What do you make of this sentence?:

"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."

Exactly what I've already suggested. That people with poor connections are going to have to do that irrespective of the ability to background download being present or not.

There are three issues with that:

1) It doesn't consider offline activities (games, utilities).

2) It doesn't consider activities with low bandwidth needs.

3) It doesn't consider the basic solution of bandwidth sharing, and prioritizing other activities during background DL processes.

Item 3 should be basic when developing a mature online infrastructure. Something tells me that either way this is bad news and poorly thought out.

This actually is not a big deal to me at all. The Wii U pad is not the Ipad. It's not like I'm using it for a bunch of other important things so I can easily find time to download a new title. And I get only about 6-8 new games (not used or black market) per console so this means nothing.

That being said, maybe I'll be getting more titles this generation if there are more medium size games (between a AAA title and an Ipad game). And maybe (probably not) the DL games will be 5 bucks cheaper than the retail version

happy -- isn't not that your aren't right, it's that your aren't 100% certainly right.  this was at the investor's meeting  so this would have been originally in japonese right?  so mistranslation could be at play here too.  the quote is just too vague to come to any conclusion imo.

What about game demoes?

The issue already exists for the 3DS, they take long to DL and they hog the system, no room to do anything else on the 3DS while waiting.

I think you're wrong. I think Nintendo are trying to hint that you CAN do it in the background, but it may slow the games down, or may not be able to use the controller etc.

You can download in the background on the 3DS. So the WiiU is only logical to follow.

Okay, it's the second time someone brings up the Japanese translation argument when other explanations lack, so let's go the extra mile.

Here is the quote in japanese, people who know how to read it, you're welcome to verify if the meaning was maintained in the translation:

There's more, but I think that's where the "sleeping at night" part ends.

(http://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/library/events/120427qa/index.html)

I just think people are reading way too much into a piece of a sentence that has been translated for another language. As pointed out you can dl in the back ground on the 3DS, so why would Nintendo take a step back wards and not allow it on it's home console. Plus as some have pointed out the speeds are still very prohibitive so if it is the same price going to the store and buying the physical copy and installing it to storage would be a better use of time and bandwidth.

You can? I had no idea...

Is this new from a recent update? I haven't played my 3DS in 3 weeks now.

My last experience with downloads was waiting after the MGS demo to DL and it took a while.