Seems like all of those US reporters who waited around an hour or more to download their first Wii U system update could have been playing games while waiting instead of staring at an progress bar.
There are now reports that if you go ahead, connect your system to your network and then go play any Wii U titles (not online obviously) that the initial Wii U system update will download in the background while you play.
The Nintendo 3DS also does this, albeit not when you’re actually playing a game but when the system is asleep and we’re glad to see it pass through to the Wii U. Looking at a 1GB or more update after just freshly opening your Wii U would have been painful.
There are now reports though that background downloads do affect the Wii U’s in game performance though. We’ll wait until our Wii U arrives to test all of the above though and verify it.
The Wii U is out in Australia in just a week now. Follow our countdown on our Facebook page.
No NeoGAF links have worked for me for about a week. This is both a great and terrible thing. Don’t know what could be the cause.
Haven’t*
#git
Does the Wii U have a standby mode like the Wii?
Please correct me if I am wrong but I believe it does not
It doesn’t have WiiConnect24 but it has Spotpass. So yes. But no.
But that require the console to be on right?
Even if you can play games while doing it, a 1GB download right out of the box is a pretty painful proposition for Australian saps who have to juggle download limits.
I can understand this would be an issue if you live rural and you might have a wireless 3G internet connection with only 5-10gb download limit. But for everyone else, surely most people have decent enough internet connections with plenty of usage these days? TPG has unlimited plans in major cities for $69/mth and I think even a half decent Telstra plan has 50gb these days. Anyone else that has less, probably isn’t too concerned with online play and will probably be content to use the Wii U “as is” out of the box just for playing games.
In this day and age, I don’t think a 1gb update is much trouble at all. Most demo’s on Xbox Live and PSN range anywhere from 400mb to well over 1gb and no one seems to complain about downloading those.