Reggie's still spinning that "we're working on it" line for Wii storage

We didn't wake up today hoping to hate on Nintendo, but they're making it a bit too easy. Granted, the Nintendo WiFi router could certainly find a place in the homes of the tech illiterate, but Nintendo keeps hiding behind the apron strings of its casual gamer fanbase, and we don't have to sit around and take it. Two months after Nintendo finally admitted it had a problem with Wii storage and claimed to be "working on a solution," Reggie's still playing that line -- to diminishing effects -- in Club Nintendo, the official Nintendo mag of Latin America. He went on to say that "we have never said that it will be a hard drive nor have we mentioned how we will fix this issue, but we are going to deliver a better way to store the games." Weak. Nintendo could easily create a backup solution for SD cards or the ubiquitous thumbstick, but instead the company is letting its most active users suffer with the mere 512MB of built-in storage, requiring them to re-download games from the Wii Shop, and making few promises about when or what the storage solution will be -- not cool, Nintendo. Phew, good to get that off our chests. Now, if you'll excuse us, we have some "High School Musical: Sing It!" to attend to.

[Via GameDaily]

[angeL @ Sep 8th 2008 5:10PM]

lol reggie

[Patrick @ Sep 8th 2008 5:49PM]

My dog's middle name is Reggie. He looks like my dog.

[JerkfacedFed @ Sep 8th 2008 6:44PM]

exactly. smash bros is out, nobody cares about the wii anymore

[gabe @ Sep 8th 2008 8:05PM]

A chin only a mother could love!

[ybd @ Sep 8th 2008 5:13PM]

The current generation of consoles is the worst ever.

[Flashpoint @ Sep 8th 2008 5:15PM]

My XBOX 360 alone has made me happier than any previous system has. And I've owned most of them. You're comment is ridiculous.

[tom @ Sep 8th 2008 5:20PM]

Couldn't agree more... It is just getting more difficult to choose one console to worship on.

PS3 - Blu-ray and high def gaming
XBOX360 - great line up
Wii - motion sensitive remote

None of them refuse to give up.
With wii storage, just enable the USB external storage. I will use my 500 GB external hard drive to back em' up

[Ignatius @ Sep 8th 2008 5:26PM]

Your comment is grammatically unsound.

[thefrozenred @ Sep 8th 2008 5:14PM]

If Nintendo really wants to target the "casual gamer" market, wouldn't it make more sense to just release firmware updates that allow the console to recognize and utilize *any* inserted USB device? I'm actually a pretty big fan of how simple it is to use any of my FAT32 USB devices on my PS3....

[Flashpoint @ Sep 8th 2008 5:14PM]

Nintendo doesn't have enough time to fix this.
The world is ending tommorrow.

Fortunately I won't have to pay Mercedes Benz $700 for my carnote this month on my S550 SO THE JOKE'S ON THEM HAHAHAH

[chefgon_ign @ Sep 8th 2008 5:23PM]

Nobody gives a damn what kind of car you drive.

[Giroro @ Sep 8th 2008 6:13PM]

Wrong! The world is ending WEDNESDAY.

[Teh_Pwner @ Sep 8th 2008 8:25PM]

WRONG! The world is beginning on Wednesday!

[Patriks7 @ Sep 8th 2008 5:14PM]

god that picture scared the shit out of me o_O

[sracer @ Sep 8th 2008 5:14PM]

The best way to get Nintendo to provide a storage solution is simply to stop buying VC downloads.

[Ignatius @ Sep 8th 2008 5:16PM]

Nintendo: Wii don't give a shit.

[chefgon_ign @ Sep 8th 2008 5:21PM]

I am completely baffled why Nintendo doesn't want to solve this problem. The people who are in need of this solution are the people who are PAYING YOU MONEY. When those users run out of space, that money stream stops. There are 250 classic games up on their service and nowhere to store them. The people who are openly willing to pay top dollar for decade old games are the people Nintendo should be catering to in order to keep that free money flowing in.

I ran out of space ages ago and my buying habbits went from 3-4 VC games per month down to less than one. Making a storage driver is not difficult, just make it and get it out on the market before I lose interest in the system all together.

All I am asking for is some way to continue giving my money to Nintendo, and they refuse to cooperate. There is just no reasonable explanation for that attitude.

[greggo @ Sep 8th 2008 5:27PM]

is it just me or does he look like donkey kong?

[Rainier @ Sep 8th 2008 5:36PM]

Either that, or Andre the Giant's wii lil brother.

[Jay @ Sep 8th 2008 5:32PM]

next gen console my ass.

[Zinger314 @ Sep 8th 2008 5:37PM]

Reggie looks like a chubby John McCain.

[jared @ Sep 8th 2008 6:43PM]

Isn't john mccain chubby too?

[Frances @ Sep 8th 2008 5:43PM]

The Wii ALREADY HAS A FREKING SD CARD SLOT!!!!!!!!!!!

Nintendo just has to make a software update to allow us to directly run VC and Wiiware from the SD card.

There are no excuses, homebrew emulators have proven that ROMs on the sd card run as fast as VC games.

[raptorspike @ Sep 8th 2008 7:17PM]

But they would also have to find a way to allow for larger SD cards. at this point, the slot only allows for a 2Gb card.

I personally want the ability to use a USB HDD by years end. I have plans for GH:WT DLC.

[generally @ Sep 8th 2008 11:37PM]

I don't think that Nintendo would opt for allowing users to place VC games on an SD Card. Why? Nintendo has always had a will in them to stop piracy of their games. They had cartridges when everyone went to CDs (N64). They had smaller DVDs when everyone went to DVDs (Gamecube).

Letting users put their games on an SD Card is just asking for piracy. Think of how quickly every VC game would get online and cracked. If their games were to be allowed on an SD, I'm willing to be it would be only Nintendo branded SD Cards which would only work with the Wii, and probably have tough encryption to match.

[Giroro @ Sep 9th 2008 2:10AM]

@generally,

VC games CAN be easily transferred to an SD card, they just cannot be PLAYED while being stored on it. VC games can already be transfered to a PC via an SD card.

[Herr Ferret @ Feb 3rd 2009 8:07AM]

Well my wii is totally rocking a 80GB Hard disk. Pity its only useful for everything BUT VC titles. Still with the geexbox media player doing it job playing movies off it along with many other homebrew apps I am sure nintendo will fix the storage problem when people are downloading homebrew off the internet instead of buying them.

[MM @ Sep 8th 2008 5:52PM]

I've already solved this problem.....I stopped downloading any additional Wii online content. If I don't have the storage, Nintendo doesn't get the revenue from VC purchases.

[David @ Sep 8th 2008 5:49PM]

I too find it ridiculous that Nintendo has had such a hard time figuring out how to add storage options to the Wii. Why is it so hard to adapt the console to play VC games from cards in the SD slot?

[purplegreendave @ Sep 8th 2008 5:54PM]

Cloud/online based storage? That'd be awesome.
Prolly just letting you play off SDs though, not even SDHCs.
I play my Dreamcast more than the Wii these days :(

[Giroro @ Sep 8th 2008 6:10PM]

Online storage would still involve re-downloading everything to the console, which is most of the problem to begin with...

Come to think of it, thats exactly the kind of thing nintendo would do. XD

[Giroro @ Sep 8th 2008 6:02PM]

this came to mind

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wlw2EMpIYes

[Zeth Ethereal @ Sep 8th 2008 6:07PM]

Nintedo is failing more and more these days.

[totoro @ Sep 8th 2008 6:10PM]

Yeah, this issue is really cutting into their bottom line :p
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-10028901-52.html

[Andy Anonymous @ Sep 8th 2008 6:15PM]

It's ridiculous that this is still an issue. All they have to do, as others have said, is enable third party hard drive support via USB. It would require nothing more than a firmware update. The VC game files are already easily transferable to a PC via the SD card slot, so piracy wouldn't be any more of an issue as a result.

[sli @ Sep 8th 2008 10:06PM]

I'll just go ahead and admit: I just keep every VC and WiiWare game in existence on an SD card and install what I want to play when I want to play it. No, I don't feel bad duping Nintendo out of somewhere around ~$1,000 (I just averaged $12/game) because they pretty much duped me out of everything I've spent on Nintendo since about 1998.

That figure doesn't even count the nearly 22,000 games in Nintendo's back library I've collected (mainly just for the sake of collecting, but eh). Even a company like Nintendo should have know better to but anything less than a 5 gig hard drive in their console. It's not like my iPod has an 80 gig hard drive capable of taking up pretty much no space. Except maybe for the part where it does. Multiple pricing tiers seem to be all the rage, but I'm not surprised that Nintendo didn't jump on that bandwagon. Much to the detriment of any gamer over the age of 16, of course.

[Silverfrog @ Sep 8th 2008 7:01PM]

I can tell you exactly why Nintendo has not yet come up with a solution to the storage issue.

They are working on their next console. Same as when MS was working on Xbox360--original Xbox support started falling off.

[Andy Anonymous @ Sep 8th 2008 7:58PM]

I really don't think so. Each console generation is about five years long, so we're less than halfway through the current one.

[G @ Sep 8th 2008 7:24PM]

He looks like the dude from Mask. Whatever his name was.

[ben @ Sep 8th 2008 9:23PM]

Wii: When Idiots Invent

[xValentine @ Sep 8th 2008 9:43PM]

What an ugly smile you got there Reggie.

[Gojulas @ Sep 8th 2008 9:56PM]

I don't understand how ANY thought is going into this... I mean, the simplest, most effective solution has been sitting right there. Just enable the use of USB MSC devices... I don't see why this is hard, I mean I doubt it's some huge compatibility issue. Mass storage is mass storage, just tell end users "you can use anything which conforms to this standard and is formatted FAT32; if it doesn't work, not our problem". I think a good majority of the user base will figure out how to get their flash drives to work...

Considering how that Twilight Hack problem still hasn't been properly patched, I'm guessing it's not some huge DRM/Piracy issue... Hell if it is, they will dump thousands into developing encryption methods or a custom file system on their proprietary external storage drive only for it to be cracked within a week, why not just skip the months of wasted dev time in the middle? I almost feel that Nintendo is insulting me; they put USB ports on the back of the console to sit there and do nothing...

[jonasthebonus @ Sep 8th 2008 10:28PM]

I love my Wii, but have never (will never) download a game. This would be one of the reasons why.

[TavisJohn @ Sep 8th 2008 10:58PM]

What I would LOVE to see is support for USB Mass Storage, and a real backup option.

I would like to plug in a USB Flashdrive into the back USB port and have the option to put active save games and VC games onto it, and run them from it.

I would also like a simple backup solution as well. I would like to have the option to do a full backup of my Wii onto an SD Card or USB Flashdrive. And then if my Wii dies I can put the backup into another Wii and hit RESTORE. Than the new console would have everything just like my old one.

[tiremfej @ Sep 9th 2008 1:24AM]

I finally after almost a year played the Wii. It's terrible.It is the single most horrible console I have ever played. I just don't get it. Sure the controller is neato, but seriously? The Wii? I know I'm in the minority of such statements, but you can't call yourself a gamer if you own the Wii. Ohwell, this is why people will vote for Barak Obama...no intelligence. Let the Wii run the country and let Barak's socialism take over. The ill informed always bother me.

[Andy Anonymous @ Sep 9th 2008 3:18AM]

Congratulations: you managed to combine two ignorant opinions into one comment. That's not always easy.

[Alienange @ Sep 13th 2008 6:46PM]

VC games are overrated. Are you guys really dling games you already own? When I can dl the vc version of games I already own then I'll worry about the 512mb limit. I'm not paying for the same game twice. I'd rather hook up my snes than do that.

[Ozzman_79 @ Sep 9th 2008 11:30AM]

What you are all failing to remember is that the average Engadget reader is in the vast, vast minority here. The majority of Wii owners probably have anywhere between 0 and 3 WiiWare/VC games. As a result, external storage for 1% of the owners that would like it is probably issue #10000000000000000 on their list of issues to address. Why spend the time and money on address it and make, let's say, $20 000 on it, when we can invest the time and money in another peripheral, which will sell to 60% of owners and make us $10000000000 dollars. It's sad, but it's probably the truth. This issue is "nickel and dime" to them so I doubt they're in much of a hurry to allocate resources to address it, no matter how many "simple solutions" there may be.

[Flipx3 @ Sep 12th 2008 12:11PM]

I have seen Wii's everywhere the last few days... sears, walmart and target. Does the xbox price cut have anything to do with this? I think so.