LOL, I was talking about second hand.

But if you want good 1st hand hard drive, then even a 2 TB external Hard Drive would cost you $85 + maybe $10 for shipping.

http://www.cedarpc.com/product/19990/Seagate-GoFlex-Desk-2TB-USB-3-0/

FYI newegg is a rip off for hard drives & surround sound headphones, it's like going to best buy for SD cards, because you always get the worse deal for that particular kind of device.

You can definitely get 250 GB external Hard Drive 1st Hand for less then $50 definitely.

22GB?

If it takes 11 hours to download and 1.5 hours to install the 6.5gb DQX beta, this would take almost 2 days.

Dude, though $150 for a 250GB is way off, you can't get a new 500GB drive for $25, or a 250gb drive for $15, hard drives themselves just cost more than that. And the 2 TB you pointed out requires external power, which though isn't a big issue, it definitely detracts from the Wii U if people have to go to those lengths to get decent storage, otherwise why did Nintendo bother making the WiiU small and nice looking? A full 3.5"" external drive with a power pack isn't much smaller than the WiiU itself. 

And it looks bad from a cost perspective because if you have to buy a 250/500gb drive to be able to effectively use the online store, then the total WiiU cost effectively goes up $50 to $349 assuming you get the basic Wii U, which is way above a 500gb PS3 (and that comes with Assassins Creed 3 or PSN+). 

And that's why we need a Wii U version with at least 100 GB of internal memory.

no issue for me, got an external hdd already 320gb imation portable cost me $39AUD at officework for aussie out there lol.

This is 2013, they could have easily put a HDD in there that would have alot of space and not take up that much actual room. Hell the drives in the PS3 are not even that big. I was surprised how small they were when i had to update and how cheap

The problem isn't the external drive cost, it's persuading users to buy an addon when it isn't Nintendo branded and there are way too many options. For example an average customer might accidentally buy an internal drive.

I don't think HDD size in the console was the motivation for the low capacity. All hard drives are pretty small now, and you can trade density for cost/performance. I think it was the cost, because after the absurd Gamepad price they didn't want to lose more money on something not essential.

I don't know why some people are acting like an external hard drive is large... I bought a 500GB Seagate External Hard Drive for $60 (new). It is about as big as my 3DS, and about 1/4th the thickness. It could fit easily in my pocket.

If the same people are going to make a big deal about this every time a game bigger than 10gigs comes out, it's going to get old really fast, if it hasn't already.

We've known the Wii U would have a maximum of 32 gigs internal storage ever since the SKUs were announced. It should have been obvious to everyone, given that the optical discs can store tens of gigs, that you were not going to be able to download more than a couple of full sized games before the system was full.

Either you are someone who is happy to buy physical discs or you are someone who was going to (sooner or later) need to purchase a hard drive. That equation has not changed for more than a year.

Thankfully Nintendo has given you, the user, the option to choose a hard drive in whatever size you want or can afford. The alternative is building in a hard drive which drives up the cost of the system by more than the cost of purchasing the same sized hard drive at the store.

Of course, Nintendo is going to eventually make Wii U's with more hard drive space.  I think it should be pointed out that it is the next logical step once it becomes cheaper to do.