For people to notice that don't currently have a console then it has to be retail. It's basically free advertising. Only people who see the eshop are owners of the system.

maybe a new mascot in retail or digital form, because Mario, Super Smash Bros, Donkey Kong etc have been around for yonks and they keep getting rehashed over and over again. In saying that I keep buying them over and over again too.

In terms of raw profit -- digital.

Though one can't deny that Wii U could use some additional goodwill from the retail side. Selling through stock of games does that to some extent.

I'd personally like to see Nintendo and retail collaborate on actually shrinking down the retail copies of games and instead put a playable console in that store space. Retail just wants something that consistently sells given the floor space

That's one major problem with the Wii U's design though; there is almost no storage available. 32GB won't get you far with modern games. I have a couple of games on Steam that take up 15-20GB each and it's certainly not uncommon with 6-7GB for a fairly standard title, this is one of the reasons why digital won't be as viable for Nintendo in the 8th gen (the other being the actual availability on the store itself).

Adding storage is pretty simple though.

Just add a SD card, USB stick or even an entire external hard drive. All are easily formatted to the Wii U.

They're not beyond the point of adding an SKU with extra storage either.

Digital sales are more profitable for Nintendo, but the prices aren't very attractive. I pre-ordered Tropical Freeze for less than 33 Euros and it's at 49.99 in the eShop.

By the way: the speed of the internal flash memory is pretty slow, even external USB drives load the games faster.

My ZombiU (bought it a second time on the eShop for 9.99) measurements:

- Disk: 01:51.5.
- internal: 01:41.0
- external HDD: 01:37.5
- external SSD: 01:33.0

Method: I measured the time between clicking on the icon on the Wii U menu and the moment when the name of the survivor appears. I always measured it twice and Tte numbers are rounded mean valiues.

The internal memory and external SSD are loading the higher quality textures immediately. You can sometimes see very low-res textures for around 1 second with the Disk or external HDD.

The controls are also more responsive from internal or external memory. The Disk is struggling to load the data fast enough, it clatters all the time (this is not the case with Nintendo games).

Of course it's simple, but that's not my point. It should come with the capacity to make full use of the fastest growing distribution method in the world out of the box, not more or less require another expense for the customer. People talk about the amazing value of the Wii U and then forget the fact that you need to add more storage yourself in order to make full use of online stores, heck; even mandatory installs could pose problems.
To top it off; Nintendo have by far the poorest track record in allowing and acting as a segue for 3rd party accessories on their platforms.

I suppose that you could simply delete stuff every time you download or install something but that feels a bit excessive to demand of your customers as well. We saw MS discontinue the Core model after a fairly short amount of time on the market due to these exact problems; online components, installs and other forms of media quite simply need quite a bit of space, one can imagine how much you can get your hands on in 5-6 years until you purchase a new console.

Bolded: This should be at the very top of Nintendo's to-do list; add more storage in the box. I also can't figure out why they went with SSD, and a tiny one at that, these discs are the least cost-eficient on the market and it's not like it has made neither the OS nor the games perform any better (which is the whole point of an SSD in the first place).

Small storage in tablets and phones is okay, they don't really need as much, no huge games or massive mandatory installs or savegames to handle.

Nintendo should be focusing on key AAA system sellers like 3D Mario, Zelda, MK, Xeno games, and shorter, app-style, classic style games for download. They could kick ass in this latter segment if they divided teams such as the NSMB team and the NintendoLand team into making these games. An annual heaping of a 4-world 2D Mario package for around $10 bucks. Mint. A downloadable classic 2D Metroid that is short - about the length of the original with 2 mini-bosses and a duel with mother brain. $10. Take my money!

As said above, storage is an issue and I don't know that this would help the Wii U that much. It's the retail attention it needs. But it's the model they should use going forward.