Well, as others have said, memory is the big issue, but it's easily solved with an external hard drive, and at that price, you might as well, since if you get the console at that price, with an external hard drive and a game, you'll end up with more stuff and more memory for less than the deluxe Wii U. Skipping Mario Kart seems like a bad idea to me, at least for the reasons you mention. Skipping Mario Kart because you "play racers on higher power systems" would be like skipping Smash because you play fighting games on higher power systems. Smash isn't like other fighting games, and Mario Kart isn't like other racing games. As for shooting games, Splatoon is coming out, and that looks pretty phenomenally different from other shooters. Passing up games by default because of their genre and system they're on is just a bad idea. You could miss out on some truly unique experiences, and as far as I'm concerned, if you were to play just one racer in your life, it should be a Mario Kart game. I mean unless you REALLY want a racing SIM as opposed to a racer, there's no need for power. Same goes for shooters. The only time power is really that worth it is for multiplats.

Sooo...did U get one yet?

The Wonderful 101 is one of the best titles for really getting used to the Gamepad, as one of the Wii U's best titles.

If you like puzzle action platformers, EDGE is totally worth $2

you'll find it worth it :)

if you're not interested in Skylanders, I think you can actually sell those figurines. I think they work cross platform.... worth researching if you want this console even cheaper