Topic: Nintendo says they're working to address Wii storage issues

[decoyman]

Link from Engadget


Sorry if this is old news or being discussed elsewhere... but it caught my attention. SD cards ftw?

[DAaaMan64]

Nintendo always solves problems like this the stupidest and completely out of no where way. But I guess we'll see!

[Plugabugz]

They are not going to produce a hard drive, but it doesn't explicitly say they are going to enable existing ones to be used.

[NWR_insanolord]

Nintendo always solves problems like this the stupidest and completely out of no where way. But I guess we'll see!

As long as they actually solve it I don't care how they do it.

[KDR_11k]

64 MB USB dongles?

[NWR_insanolord]

I don't consider that a solution, so my statement still stands. Also, they said no hardware.

[Plugabugz]

Which still makes my point true.

[NWR_insanolord]

That would be great, I have about 4 2GB USB drives around here that I'm not using at all right now.

[Smash_Brother]

I think it makes a tremendous amount of sense to just let people use their own USB storage devices.

That way, anyone who needs to can buy as much space as they want or they could even use their iPod as a Wii HD and the Wii to charge the batteries on the thing, heh.

[NWR_insanolord]

I think it makes a tremendous amount of sense to just let people use their own USB storage devices.

That way, anyone who needs to can buy as much space as they want or they could even use their iPod as a Wii HD and the Wii to charge the batteries on the thing, heh.

You're right, it makes a tremendous amount of sense. As pointed out earlier in this topic, when was the last time Nintendo did something that made a tremendous amount of sense?

[Smash_Brother]

You're right, it makes a tremendous amount of sense. As pointed out earlier in this topic, when was the last time Nintendo did something that made a tremendous amount of sense?

The Miis, Wii Sports, WiiFit, WiiWare, Mario Galaxy, the various fun channels, etc.

I think they're giving themselves a pretty decent track record as of late.

[Plugabugz]

I'm sure KDR and i can give an arm-length amount of stuff that says the opposite, though.

[Smash_Brother]

You can't deny that Nintendo has managed to go from last place last gen to 1st place this gen.

Anything else is really just details.

[Ian Sane]

The Miis, Wii Sports, WiiFit, WiiWare, Mario Galaxy, the various fun channels, etc.

I think they're giving themselves a pretty decent track record as of late.

Well most of that is game design which they have always been very good at.  Nintendo usually reserves wacky inane solutions for the stuff of a greater scope.  Typically the weirdest solutions are for stuff that affects all games including third party stuff.  Controllers, game media, online plans, memory storage, marketing, third party policies - those are usually the "if we screw this up everyone has to live with it for five years" stuff that Nintendo reserves wacky solutions to.  The bigger the potential damage the stranger the solution.

I think just the fact that the issue exists entirely because of an inane Nintendo solution suggets that an inane solution will be used to "solve" it.  Why is this an issue in the first place?  Could Nintendo's unconvential and borderline stupid approach to SD Card suppot have anything to do with it?  If they can't understand the whole concept of even having SD Card support in the first place why is anyone thinking that they understand the concept of allowing any USB hard drive?  Does allowing a hard drive sound at ALL like something Nintendo would do to address the issue?  It would absolutely blow my mind is they solved this problem in a logical way.

Nintendo is the type of company that offers 1L buckets and when told that 4L buckets are required offers 2L buckets.

[TheFleece]

I saw a response from someone on another website who suggested that Nintendo might do the following:

"1) Compression. The games get compressed on the existing internal storage and decompressed as needed.

LIKELIHOOD: Not very
REASON: Compression is nice, but if you have everything compressed, where does it expand to as needed? You could limit compression to guarantee that the biggest allowed game could expand, but that's not likely.

2) Offline storage, like what Valve and Steam are beginning to offer. This means that you can purchase a game and it stays on a Nintendo server somewhere. When you want to play it, they either send the whole thing or stream it to you as needed. When you want to play something else, the new games overwrite the old ones as necessary.

LIKELIHOOD: Very High
REASON: Nintendo doesn't want to provide external storage, because that's how those pesky pirates manage to crack things and trade them at will. If the game stays on the Wii's internal memory or on their servers, that lessens the pirating abilities. The issues here are bandwidth, availability, server uptime, etc., not to mention the associated cost. Will it be $19.95 a year for a "Nintendo Wallet" or something like that? I have no idea.

That also goes with Nintendo's strategy (as mentioned) of making it as simple as possible. No new SKUs, no extra hardware at all -- just an optional offline storage solution that's completely in their control. Will it work? Probably, but not without some grumbling.

If there's another viable solution to the storage issue that doesn't involve any external storage solution, I'm all ears. I can't think of it though."
http://blog.wired.com/games/2008/06/nintendo-no-ext.html
----

Offline storage idea has been the most realistic idea for dealing with the situation other than screaming for a hard drive and if Nintendo has a way where I won't have to make more room for something I'll never use or only use for the Wii then I'm down. The idea of buying a Wii specific hard drive irritates me- mostly because I just bought a terrabyte of drive, though I doubt it would be as expensive.

[NinGurl69 *huggles]

It could work.  And it'll give Nintendo even more customer usage/behavior statistics than before.

It's really about "getting the right job done" and not necessarily "feeding the customers all the best tech" isn't it.

Blue Ocean.

Disruption.

Milkshakes.

[Ceric]

I like to point out that I'm pretty sure there already doing compression.  I could see the online storage.  I still think its very stupid that Nintendo didn't opt for a faster SD drive so they could use that as there solution.

[animecyberrat]

No way, I never have my Wii connected to the internet unless I am downloading a game, I wouldn't want to be forced to be online to play a game on my console I already downloaded. That is not a solution, that only create bigger problems.

[TheFleece]

A better SD drive would have been the best solution. I wouldn't want to play a streaming game if it had to buffer every few seconds, but would rather opt for an online place to store games I guess. I really wish that Nintendo would have seen this situation before hand and prepared for it accordingly with hard drive or boot off SD cards.
If they're not making a hard drive then what will those damned USB ports be used for aside from charging stuff and just what are they developing?

[Sarail]

I just want the ability to plug up my USB external hard drive.  THAT makes the most sense.

[NWR_insanolord]

They'd better not use the online storage method, I have my Wii in a place where it barely gets a WiFi signal (about 7 minutes to download an NES game) a lot of the time, and that would mean it wouldn't work there. Also, at least if it works in the same way as it currently does, that would screw up save states.

[NinGurl69 *huggles]

Nintendo won't do anything.

They still remember the 64DD.

[ShyGuy]

Perhaps SD drive performance could be improved with a firmware update?

[NWR_insanolord]

Perhaps SD drive performance could be improved with a firmware update?

As I always point out, there's nothing wrong with the reader itself. I loaded a save the other day and it took about one second from start until the message popped up saying it was done, and mp3s in Excite Trucks start playing immediately. The reason it takes so long with VC games is the encryption process. A firmware update could change that, the problem is Nintendo wouldn't want to lose the anti-piracy layer the encryption provides.

[Michael8983]

A hard-drive isn't necessary and would no doubt be abused by certain developers.
SD cards are cheap and offer plenty of extra storage space. I really hope Nintendo goes this route.
In fact I suspect Nintendo has planned on this from the start but simply chose not to allow direct-play from the SD cards early on to keep the hackers from finding ways of abusing it. Now that extra storage space is necessary it's time to make the compromise.