Nintendo launches Wii System Menu 4.0, including SD card WiiWare playback
By Paul Miller 
posted Mar 25th 2009 2:15PM
posted Mar 25th 2009 2:15PM
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Oh look, another feature that should have been there from the start. Not being able to play games unless they were on the 512MB internal storage was the sole reason I stopped buying VC games.
quitcha beetchin' it's free
It is far more important that companies make their products upgradeable and standards based, rather than disposable and overly proprietary - a release will never be perfect, tech keeps improving. Nintendo's use of Bluetooth, USB and SD should be complimented, as should their continuing updates. 32GB SD cards didn't exist when Wii was announced, but now they are supported.
This feature coming this late, in my opinion, was Nintendo ASKING to be hacked. So I did.... Hey, they asked for it...
I'm going to have to agree with J. Kelley here, even if he sounds like an R&B singer who pays teenagers to pee on him. If the Wii had the potential to read SDHC cards from the start, why not let it? This update three years after the fact seems pointless and unnecessary, when it could have been offered at launch.
when you are happy and you know it clap your hands..........
when you are happy and you know it,
then you really ought to show it,
when you are happy and you know it clap your hands...........
hic......hic..........hic...............
isn't the song "IF you're happy and you know it?"
I'm sorry guys, but I'm going to install a LOT more DL'ed game channels on my Wii now. I refuse to pay for non-physical versions of games I've already bought at least once before. Call me a pirate if you want (and thanks, to the douche who's going to do so in a reply,) but I also refuse to download songs from iTunes or Amazon just to have on my computer, even though I own the CD.
Give me a legitimate reason nintendo needs my $8 for SMB3 on the Wii when I already own it for NES, legitimately.
And it sure as hell doesn't take longer than 5 minutes to save the original SMB3 files in a new Wii emulation wrapper.
TO THE HOMEBREW CHANNEL!
$5, $8 is SNES. So put down the torches, you picky pricks out their on the boards.
No one is forcing you to buy any of these games. Quit being so dramatic.
Also, no one cares about your downloading habits.
Have a nice day.
you are a pirate!!
You did not buy it in a form playable on the Wii, so yes, you are a douch...er..pirate. You can not justify your theft, no matter how much you wish it.
As for the music...If you already have it on CD, then you can rip it and play it. Why would you need to buy it from iTunes?
Well, I don't have any of the VC platforms myself, so for me the Virtual Console is a pretty cool feature!
If I already had the platforms and games though, I wouldn't buy them twice either.
WiiWare has some great games too, I bet (hope) the SD-card system is compatible with WiiWare and regular Channels too.
About re-buying tracks you have on CD on iTunes or Amazon just to have them on your computer: ever thought about ripping your CDs to your computer? :P
And yes, it's legal as long as it's for personal use.
i have some 8-tracks i would like to sell your legacy oriented self.
I do what i want cuz a pirate is free! I am a pirate!!
Well... if you already own it for your NES, just play it on your NES. And you don't have to buy music to get it from CD to your computer, there's a little button you press that takes the music of the CD you say you bought and puts it on your computer.
oh and btw
you are a pirate.
and not the cool kind, just the kind that justifies stealing.
lol @ the Lazytown pirate references in this thread, it's exactly what I thought when I read the post! :D
You own the medium, in this case carts, that the game is loaded on. The games themselves are *licensed* to you with the agreement that they are only to be played on that original medium.
the future doesn't look so bright anymore for people who like to own things physically. in the future people will be forced to buy things they already own in different formats.
Packaging is just a delivery for intellectual content.
If you've bought it, you've bought it.
As a shameless money-saving DRM-flaunting douche-mocking pirate who actually pillages, plunders, and rapes intellectual content without payment or remorse, you, sir, are no pirate.
You are a savvy and aware consumer who supports the spirit of the law, not the letter, a trait vasty underrepresented in our society.
(200 years too late)
Holy crap, SDHC at long last ? About time ! Phew.
Maybe if they actually started uploading more VC games people could fill up that storage :) Seriously they need to start putting more old school titles on the VC. I think there are more Sega games then SNES games right now.. whats up with that?
i just bought the drivekey modchip yesterday...is this new update going to have any problems working with the chip?
Finally!
Does this mean my Wii is going to be flashing that blue light for a couple of weeks again until I update it.
That's because you didn't turn off from the remote, a soft-off mode. You should press and hold the power button, that'll disconnect your wii from the internet, no flashing blue light until you turn on.
Or disable the blue light for updates, like I did... my wii was in my room, and the first update woke me up and kept me awake all night with the stupid flashing light filling the entire room >.
Just in the nic of time... I downloaded 'World of Goo' last night (fun game if you haven't played it) and now i have 0 blocks left...
*now if i can just remember where i put my spare SD card...*
32gb pong
Does this break the Backup Channel or other Homebrew?
Initial reports are saying if you previously installed Backup Loader or Homebrew Channels, they still function, however the Twilight Hack is reported as no longer working, and users are also reporting that WAD Manager cannot be used to add/remove apps.
No Netflix... boo hoo. Seriously, I was hoping this to be a surprise announcement that Netflix streaming would be supported.
If the new Nintendo DSi allows me to play old NES/SNES classics via the same type of VC center, then I'd be all over it.
Til' then, I believe the DSi is the first step backward for Nintendo. A camera and quarter-inch increase in screen size isn't enough to justify an upgrade. Give us VC compatibility, PLEASE! I want to play Earthbound one day on the go instead of carrying around a laptop with an an SNES emulator and ROM installed!
did someone say iPhone killer?
At the very least, it's a Zune killer!
hahaha
iPhone totally ripped off the Channels UI
and Wii totally ripped off the App Store system
What a bag of HurtWare
That's exactly what I was thinking about. If they allow everyone access to their old catalogue of games again then they would make money on their old IP.
Yeah, that's crap because now we have to shell out more, but I think the majority of people that would pay for this service don't own the originals. If they do the they might as well play it on the old system and stop bitching. :P
But just imagine the convenience of all the games of yore that you loved and didn't finish, on your SD card... I sure as hell wanna try and beat some of those old bastards.
woo hoo! I was wondering what I was going to do when Cave Story came out, since I'm about out of space. 'Sabout time.
Cool.. So this was the "storage" they been working on! Wonder how sales of 32GB Sd will do now...
Even the photo channel handles >2GB now. So can do movie now!
What a failure....having to copy the game to sys memory before loading will suck. Some of those WiiWare games are huge, can't imagine waiting 5+ minutes for it to copy every time I want to play a game.
Didn't you read the article? You CAN launch games directly from the SD card WITHOUT copying back to system memory... thats why there is a "SDcard Menu"
No, actually this is not the case. When you're launching a title from the SD card then it seamlessly copies it to system memory while loading, which can take a very long time for some bigger titles, like SBC4AP...
http://hackmii.com/2009/03/system-menu-40-rundown/
it's not copying the whole thing, it's just caching it. It takes a couple seconds, no worse than loading off a ps3 or 360 hard drive
What I mean is, it does it for you automatically rather than transferring it manually by the Wii settings menu..
I have Final Fantasy MLaaK on Wiiware, its one of the biggest title and it only takes at least 5 seconds to boot...
I think the slowdown in transferring is probably some funky verification going on. Oh, and did I miss the last two menus?
I was thinking the same thing, where the heck was 3.0?
It's aboot fooking time, eh?
Why no VC support for the upcoming DSI? Just take the SD card and play all those games on the DSI? That would be awesome.
This is the same company who won't let you access the same "virtual cash account" on both your DSi and the Wii--you have to fund them separately. While that would be nice—or even having the ability to download a DSi version of games you bought on the Wii VC—they won't do it.
dangit! now i want one....
Just remember, you lose what you've paid to download if you ever decide to sell your Wii. I guess you can call customer service if you have it synced with your Nintendo account, but that's a listed option when you go to cancel your Wii Shop Account.. it just says you lose everything.
Welp one this is cracked its time to buy a wii again!
Does this mean that larger SD cards are also supported for the photo channel and for playing back video files?
wonder if i can take my VC games to my friends house.
That is a negative. VC and Wiiware games are still encrypted to the system they were originally downloaded to.
and let the never ending Easy-Ass HomeBrew begin now!!!
This was something that I have been waiting for a long time, I ran out of memory log time ago, and that nintend bs that you should make some space in the fridge wasnt so practical, now I have lots of space. Btw, I have the modchip channel "aka wiikey" (with latest firmware) installed upgraded and everything works fine at least for me
I hope this update leads to a somewhat relaxed restriction on the size of Wiiware games.
Finally, that was a huge hurdle, now it's gone!
SDHC card support. After almost 2 1/2 years, they finally flip the firmware switch. 28 freakin months. Why?
I imagine the reason they were reluctant to support SDHC is because of the potential hole it opened for would be pirates. Nintendo must have finally realized that they were only punishing legitimate users, while hackers continued getting around each and every road block they put up.
For the same reason that Nintendo has poor online gaming, it's Nintendo and they don't give a shit about us hardcore gamers anymore. I'll just give my money to Microsoft now and enjoy some proper COD WaW and SF IV. Well I can't shit on them completely, I love SSBB (only reason I haven't sold my Wii, and online sucks when playing randomly) and the DS.
because hardware sales is dwindling
they've reached the core audience
now they want to reach out to the 1337 hax0rz community.
that's not a bad thing
that's a good thing
Using SDHC was already *unofficially* possible. All Nintendo has done is make storage less of an issue for your average user.
No flash update for internet channel ... FAIL ;-(,,,,,
AGREEEED!!!
cool
So can i run my virtual console saves from the sd card or just wiiware
VC games will work off of SD too. As do channels... well I can at least confirm that the Internet Channel does.
When are we getting an update to the internet Channel? Come on ...!
Anyone try an SDHC card within Rock Band 2 yet? I read something about Wii architecture that a game is "tied" to whatever original Wii System release it was originally created with.
I was wondering what my Wii was doing all day yesterday. The blue light was driving me nuts.