I've noticed that whenever Nintendo pulls out the big guns and releases a remarkably strong console for its time, it always has a fatal flaw, one that renders the entire effort pointless and the investment wasted. It was the case with the Virtual Boy and its sheer bulk, the Nintendo 64 and its cartridge medium, the Gamecube and its miniDVD drive, among other issues... Or am I the only one who noticed that?
The N64 and GC dilemma, imo, was a factor with load times, but part of that depended on the developer's method of loading.
Yeah, you're right, the N64 did have little RAM and VRAM, didn't it...? I don't think it suffered from slow loading times though - cartridges are generally much faster then discs, especially back then. That said... A CD is 650MB's, a cartridge back then was up to 250 if I remember right. Same deal with miniDVD's - 4,7GB vs 1,4GB single-sided single-layered and you have a clear winner right there.
As for the flaw of the WiiU, I can tell you what the flaw is already - a second set of triggers, preferably analog would be welcome on it, unfortunatelly they're not there.