Though Nintendo pegged Wednesday's Direct broadcast as 3DS-centric, President Satoru Iwata still carved out some time for the Wii U. Most importantly, the spring update they keep talking about is coming next week, faster loading times and all. Iwata also revealed the official Virtual Console would come one day later and there are plenty of titles already primed and ready to be downloaded.
Here's a list of the changes coming to the Wii U console in the upcoming update:
- Increased loading speeds between applications and the home menu
- Automatically install games and software in the background after your finished downloading
- Recieve updates for games and software in the background when using the Wii U
- Press the B button during startup to go directly to Wii mode
- Download and install software when Wii U is off
- Move data between two usb drives attached to the Wii U at once
Nintendo showed a quick scroll of virtual console titles available day-one without really going into specifics. Mario, Kirby, Samus each made expected appearances. In the realm of the totally unexpected, however, comes "Earthbound" (known as "Mother 2" in Japan). Iwata, who worked on the original game as a programmer, said, after hearing the cries from the fans for years, Nintendo is finally bringing the title to the virtual console by the end of this year.
Every virtual console game on the Wii U can be played on the GamePad only (off-TV) and have their own Miiverse pages. If you happen to come across a virtual console game you've already bought on the Wii and really want those Wii U-specific features, you can purchase an upgrade at a special price ($1 for NES games and $1.50 for SNES). Nintendo is also working on bringing GameBoy Advance and Nintendo 64 titles to the service in the future.