The reason why the outlet collection solution does not work is that a View Controller is not an outlet. From the documentation:
An outlet is a property that is annotated with the symbol IBOutlet and
whose value you can set graphically in a nib file or a storyboard.
A view controller is not a graphical object.
If you want to use an IBOutletCollection, you should only use one view controller, and put the views in the collection.
But if you want one controller for every view, you need to go for a more programmatic approach. An array with view controllers might be a good start, but I couldn't say as I don't know what you want to do with them.
Edit:
To be more clear as you don't seem to catch my point:
No, it does not has to be a way. A Storyboard is not an API, it is a graphical tool for drawing scenes and segues. It is specially designed for things like Tab Bar based apps.
If you right click on your Storyboard file and choose open as -> Source Code, you will see that a Tab Bar Controller have special elements that other View Controllers do not have. To mess around with the XML in a Storyboard file is beyond me.
If you want to go with Nib files, use Ramshads answer.
If you want to get as close as possible with storyboards, go with dasblinkenlights answer.
But the answer to your question (as far as I know) is NO, there is no way to accomplish this with storyboards. If it were, it would have been documented, which it is not.