Iwata "very sorry" about day-one Wii U update

Nintendo president Satoru Iwata isn't happy about the Wii U's enormous day-one patch, but is pretty confident in the Nintendo Network's offering once you have it installed.

The patch weighs in at 5GB and took some users several hours to download and install at launch in the US, but is required for the vast majority of the console's online services. Early adopters were not pleased, and neither is Iwata, it seems.

"Personally I think that users should be able to use all the functions of a console video game machine as soon as they open the box," he told IGN via email.

"So I feel very sorry for the fact that purchasers of Wii U have to experience a network update which takes such a long time, and that there are the services which were not available at the hardware’s launch."

That said, he thinks the Nintendo Network will be worth it, even if the unique features have been difficult to message.

"It is challenging to communicate attractions which are hard to understand unless you actually touch and experience them yourself. This is especially so with Wii U because it has unprecedented entertainment potential," Iwata said.

On top of that, the Nintendo Network is quite different from existing offerings.

"We have not thought that offering the same features that already exist within other online communities would be the best proposal for very experienced game players," Iwata said.

"Nintendo has paid a great deal of attention to the dynamic of people playing video games together in the same room. With Wii U, we thought about expanding this concept into separate rooms which are connected online. Miiverse is a network community dedicated to video games that represents a very unique game-dedicated social graph that has never existed before."

The Wii U arrives in Australia and Europe on November 30 - not long to wait, friends.