Wow. Not nearly as many people complaining as I would have thought

I always use Wifi and I never had a problem.

And if you are really serious about Ethernet you already own a dongle... jeez, it's $15. Don't make a huge fuzz about it. You always need to buy "something" to get the max out of your console.

Also, not including an HDMI cable with the 360 in 2005 was a wise decision as no freaking person back then had an HDTV yet. Same goes for the Wii U: Most people use WiFi. No reason to make the product bigger and more expensive just so a minority of customers can have their 10% more stable connection. It is called being a business and serving the customers. If only 10% of your customers want something you don't add costs for the other 90%. You are not the center of the world.

No ISDN port either? OMG, Nintendo so bad!

What's ISDN? Is that some kind of a serial number for a book?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_Services_Digital_Network

So what is the truth on that? 802.11n is capable of something like 50-60mbps, depending on your router.  It also has bigger latency than wired connection.

Here are some results from speedtest while downloading some videos, dl seems to be capped at 100mbps with minimal impact on ping. Note that I am using the wireless-n tablet less than 2 meters from my router, no wall between.

http://www.speedtest.net/result/2293874361.png

http://www.speedtest.net/android/286527918.png

21ms more latency and 150mbps less dl speed.

What kind of performance does that 15$ dongle offer? USB adds some latency and I really doubt that it can handle a decent internet connection.

your max download speed ain't the issue here... most games online only use around 512kbits not even kbytes to communicate with the server... (more if its P2P and you are the host, but not much) the thing is the ping... ping has nothing to do with max speed (its a configuration on your ISP server) ping on the other hand, has to do with how far you are from your ISP server, the type of cable used in that link, how good is your router, even built-in ethernet ports have differences in performance between manufactures... in WIFI, after all that, your router have to transmit over the air the signal with encryption  because of security, then the console have to decrypt the data and use it, the same process goes as a respond... all of this is in milliseconds... as i stated in my other post, the thing is, that is not a problem... its works... but it is not optimal (this case as the usb to ethernet case)
i understand, you may think "all i want is it to work" and you are right... if works what is the problem? but for some, its the little thinks that makes a thing just good instead of being great... and you have to understand those people too...

Well at least you can finally drop that extra land line you've been keeping around just for that.

+1

If you own a Wii and want to see the difference between a wired and wireless connection, play Tatsunoko vs. Capcom online. You will almost instantly know what kind of connection your opponent is using. You can even see the difference in Monster Hunter Tri. When I played wirelessly, monsters would occassionally teleport across the map and other players would seem to be swinging at air on my screen when they were in fact doing something else. These things especially happened right after changing zones.

That said, wireless is still fine for most games, and it's a $8-15 fix if you want a more reliable connection.