Comedy gold!

My brother has always slated big N's "kiddy" style of games with the cutesy looks of many of the Wii games his main argument. I've always had to argue on Nintendo's side since I owned a Wii and other Nintendo stuff. This just plays right into the hands of all those who claim Nintendo is for kids.
Being a father I see some logic to it, but I say it should be a parents job to regulate what their kids can and can't see, case in point we recently had our 9 year old daughter tell us she was playing a game on our Tablet PC in which you beat someone up and made them bleed. It was cartoon style violence but we didn't feel she should play it so we decided to take it off the tablet, as responsible parents that's how we felt it should be dealt with. Nobody else should need to do this for us, certainly not Nintendo if (big if) we bought a Wii U for our family use.

Definately mate! It should be up to the parents to decide what is best, this is big brother gone mad.

Another point for me is that I have to be up for work at 5 am. If I wanted to play "adult" games then I'd be getting (assuming a 1 hour gaming session) 5 hours sleep. So why would I restrict my game playing due to Nintendo's blanket curfews?

This isn't restricting playing time, it's only restricting what you can view/purchase from their download store. 'Mature' retail games like ZombiU can be purchased as a download title. The trailers are integrated into the Nintendo eShop before purchase, so disabling the purchase automatically disables the trailer. So... Nintendo is trying to keep unsupervised kids from buying games like ZombiU after school without their parents knowing.

Not Nintendo's responsibility, I guess, but I don't think it's a big deal and it's getting them some free publicity.

Maybe they'll release yet another firmware patch, this time with a Parental Controls option, that takes another three hours to download and install! 

Actually, the Wii U already has parental controls... and it looks like configuring the parental controls to allow a user with unlimited age ratings disables all of these eShop time restrictions?

Never used a Wii U or Wii eshop, but i'm assuming here that had iu say entered a card details, like i did with my PS3, prior to PSN hack (never again), it'd know i was over 18, yet still block me from viewing any 18+ content, unless it decided it was an ok time of the day?.

If so...madness, i work shifts, so would'nt by default be viewing content when it was declared 'safe' and my sisters 2 kids had TV's, PC's etc in the bedrooms since early age, they are far more tech savy than myself and i've no idea what they've been viewing online, but they'd be up far later than i would be if i was working a day shift the very next day....

Yeah I am on both sides of the fence here but ultimately kids see some real crap during day time telly that I find more disturbing. I guess they are protecting themselves but then they should allow us to setup accounts for kids and adults like u can on the 360.

I still think this 'story' is non-news.

You don't need to sign up or enter any credit card info for the Nintendo eShop. Any console that's online immediately has full access... from the main system menu...  and you can add points via eShop point cards from retail stores without a credit card.

Also, it looks like the daytime blackout on 18+ eShop content can be over-ridden by using the parental controls to create a user with no age rating restrictions. They're only trying to hide these 18+ titles from unsupervised kiddies.

... they should allow us to setup accounts for kids and adults like u can on the 360.

The Wii U does let you create separate accounts for each user, and can tailor parental controls for each. But, default is for a single user with no parental controls... which triggers the blackout.

Guess in todays...where there's blame, there's a claim! society, Nintendo could'nt afford the risk of say the daily mail jumping on an incident.

Been enough 'kid racks up megabill on dads credit card' type stories for XB 360, without Evil Nintendo Wii U is a porn portal for YOUR child....etc etc.

My sister/brother in law, just bought kids gadgets and told them:go play in your room (and let them carry on without a clue what they were upto), just so long as they did'nt make too much noise.

Sad state of affairs really....