With the arrival of downloadable content like WiiWare titles and Virtual Console, as well as dedicated games channels, the laughable storage [0.5GB] on the Wii console has jumped to being a priority for Nintendo.
According to Reggie Fils-Aime, Nintendo's US preseident speaking to MTV, there is now a 'sense of urgency' to sort it out. An increasing number of Wii owners are frustrated by the lack of space and have not been shy about letting Nintendo know all about it.
According to Fils-Aime:
"We have said publicly that we're looking hard at the storage situation, that we're working on a range of solutions. We have nothing to announce now. But certainly it's an issue we are aware of and we're working to find a solution and we will. We have a consumer base who loves virtual console. We have a user base who really is enjoying WiiWare content.
So for us really our challenge really is how do we satisfy all these consumers who are loving all of the product we make available on a download basis? As we continue to have things, as you point out, like 'Mario Kart' that has its own channel when you're playing from an Internet perspective, we're just making this challenge tougher and tougher. So in our view this is becoming much more of a mainstream problem, which is why we have a sense of urgency to solve it."
Last month Nintendo said that there would be no external hard drive for the Wii so it'll be interesting to see what it comes up with.-Martin Lynch
[MTV]
wii console nintendo games
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How about making Wii owners buy a completely NEW console! That seems like Nintendos logic
erm what about the usb ports im sure they'll just release some nintendo usb storage device
mind it might be a little slow
Whats wrong with the SD card slot?
That was my thinking. you can get a 16gb sd card now for less than 40 quid.
Look... Just let me run VC/WW games off the SD card and I'll be happy! I have about double the amount of content that I can fit on the console at one time!
why not just make an online storage service available? that way you can access your games from any other wii as well.
can anyone say wireless?
to p bizzle: wtf is wireless going to do? you still need to store the content somewhere in memory or on the device, otherwise it will be ungodly slow. thank you sony for allowing me to upgrade my hard drive to 160gb. haha to all you wii suckers.
Online storage seems sensible, so do SD cards, especially seeing as there is already a built in SD slot. So, I think Ninty should use both! That way, if you get another/new wii, you can transfer stuff and if you visit a friend, you just take ure SD card. Magic
The SD slot does not support SDHC thus cannot support above 2GB. The USB port is only USB1.1 that means a data access rate of 1MB/s which for games is not that fast. That means for a 60MB game it would take a whole minute to load. Ok given that this is still better than some PS2 wait times its bad for today's impatient gamer.
The Wii SD slot is grossly undervalued and underused by Nintendo. Effectively you can backup your data to the slot but not access it in real time for every task.
The solution to the space issue is therefore to allow the SD slot to be accessed in real time. Allow channels not only to be stored there but accessed and maintained from there.
so this why they cancelled all loyalty points over 12 months old, stop people spending them on downloadable content.
I lost thousands :(
"Just let me run VC/WW games off the SD card and I'll be happy!"
Amen 2 that! My 2GB SD card still has plenty of available space even though I download a lot of VC titles. The hand jive u have to go through to leverage the SD card is what discourages me from playing. copy to SD, wait, delete, copy from SD, wait, yawn...
Would at least be usable if it didn't require all those manual steps.
this issue shows the biggest problem nintendo has...lack of foresight. I was more than aware of the storage problem before the Wii even came out. If nintendo was smart they would have had plans in place before the console came out. That way they would have either had faster USB, better sd capacity, or some way of upgrading the HDD. They didn't think of any of that until now.
Announcing 2 new SKUs! Wii Professional, with 4GB of storage, and Wii Elite with 16GB of internal storage!
You'll only find this sort of satisfaction ..... from Nintendo!
Nintendo probably didn't even know that the Wii would be that successful of a system, which is why they originally said that they're not actively competing with Microsoft and Sony. I could see them limiting the technology just in case the system went bust on launch and they wouldn't be at a billion dollar loss like Sony is right now.
But this storage fix is definitely serious business.
All of you are either almost there or WAY off the mark. First of all you cannot make the wii an "online" storage piece that you could play anywhere because they don't have "accounts the way that XBL does. Second they cannot use the SD card slot because of piracy. It COULD be implemented the same way the HDD is on the 360 but again they don't have a setup like XBL that ties games/information to EITHER your console serial number OR your gamertag. Meaning that currently with the 360 if I take my HDD over to a friend's house then he cannot play my full Geometry Wars unless he logs into XBL as my gamertag (the one that purchased it). Until Nintendo has a unified system then I can't see what they will do. If they use the SD or HDD(USB) option then they open themselves up to massive piracy very quickly with the ability to read those formats normally on any PC. It would be more difficult if they had a service like XBL or a setup similar because then (again) they can tie console codes/user codes to the downloads etc. and force users to play on that console or play online (verify you are who you are or consol who it is).
Technically speaking (to those that said "online storage", that is what nintendo is saying to do now: remove games from the system as you want to "change out" for different/new ones then you move games again if you want to play etc.
@nogg3r5 USB 1.1 has 11MB/s transfer rate.
I think that ultimately hopefully there is some logical way that Nintendo can implement this solution. I know that it has in fact stopped me from putting money into downloads. If they can solve this my Wii might just get a little more play time over the 360.
Dane in response to your Comment
"How about making Wii owners buy a completely NEW console! That seems like Nintendos logic "
Name one other item that nintendo has forced you to buy when its upgraded?
Its not exactly the PSP - PSP Slim - or the PS - PS one
"thank you sony for allowing me to upgrade my hard drive to 160gb. haha to all you wii suckers."
Yeah, enjoy your three PS3 games.
Support for SDHC would be great.
The problem with the SD slot is that you can't run stuff natively from there. It only works as storage.
So let's say my Wii internal memory is full, but I want to download a new game. I have to move something from internal memory to the SD slot.
Now let's say that I want to play whatever I moved to the SD slot. I have to take something else out of internal memory, move it to SD then take what I want to play from SD and move it back to internal memory.
Now you know why people are PO'd.
Update the wii for gods sake.
Simple Solution !!!-> Enable the USB ports in the back.
The usb ports in the back are USB 2.0.
Im not sure where you people get your technical data.
Additionally, the bcm4318 is a wifi b\g card, not a simple b card.
Have it support either fat32 or ext3 filesystems....
Its a simple....simple....solution...
"Name one other item that nintendo has forced you to buy when its upgraded?
Its not exactly the PSP - PSP Slim - or the PS - PS one"
Apparently you never owned a Gameboy-GamboyPocket-GamboyColor or a GameboyAdvance-GamboySP or a DS-DSLite, they even remade supernintendos!
If anything Nintendo is to blame for the upgrade trend.
"Apparently you never owned a Gameboy-GamboyPocket-GamboyColor or a GameboyAdvance-GamboySP or a DS-DSLite, they even remade supernintendos!
If anything Nintendo is to blame for the upgrade trend."
uhhh, sega. you have sega, then the smaller sega, sega cd from the side and sega cd from the bottom, sega 32 bit add on thing that i swear to this day didnt do crap, all with seporate power adaptors so you needed 2 and a half power strips daisy chained to hook it all up. that my friends is not only the longest run on i have ever written, but a perfect case study in over saturation of the market with console development. who is doing this now? starts with N and ends with Intendo!
For those saying that the Wii has not XBL so it's open to piracy....it's as simple as an update to the Wii and we have the WiiLive channel. Most things like that can be fixed via an update. That is a software issue not a Hardware issue.
Then add USB HD support for save files/VC/WW titles and Guitar Hero & Rockband DLC and were fixed. We don't need full huge games on a HD. Just the data that needs to be saved or accessed. If my external 160gb drive worked now I would have that plugged in right now instead of just sitting on my desk getting dusty. The SD card slot is nice to backup game saves like the Memory Cards of games past but not for Download Content and to be running VC/WW titles off of. If it was that great/easy Sony/Microsoft would not have added a HD and just gone the SD route and saved $$$.
Does anyone remember the geeks and otaku comment about this that nintendo made recently?
Hey! you could buy/rent/borrow the twilight princess and mod your wii so you can play all the emulators you want and there is tons of homebrew apps to add to it. You use the SD card so there plenty of room when you run out get another SD card.. oh ya, Nintendo does not want people using unsigned code so I am in no way telling you to do this just letting you know it can be done.
They should just release a firmware update so that we can connect USB storage devices. If piracy is their only concern, they're ignorant of the fact that most of their VC titles are already online in the form of the original ROMs and it's probably already possible to pirate WiiWare from the existing SD card option. I personally don't use Nintendo's store much, so I still have most of my flash memory space, but their current obstinacy in dodging the problem is unacceptable. Considering that 4GB USB sticks cost less than $10 Cdn these days, it seems to me that Nintendo's planning to simply release a new version of the Wii at no difference in cost to them compared to when they were initially selling the Wii.
the sd card slot is to slow.
have you ever tried copying a big n64 title such as zelda to the sd card?
takes about 10 minutes
are we trying to break the record of most comments made on gizmodo ever?
An update enabling the complete use of the whole hardware(u know what I mean) but the only possible problem that comes to my mind is overheating
This is how i imagine things at nintendo right now:
Inside the nintendo building, there are tons of monkeys, who are the nintendo employees. They do all their best,
but after all, they're just monkeys.
They can't come up with an online system on par with the current generation, since that technology is out of reach for them.
All the monkeys are working very hard, but developing an external storage solution is almost beyond their limits.
A nintendo rep. must probably be hitting them with the whip right now, hoping one of them might have an excellent idea.
Something revolutionary for the platform.
Something that has never been considered.
Something none of them would have thought to be possible to accomplish in this age.
Something like... using one of the two USB ports for connecting a HD, or maybe even using the SD slot.
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And no, piracy is not a concern for putting the games in external storage. The wii already has an authority verification mechanism based on certificates and public key cryptoraphy. It should not be an issue letting my games play only in my wii.
And for the USB 1.1 excuse, that only confirms that the *monkeys* have not yet implemented the USB 2.0 drivers, *since the wii's USB ports are 2.0 capable*
Honestly, i dont know why nintendo is acting SO LAZY to address this problem. This is a joke. The wii's online sucks, and things like this make them look so bad..
I guess they are earning huge amounts of money thanks to all the casual-gamers, so all of the real gamers are not so relevant any more.
At this rate the homebrew community will come up with a solution quicker than nintendo.