Should Nintendo include an expansion port in the Wii U like it did with the n64? That way, later on down the road (when ps4 / xbox 720 come out) we can just buy the expansion pack and put it in the Wii U, thus increasing the Wii U's lifespan?

The Wii could have REALLY benefited from such a thing.

Yeah, I always thought that was a good idea on the 64. It's a good idea to do so that they can make sure WiiU doesn't fall behind.

Sounds neat. A little lazy, but neat.

How is that lazy?

What kind of expansion port? RAM?

But if it is as simple as including an expansion pack with a game, what would be the reasoning of leaving it out of the original design in the first place.

Allow me to correct myself; might come off as a tad lazy. In this generation of consoles, people may argue that expansion ports are a thing of the past seeing as we now have the technology and resources, as well as the respective consumer knowledge, to get the power and all ready to go on the hardware - something the Wii is still being scorned for, unfortunately. When the PS4 and Durango are out, it'll most likely be perceived as Nintendo trying to save themselves in that department yet again, only in a more intuitive way. But, it's still a neat concept.

EDIT: @steveex captures part of my perspective quite well.

@tealovertoma RAM definitely, but could be for anything Nintendo allowed it to be for. Perhaps even processing power.

@steveex Cost. Same reason the n64 didn't come with the expansion pack in the first place and why the wii remote didn't come with the motion plus.

@GameLord08 The xbox 720 is rumored to be upgradeable a well, so I don't see why Nintendo would be shunned for doing the same thing. It's similar to how PC gamers upgrade their PCs so they can play newer games.

Oh, I see. In this case, an expansion port could be ingenious; it could even expand the time-span of this console generation even longer than the current one is proving to last, without any begrudged gamers. It's good, it's good.

That 720 rumor seems pretty BS. Everything Microsoft has done flatly seems they wa t to close things as much as possible.

It could benefit from such a thing. That way, when the xbox 720/PS4 come out and have all of a megabyte of RAM more and millions of people are complaining nintendo can just give us an expansion pack and shut up all the whiners.

It will be more of megabytes. The Wii U has somehwere between 1.5-2GB of ram while the 720 is rumored to have 4-6GB with 8GB at the maximum.

Sega 32X and Sega CD. I think I've made my point that this could be a bad idea.

Seeing as how the WiiU isn't too far off from the 360/PS3 specs-wise (from what I've seen), definitely. It's there for people who want to upgrade, but you don't have to if you don't want to.
@kyuubikid213: The reason those did bad was because devs had to make games specifically for those attatchments. In Nintendo's case, the expansion would allow it to play PS4 and Xbox 720 games, assuming that the difference between those and the WiiU will be close to the difference between the Wii and the 360/PS3. People would already have made the games, so there'd be very little risk on putting it on an additional system.

What Durango's Yukon leaked docs describe is an scalable system, which doesnt mean it will be upgradeable by the end users. It seems more related to MS being able to scale up the system at will in the future, for example releasing the XB750 few years later with twice the number of cores than 720 and higher CPU frequency.

http://www.pcmag.com/image_popup/0,1740,iid=342262,00.asp

An expansion slot will be worthless as nobody will develop games considering that the users will use that. And this will remain true with the scalable idea of the Yukon with an exception: MS seems to focus strongly on multitask and multimedia including also dual 1080p output, and an scaled up system might take advantage of that.

No. Those did bad because the expansion devices were used to try and expand the life of the system even though a new Sega system was on the way and everyone knew about it. Nintendo should just stick with the Wii U, despite any short comings it may have compared to the PS4 and 720, and try harder to be ahead of the game next console race.

Although this is all someones idea mixed with speculation, this is how I feel.

I'm not talking about a port which enables Nintendo to connect a separate console to the Wii U.

I'm suggesting nothing more than an upgrade once every two years or so. It would be the same as developers making games for use with the n64 expansion "pak," the wii classic controller pro or the wii remote with motion plus or the 3DS' circle pad pro. Not all developers would support it, but if it were necessary and available then I see no reason not to.

Those weren't separate consoles they were basically upgrades for the Sega Genesis.

Eh... seriously? They had their own power supply and each had their own library of games.

Yeah but they couldnt run on their own and needed to be hooked up to the Sega Genesis. Really it would be like calling a DVD drive for a computer a separate console. That was basically what the Sega CD and 32X was.