Many gamers in the US and Canada will be keen to do the system update on Wii U, which is required for using the eShop, Miiverse and other important features - but beware.

A number of people are reporting that if the update gets interrupted, the console may be rendered useless. The update is said to be around 5Gb in size, which on slower connections will take quite a long time, but patience is necessary, as found out by L.A. Times reporter Ben Fritz.

Ben wasn't convinced the progress bar of the update was moving, and decided to unplug his console to restart the process.

It's often the case that systems shouldn't be powered off during an update, but in the case of such a large download it seems inevitable some connections will falter. Should Nintendo have handled this differently?