Nintendo product marketing manager Bill Trinen confirmed a question many Wii U customers were wondering in an interview with 1UP

When asked about whether there was a limit to how far the Gamepad would work here is what he had to say.

“We tend to be more conservative, because we’re looking at it from a performance perspective. What, really, is the range where you’re going to get the best performance out of that? And you’re going to get the best performance within a range of about eight meters. That´s about 24 feet. That’s for best performance.”

24 feet is plenty of space for a lot of living rooms and at least he brings up a good reason for setting a limit on how far to have the range.