Nintendo launches Wii System Menu 4.0, including SD card WiiWare playback
Nintendo's finally patching WiiWare's biggest hangup: storage. Not only can you back up titles to SD, but games can now be played straight from the cards, so there should be very little hassle to data management going forward. The "SD Card Menu" can be accessed straight from the main Wii System Menu 4.0, an update that's being pushed out as we speak, which also enables the Wii to work with memory cards larger than 2GB, all the way up to 32GB -- which should make room for a good many NES carts. Nintendo's also pushing out the new Virtual Console Arcade, which brings old school arcade titles to the Wii. Hit up the read link for Joystiq's walkthrough of the SD card functionality, or just fire up your Wii and find out for yourself -- the water's warm!























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.