The Wii U isn’t just hindered by one giant update– there are countless others
November 20th, 2012 Posted in News, Podcast Stories, Posted by Austin, Wii U
Edit: Just wanted to note that these updates can be downloaded in the background while you play games.
I want to make it clear that I absolutely adore the Wii U as a console, but it definitely has some major problems. The two everyone seems to be talking about are the oddly long load times (10-20 seconds for an app, sometimes more than 30 for a game) and the big one-hour update that you have to do right at the beginning. What people seemed surprised to hear on our Wii U stream last night was that there are countless other updates that you have to install in order to play various games. By memory, here are the games and updates I’ve had to do so far:
- ZombiU: No update initially, but today I had to do an update that took about 2 minutes.
- Nintendo Land: Had to do two updates yesterday, one taking about 5 minutes and one about 8.
- New Super Mario Bros. U: Had to do an update once, took about 8 minutes.
- Sonic & SEGA Racing Time: One update, took about 6 minutes.
- Black Ops 2: Just the one update so far, taking about 8-10 minutes.
There might have been more that I’m forgetting about, but beyond that the system alterts you that it’s finished downloading something randomly every so often (especially yesterday), but gives you no indication as to what it is. I looked into it, but nothing seemed to help out.
This isn’t a system breaker at all, but I think new Wii U owners should be prepared: Long load times, lots of updates, and one BIG update will be there to meet you when you turn on your console for the first time. Unless they fix all of it by the time the next shipment arrives, who knows?
~Austin
6 Responses to “The Wii U isn’t just hindered by one giant update– there are countless others”
By Gamer Greg on Nov 19, 2012
I only had 1 Nintendo Land update, it took 12 minutes. Maybe they merged? I didn’t put it in until last night when all my updates and stuff were completed, finished dinner, and decorating the house for Christmas.
By ei8htbit on Nov 19, 2012
Guys,
This is NOT a big deal at all. Regarding the amount of updates, keep this in mind: When is the last time you bought 6 games at once and played them on the same day? For anyone who owns a 360 and/or a PS3, when is the last AAA game you bought that was actually playable out of the box on day one without an update that took a few minutes to download? It’s a fact of development in modern gaming – games and systems go “GOLD” before final code could ever possibly be ready given the quantities that need to reach warehouses in advance.
The difference with the OS update is that it’s the frigging console’s entire operating system, there’s a lot in there that’s included so naturally it’s going to be substantial. People are acting like they’ve never had to wait to download a 6GB movie or game before – there’s hundreds of thousands of these things out there and everyone is on the server at once – where is the mystery in that?
MORE IMPORTANTLY: Every one of these games updates appears to give you the option to begin playing the game before the update is finished downloading (meaning you should be able to DL it in the background while you play) There is a button that says “Play Game” while the progress bar continues in the background. Of course you will have to reload once the update is completed to get any of it’s benefits.
REGARDING LOAD TIMES: This must be case by case to some degree, because I rarely wait even 10 seconds to load. Again, games require time to load into memory this is nothing new. Try starting up Borderlands or Black Ops 2 on 360 – you will be waiting at least 10-20 seconds before landing on Title Menu.
Everyone has gone launch crazy..
By Austin on Nov 19, 2012
I’d like to point out that this is still better than most of the download/load times on PS360, but I still consider it unacceptable. And yes, you can download these in the background.
By Patrick on Nov 19, 2012
I’m sure the updates were just to add Miiverse support or something. Most PS360 games don’t require updates on launch day.
By Austin on Nov 19, 2012
Yea, but they do have ridiculously long download/load/save times. Unacceptable, I say!
By Austin on Nov 19, 2012
Also, wasn’t the choice of using a solid state drive over an HDD supposed to fix any load time issues…? Also 2GB of RAM?