In an interview with GameInformer.com, Shigeru Miyamoto had the following to say about why Nintendo chose white as Wii U’s color.

“Based on my background as an industrial designer and Nintendo and my background in creating entertainment, I’ve always wanted to make greater use of color in our hardware. If you look back on things like the Famicom and the original Super Nintendo, they were a lot more colorful from a hardware perspective. What we found over the years when we included a lot of different colors in our hardware is people would kind of point to that and use it to paint us as more kid-oriented. So really what we looked at is what are some ways from a design perspective that can make the system appeal to all ages. One of the ways that we found to best do that is to minimize the use of color. In that process we asked if we’re going to do that, what’s the best way to go? We found that rather than going all black – all white seems to have a broader appeal to people.”

Personally, I like that each Nintendo system has up until now been a good amount different in its design than its predecessor. NES to SNES saw black out and purple in. SNES to N64 saw an almost all black system with super sexy contours. N64 to GCN saw a drastic change in design, it being a box, and the primary color being purple (and black). GCN to Wii saw the most basic design, yet that simplicity was made cool with the stand, all white, and blue light down the middle. For the first time, Nintendo isn’t changing things much with the Wii U. The color is the same as Wii’s, but is a little bigger and more rounded. One of the things I hope doesn’t happen is that people just think it’s a redesign like a DS Lite to DS. It’s bad enough that some are already mistaken about the U-control being a new controller for Wii and not for a new system. Perhaps Nintendo in their final design of the Wii U, will choose to add a little something to help differentiate it from the Wii…while keeping some of the heritage in tact.