It appears that the WiiU console will not offer a convenient means of downloading retail software seamlessly in the background while performing other WiiU tasks, such as playing games, shopping or watching movies on Netflix.

The news come from the investor's meeting Q&A, where Iwata describes the scenario:

Reason more to give them the benefit of the doubt when it comes to online convenience, not so sure about that one.

Here's to hoping that a software update will correct this early on.

Share your thoughts.

Source: April 2007 Investors Briefing Q&A

Hopefully these use torrent software to distibute.
Otherwise, I'm hoping my long-awaited dream of downloading from the physical store happens.

It would be likely corrected before launch, I also don't believe this 100% means it doesn't do it in the background, as it could simply relate to the length and size of the downloads, impacting your online speed, or your having to wait until this is done to download anything else, that could be what is convenient, waiting till overnight to download something for 4 hours (which again reasonably would eat up a good chunk of your bandwidth)

From what I can tell he only says that you have to be prepared for longer download times. Recommending that you download bigger titles while away from the console doesn't necessarily mean that the console will be locked while downloading. I usually download bigger files during the night so that the files will be ready next morning.

Simply saying that it could take awhile to download 10+ gig files. There isn't enough information to come to the conclusion about not being able to download it in the background or download it later.

Yes, you guys are absolutely right. It could mean just the waiting time before the title is downloaded rather than having to wait per se. This brings us back to square one, requesting lock.

Thanks guys.

Wait a second...

The text says:

However, consumers will be able to use the Wii U effectively by finding convenient times to download software such as when they are sleeping at night.

How could that mean anything else than the Wii U doesn't multitask? Why mention they can do it at night if it's seemlessly in the background.

Nah, I stick to my conclusion in the OP.

i'm not sure your conclusion fits the statement made but... i've said it before and i'll say it again. creating a robust online experience doesn't happen overnight. it will take nintnedo a few years to catch up to psn which still hasn't entirely caught up to live.

Might as well get the physical copy if it is the same price as the download copy.

Guys, the quote says:

"However, consumers will be able to use the Wii U effectively by finding convenient times to download software such as when they are sleeping at night."

How could that mean anything else than the Wii U doesn't multitask for downloads and make them background operations? Why mention they can do it at night if it could be done seemlessly in the background? Nah, I stick to my conclusion in the OP.

My first thought when I read this was that he was talking about people with poor connections and the time it would take them to download a ~10GB game. I did not read anything about the ability to background download.

Regardless of whether or not you can download while playing something else though, it's going to take well over 12 hours to download something that size with a poor connection. As an example, I only ever tried it once on my old 1.5mbps connection, and it took 11 hours to download a 5.5GB game.

Doing it in the background won't make a jot of difference to those people, as they'll still have to leave their consoles running idly for large periods of time even if they wanted to get in an hour or two of game playing while it was downloading.

For those of us with superfast broadband (I will be on a 100mbps connection very soon, for example), the lack of background downloads would be a hindrance, but as I've said, I didn't read anything about that.