I have never heard of any WiiU failures personally.  Sure I know there is some but I haven't heard of them is what I mean. And yes that update sucked lol  Took me hours -_-

fanboyism confusing the media. How drole.

With regards to amazon or similar review sites:

To be entirely hypothetical here, currently there stands over 200 verified (people who have at least purchased the console) negative reviews.

If we assumed Sony or Microsoft, or a company they hired, such as a reputation management company, were handed a lump of cash to tarnish the competitions reputation, it could cost them just 79,998 usd in order to buy and then review (badly) 200 units, vastly effecting the overall review score - in the grand scheme of things, 80,000 usd is a raindrop in the puddle of advertising expenses.

On top of that, Not everyone buys consoles for themselves, or indeed, buys consoles to keep, We have the presence of scalpers who buy consoles purely to sell on, such people could very well have no intention of keeping a ps4 or xbox one, and chip in their bad review on purpose, after all, if someone posts up an ebay add saying "tested and verified working" then they might even get some additional money.

Then theres instances where family members or friends will pick up consoles for other people, even if they dont actually like the brand of console they pick up, again these people, while buying the console, would have no real reason to leave positive feedback.

Just because a person is verified, does not instantly mean they are a genuine source of information.
I can see this occurring on the Xbox One reviews when it launches too.

We live in a connected age where online image is more important than ever before, It's only right then to assume that these companies will resort to underhanded tactics where possible to give one another the upper hand, it happens during elections, it happens during wars, there's no reason to assume it will not happen with very important products from two companies line ups.

Google: Wii U Launch Hardware Failures

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2012/nov/19/wii-u-launch-us-problems

"There have been other reported concerns including Wi-Fi configuration issues, HDMI output failures, and in one instance, a user claims to have gained access to an admin debug menu while attempting to configure the console's Miiverse social networking service."

http://www.idigitaltimes.com/articles/13156/20121129/wii-u-issues-top-5-problems-nintendo.htm

"3) Bricked Consoles: Nintendo has not shipped defective gaming systems, but many are reporting that their systems aren't working properly. That's because Nintendo requires users to download a 5GB update to the Wii U directly out of the box in order to enable web-based features. The update reportedly takes about 1-2 hours, and if the internet connection is lost during that period or if the power goes out, or, if the user simply grows tired of the update and turns the system off, the Wii U is bricked. Several reports of bricked consoles have surfaced since the Wii U launch. Thankfully, consoles should still be covered by the company's 12-month warranty. Nintendo has not made an official statement about the bricked consoles at this time."

http://www.slashgear.com/wii-us-launch-day-update-reportedly-causing-major-problems-19257559/

There are dozem of realtes about consoles broke at launch... Nintendo even replaced batch of consoles... just take the Wii U issues and change the name for PS4 and you have your answer.

But I'm surprise how the people forget one of the worstest launch in the console history in terms of failures.

And at the end I'm the biased guy lol

BTW Amazon didn't stopped to sell PS4... they have low supply right now and Sony didn't stopped the production.

Cool, and where are the hard numbers? None of those articles say any percentage of failure rate. In a year from now I could link to you the recent PS4 news about it's issues and would have the same impact as those articles you posted. 

Your links proved nothing to my original point, which was (in case you still can't understand), is that the console had issues, but these issues dind't result in DOA consoles (expect the stupid people who trun off the console during the update, even though it said very clearly that you should not do it), they were just annoyances.

And you still can't prove how many of the console that were shipped at launch were defective. 

You won't have to PS4 too... people are just overreacting... if there are some thing big like RROD we will know just after one year or more in the market...

BTW the Wii U failure hate is normal like any other eletronic launch... same for PS4 but 0.04% means 4000 concoles dead... so little.

PS. PS4 sold 1 million in 24 hours... less than 50k consoles dead is fine (5% of all)... most eletronics have a 3-8% failure rate.