there is a reason you can count the number of players with a "mature" online functionality on one hand.  the answer is it can be very expensive.  amazon has an entire web services section of their business to address the fact most businesses can't afford to create their own services.

If I'm not mistaken google made a modern-day browser in nearly a year. It has the basic feature of background downloads. What reason for not multi-tasking is unclear, but I would bet strongly that it is a design contraint (not wanting to reserve too many resources for the OS) than money.

We might never know, but I wouldn't argue it's a matter of money, but a matter of OS design architecture.

Let us imagine that Nintendo come out with with the best online network ever seen in gaming. Everything you doubt is addressed, you can download anything while playing another game, while watching something on Netflix or whatever else you may choose to do while your game of choice is downloading.

Mike from Macclesfield comes along to download a 10GB game on his 1.0mbps connection, a connection that only actually hits 1.0mbps intermittently. Nintendo presenting all the convenience possible isn't going to change the fact that our friend Mike is going to need to allocate anywhere up to an entire day to download that game (not an exaggeration).

Nintendo cannot do anything about people with those kind of connection speed issues, no matter the amount of convenience they offer.

I've downloaded two full games on PS3 and in both cases it took quite a bit of time. Same thing when I downloaded Civ5 on the PC through Steam.

In all those cases, the games were probably less than 10GB (maybe not LBP). I don't see how any console company can really make that any different.

I have decent cable internet that gets speeds greater than 10Mbps down and all of the instances above were over my wifi-n network (PC) or g in the case of PS3.

Facts are, the system can only go as fast as the connection. So by Nintendo saying they'll have a sleep based download feature, I say awesome addition. I'll likely go mostly digital if rumors be true and used game sales are forced out of the systems or if they prove to have good sales. I simply don't like having to have racks of games and discs.

So, knowing I can buy the game at launch (midnight) and set it to download while I go to sleep, why would I need anything else?

The sentence is so vague it's hard to tell what he is saying. But his point would be the same even if the Wii U could multitask.
When you are dl a game on the 360 and you use Netflix or play another game online it will either slow down your dl or pause it so it doesn't interfere with what you are doing. Even sometimes while playing a single player game it will get notifications on the 360 that my dl has paused. But if I'm not doing anything on my 360 the dl is much faster. I can imagine that a much larger dl will take a lot longer especially if the system is multitasking.

THe more interesting part I took from the interview was this:
Iwata: First of all, regarding your remark that the digitally downloaded software has less value than the traditional and physical, packaged software, I hold doubts about whether it is exactly correct. When I think about it as one of the consumers, for example, I find the value in being able to store a number of software titles in a hardware system and being able to bring them with me wherever I go and, therefore, I may choose this option. Different people value different things.

^Does this mean that the Wii U will have a large HDD? I mean an SD card will not be able to store "a number of software titles" at least at 10 gigs a pop.

That's all true, but it's Mike from Morgantown.

Anyways, it's besides the point. The point is, customer service and customer convenience. If someone has a bad connection, there really is nothing Nintendo can do about that. I wouldn't blame Nintendo for something they have no control over, I don't think that's what you expect me to do...

Multitasking on the OS level should be standard by now.

Releasing a console that cannot download data while you are playing an offline game or using another offline application in 2012 is just not an option; it's not competitive.

Hopefully we're all wrong, but this and the no internal HDD rumour means the Nintendo download service will be left behind yet again. Don't do it Nintendo.

man...I hope that's not that case...

I'm not so upset about the no internal HDD thing. I'm all for giving consumers the choice personally. But the no download thing, yeah I understand let's give Ninty a chance, but in this day and age, it feels prehistoric...