Wii storage solution coming
There were plenty of announcements missing from the Nintendo 2008 E3 press conference this summer, but perhaps most surprising was the fact that the company did not address the ever-growing storage problem plaguing the Wii.
Since WiiWare hit the console earlier this year, the factory-installed 512MB of internal storage just isn't cutting it. Nintendo is essentially shooting itself in the foot: here we have all these new games to download and play, but only the capacity to store a limited number of them.
Kotaku is now reporting that the company does indeed have a storage solution on the way, but it won't come in the form a physical hard drive. Nintendo executive Reggie Fils-Aime tells Club Nintendo magazine that we'll see something even better than a hard drive for the Wii.
What's better than a hard drive? Some sort of online solution? While we'd love to see this, we all know Nintendo isn't much of an innovator when it comes to online functionality. Either way, we'll let you know when the company officially announces something. For now, what kind of storage solution do you think we'll see--or would like to see?
Before covering games and gear for CNET Reviews, Jeff Bakalar dabbled in film and video production. An avid writer, reader, and gamer, Jeff is also an obsessive New Jersey Devils hockey fan. Catch him live every day as the co-host of CNET's infamous podcast, The 404. 
There is no solution better than simply supporting USB flash/hard drives
enabling the SD card to be accessed on the fly.
a simple software update and bam! A beautiful storage solution more unlimited and stable than any harddrive, and already available cheaply. With SD cards ranging all the way up to 32GB... also they can be swapped in and out and easily stored... while Harddrives also carry a little thing we call moving parts, and moving parts do this thing called "FAIL" - for the price they charge for the "specialized" harddrives in console's though it's really not worth it for the space you actually get. at least the SD cards are solid.
that said, i think a seamless extension of the internal memory is what they have cooking. it's the lazy way out but still sensible. my 2 gig card has everything i've downloaded copied onto it and it isn't near-full yet. (i have about 50 purchases with VC and wiiware combined). their reason for dragging their feet is becoming really upsetting!
To me this says they are trying to find a better way to store games than currently exists, not that it will be better than a hard drive. Nor does he even say they aren't doing a hard drive, he just says they never said that it would be a hard drive.
Honestly, I also don't like this "store my games in the cloud" garbage. That's exactly what the Wii already does, it just isn't transparent enough. When you buy a game from the shop channel, you get a local copy, but you have permission to pull it down again whenever you want. So, if you delete it, then its stored online for you to retrieve later. This doesn't include save game files, but really I think downloadable content is the big key here.
Anyway, sorry for the long comment, but I am honestly really frustrated with people taking things out of context, when quotes are fairly straight forward, just to try to garner interest. But then, I guess this is the media, and there more about making money than necessarily reporting accurately.
Man if Nintendo knows one thing - itīs how to make money. And i bet my f**** a** that they will never ever just allow you to buy (non-nintendo-licensed)-sd-cards to save your games.
Its obvoiusly what they will do... they will sell u damn expensive cartridges!!! hahaha, like these suckers always did! trying everything to prevent users copying their games. and to use it u have to buy a new special hardwarething, hahaha. maybe they will combine it with this very innovative new controllerpad, that everyone has to buy (times4), with a special slot for n-sdcards(with the enourmeous capacity of 1GB).
i really love nintendo! but the way they make their money is almost criminal!
man i am really happy that my girlfriend forced me to quit computergames! saved me a lot of time and money!
Solution #1 (offline): Dump unplayed games off to SD card, copy back as needed
Solution #2 (online): Delete unplayed games, redownload as needed
Perhaps these aren't the solutions we're used to having, and may not be ideal... but they're there.
- by awellens September 9, 2008 6:47 PM PDT
- Ebay seller allyvwell sells 2 gig memory cards for the Wii for $8.99 and free shipping. I bought one and I store games on it that I don't play as much. I copy back as needed.
- Like this Reply to this comment
-
(23 Comments)