Outspoken Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter recently claimed that Activision, developer and publisher of the Call of Duty series, notably, forced Nintendo to build the Wii U Pro controller so that Call of Duty would be on Wii U. Apparently, according to Pachter, the comments were not substantial, and more of an estimation.

The Wii U Pro controller is almost identical to the Xbox 360's controller in design, save the right analog stick and X-Y-A-B buttons being swapped. Other controller options for Wii U are the touchscreen-enabled GamePad and the Wii Remote and Nunchuck.

"I'm putting two and two together to conclude that Activision put pressure on them [Nintendo]. I do not know this either first-hand or third-hand; nobody told me. I am merely deducting it from what we know, and it's an educated guess. If the Pro controller is for multiplatform games, that mean it is for third-party games. Nintendo hasn't done anything altruistically for third parties, so I concluded that they added the Pro Controller because of pressure from third parties. The pressure could have come from anywhere - EA with sports games, Ubisoft with Assassin's Creed, or Take-Two with GTA - but it seems to make the 'prize' that would make the Wii U legitimate as a console of choice for multiplatforms games is Call of Duty," Pachter explained to video game website Gamesbeat.

Pachter further clarified his stance, explaining that Call of Duty has not sold well on Wii compared to other platforms. He went on to say "Add to my logic that Mark Lamia [head of Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 developers Treyarch] made a comment at E3 about how the Pro Controller seemed tailored for the game he is working on for release this fall, and you can see how I concluded that Activision put pressure on them".

Pachter is probably right about Black Ops 2 being for multiplatform titles, put the connection between the Wii U Pro Controller being developed and Activision demanding it to support Call of Duty seems a little thin.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 releases for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC November 13. A Wii U release has been leaked, but not confirmed, by Treyarch.