Satoru Iwata promises relief for long Nintendo Wii U load times

By Anthony John Agnello Published January 14, 2013

The Nintendo Wii U’s got some growing up to do yet. It doesn’t have very many games unique to the platform, its social network Miiverse is still populated by a small but growing community, and its services like Nintendo TVii don’t have their full range of functionality yet. That’s fine. Modern game consoles are, after all, more like modern PCs and mobile devices than the consoles of yore. They are evolving tools changed through updates delivered over the internet. One problem holding the Wii U back, though, is the fact that it doesn’t work very smoothly at a basic level. In fact, it doesn’t even come with the firmware it needs to work out of the box and it won’t for months to come. It takes almost 90 seconds to switch between apps and to load some content on the console. Nintendo promises it’s working on it.

Recommended Videos

Speaking with Nikkei Business on Sunday, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata said that people are generally satisfied with the console besides its sluggish performance and that the company is working on fixing those issues.

“People realize the importance and benefits of having a personal screen that works in conjunction with the TV the more they use it,” said Iwata, “Setting aside the dissatisfaction some purchasers have with start-up and software change speeds, which we will improve.”

In a world accustomed to the instant gratification offered by gadgets like the iPhone, it’s no wonder that some customers have grumbled about the Wii U. The truth is that the console is not so bad. If you’re already sitting in front of a television to play a game, waiting another minute for the game to load isn’t really that big of a deal.

On the other hand, Nintendo really needs to improve the efficiency of its digital distribution. Downloading ZombiU, a large retail game, from the eShop took over 6 hours and that was after three aborted attempts where I was met with an error message after downloading completed. The whole process took over 24 hours. If Nintendo’s Wii U is going to be a success, its service needs to be improved more badly than its basic operating speeds.

Topics

Anthony John Agnello

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Anthony John Agnello is a writer living in New York. He works as the Community Manager of Joystiq.com and his writing has…

Gaming

Nintendo’s Wii Shop Channel and DSi shops are back online

Nintendo 3DS close-up.

After months of service outages, Nintendo's Wii Shop Channel and DSi Shop are back online.

Nintendo's two virtual marketplace services went down in March of this year. In a statement to Kotaku on the outage, Nintendo acknowledged the downtime but had nothing to report other than that the shops were undergoing maintenance and that it would provide updates on them at a later date. It seems it completely skipped the update and simply put both back online instead.

Gaming

I paid $2 a day to play an abandoned Wii Sports sequel

wii sports club retrospective boxing

It’s hard to find someone who was alive during the Wii’s heyday that hasn’t at least tried Wii Sports. It’s one of the bestselling games of all time, and its simple but accurate motion controls made everyone from young kids to seniors feel like they were an athlete for a few minutes. Those are big shoes to fill for any game trying to follow it up, and Nintendo Switch Sports is poised to reinvigorate the formula on April 29 with its reworked visuals and new sports offering.
But did you know that another Wii Sports game came out between those two titles? In the early days of the Wii U, Nintendo released Wii Sports Club, a remake of the classic casual sports title for the failed Wii U console. It enhanced the controls and visuals and tried to give the Wii Sports series a lively community.
Nintendo Switch Sports rekindled my memory of Wii Sports Club's existence, and following the announcement of the Wii U eShop's impending closure, I knew I wanted to check it out and see why this follow-up fell into obscurity. This meant paying $2 a day to access a remake of Wii Sports with broken features that almost no one was playing. Was it worth it? No, but it's a very fitting Wii U game as it's also a product completely overshadowed and made redundant by its predecessor.
Wii U - Wii Sports Club All Sports Trailer
Pay to play
I was able to find Wii Sports Club on the Wii U eShop and download it for free. While free-to-play Wii Sports seems like a fantastic idea, it doesn’t last long. The first time I booted up the game, I had a 24-hour free trial to try any of the five sports -- tennis, bowling, golf, baseball, and boxing -- that I wanted. I got a bit of tennis and bowling in on my first day with the game, but didn't see everything it had to offer.
After that first day, it was time to pay up. I was given two payment options in-game that would then bring me the Nintendo eShop. I could purchase the individual sports for $10 each, which would give me access to them and their associated minigames forever. My other option was to pay $2 a day to access everything.
Although having to buy a $2 day pass several days in a row for an abandoned Wii U game wasn't really a wise financial investment, I was curious enough to succumb to this microtransaction and keep playing. Doing that and only spending around $14 makes a lot more sense than paying $50 for remakes of games I got for free with my Wii over 15 years ago. This monetization scheme doesn't seem like it was that good of a deal in 2014, and it definitely isn't one now when there are tons of cheaper or free fitness apps that people can get much more out of. But what exactly did I get for that money?
Reinventing sports
Since June 2014, Wii Sports Club has featured the same five sports as the original Wii pack-in: Tennis, bowling, golf, baseball, and boxing. The individual sports play as you remember them in the original Wii Sports for the most part. Swinging the Wii Remote causes your character to make the same motion with a tennis racket, golf club, bat, ball, or fist. Some training mode minigames do shake the formula for each sport up a bit, but none kept my attention for long.
The most significant gameplay differences between the original Wii Sports and Wii Sports Club are Wii MotionPlus support and the Wii U GamePad. Wii MotionPlus is obviously more responsive than the basic Wii Remotes, so the movement of whatever you’re holding in-game does feel more accurate in Wii Sports Club. That said, the game is still easy and accessible enough that I’d call it a must-try for players who love Wii Sports.
Then there’s the Wii U GamePad, which comes up in golf and baseball. In golf, you place the Wii U GamePad on the ground, and it displays the ball you have to hit. It’s a fun visual touch but very gimmicky. Meanwhile, the GamePad’s gyroscope is used to aim pitches and catch balls in baseball. Although baseball makes much better use of the GamePad, constantly switching between it and the Wii remote can get tiring. Outside of those features, the Wii U GamePad is fairly useless in Wii Sports Club, so it isn’t nearly as good of a tech demo for its system as the original Wii Sports was.

Overall, these five sports are only slightly enhanced versions of what you remember from the original Wii Sports. It’s a remake that’s not wholly necessary, considering one can play the original game on Wii U via backward compatibility. That’s not a good thing when there are over six times more copies of Wii Sports out there than there are Wii U systems. It's a bite-sized version of the conundrum that the Wii U also found itself in.
Gone clubbing
Wii Sports Club is so named because Nintendo focuses on in-game clubs. Each day, players can choose to join a club -- many of which are based on states, regions, or countries. These clubs are then ranked individually for each sport, depending on their players’ performance.
I joined the Illinois club, but this didn't have a noticeable impact on my experience because Wii Sports Club's social functionality doesn't really work anymore. While it still tracks clubs' performances online, there's no good way to communicate.
Playing Wii Sports Club is a lonely experience in 2022.

Gaming

Nintendo’s eShop closures are a necessary, but messy move

A Nintendo Wii U gamepad flat on a table.

Nintendo last week announced its intentions to shut down the Wii U and 3DS eShops, the systems' digital storefronts, in March 2023. This decision was disappointing for hardcore fans who stuck with Nintendo during that rocky era and extremely worrying as many of the games available on the platforms won't be preserved.
More significant Wii U games and a handful of 3DS titles were ported to Switch, but many titles are still stuck on those systems and can’t be ported. Once the digital storefront shutdowns, digital-only titles will be gone forever, and physical copies of these titles will get more expensive and harder to experience. Fans and game preservationists have not been pleased by this decision, with the Video Game History Foundation giving the most candid response.
https://twitter.com/GameHistoryOrg/status/1494398068346654720
Following this announcement, Digital Trends spoke to an industry analyst and game preservationists to get a better idea of what exactly caused Nintendo to shut down these stores and to learn how it could do a better job at preserving its legacy.
Why is Nintendo shutting down the 3DS and Wii eShops?
Officially, Nintendo’s FAQ on the eShop closures says “this is part of the natural life cycle for any product line as it becomes less used by consumers over time." The answer doesn’t get into specifics and might confuse those still playing games on the system or fans of games only available on Wii U or 3DS. Omdia Principal Analyst Matthew Bailey explains Nintendo’s user base argument in more detail, highlighting the massive gap between the number of people playing the Switch as opposed to the Wii U.
“While Omdia expects the number of Switch consoles in active use to exceed 90 million on a global basis this year, the Wii U’s global active installed base will drop under one million in 2022,” he explains. “Even when you include the more enduring 3DS family of consoles into the equation, the Switch still comfortably accounts for over 90% of Nintendo’s total active console install base.”
If one is going off just the numbers, it’s sensible that Nintendo would want to focus on the majority of its players. Bailey admits that “Switch users are already reaping the benefits of Nintendo’s singular first-party development focus on one platform.” Still, one might argue that Nintendo should just let the eShops remain up even if it isn’t actively updating or maintaining them.

Unfortunately, Nintendo doesn’t see that as possible due to cost and security issues. Game Over Thrity, a Twitter user with over 20 years of experience working on IT projects and infrastructure, shed some light on what might have influenced Nintendo’s decision-making in a thread.
“As these systems age, they require patches, security, special contracts, updates, and personnel that know how they were built (and maintained),” his Twitter thread explains. “As time goes on, there are security holes, servers, code, infrastructure, etc., that can’t be brought up to modern standards. It becomes a constant struggle between maintaining legacy systems, paying people to do so, and trying to keep up with global regulations. It’s not cheap by any means. They can’t just ‘leave the lights on’ and stop supporting them. What if someone hacked the payment processor?”
With every passing year, the Wii U and 3DS eShops likely became more expensive to maintain and an increased security risk for the video game publisher. Instead of investing the time and resources into pleasing a smaller amount of players, the easier option is to turn everything off entirely. While he isn’t affiliated with Nintendo, Game Over Thirty’s assessment aligns with what we’ve heard from Nintendo and Omdia.
"The Wii U’s global active installed base will drop under one million in 2022."