External HDD for Wii?

Here's a tricky one for ya: a French gaming site -- JeuxFrance -- is reporting that a Japanese gaming magazine -- Game Laboratory -- has reported that a reliable source within Nintendo told them that the company is looking at releasing an external hard drive accessory for the Wii. Did you manage to get that? Now, to us it seems logical that Nintendo would want to make such a device -- more storage equals more virtual console games sold, right? -- but as there are at least two foreign languages involved here, it would be an understatement to say that this is a stretched rumor. Maybe we should just listen to our Joystiq pals and note that it could simply be a case of an April Fools joke escaping a little earlier than it should have; oh, the limitations of print.

[Via digg]

[Steele @ Mar 19th 2007 1:25AM]

Makes sense, Nintendo would definately be missing the mark if they didn't release something that would allow for more storage. Since the highest capacity SD card I can get recognized is 2gb, and I'm sure many people would like to store more than 2gb of information. I know I do

[ronak @ Mar 19th 2007 1:36AM]

the new grapevine...

[marcelo @ Mar 19th 2007 2:01AM]

ohh well, that's quite cool. If this becomes true ill have my first USB port plugged :D

Now, just wait for a multimedia channel working as iTunes or WMP and could be really really cool.

[Ian @ Mar 19th 2007 2:13AM]

I never thought of that... NOT having an HDD will really hurt the wii. I've got a PS3, and I must say, a lot of the fun involves the HDD running.

[PSXer @ Mar 19th 2007 2:16AM]

More virtual console games sold? The largest N64 game ever made was 64MB (coincidence? I think not!) and there were only a couple of them. It'd be hard to fill the internal 512MB up just with those, and even if you did a 2GB SD card can be had for about $15. (well, if you don't mind the fact that the card doesn't have the Wii logo on it)

What else could it be used for, demos? I suppose it could, though Nintendo in the Gamecube days wasn't too keen about having demos playable at home. They felt that demos available at gamer's homes might satiate their appetite for the actual game.

[Otis Whitaker @ Mar 19th 2007 2:29AM]

I don't think Nintendo will do this.
If the company won't even allow you to save directly to an SD card (Which, yes, to those who don't have a Wii don't know, you can't do. You can only transfer files to an SD card.. and if you want to use them, you have to put it back onto the 512MB internal memory.. I assume this is because Nintendo is so stupidly overly paranoid about piracy), I have serious doubts about them freely letting you use an HDD on their console.

[Finite @ Mar 19th 2007 3:19AM]

Hmm... seems a little silly considering the size of sd cards these days. Seeing as even 8gb cards are under $60, this seems unlikely to me. Also, a hard drive would only increase potential problems with the system. Then again, a fair amount of built in flash memory would be nice.

Oh...

I thought I would add that engadget's comment activation is more an irritation to legit users than an antispam measure. Seeing as I continue to see WoW gold spam comments, it's hard to see how Engadget will be able to continue to justify using this ineffective, draconian system.

(Yeah, I said it before, I just like it too much. An edit of this authors post on windows activation a few posts below this :) )

[Steve @ Mar 19th 2007 3:31AM]

A waste of money, develop more games instead.

[grable @ Mar 19th 2007 4:50AM]

Didnt Nintendo say they werent going to make their own branded storage device, but rather let 3rd parties do it eventually?

[Septimus @ Mar 19th 2007 5:15AM]

If anyone is interested, I have a got a KingMax 4GB SD Card working fine on the Wii.

They are pretty cheap 66x speed cards and work well.

I can't see this HDD thing being true, seems very un-Ninteno like.

[GhostDoggy @ Mar 19th 2007 5:37AM]

If its a stretched rumor then why bother posting it? Are things so slow at Engadget that you have to rely on stretched-rumors as 'news'? I'm feeling more confident, now, in the headlines on the yellow tabloids in the grocery checkout line.

[strider_mt2k @ Mar 19th 2007 6:16AM]

Can we confirm this via a couple more gaming sites?

[meist3r @ Mar 19th 2007 6:37AM]

I'd love to see that happen but I am not too confident about it. The biggest concern I have is Big-N's policy. How should they sell VC games to HDD customers when all the games are locked to a specific console? The HDD would need a unified HD-ID that only unlocks on it's host machine and would probably be useless on other consoles. Like many others have already said the SD-card feature alone would provide enough space (and exchangeability) for most of us. Hell I could even boot Linux from an SD card ;)

I'm offering you a deal Nintendo: Give me a keyboard in Wiihte first and I will think about buying one of your HDDs =)

[Dan @ Mar 19th 2007 9:14AM]

JeuxOnline gets some scoops others don't, but I still find the rumor of a HDD a bit unreliable, simple because Nintendo is the kind of company that wouldn't do the smart thing like this.

It would be quite a surprise to see an HDD released, but sounds too good to be true.

[HEADsoldier07 @ Mar 19th 2007 9:54AM]

Nintendo would never release an HDD - they want you to buy their $65 name brand SD cards...

[Pal @ Mar 19th 2007 10:14AM]

Nintendo dismissed the rumor. http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=74283

[Kamalot @ Mar 19th 2007 10:33AM]

I've heard that Sega Saturn games will soon start appearing on the Virtual Console. For that to happen, Nintendo would need to release some kind of hard drive attachment that games can play directly off of, since Virtual Console can't play games directly off of the SD card.

[LongshotX @ Mar 19th 2007 11:42AM]

Don't get your up hopes up. The Sega Saturn is notoriously difficult to emulate and I doubt the Wii has enough processing power to do it. Guess that's what happens when you enter the next gen with a last gen console.

[Corrupt_Data @ Mar 20th 2007 5:33AM]

The sega saturn had dual 28 MHz processors... aside from programming difficulty the hardware of the saturn would be easy enough to emulate as it was very underpowered. I doubt the Saturn will be on the top of nintendo's list though as it was never in high demand.

[Paul @ Mar 19th 2007 1:15PM]

If they only added iPod support too...

[Matt B @ Mar 19th 2007 1:52PM]

Consoles with no HDD are so last gen. :P