"Gimped storage seems to be the trend and hey, Apple is making a killing with it."
Yeah, but they are mainly selling $.99 games or giving the game away free. Not too hard to delete a game I have nothing in. Also, they aren't selling a 1080p capable system.
"I don't want a download-only or DLC-dominated future, I don't want tons of mandatory installs and patches to get software working that should run out of the box, I don't want my console to be a PC-lite experience. So not having a huge hard drive isn't really that bad in a lot of ways."
It'd be nice if all games came complete, but Nintendo is one of the best at testing a game for bugs. And Mario Kart 3ds proved even they can benefit from having patching ability. Patches aren't bad, games could spend years in testing if it wasn't for patching ability and still they couldn't catch everything. It's really only bad if a company like Ubisoft releases a game without testing just to patch it later. But Ubi, they are supporting the Wii-U nicely.
While not all DLC is great, it's not all bad either. Today it's a viable business model to release DLC game for $15. I have a PS3 and many download games are are 2-4 gigs, and some are much much more. From a developer standpoint, if you wanted to release a download only game for $15 and it was going to be 4 gig, are you even going to think about releasing it for the Wii-U? You know most people only have 6 gig available (after operating system and game saves). That's of course assuming Nintendo doesn't cap it at 1 gig or something relatively ridiculous.
From the consumer point it's bad too. SD cards are available up to 64 gig I believe for about $50, or a USB drive for $70. Add in a second controller at the rumored $100 and the system at the rumored $400 and you are getting dangerously close to the PS3 launch point in a recession no less. So you can ramble on about non-proprietary storage, but at $400 I expect to not have to buy storage. Of course maybe consumers aren't that smart. No one seems to mind that a $300 xbox + $300 for 5 years of live comes to $600.
Lastly, I still don't get what the Wii-U is trying to accomplish. They are saying they are coming for the hardcore, but their big game was Nintendoland? I'm sure all the Sony/Microsoft fanboys are lining up for that. And while 3rd party support appears decent, I get the deja-vu feeling from the Gamecube days. Line up a bunch of ports for the Wii-U and then when they don't sell as well as the large user-based Sony/Xbox systems, say there is no market in the Wii-U for these kind of games and move from Nintendo. Plus of course, 8 gig storage isn't exactly screaming hardcore or that they will have a comprehensive online plan. 70% of 3ds are online? 8 gig isn't going to be enough for 70% of Wii-U owners if they have the same trend.