I feel like Nintendo is in big trouble at this point. Here's why:

[nomad]

Captain_Tom said:

Mensrea said:
Wii U's online is drastically better than you are making it out to be. I've been using all of Nintendo's online features for MK8 (Which is 12 player online races by the way). Adding people I've played with is easy, I can send messages easily, setting up a private group with my friends is easy. Nintendo's online is not perfect, but on the Wii U at least, it's pretty solid.

Is there voice chat? DLC? Can I purchase the DLC once and use it on multiple systems?

Yes, there is voice chat in MK8, but they choose to exclude during games(races),  it's more of a game design decision than a limit of Nintendo's network infrastucture

Same for your "12player vs 32 players" comment. Nintendo choose 12players as their target number for MK (like Respawn w/Titanfall). And CoD for WiiU is above that with an 18 players limit. We'd probably see more if WiiU had more 3rd party support, EA's BF for example.

DLC and games are tied to accounts which are tied to hardware. In this area, you could say they are behind, but calling the whole network 2 gen behind is a big exaggeration.