SOURCE: http://mynintendonews.com/2012/05/20/details-regarding-wii-u-os/

The source who claims to have knowledge of the OS states that Nintendo has reserved at least 512 MB of RAM for the operating system alone.

Its gots to be at least a gig.

Said this in the official Wii U thread earlier after hearing about this... gotta be at least a GB. Possibly 1.5. And it's been over a year since they showed off the E3 prototype, so I'm sure they've tweaked the rest of the specs a bit since then. Not saying it's gonna be more powerful than what was demonstrated at E3, but more optimized for both Nintendo's and 3rd party developers' needs.

It's been said from a supposed Ubisoft source that the Wii U has 2GB. It's in the Wii U thread along with a bunch of other wild rumors.

Damn that's a nice amount.

They need to optimize the OS. The Ps3's OS at the start of this gen was at 100mb? Then they optimized it down to 10mb.

You can do it Nintendo!!!

100MB to 10MB? Do you have a reliable source for that, doesn't sound believeable.

The extra memory might be needed to transfer data between multiple WiiU-motes. Just a thought. Might even be fake news.

Back on topic though, of course Wii-u will have at least 2GB RAM, purely because RAM is so cheap nowadays to how it was when the Xbox 360 and PS3 released. the difference in price between 1GB and 2GB is virtually nothing and 512MB is more expensive than 1GB.

What makes you say that, or did you pluck it out of thin air?

Way off the mark. The PS3 OS at launch used 120mb, which Sony managed to drop to 96MB then to 50mb.

http://www.psuni.com/ps3-os-footprint-slashed-to-50mb-1798/

Still large when compared to the Xbox at 32mb, but then it's not entirely unexpected with Microsoft who has been making Operating Systems for decades, so they have the expertise.

512mb though is massive for a console, but I guess Nintendo is playing it safe, you can't increase an Operating Systems memory footprint on a console without serious reprecussions, but you can reduce it for future games.