External hard drive required to download LEGO City Undercover on Wii U

It’s not been a good morning for Wii U.

The console is posting a historically poor performance in the US and leading retail figures are urging action to reverse the slide.

Now Nintendo’s digital strategy is being questioned after it was revealed that gamers hoping to download LEGO City Undercover will need to purchase an external hard drive to do so.

Eurogamer reports that a rumoured file size of 22GB is to blame. The entry-level Basic Wii U ships with just 8GB of storage (just 3GB of which is free) while the Premium offers 32GB (with 25GB free).

It’s a bitter pill to swallow after Nintendo’s lofty promise of a concrete and competitive digital ecosystem for the console and makes a bit of a mockery of the console’s simultaneous digital and retail release strategy.

Considering that Xbox 360 and PS3 ship with hard drives with anything up to 500GB, the Wii U’s storage provisions look baffling at best.