No, the Wii U absolutely does NOT need this. it might convince PIRATES to buy the console, but they don't pay for games, meaning Nintendo and the other game makers do not make money. And then there would be the people who already own the console who would stop buying new games because they can easily pirate them, leading to a reduction in software sales.i see , but with the release of a system mod it is mainly going to be used for the reason of playing backups " no i am not interested in running linux on my console because i already do on my pc !" .
and let us face it the wii u needs this to happen to boost the sales , because i am no longer going to shell out 60$ or 50$ for a mario/donkey kong game :s