2) That's a good question, and a legit concern. The SD to internal flash thing on Wii was nothing more than a pain in the butt.

I'm hopeful that won't be an issue, since digital software is not an afterthought (the SD support on Wii came in an update, you probs remember), so the likelyhood is that it will be well executed.

Remember, the last thing they want to do is hinder their digital commerce strategy, if their last financial breifing is any indicator. I'd be hard-pressed to see them do something so stupid after all the steps in the right direction they've been taking lately. Have faith.

@Euphoric friend. I would say so too

that is true if the entire game was on the SD card.

..but it couldn't "see" the dlc i downloaded for Samba (disc based) when it was on the SD card.  that was required to be on the actual wii system to be played.  as a "core" or "dedicated" or "hobbyst" or whatever gamer you want to call me ... i have waay more than 8 Gb of dlc and patches.  i don't want to have to shift that data to play a game due to only 8 Gb of "useable" data.  so as long as the wii U can read directly from the external it's all good and i would have no complaints.

Good for people that don't want it, but in effect adds $60 to the price tagor people who do. So instead of getting the WiiU for $300 and thinking that it wasn't a bad price many will in fact be paying $360 which is more than alot of people have said the want to spend.

That and Nintendo could buy 10 million of them and get a much better price and pass it on to us.

Then again Western Digital can sell in the hundreds of millions of them and reduce prod costs even more powerfully.

Also, comparing WiiU to another gen 8 console, 360$ will be an excellent price for digital buyers, 300 an even better price for retail buyers. Add to the fact that you can use any existing External HD laying around at home and you could even save money.

Has Nintendo confirmed that any external HDD will be compatible?

This doesn't bother me at all. I got a 750Gb external last year for $99, and I would rather be able to use it as a multipurpose storage device than pay an extra $99 for an included hard drive.

Although I would prefer a HDD, it isn't a necessity. From what I understand, a portable HD or SD cards are either cheap, or free as you've already got them ;P Personally I don't have a portable HD or big SD cards, so it's a small issue, but nothing major. It's a problem on the scale of sixaxis lacking rumble... i.e hardly a problem.

i think it's better to have a console without hdd and one with so people can decide if they want a console for 50 bucks more or so with hdd or not. i prefer to get the one without and use what i already own because it is less expensive for me then. if people like to buy a console with incuded hdd good for them, i think using a 1.5tb external drive which i already own and use 1/4 of that for my console is much cheaper for me than having a console with build in 375gb and 50 bucks higher price then (after some years, the launch consoles would maybe cost 100 bucks more because of the hdd)

but i don't know if this is possible for nintendo, they would have to build the console a little bit different then which woud maybe be a bigger console then.

yeah but even if you have to purchase an extra hdd it won't cost you more than you would have to pay extra for the same storage build in the wii u. wii u would cost minimum 50 bucks more with 320gb or so. and you can always use the other hdd for other things as well then if you want. i know 1.5gb external hdd cost 109€ atm on german amazon (which doesn't have to be the cheapest), for 50 you will get easily 350gb.

still, some might want to have an internal drive but many don't want to have it, good decision by nintendo.

Yah!
http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/news/30582