That is indeed the question. The very question that nintendo must surely have ask themselves.

They obviously thought it wasn't.

I do understand what you are saying. For a few more cents we won't be having this discussion but instead be critising something else about the console, like the fact it doesn't make coffee.

Nintendo made the decision not to have onboard ethernet and give you the option of an add-on ethernet.

In all honesty I think the vast majority of people (including myself ) won't care about an ethernet port. If they lose 200,000 sales because it lacks a port, I am sure they won't lose any sleep over it.

The wii's lack of HD was predicted to result in horrid sales (some prophesied less than the gamecube) because it lacked ( as you so eloquently put it ) the image for the more performance-conscious or tech-savy crowd? Yet it is still the market leader and will die before being overthrown.

You couldn't add HD to the wii but you can add ethernet to the wii u.

IT IS PRETTY SIMPLE, IF YOU WANT A WII U YOU WILL BUY ONE AND SOMETHING AS INSIGNIFICANT AS AN ETHERNET PORT WILL NOT DISUADE YOU. You will simply buy the add-on - which I doubt very many people will.

of course, because I dont like everything nintendoes automatically erases my wii in my bedroom.

I mean, be honest, WOULD you say no to an ethernet port? Wouldnt it be just easier to include one? is it that hard? how did sony handle it? cmon, its not that hard, and why not include it? whats the problem? I think ITS very normal to criticise a company for not including such thing. really

THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE

when

I ALSO WANT MY DIGITAL AUDIO OUT

Sucks for you. 350mbps is nothing magical, but early next year our apartment gets a better connection option. 1gb connection might be magical for me. :)

I was just wondering what city you lived in? 

A smallish city in the middle of Finland. That 1gb connection will be available only to few apartment houses close to a technology center, but the 350mb is available almost nationwide.

You are missing the point. Most people in the world don't have your speed.

Also as other have mentioned data caps. When broadband first come out they existed. Then they vanished and now they are returning as ISPs can see extra value in selling you more blocks of data if you need them. It is to weed out the pirates and also so they can establish their own streaming services or via partnerships that offer free data (as in does not count towards your cap) from those sites, again to make more moeny from you.

Also a BlueRay disc video bitrate is 40.0Mbps MAX (with data transfer of 54Mbps, if at 1.5x read speed, otherwise 36Mbps). However this is for crappy BluRays that are still encoded in MPEG2 (which has been around since dvd days).

MPEG4 1080p compressed streams can be achieved with a bitrate of 4-8Mbps and still look great. If anyone is going to stream things to you it will most likely be in MPEG4 and not MPEG2.

The only thing I thought Scandinavian countries would be behind in was internet speeds, guess I was wrong. Fuck it, I'm moving to Finland.

Blu-rays are usually around 25-30mbps and is the best quality digital video you can get I believe. 4k is just over 4 times the resolution so you'll be looking at a maximum bit-rate of around 110mbps. Internet or streaming 1080p has a much lower bit-rate though, only around 10mbps, but qualit does suffer. They could probably apply the same level of compression to 4k and get away with 40mbps.

Maybe not now, but definitely later.

Where I live, only data caps that I have ever seen was with early 3g connections.

40mbps video max and 24.5mbps audio max, 54mbps total max.

And here is a thing which you don't know, unless you have a magic crystal ball. 8mbps is not great by any means.