perhaps his gamepad may be facing him as he was playing. if i understand correctly the bar along the gamepads camera also act's as the sensor bar when using a wii remote.
I seriously doubt Nintendo went out and made a completely different bar for the Wii U. It looks the exact same as my Wii one.Maybe he just got a faulty unit.
Might be... psychosomatic??? The sensor bar doesn't sense anything. It is literally a string of lights in the infrared spectrum. It is literally only connected to the Wii/Wii U to power those lights. The only possible reason something could ever be wrong is in the case that one or more of the lights was defective.
It's far more likely that he had a very powerful light source adjacent to his television that was superseding the lights from the sensor bar. I've seen it happen myself.
Now - Join us on Filmwatch as we celebrate the release of Star Trek Into Darkness this month with a must-have collectible for Star Trek fans! | Promoted post
40°
40°
20°
30°
Ad 
30°
Nintendo!
It's not fun getting a defective bar out of the box.
The sensor bar doesn't sense anything. It is literally a string of lights in the infrared spectrum. It is literally only connected to the Wii/Wii U to power those lights. The only possible reason something could ever be wrong is in the case that one or more of the lights was defective.
It's far more likely that he had a very powerful light source adjacent to his television that was superseding the lights from the sensor bar. I've seen it happen myself.