your guess is as good as mine.

As mentioned previously, this image was leaked via Twitter. Nintendo, Traveler’s Tales or both didn’t quite like having an updated Wii U controller leaked to the world. To that end, the image has been deleted from Twitter, while the Q&A tester’s account has also been removed. That’s a bit drastic, but I guess he shouldn’t have been tweeting out secrets. I just hope that Traveler’s Tales didn’t have the poor guy fired.

Now that E3 is closer than ever, we should start to see more leaks. E3 is like the gamers’ Christmas and we’re always trying to sneak a peak at the presents. We’ll keep you updated on all the news leading up to this year’s big event.

[Lead image: GamesRadar]