Nintendo's Satoru Iwata Apologizes for Lack of Key Features on Wii U's Launch
posted Sunday Dec 2, 2012 by Nicholas DiMeo
Wii U sales may be surpassing Nintendo's expectations, however the company's President, Satoru Iwata, believes that customers who have already purchased the console should be able to experience all of the features from day one. Unfortunately, the Wii U was missing some features at launch and that doesn't sit right with the man in charge. So much so, in fact, that Iwata has apologized for the features that were missing from the November 18th launch day.
Personally I think that users should be able to use all the functions of a console video game machine as soon as they open the box. So I feel very sorry for the fact that purchasers of Wii U have to experience a network update which takes such a long time, and that there are the services which were not available at the hardware's launch.
To be fair, Nintendo pushed out a 5GB update to the Wii U's firmware on launch day to include many of the missing features, however, it can take up to two hours to download, depending on your Internet speed. We also learned that this update won't be bundled into Wii U packages until 2013, when the next batch of units hit the shelves. The good news is that users were able to get access to Miiverse, Internet-based features and backwards compatibility for their Wii games with the update. TVii is still missing, though, and won't be available until later this month. This was one of the more anticipated elements to the Wii U, as it allowed a second-screen experience on the entertainment side of things.
Despite the lack of features that came included with the Wii U, the console was still able to push 400,000+ units on launch day, to the pleasure of Reggie Fils-Aime, president of Nintendo America.
Wii U is essentially sold out of retail and we are doing our best to continually replenish stock. Retailers are also doing their best to get the product to store shelves. But as soon as product hits retail, they're selling out immediately.
Did you buy a Wii U? Or are the missing features, like TVii, enough for you to hold off until they become available? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
