Topic: Is it worth it for Nintendo to make their home consoles so compact?

My PS4 is tiny, I wouldn't mind if it grew to that size. The priority is a system that runs silently with good specifications.

I'd say Wii and Wii U are more compact and sleek than GCN. GCN is almost completely a cube(even more so with the GB Player), and Wii and Wii U are cuboids. They have the benefit of being more flat and not having the open disc tray, too. That was one of the things Nintendo brought up when Wii first came out, that Wii is rougly the size of 3 DVD cases, so it could fit in more places by either being horizontal or vertical.

The way I think of Wii U, interms of hardware, is a Mac Mini that is permanently tied, via AirPlay, to a standard definition iPad with buttons.
The Xbox One is about 4× the size of Wii U.

To the folks who wanted more power out of the wii u, they tried it with the GCN. It was 2nd behind the xbox in terms of raw power. It didn't get the desired results and we all know the PS2 won that gen.It fit in a cube with a handle and made of materials that made the majority of people think it was a toy. I personally like how small the wii/wii u are. It fits nicely in the window shelf of my basement. TV mounted on the wall hides it well. I could in theory, velcro the sucker to the back of my TV or custom mount it in some way.

It is foolish to heed the thoughts of fools. Who cares what the gamecube looked like? It had the best catalogue of that generation.

I'd argue the same is true of the Wii U ATM

Yeah, probably. I don't regret getting a PS4 this holiday, though. As I suspect I love Dragon Age Inquisition more than I would any single Wii U-exclusive title. I like Nintendo games, but Super Mario 3D World and Smash Bros. feel a bit soulless without any story to speak of. Waiting for that Zelda U and (hopefully) 2016-slated Metroid and Paper Mario.

But yeah, compactness :/

It's all depends on what you're into I guess. I'm in a similar boat (but with PC rather than PS4) and for the games I've picked up the Wii U's stuff has punched well and truly above its weight. See the thing is I seem to get games for both my PC and my Wii U at about the same rate. The odd thing about it though is that I actually beat games on my Wii U and my PC backlog seems to just grow.

Maybe it's the format? I have the same problem with 10s of humble bundle games that I never finish on my macbook pro (they all run fine, that's not the issue). Personally I rather hate the keyboard as an interface. It's just too clinical for me.

Well given I literally have the same controller hooked upto my PC that I use on my Wii U.... I think it's the content

I expected the Wii U to be tiny when I bought it, but actually it's pretty long (compard to it's width), even more so with the cables extending from the rear). Because of that it didn't fit in one of my console docks. So it's all a matter of perspective.

I like the smaller size. I don't do vertical partially because it didn't come with a stand and partially because, unlike the Wii, there's an accessory that's easier to stack on top: the Gamepad. I like the fact that I can use the top shelf of my media centre to hold my Japanese Wii (vertical), Wii U with attached hard drive and Gamepad and the media and backup drives for my Mac Mini with room to spare.