Wii U Touchdown: 200th Post celebration

Early today, the unthinkable happened.  The Nintendo Wii U has hit North America.  With the Wii fading into obscurity, the Wii U will now take the place of the Wii.

However, the first snag was hit with the Wii U.  A firmware update.  And it has to last for around 50 minutes or so.  MAybe even 4 hours


Congrats! If you're reading this, you're one of the lucky people – or smart people – who either plopped down a preorder for Nintendo's Wii U or managed to score yourself a console after a bit of line waiting earlier this morning.
The bummer? You aren't going to get to do that much on your Wii U right out of the box, especially not if you connect your brand-new console up to your home network. Nintendo's officially released the console's first major update and, at roughly five gigabytes in size, you're in for a bit of a download process.
As reported by Kotaku's Owen Good, a number of new Wii U owners are taking to Twitter to complain about the lengthy download times built into the mandatory firmware update – anywhere from one to four hours, Good suggests, which can be a bit of a buzzkill for those looking to tap into everything their Wii U has to offer.
Worse, gamers who don't heed Nintendo's warnings (or their general common sense) about turning off the power to their Wii U consoles before the firmware update finishes are in for a bit of pain. In other words, don't be like the Los Angeles Times' Ben Fritz: When he pulled the plug on his Wii U mid-download, the act of impatience bricked his system.

So remember folks.  If your Wii U is updating, let it update.  Otherwise, you'll end up with a $250 to $350 paper weight.

However, for those of you who are in love with Digital Distribution, it seems the Wii U may be less restrictive than the 360 and the PS3.



Trine developer Frozenbyte has confirmed to IGN that the WiiU's eShop will not be subject to pricing regulation from Nintendo, meaning games don't have to adhere to strict monetary tiers as developers enjoy the freedom to charge what they like.
"We have the power to price our products as we please, with just some basic guidelines from the big guys," beamed marketing manager Mikael Haveri. "The step to this is purely from Nintendos's side and they clearly see that [their] previous installments have not been up to par. We can set our own pricing and actually continuing on that by setting our own sales whenever we want. It is very close to what Apple and Steam are doing at the moment, and very indie friendly."

Not only that, but patches applied to games will come at no additional charge.  Meaning if you got a Wii U title on the eShop that needs patching, you pay NOTHING!