A Nintendo spokesperson states that the Wii U and its controller will only be sold together.

As more information about the Nintendo Wii U began to trickle out last night people across the Internet noticed something: there was no mention of multiple Wii U controllers. While multiplayer gaming was confirmed, with one Wii U controller and up to four Wii Remotes, there wasn't any mention that multiple Wii U controllers would be available.

CVG asked a spokesperson about this and they stated that the Wii U and controller would only be sold together as one unit, even claiming you will not be able to buy the controller by itself. They also said that multiplayer games that are in development are being designed to only use one Wii U controller.

Whether or not more than one Wii U controller can be synchronised with a console is unclear at the moment.

Update

A number of people in the comments section have noted that this somewhat contradicts what Katsuya Eguchi stated earlier. We are aware that there appears to be a contradiction but at the moment we believe that both are true essentially. At present it appears that only one controller will be usable with Wii U but Nintendo are looking into changing this if possible. As always we'll keep you updated with developments.