So I managed to download Batman Armored Edition (the download itself took ~4 hrs), and now the installation process itself seems to be laboriously slow. Has anyone else installed this digital download and have a similar experience, or might I be having a hardware issue? Any other tips pertaining to this would be appreciated too.

Its more than likely the servers are busy due to everyone getting a Wii U today. Just sit back and relax.

Don't download retail games. Problem solved.

Yeah, it's basically what @Tasuki said. Just do something else while you wait and relax.

The software is already downloaded (and yes, even that took a while). I'm talking about the install phase, so it shouldn't have anything to do with the servers (unless they're doing something ridiculous like checking every little segment of data against some key on the server, but who would that ? .

@riverfr0zen Wii U sucks...simple as that, gee 4 hours to install a game??' it take 10 minutes to install a 12g game on ps3, i was thinking on getting Zombi U on eshop and if i have the same install problem i let you know ok.

@Alexneon Yeah, I'd appreciate to hear about others' experiences, just to make sure it's not an issue w/ my USB HDD or something. This is the first real problem I've had with it. Downloading/installing some of the smaller games was quite acceptable — but this is the first 'big' (18 GB?) game I've tried, and it installs directly on the USB drive, so was just wondering.

People need patients in this day and age

It takes me longer than that to download a 400mb demo on my ps3 and it takes me hours to download a game like section 8.

We're talking about install times here, not download times. They're two separate parts of the process.

^This

I feel like an old man, but I'm 19 and yet I have to tell 20-30 year olds to be patient.....

Yet everyone is convinced that now is the perfect time to go all digital; funny stuff really.

To the OP though, it probably is just one of the wrinkles of the new system that they'll iron out over time. There are people who claim that the OS is running much better now yet I'm one of those who is still experiencing 20+ seconds of waiting for Miiverse to load. Just sounds like bad luck really but I'm sure it's something that could be fixed in the future.

To be honest its just the age we live in. With stuff like fast food, instant messaging and stuff like that people arent use to waiting. They want it now.

What am I, a doctor?

Anyway, Batman finally installed. The system claimed 4~ hours, but in reality the whole thing was about 6hrs.

I expect that the games are compressed for the actual download and need to be unpacked once on your system. Chasing Aurora took longer to install than I would expect considering it's only 100MB.

I do wish Batman was a retail download here as I was looking forward to that. I guess Koei gets my money instead!

That's exactly what I figured. Trine 2 was at, like 2hrs! It's all good, because you can still use the WiiU while it's downloading.
BTW SeanAaron, I sent you a request in Miiverse!

You can use the Wii U while it's downloading, but not while it's installing.

They are probably compressing it, but that's a damn slow unpack algorithm, if that is what the issue is. They really need to fix that.

Jeez, some people here don't understand technology.
On topic, have you tried defragging your hard drive? Maybe something to do with its file system? I'm thinking it might be an issue with that, but I've never DL'd a retail game on Wii U so I really have no idea

Well, supposedly you 're-format' the drive on the Wii-U before you can use it. However, this process has taken (at least for me) less than 5 seconds...so I don't really know what level of format has been done. I assume something has been cleared/formatted but haven't investigated that. Possibly de-fragging the drive before attaching/formatting with Wii-U may help — that may be something to check out.

[EDIT: It is a drive I'd previously used for other purposes, so there had initially been a lot of data all over it]

It could be failing, maybe try it on some other device, like a flash drive or SSD. Or just another HDD