Topic: Wii don't need a hard drive.

[ShyGuy]

Time to bust out a "controversial" topic here. The Wii doesn't need a hard drive. Consoles don't need hard drives. Let me tell you why.

1. The Future. The year is 2018. You walk into your local used game store, UncleBob is  furiously digging through a bin in the corner looking for a Metallic Rose DS Lite. You go up to the counter and ask to purchase Lost Winds and Boston's More than a feeling for Rock Band 360. The clerk laughs at you and says, "THERE IS NO POSSIBLE WAY TO PURCHASE THOSE ITEMS BECAUSE NO PHYSICAL COPY EXISTS." Sure, you can hope they bring the popular titles out on the virtual console for PlayStation 5, but what about obscure stuff? What about paying for the same virtual things over and over?

2. The Patch. People are predictable. They will follow the path of least resistance most of the time. The hard drive allows "updates" for games in the future they say, it solves the problem of game bugs they say. Good Intentions. Then the publisher starts breathing down their neck, whispering "Ship now, patch later" The pressure is off the programmers, the testers. They can always patch the game in a future download. NEXT THING YOU KNOW BULLY FOR THE 360 IS A BROKEN MESS CAUSE THEY LEFT THEMSELVES AN OUT. Don't believe me? Think I'm exaggerating? Look at PC Games.

3. The Bloat. The Wii has 512mb of storage. Not enough, you're running out of room, right? The PS3 has 80gig of storage! Tons more space, you'd never run out, right? WRONG. SONY FANBOYS ARE COMPLAINING THAT THEY ARE RUNNING OUT OF SPACE. No matter how much storage you give a system, the software will bloat up and fill the available space (see the path of least resistance comment above) So even if the Wii had teh mad gigabytes, we would end filling it up with 20 minute installs of Devil May Cry 4 and Pac-Man XBL goes from less than a 100k to dozens of megabytes in size.

So there we have it, a little over dramatic in places but you get the point. Now I know that fixed storage is inevitable, and sadly it's necessary. I don't have a problem with the technology itself, but the weakness of humanity means the hard drives cause more problems than they solve when it comes to game consoles.

[Kairon]

I believe in a flash memory future.

[Smoke39]

It's Nintendo's console, they can impose any restrictions they want on third parties regarding a hard drive (or flash or whatever they want).  E.g., a "no patches" policy, or size restrictions, etc.  Problem solved.

[ShyGuy]

I don't have a lot of faith in Nintendo's policy restrictions when it comes to the Wii so far. Plus Sony and Microsoft have size restrictions and they are still running out of space.

[Adrock]

Storage space wouldn't be as big an issue if the SD expansion slot was more useful.

[King of Twitch]

Nintendo and technology don't mix

[ShyGuy]

I'm sorry, I don't mean to derail my own thread here, but PLEASE CHANGE YOUR NAME BACK THE PERIOD CONFUSES ME

[DAaaMan64]

Nintendo and technology don't mix

I thoroughly enjoy the ironic truth of this comment.

[RABicle]

One day. In the future. Our tubes will be so fat and our bands so broad that Nintendo will have the only harddrive for their consoles and we'll stream our games and save files right off them. I kinda look forward to teh day when I no longer have to worry about digital or physical space management.

[Nick DiMola]

I actually agree with all of your points ShyGuy, particularly #1. I definitely don't want games to move away from the physical medium in the future, I think it is a major mistake and it kills the whole collection facet of gaming, which I particularly enjoy.

[blackfootsteps]

I actually agree with all of your points ShyGuy, particularly #1. I definitely don't want games to move away from the physical medium in the future, I think it is a major mistake and it kills the whole collection facet of gaming, which I particularly enjoy.

Same thing I like about CDs but it hasn't seemed to stop the digital revolution.

[Chozo Ghost]

Hard drives are the path to the dark side. Hard drives lead to porn, and porn leads to suffering.

I sense much hard drive in you.

[Rhoq]

"Wii don't need a hard drive", huh?

I guess you didn't have to free up space this morning just to install the Nintendo Channel.

I currently have 12 VC games stored on an SD card because the Wii's "generous 512MB of flash RAM" became pathetically small about 3 or 4 months ago.

[UncleBob]

Why would anyone endorse something that so greatly limits what the system can do?

Hard Drives aren't just about patches and DLC - as we've seen with XBL and WiiWare, there are a *lot* of small time developers who simply could not develop a full-fledged game that would be profitable at retail.  Digital distribution is virtually the only way to get these games to the public.  The limited space on the Wii makes it a pain to purchase too many titles - which is something that any console maker would have to agree is crazy.

The idea of the Wii is that it's simple - so easy a caveman... Errr... Soccer Mom can do it. Forcing them to go into internal menus and swap files around isn't easy or fun.

Mario Kart and Wii Fit show this off perfectly - you install the special channel so you can quickly access the data of the game without having to swap discs.  If I could have done something like this on my DS, my Nintendog probably wouldn't be dead.

Hard Drive = easy. Swapping files around on SD cards = pain in the neck.

[Rhoq]

Hard Drive = easy. Swapping files around on SD cards = pain in the neck.

Amen.

Now, I would be content with copying to an SD card if the Wii could access Channels saved on that SD card. For all intents and purposes the SD card slot is a rather useless feature of the Wii since, many times, it takes longer to copy a Virtual Console "Channel" to the SD card than it does to download it from the Shop Channel!

[Plugabugz]

The title of this thread is wrong. It should be Nintendo don't need to produce a hard drive


I just found this. 500GB for £75. All Nintendo need to do is produce a generic driver to support them all, and the problem is sorted. No R&D involved, no mass production or marketing. All the pennies they would have spent making one have been saved! All by using a product that already exists.

[Rhoq]

The title of this thread is wrong. It should be Nintendo don't need to produce a hard drive


I just found this. 500GB for £75. All Nintendo need to do is produce a generic driver to support them all, and the problem is sorted. No R&D involved, no mass production or marketing. All the pennies they would have spent making one have been saved! All by using a product that already exists.

When the Wii was first unveiled, Iwata said that the Wii would support just about any USB Hard Drive. It's time he made good on that claim.

[NWR_insanolord]

Wii don't need a hard drive.

sadly it's necessary.

Make up your mind. (hint: the second one is the right one)

[ShyGuy]

Sorry, I meant to speak in a future tense when I said it's necessary. It will be necessary for Wii 2 to have a hard drive.

[NinGurl69 *huggles]

"Hard Drives" start with the same root word as "hardcore".

Nintendo will never support these things.

64DD used to be promising.  Laffo.

[Rhoq]

It will be necessary for Wii 2 to have a hard drive.

Who cares about the "Wii 2"? It's necessary for the current Wii to have a hard drive!

[BranDonk Kong]

Wii absolutely need a hard drive. I have a few VC N64 games, and it's killing my storage space.

[Ian Sane]

When I was kid back in like 1994 I thought of what an ideal console would have.  I figured it should have four controller ports since it was annoying to have to buy an adapter and a hard drive because it was so useful with PC games to save as many custom tracks or levels or "Sim Cities" that I wanted.  In retrospect I was designing the Xbox.

It doesn't have to be a hard drive but having some sort of large built-in storage is such a no brainer idea for a console.  Having save batteries die sucks.  Having to buy memory cards because they don't include them with the damn console sucks.  Having a limit on the amount of save slots, and thus not having enough for each sibling or friend to have one, sucks.  Built-in storage eliminates those issues.

Now I'll admit that bloatware is a problem but it's a problem no matter what.  The sh!tty devs that clog up the hard drive are the same ones that would eat up a whole memory card.  No matter how you dice it they're going to abuse it.  I think an ideal hard drive implementation allows for some form of portable storage so that you can back up files or take your save to a friend's house.  You should also be able to easily remove the hard drive so that you can replace it if it breaks or just buy an extra if you have a lot of games.

No physical copies and devs relying on patches are all valid.  Microtransactions are also a valid complaint and that is also a problem with the combination of hard drives and online support.

But you know what?  The Wii has functionally the EXACT SAME THING.  It's just smaller than what MS and Sony offer.  Just because it's technically not a hard drive doesn't mean it's different.  All the same issues apply.  Except in this case I would say it's worse because of the huge size difference.  It reminds me of how for the first couple years the Cube had by far the smallest memory card (and sure enough those crooks charged us the same price as the PS2 memory card despite it being 8 TIMES SMALLER). 

Let's say Developer A makes some amazing game for the Xbox 360 and PS3 that requires extensive use of the hard drive.  Where's the Wii port?  Oh that's right they can't port it to the Wii because its technically-not-a-hard-drive-but-is-still-really-the-same-idea-built-in-storage is vastly smaller.  The Wii misses out on a lot of multiplatform games because hardware wise it doesn't compare so a straight port requires a big chunk of extra effort.  The built-in storage is part of it.

The Wii is open to bloatware and patches and games with no physical copies exactly like the other consoles are.  Except the spaces runs out quicker.  Yee haw.  Nintendo hardware always seems like it's designed for magical fantasyland developers that do everything efficiently.  While that's a nice design in theory it doesn't work at all in the real world.  Devs like being lazy so they need flexible options.  Rinky dink cartridges or memory cards or built-in storage doesn't fly with them if the competition allows them the option of making inflated bloatware.  The result of having everything "smaller" on the Wii has just resulted in PS2 ports.

Hell people can run out of storage on the Wii just by downloading first party VC games.  There's no inefficient third party there.  You could have only Nintendo products on the Wii and still have to be swapping SD cards.  When the designer of the console itself has nailed their dick to the floor with only 512mb of storage then you know it wasn't a good design.

[Pale]

The title of this thread is wrong. It should be Nintendo don't need to produce a hard drive


I just found this. 500GB for £75. All Nintendo need to do is produce a generic driver to support them all, and the problem is sorted. No R&D involved, no mass production or marketing. All the pennies they would have spent making one have been saved! All by using a product that already exists.

The problem with this plan is that they need to fix the SD support FIRST.  I saw this because I'm sure that if they do enable external hard drives, they would just work like the current SD slot anyway.  They NEED to make it so the main wii menu can feed off of things other than its internal memory.  This is the first step.

[Morari]

THIS POST HAS BEEN CENSORED FOR YOUR PROTECTION.

--Bureau of Internet Morality