Wii not getting a hard drive because "it's like an iPod"
By Nilay Patel 
posted November 2nd 2007 4:33AM
posted November 2nd 2007 4:33AM
Although the Wii's Virtual Console channel has been a smashing success, there's always a price for fame: quite a few gamers are running up against the storage roadblocks of Nintendo's console and starting to wonder about expansion options beyond SD cards -- like, say, a hard drive. Sadly, however, Ninty's not having any of it, with Nintendo of America PR manager Eric Walter saying that "we really don't want people storing every single game they buy on their drive." Sounds silly, but since VC titles are yours for keeps, Nintendo's position is that you can delete games and "go back and get them any time," or, presumably, build a small library of SD cards. This odd line of reasoning also led Walter to say that he likens the situation "to putting music on your iPod; you listen to it for a while, and then you get tired of it, and you pull it off, and you put some new stuff on." Clearly Walter does not know how often we listen to the Clash on our iPods -- or how often we rock Super Mario Brothers 1 through 64. Either way, it looks like the mothership has spoken for now -- looks like it's up to the third parties to figure out a way to make it all better.[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
If Wii is like an iPod, then where is WiiTunes for my computer?
I honestly don't understand why Nintendo wouldn't just allow us to use USB-based storage. They already got SD cards, which are removable storage based on the FAT or FAT32 file system, they could VERY easily add support for USB removable storage. Let third parties make hard drives at that point, such as WD or Seagate could have a special "Wii themed" small HDD or something. Plus, if its hidden away behind the console, its not a big deal. Plus, I know many people would love to use their USB Flash drive for Wii saves or USB hard drives (like I have a small portable one for my laptop).
But the biggest and foremost thing for Nintendo, make it so we can LOAD GAMES OFF THE SD CARD, as well as USB if they do that above. Its annoying that the SD card can only be used for "backups" and we can't actually have games directly save to the SD card or have VC games load off of it. At that point, it makes the SD card slot have allot less of a purpose. Especially with WiiWare and more channels coming out, which will of course use allot more space than VC games will, we are going to NEED extra storage very soon.
Also, Nintendo should also up the size of the internal flash storage on the Wii too. Such as make new units that have 2GB or 4GB of flash storage or something, especially since its getting pretty cheap these days.
Not just the downloadable games... that means current games could never have additonal content, like map packs, etc. But then again, I guess people who own the Wii aren't really worried about playing Call of Duty 4 with a 8 new maps every quarter.
I don't see why it's so bad to have one, but Nintendo has always been a 'games first' kind of company. A hard drive would suggest that it might be more than a game player, and Nintendo seems to hate that image. That's why they resisted online-capability for so long.
I'm not sure exactly what you guys are talking about when you say 'support for a hard drive.' If you're looking for something like an official peripheral that hooks into the console and is meant to stay there permanently, then I really couldn't care less. I can understand if thats a road Nintendo doesn't want to go down.
What would be mind numbingly easy to do, however, would be to add support for things like USB flash drives. Imagine if you could have a 4GB flash drive that you could just plug into the back of your Wii and get saves and games off of.
Everyone complaining about the HD space, there is a great reason. And that is that they wanted to keep price down, and they don't want to have different configurations of the Wii. The last thing they want to do is introduce a hard drive and then have developers start fragmenting the market, especially this early in this round of console wars. They definitely don't want the Wii to be the 360 Core, a useless piece of crap designed to drain more money out of your pocket later than you would have had to if you had just ponied up to begin with.
I am sure that Wii2 will have an HD, but I totally understand why they don't right now.
Why not go large scale psp on them? Do what datel did with the HDD accessory for the psp. Just create an HDD that plugs into the SD slot. Now, the biggest problem with that is how much storage the Wii will recognize.
I dont have one personally, so I wouldnt know.
If Nintendo doesn't want to release a Hard Drive for the Wii than at least give us a Firmware update so that we can use third party devices. It is ridiculous that I can't keep my media on my Wii if I want to without stocking up on SD cards! We are becoming claustrophobic with this limited space.
Nintendo is starting to show the arrogance of a market leader, ignoring their customers' wishes. Good news for MS and Sony I guess. If this crazy policy doesn't stop me from buying a Wii, it surely will stop me from buying Wiiware as I want the games I own to be available to me all the time.
wow. Not only is Nintendo arrogant, but they are becoming stupid as well with these stupid ass comments.
the irony being that my ipod has an 80 gig harddrive built in so that i don't have to take off any of my music.