- I dont think I have to say its never good to to turn off any system during an update.

First Wii U brick reported: Do not shutdown during firmware update

Posted in News Tags: Nintendo, Wii U

The Wii U will brick if you shut it down during an ongoing firmware update.

Ben Fritz, Film business reporter for Latimes, has bricked his Wii U without playing a single game. The reason? Shutting down the system during an update. The size of the update is something that’s not pretty either.

It’s a known fact that many hardware manufacturers tell you not to turn any system off if it’s updating, but there’s always a backup mechanism in place if things go wrong, for example, the PS3 will retry the update as soon as the console starts.

“Warning: don’t unplug your Wii U during the 2 hour plus software update or the console stops working,” he tweeted.

The Wii U firmware update is 5 GB in size and adds the Nintendo Network to the console. Weird way to install a required service, but hey, it’s Nintendo.

Here’s what Fritz had to say:

So is there some secret way to hard reset a Wii U? Cause mine is totally busted

— Ben Fritz (@benfritz) November 18, 2012

Warning: don’t unplug your Wii U during the 2 hour plus software update or the console stops working.

— Ben Fritz (@benfritz) November 18, 2012

Since the console is bricked, my Wii U tryout party has turned into a “Predator” viewing party. #goodtrade?

— Ben Fritz (@benfritz) November 18, 2012

@jonshiring seriously. I never played a single game and now as far as I can tell its unusable.

— Ben Fritz (@benfritz) November 18, 2012

That should be really frustrating, but at least now he can check out how Nintendo customer support is like.

Its pretty clear that you shouldnt turn it off in the set up instructions.

Maybe people should read more and react less.

Powering off during an update isn't exactly the smartest thing to do, especially when the update modifies the operating system. The system should have a way to deal with such issues though.

Is the automatic shutdown activated by default ? If so when does it shut down ?

That's scary. I have slow internet speeds and it would take forever to download that update. Who knows what could happen.

Should have added an ethernet port.

an earlier article said it was an hour and it is default, but I think this guy literally just unplugged his Wii U during a update so it might not even apply.

I would imagine you can turn it off. This could be a big problem for a lot of people who don't see this. I wouldn't have thought about this myself. If he just unplugged the system then damn.

I'm pretty sure during the update process that automatic shutdown is disabled.

The console automatically turns off after an hour of inactivity -- this can be disabled in system settings, but it's been confirmed that this function is INACTIVE during the system update. The console will NOT turn itself off while updating.