I guess the secrecy was more important to them. They didn't want to see the kind of leaks that Microsoft and Sony try to fight but fail because they felt they had something special with Miiverse and some of their other ideas and wanted as much time as possible to separate between their launch and the competing system launches.

I think Sony is already exploring the same area as Miiverse as they already are half-way there with what they did on Vita and will now see a working model where people are actually engaged in game centric social network. The one on Vita is barely used.

Microsoft seems content to think that people will remain fine paying for XBox Live Gold when competing platforms don't require such a premium. It was fine when MS was a pioneer and only one in the market, but more recently they are just a more closed system and less appealing. I mean you could play Portal 2 between PS3 and Steam, but not X360 and Steam or X360 and PS3... and only because Microsoft has a closed system. This type of issue is why Dust 514 is only going to PSN and other PC/console cross-over projects will end up choosing such directions for same reason.

The Nintendo Network is more like PSN but it is also a few years behind and will take time to catch up and become as robust as PSN.

I feel right now Steam and PSN are the best gaming networks. XBL is fine but that premium just to play online is no longer justified. If MSFT must charge money for XBL Gold, they need to go the route of PS+ for the value and have the Silver be the same as PSN without PS+.

Did you buy it expecting iPad precision?

It's a gaming console, for 350$.

Oh, come on! Einstein already fixed that problem for you decades ago!

Just sit with a beautiful lady!

"always", I thought WiiU is Nintendo´s first product with so many updates...

Everyone bashing the load times probaby doesn't have one. The load times are fine. The only long load time I've experienced was the initial connecting to the interenet. Since it updated (especially the second update), load times are decent. Usually about 5 seconds, but less than 10. If they speed it up, great. I have a much longer load time loading the facebook ap on my new Windows8 phone.

lolz!

Load time are seriously a bummer, even going between the miiverse and say the web browser. They have a whole gig of ram dedicated to the OS. Why not load the entire OS (browser, miiverse, settings, etc) into a ramdisk and have it constantly in memory. You'd have nigh instant load times between core OS functions.

As far as app loading goes, its about the same as on other consoles. Netflix takes just as long to load on WiiU as it does on 360 as it does on my WDTV. Game loading could be a little quicker, but all games have long boot times at start regardless of platform. I mean, look at most steam games.

Doesn't help my perceptions though that I"m used to USB load speeds for games.

I don't see why people continue complaining; sure it's slow but it isn't too bad. A patch, as expected, is not a deal-breaker.

not talking update as in firmware only, hardware as well.

Oh do you mean Ds Lite,i,xl .3ds(xl).Yeah it is really bad for someone who bought a normal 3DS and then Nintendo announced the XL.