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
This week’s Famitsu review scores are as follows:
Professor Layton vs. Ace Attorney (3DS) – 9/9/9/8
Dai-2-Ji Super Robot Taisen Original Generations (PS3) – 9/8/9/9
Darksiders II (PS3/360) – 9/8/9/9
Medal of Honor: Warfighter (PS3/360) – 8/9/8/8
Taiko no Tatsujin Wii (Wii) – 8/8/8/8
Naruto SD: Powerful Shippuden (3DS) – 8/8/7/8
Atelier Totori Plus (PSV) – 8/8/8/7
Kamen Rider Chou Climax Heroes (Wii) – 7/7/8/8
UnchainBlades Exiv (3DS/PSP) – 8/7/7/7
Kamen Rider Chou Climax Heroes (PSP) – 8/7/7/7
Love Tore (360) – 7/7/6/8
Koi wa Kousoku ni Shibararenai! (PSP) – 7/7/7/6
Saint Seiya ? Ultimate Cosmo (PSP) – 6/7/6/6
Missing Parts (PSP) – 6/7/6/6
Sports Champions 2 (PS3) – 7/6/5/6
Though Nintendo may kindly ask you not to, a Wii U owner seems to have stumbled upon a simple-yet-ingenious way of using an SD card to play Wii U games off of: By using a USB SD card reader. Check out the video:
Keep in mind that if something goes wrong in this process, Nintendo can’t be held responsible. They told users a week or so ago that, while you can play games off of a flash drive, they don’t recommend it because flash drives can only take so many read/write cycles before they turn to junk. It’s much safer to use a hard drive!
THQ and developer 4A Games dropped its plans to release Metro: Last Light for Wii U. Part of that can be blamed on the number of SKUs the studio is already committed to. Unlike the original game, Last Light will be coming to the PlayStation 3.
Chief technical officer Oles Shishkovtsov explained that if yet another platform was involved, the quality of the game could have diminished:
“We had an early look at it, we thought we could probably do it, but in terms of the impact we would make on the overall quality of the game – potentially to its detriment – we just figured it wasn’t worth pursuing at this time. It’s something we might return to. I really couldn’t make any promises, though. We had an initial look at the Wii U, but given the size of the team and compared to where we were last time, just developing for the Playstation 3 is a significant addition.”
Wii U’s technical aspects may have also contributed to the decision. 4A’s Huw Beynon said that console “has a horrible, slow CPU.”
