Longtime Nintendo boss Satoru Iwata has issued an apology to Wii U owners who had to update their consoles for up to five hours (it's been reported) in North America. Obviously, the update depends on the speed of your internet, and you can still play Wii U games on your console without it, but he feels sorry that not all the functionality was delivered in the box.
"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. 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."
As reported by My Nintendo News.