Nintendo head-honcho (President and CEO), Satoru Iwata, recently reminded us of the upcoming April update for the Wii U which will shorten loading times on the system. He wrote the following on MiiVerse, just as a reconfirmation:

Hello, this is Satoru Iwata of Nintendo.

As we announced in the January Nintendo Direct, we plan to release two Wii U system updates. One in spring, and one in the summer.

Today, I would like to let you know the status of these two updates.

We are planning to release the spring system update in April, which will improve the time it takes to launch software, and the time it takes to return to the Wii U Menu.

We still have tests remaining, and it will take a little more time until we can release the update. But today, we have prepared a video so you can see how the loading time will change when returning to the Wii U Menu with the system update, so please take a look if you are interested.

In the future, we would like to share announcements about Nintendo Direct events here, so we appreciate your continued attention.

And lastly, like in other Announcement Communities, please understand that while we read every comment, we are not able to reply. Thank you.

What does seeing Iwata reconfirm the update mean to you?

Sumo Digital has been hard at work to improve their masterpiece, Sonic & All-Stars Racing. Luckily for the development team, patching games on the Wii U is easier than ever before, and so they’ve given us this list of improvements for the game:

Networking

• Vehicle collisions in online races handle high latency much better.
• X360 – Increased timeouts to allow for less network errors.
• Rating reset issues should be resolved.
• -100 Rating Penalty for players who quit races intentionally (even for router resets).
• Starlight Carnival – Road shader adjusted to prevent ‘driving in the sky’ issue.
• Super pick-ups in arenas should work in all cases now.
• Rare issue leaving players unable to return to lobby addressed.

Difficulty

• Tuned the difficulty of Traffic Attack, Ring Race, and certain Race events in World Tour.
• Corrected certain traffic attack gates not giving you extra time.
• Made the ‘Skip event after 3 failed events?’ option appear on all difficulties.

Achievements

• Team Sonic – Made achievable in local gameplay so this is easier to get.
• Yokozuna – No longer unlocks when you only beat Sunshine Tour Expert Ghost.
• ‘Beat someone 500 points higher than you’ sticker no longer awarded unless criteria met.
• ‘Meteor Strike’ No longer triggers incorrectly.

Misc

• Time Attack – Multiple exploit fixes.
• Online play – Multiple exploit fixes.
• Co-op swap weapon slot now allows you to swap if you already have a weapon.
• Improved front end leaderboard caching.
• In-games triggers now handle physics tunnelling better for very fast players.
• incorrect HUD showing ‘Lap 2’ cases addressed.
• Improved motion controls for Wii-U
• Favourite character in license no longer incorrect.
• Hot-Rod physics effect in Arena’s clamped.
• Occasionally being able to drive through Swarm attacks corrected.

Audio

• Announcer should now say correct finishing position in high latency games
• All-Star music volume level corrected
• Reverb effects removed when audio disabled.