Wii hard drive rumor resurfaces, Nintendo calls it "pure speculation"

Given the Wii's relatively paltry 512MB of internal storage (and nothing more than an SD card slot for expansion), it's hardly a surprise that rumors of an external hard drive add-on have been persisting for about as long as the console's been around. Now, despite being shot down by Nintendo just a few months ago, the rumors seem to have picked up again, with the speculation now pointing towards an announcement at E3 in July. Lending a smidgen of credence to this latest rumor is SNK's recent announcement that it would soon be bringing some of its Neo Geo titles to the Wii's Virtual Console, many of which would take up a heckuva lot more space (up to 330MB) than the current crop of old school games available on the service. Nintendo isn't buying that argument, however, telling gaming site Spong that it's nothing more than "pure rumour and speculation and none of it is based in any fact or announcement." We somehow doubt that'll be enough to quell all the speculation though, which means we'll just have to wait 'till E3 to finally put this one to rest -- at least for a little while.

Read - CVG, " Wii hard drive on the way?"
Read - Spong, "Nintendo: Wii Hard Drive Has No Basis In Fact"

[Paul @ Jun 4th 2007 3:43PM]

wii hdd for what? to say yeah my wii has a hdd

[Stefan @ Dec 14th 2007 12:42AM]

Well when you run out of space for vc games you want extra space.

[lalalalalala @ Jan 1st 2008 9:41AM]

A hard drive because I ran out of memory because of my vc games and deleting and re downloading is such a chore. Plus whats going to happend when the wii is discontinued and you lose all the deleted games that you cant redownload. They should at least support sd cards to play games from. I would be happy if they gave me firmware for my usb hard drive.

[Ian Zabel @ Jun 4th 2007 3:47PM]

It's Spong, not Sprong.

[thak @ Jun 4th 2007 3:53PM]

what?!?!? an engadget post with a typo?!?!?!?

[daniel @ Jun 4th 2007 3:51PM]

they should just release an update that lets you actually play virtual console games off sd cards instead of having to copy them back to the internal memory first

[thispaceforsale @ Jun 4th 2007 4:09PM]

It would be great if I could attach any usb drive to the wii, and it would recognize it for transportation or to play files off it

[Mike Rapin @ Jun 4th 2007 4:11PM]

Wouldn't an add on DVD drive be a better idea or maybe a DVD playing ability update be a better idea than an external hard drive?

[Matt B @ Jun 4th 2007 4:17PM]

My guess is a 60GB for $179.99. Yes, it's half the space MS charges for a 120 on the 360. But Nintendo fans have shown that they don't care how much they profit off of old technology.

[trainwrecka @ Jun 4th 2007 5:57PM]

um... in your post you say M$ charges $180 for 120GB.... talk smack about your own company doing the ripping off before you come at something that isn't even announced.

[Slvrgun @ Jun 4th 2007 4:29PM]

this should have been in the wii

[Steve Moseley @ Jun 4th 2007 4:35PM]

This was pointed out in another comment in another blog, but Neo-Geo carts were 330 Megabits not Bytes.....therefore the games would be about 41.25 MB. They aren't big enough to necessitate a hard drive. They could easily use something like flash or a usb thumb drive if these games are the driving force behind something like this.

see Rom sizes here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo_Geo_%28console%29

[Tim @ Jun 4th 2007 4:53PM]

I can see a USB jumpdrive being a potential accessory... 4gb would be
more than enough for the console and wouldn't need to be such a big
bulky attachment

[Neebs @ Jun 4th 2007 5:12PM]

Speculation goes farther than outright denying.

[Ethan Duffy @ Jun 4th 2007 5:43PM]

I agree with Tim, a USB stick would be far more likely, and if you add disk loading to a N64 game for instance it might cause problems. In this generation more than 512MB is absolutely necessary.

[FaaR @ Jun 4th 2007 7:50PM]

No N64 game ROM was so large that the Wii can't hold it in its entirety in main memory. Biggest title was Resident Evil at 64MB, Wii's main memory is 24+64MB, subtracting up to 8MB for N64 main memory storage and some for the emulation software still leaves plenty of margin.

Loading a ROM off of a harddrive would therefore make no difference; the ROM would be fully loaded even before the game's starting to run and Wii RAM would be dozens of times faster than that crusty old N64 cartridge interface.

[Mark @ Jun 4th 2007 5:45PM]

Also rumors of a download channel have resurfaced, even with some European developers commentating on what they have created or plan to release. A external HDD solution is not out of the picture...

[Dan @ Jun 4th 2007 5:45PM]

When Nintendo does not deny the rumor, but considers it speculation, 9 times out of 10, the rumor is true. Can't wait to have a HDD for my Wii this year.

[Nik @ Jun 4th 2007 5:48PM]

This supposed hardware announcement at E3 is likely nothing more than the DVD enabled redesign of the Wii, which should have been in the system to begin with. That kind of move would not surprise me coming from the company who redesigned/updated the GBA a total of three times in six years.

Seriously Nintendo, I buy your system and the games that go with it because I have to. They're like meth and if I don't get my fix I get itchy. However thats it. I've got three Wii games on my list for the year, you can probably guess what they are. Slightly more difficult however, is the close to a dozen Xbox 360 games I'll be picking up. Jealous now? You should be. Forget about your already enormous bank account for once and treat your customers fairly.

[tcgiant @ Jun 4th 2007 7:08PM]

*ahem* Game cartridges, including Neo*Geo ones, are all sized in megaBITS, aka Mb, not MegaBYTES(MB). 512 megabytes stores a good 10-12 Neo*Geo games, easy.

[Rick @ Jun 4th 2007 9:22PM]

How about making some more Wii's first? Just came back from a walk through the mall, nope, no one has any yet.

[Marco (Griffith) Jardim @ Jun 4th 2007 10:01PM]

(only people who already purchased a title from the VC will understand this)

Wow, a 330mb download from the VC. Mario is going to have to run a marathon when you're downloading it!

[John Stracke @ Jun 5th 2007 9:38AM]

I can't see a hard drive being a popular option for game developers. The Wii market is already artificially small; why reduce your target still more by requiring a HD?

[JET @ Jun 5th 2007 10:24AM]

I would be very surprised - astonished, actually - to see N release a hard drive for Wii. It doesn't make any sense, especially with their push toward smaller, mobile technologies. So what if VC games hit 350MB? A 4 or 8GB SD card will hold plenty of them.

My completely speculative prediction for N's hardware announcement? A DS redesign with a SD slot to allow you to play your purchased VC games on the go. They may even find a way to squeeze the name "Game Boy" into it since they've been promising new Game Boy hardware for a couple years now.

JET

[Matt @ Jun 6th 2007 4:50AM]

Well, with GameCube, Nintendo always came out with an expanded memory option exactly when I needed it. When my Memory Card 59 filled up, the black 251 came out. And just when that got full, the white 1019 hit the shelves.

I'm getting close to filling up my Wii's internal storage. I could archive off a few of my lesser-played games, but I'm still gonna fill up pretty soon. I really hope history repeats itself, and a HDD option becomes available.

[Lightbringer @ Sep 10th 2007 6:57PM]

bleh..big issue, this one.

Why the heck do they have to limit people to such mediocre storage limits? it is counter-productive to their whole 'buy the classics' VC ideals...

[cokimoto @ Oct 7th 2007 6:41PM]

guys go to eSol and checkout gaming they were picked by nintendo to create a usb of 32 gigs for wii

[Da wei @ Apr 3rd 2008 4:51PM]

What about more than just the VC? Such as Rockband which is going to be released in a couple of months. My guess is that it is crippled in comparison to the 360 version because there is no storage space. You can't create avatars, no band world tour, no song downloads. Harmonix probably left all that crap out because of the space issue. Sure, maybe avatar creation and world tour won't take up that much space, but if you start downloading a ton of songs, your SD is gonna fill up before long. Who wants to keep changing that shit out when other consoles have HDDs? The Wii could benefit from an HDD in more ways than just more VC games.

$.02