@Bankai
The cloud is nothing much more than a fancy way of saying "on the internet". MiiVerse is a cloud service as are high scores and other such features. My purchasing history is already "not tied" to my Wii U in a sense because I can see it by logging in with my NNID here:
https://p.nintendo.net/premium/

The fact that I can't move to another console with it is therefore purely a DRM issue. Nintendo scared of piracy and other such things. Nintendo has also confirmed that MiiVerse and Nintendo Network IDs will be coming to both the 3DS and future consoles. It's a really, really small step from there to cloud saves and the ability to login to your friend's console with a disk and finish the game. All of the other features you mentioned are already possible. Do I need to go on?

.... and again, your suggestion that the GamePad has "nothing to do with hardware" in the same sense that cloud features do is amusing. The GamePad is physically hardware and literally requires an extra piece of hardware at the receiver end also. The implication that it would be just as easy for Sony/MS to implement a GamePad as fully featured as the Wii U version as it would be for Nintendo to extend it's already existing "cloud services" is laughable.

No need for cloud, and no need for linked IDs. I got everything I need right here, like food, water, shelter, etc. PSN going down for months with credit cards being used illegally, Xbox 360 needing to be paid for, both being jacked sometimes, and even more constant updates than Wii U(I know there's been over 100 updates for other consoles) should tell you about their hardware and servers enough. BTW, just remember that you paid at $110 to get cloud on those systems if you have it on both. Apple's iCloud is free, but there yearly new phone/tablet/mp4 player isn't, plus it costs money for cellular. Maybe you wouldn't need rain clouds if your devices had the ability to expand memory.

@SCAR392
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My thoughts exactly, lol.

I'm sorry but Nintendo fans do care about the power anyone who says they don't is talking rubbish. If not then why are they always winging about that the games on Wii U are the inferior versions. If they didn't care they would accept. the version they get .
I definitely care about.how a game looks to me it's as important as gameplay as with the way technology is now games have to look good.
We are not in a retro era anymore, yes it's nice to see retro style games but even then the graphics are excellent.

What's bad for the Wii U is how horrid that lineup is for upcoming games.

Yeah it's terrible having alot of games to look forward to... Can't wait to buy all those crap games

Its comparatively sparse to the other consoles with mutile games that were supposed to launch windows delayed for good knows what.

One of the games on the list is shovelware' and two of the games on the list I played last year one of which in june.

The eshop list is abysmal as well.

If they cared to the extent that some claim they do then they'd all be PC gamers. At the end of the day though content is more important than hardware especially these days when technology has progressed as far as it has... which brings me to....

In the "retro era" visuals mattered a lot. Just for Nintendo stuff the ten years from NES to N64 was a considerably bigger leap compared to the ten years from GameCube to Wii U. Ten years ago we were getting Wind Waker which, quite frankly, would still be perfectly acceptable visually in 2013 for the Wii U right now. The same wouldn't be true if they released a game that was visually on the same level as Super Mario Bros for the N64 launch..... you'd think they were mental....

Other than account portability I cannot see what the cloud would bring to the Wii U; I'm also not seeing any inherent "must have" aspect to it.

I have an iPhone and an iPad and a Mac Mini. The ability to have the inbox on my mail app across all three is convenient as is having access to an open browser tab from one device available in another or my place in a book I'm reading tracked or save data for the very rare app I run on both iPhone and iPad (actually I don't think I have any).

But I only have one Wii U, it's personally irrelevant to me. If I had a 3DS and a game I played there also had a Wii U version cloud-based high scores would be good, but essential? No. The 3DS isn't a mobile communications device so I really don't see the inherent use of these things for Nintendo. What is being described by Bankai sounds potentially interesting, however it also doesn't sound like a selling point or a must-have feature for a game system and that is what Nintendo makes.

I would rather see a 3DS that could make a Skype call than any of the things you mention because it would save me getting a phone for my kid, but Nintendo seems to be determined to keep their entertainment niche rather than doing things outside its core area in a half-assed fashion. Frankly I can't blame them - remember the N-Gage?

Well the problem is that Nintendo's services doesn't do as much as apple's or Microsoft's does.

For example not only do I save some of game saves in the cloud, but Xbox music kinks my playlists from ,my PC to my Xbox and my movie and TV show purchases on Xbox video as well.

When monster hunter ultimate was announced I though that the transfer would be cloud based. Where I'm playing on my 3DS and when I save near Wi-Fi it updates and when I play on my Wii U it pulls done the save it seconds and I finish playing. Yet in reality its some very complicated transfer procedure.

Again similar to this

You're over exaggerating by calling it complicated. If local syncing is complicated, cloud is rocket science.

Complicated isn't the right word to use. I was hoping for near instant syncing between the two copies of the games but it takes a bit lender than that.

The whole cloud thing isn't a huge deal for me. I'm 20something, have my own place, and don't really do the whole take-my-console-and-or-games-to-friends'-houses thing anymore. When I want to play my Wii U games, I'm pretty much only going to be using MY Wii U, so it's not a big deal. In fact, it's not a deal at all.

BUT, I can see how some younger gamers who are constantly on the go, and some older gamers with families who may own more than one console would find it annoying to not have that flexibility. It is kind of nice, one every few months (that's pretty much how long it is for me these days) to get the time to sit and game with friends on their 360 and pull up my account on someone else's console. But still, in that regard, I think Nintendo is making big online steps, and we all may be surprised at how quickly they move towards allowing. I love the eShop and I love Miiverse- I feel way more "online" than I do with my 360- where the only communication really happens inside a game or just between friends. Miiverse really opens things up and makes it feel like a ginormous community.

And again people didn't get what a dual-screen setup could enable before the devs started being creative with it.

Cloud opens up new options for creative devs to experiment. There are plenty of very interesting Cloud applications out there if you look around. There's no reason to think game developers can't do the same with the tech as their enterprise development peers have been able to.

So for the hundredth time the real appeal of the PS4 is not its hardware specs. It's going to be its applications. They might not appeal to you personally, and that's fine, but it amazes me that here on a Nintendo forum people are talking about a graphical update as the only thing new gen hardware brings to the table.

Spotpass is kinda like cloud. Like I said, if you want cloud, use your iPhone. I don't need it, and can't really see why it would be useful right here, right now. Xbox 360/PS3 cloud can't even handle that much data over cloud, and no one really saves their games to the cloud, do they? I've saved my Dead Rising save file to cloud once, and the servers were down, so I couldn't even use it the next time I booted up my game, and unless you copy your files constantly which is annoying, it's not even cool or useful.

Another way you could avoid a cloud system, would be by not having so many damn devices that all apparently do the same s***. Seriously, just get an iPad 3, and you won't need an iPhone anymore, much less both. There's an app for that(iPhone). Same thing with Apple. They have iMac as their 'home console', with iPad as their portable. iPad can't even run most of iMac's stuff. How the hell are you gonna sync unusable apps over to iPad through cloud, without internet on top of that?

Okay. Once you understand how iCloud actually works, let me know. Then I'll start listening to your opinions about Cloud systems.

Dude you really need to stop. (not talking about you, Navi)