Monster Hunter Is Once Again At The Centre Of The Handheld Hardware Debate.

In an interview with GameInformer, the boss speculated that the peripheral was probably produced at the request of Capcom in order to support the controls of the system's upcoming Monster Hunter title.

"Well it's not like they looked at PS Vita and said 'we need to do that as well,'" he said speaking of the system's second stick.

"I don't know. It's clear that they didn't believe a second analog was necessary when they designed the 3DS, so I can only guess it was requested by Capcom's side. Maybe a Capcom producer told Nintendo that to play Monster Hunter we need [two] analog sticks. That I don't know, so I can only guesstimate.

"It was a bit shocking to see what they came up with," he concluded.

The 3DS's circle-pad extension has been at the centre of much controversy, prompting speculation that Nintendo is set to release an "updated" 3DS system with the extra circle-pad included.