Gaming Forums => Nintendo Gaming => Topic started by: Spak-Spang on October 02, 2008, 11:51:54 AM
Title: Nintendo's Storage Solution
Post by: Spak-Spang on October 02, 2008, 11:51:54 AM
I have been trying to figure out how Nintendo's new storage solution will work.
We now know you can save directly to the SD Card, but no mention of playing from the SD Card. Instead, Nintendo stated it will be easy to transfer from SD Card to Wii. (Read: Faster)
Well, this could mean one of two solutions.
1)Nintendo has just upgraded its SD Card firmware, and we will have the same issues as before it will just be easier and quicker than we had to deal with. Not really a solution.
2)The second possibilities comes from an idea Activision is using...or is it Activision got the idea from Nintendo with a heads up.
What is a portion of the Nintendo Wii SD Card say 1,000 blocks is reserved for fast swap channels from the SD Card. This will allow the appearance of playing games from your SD Card, but not really. You will open into the SD Card Channel menus pick a game, that will be quickly uploaded to the Wii for play...and when you end the game, it will be deleted off the Wii memory.
Since there is a limit to the size of games available for Wii Ware, it is easy for Nintendo to reserve an usable amount of Wii memory for this option, and for all intents and purposes we will be able to play games from our SD Cards, without having to deal with possible lag issues of playing games on our SD Cards.
Title: Re: Nintendo's Storage Solution
Post by: raptorspike on October 02, 2008, 11:54:48 AM
Can they seriously pull their thumbs out, and release a patch that allows for USB HDD use.
Title: Re: Nintendo's Storage Solution
Post by: Pale on October 02, 2008, 12:01:38 PM
This is the main reason I'm anxious about the US conference... because i want to understand what the hell they mean by all this.
Title: Re: Nintendo's Storage Solution
Post by: Plugabugz on October 02, 2008, 12:07:47 PM
They should just do the memory card option AND usb HDD use.
My friend has a 1TB external hard drive and i'm pretty sure in 7 days its nearly 20% full. People will fill it. I don't know what's on it!
Title: Re: Nintendo's Storage Solution
Post by: Spinnzilla on October 02, 2008, 01:47:34 PM
Isn't 2 gigs the biggest the wii can read? if so I hope they expand on that too, so I'll just have to buy an 8 gig card and not have to worry about space for a while.
Title: Re: Nintendo's Storage Solution
Post by: vudu on October 02, 2008, 02:12:11 PM
What is a portion of the Nintendo Wii SD Card say 1,000 blocks is reserved for fast swap channels from the SD Card. This will allow the appearance of playing games from your SD Card, but not really. You will open into the SD Card Channel menus pick a game, that will be quickly uploaded to the Wii for play...and when you end the game, it will be deleted off the Wii memory.
As long as they can limit the transfer time I would be fine with this solution. However, if it still takes 30 seconds to transfer a NES game (and god only knows how long to transfer Cocoto Fishing) it's not an acceptable solution.
Title: Re: Nintendo's Storage Solution
Post by: Spak-Spang on October 02, 2008, 02:15:09 PM
I think that is the point of the firmware update. If they update it to firmware which can handle reading and writing information must faster it makes sense.
And since Activision is already talking about fast uploading of songs, perhaps they already know something...or it will get even better.
I personally think that if they can load the maximum size Wii Ware game into that memory in 30 seconds or less then it would be a perfectly viable solution.
Title: Re: Nintendo's Storage Solution
Post by: Kairon on October 03, 2008, 03:21:54 AM
Nintendo stated it will be easy to transfer from SD Card to Wii. (Read: Faster)
Careful. Hope is blinding. This IS Nintendo we're talking about. Their idea of "Core" gamer is Animal Crossing... (Which IS a core Nintendo Fan game, in my opinion, just not a "Core" game)
Quote
What is a portion of the Nintendo Wii SD Card say 1,000 blocks is reserved for fast swap channels from the SD Card. This will allow the appearance of playing games from your SD Card, but not really. You will open into the SD Card Channel menus pick a game, that will be quickly uploaded to the Wii for play...and when you end the game, it will be deleted off the Wii memory.
Since there is a limit to the size of games available for Wii Ware, it is easy for Nintendo to reserve an usable amount of Wii memory for this option, and for all intents and purposes we will be able to play games from our SD Cards, without having to deal with possible lag issues of playing games on our SD Cards.
This is the solution I anticipate, and hope for. It also suits Occam's razor: It's MUCH simpler for Nintendo to do this sort of thing, in my opinion, than to do any sort of advanced, costly, additional-hardware-solution thing.
Title: Re: Nintendo's Storage Solution
Post by: Spak-Spang on October 03, 2008, 10:01:32 AM
Kairon: Your post confuses me. You state not to get your hopes up about the ease of transfers to the SD card meaning faster transfers...which to me is the only thing it could mean, as it already is pretty easy.
But then you quote my solution as the one you hope for (which is actually the one I hope for as well) as the best solution.
I just don't know why Nintendo has to wait till 2009 to roll that firmware upgrade out. They need it for the holiday season.
Title: Re: Nintendo's Storage Solution
Post by: NWR_Lindy on October 03, 2008, 01:13:57 PM
They need it now. I did some fridge-cleaning to accomodate Bomberman Blast and felt like stabbing myself in the eye. Copy, delete, copy, delete, copy, delete, copy, delete...it's maddening. Also the fact that there's no progress bar to show you where you're at in the copying process is so lame.
Title: Re: Nintendo's Storage Solution
Post by: GoldenPhoenix on October 03, 2008, 02:12:12 PM
They need it now. I did some fridge-cleaning to accomodate Bomberman Blast and felt like stabbing myself in the eye. Copy, delete, copy, delete, copy, delete, copy, delete...it's maddening. Also the fact that there's no progress bar to show you where you're at in the copying process is so lame.
This is perhaps the biggest problem with "fridge cleaning" because true fridge cleaning should be quick and easy to move things back and forth. As it is now it is a sewer cleaning.
Title: Re: Nintendo's Storage Solution
Post by: UncleBob on October 03, 2008, 08:04:56 PM
They need it now. I did some fridge-cleaning to accomodate Bomberman Blast and felt like stabbing myself in the eye. Copy, delete, copy, delete, copy, delete, copy, delete...it's maddening. Also the fact that there's no progress bar to show you where you're at in the copying process is so lame.
Not to mention that there should be a "move" option instead of Copy, delete...
Title: Re: Nintendo's Storage Solution
Post by: Kairon on October 03, 2008, 09:08:21 PM
Kairon: Your post confuses me. You state not to get your hopes up about the ease of transfers to the SD card meaning faster transfers...which to me is the only thing it could mean, as it already is pretty easy.
Oh sorry. I don't mean to say not to get your hopes up. I just meant to say that you shouldn't see too much in that Nintendo statement. "Easy" can be defined many ways, not just in the sense of "faster," and by now we should know that Nintendo defines things in a vastly different manner than we'd traditionally expect. Confirmation bias is what I'm warning against here, seeing this as evidence of what we already know we want (speed).
Still... that doesn't mean we can't hope... I like the idea of a dedicated virtual memory space very much, which has ALL OF A SUDDEN gained support even though I've mentioned it ages ago in related discussions T_T
Title: Re: Nintendo's Storage Solution
Post by: BranDonk Kong on October 03, 2008, 11:23:40 PM
2GB is the current max the Wii can read *right now*, but a future software upgrade could easily change that limitation, provided Nintendo's SD spec in the Wii is SD 2.0...if it's not, then this still sucks.
Title: Re: Nintendo's Storage Solution
Post by: Toruresu on October 03, 2008, 11:31:45 PM
2GB is a lot for me. Then again, I've only downloaded 2 VC titles and 1 WiiWare game. I believe if I ever fill the 2GB SD card I have, I'll just swap it with another.
Title: Re: Nintendo's Storage Solution
Post by: KDR_11k on October 04, 2008, 02:39:35 AM
Careful. Hope is blinding. This IS Nintendo we're talking about. Their idea of "Core" gamer is Animal Crossing... (Which IS a core Nintendo Fan game, in my opinion, just not a "Core" game)
That's just a communication error, core does indeed refer to the userbase they've been serving before (which people have been decrying as kiddie), not forum whiners.
Title: Re: Nintendo's Storage Solution
Post by: Kairon on October 04, 2008, 02:47:44 AM
Well, at the very least two different definitions of an admittedly vague and inflammatory word.
Title: Re: Nintendo's Storage Solution
Post by: Flames_of_chaos on October 04, 2008, 06:58:09 AM
Well guys I downloaded about 40 VC games and about 10 WiiWare games and I still have 10,300 blocks left on my SD card (2GB card) so don't expect to have issues with a SD card being "only" 2GB since it will hold a lot.
Also downloading directly to the SD card will be awesome because the only time consuming thing about backing up games to a SD card is copying from the Wii internal memory to the SD card however copying from the SD card to the Wii memory is pretty fast. All they really need to do is enhance the menus to make the process more friendlier.
Title: Re: Nintendo's Storage Solution
Post by: Flames_of_chaos on October 04, 2008, 10:42:48 AM
Source with some interesting info and the general sales boasting (http://www.nintendo.co.jp/n10/conference2008fall/presen/e/index.html)
Title: Re: Nintendo's Storage Solution
Post by: shammack on October 04, 2008, 11:16:30 AM
Quote
To make it so that software stored on SD memory card can be played on Wii console by going through much simpler procedures.
To me, that sounds like you can't play them directly off the SD card, but they may be doing something like the Guitar Hero method. Good to at least see something that suggests there's more to it than just be able to download directly onto the card.
Title: Re: Nintendo's Storage Solution
Post by: Flames_of_chaos on October 04, 2008, 11:23:39 AM
Well if you read it carefully it can be only be played off the Wii internal memory for probably more than one reason but the biggest reason for them is if it could be played off the SD card it will be a security breach so in order to compensate they will make the moving more streamlined and less annoying which is fine by me.
Title: Re: Nintendo's Storage Solution
Post by: ATimson on October 04, 2008, 11:48:28 AM
To make it so that software stored on SD memory card can be played on Wii console by going through much simpler procedures.
To me, that sounds like you can't play them directly off the SD card, but they may be doing something like the Guitar Hero method.
Without knowing what the Guitar Hero method is...
Quote
We will also make it so that you will need to go through just one process in order to transfer Virtual Console or WiiWare software stored on an SD card to the Wii console and then be able to play it.
That sounds to me like they're planning on just-in-time copying; the channel may be stored on the SD card, but choosing it from the Wii menu will copy it memory and start it without fussing around with the Memory stuff in the settings. In other words, Spak-Spang's second solution suggested above.
Title: Re: Nintendo's Storage Solution
Post by: NWR_Lindy on October 04, 2008, 12:01:20 PM
Well if you read it carefully it can be only be played off the Wii internal memory for probably more than one reason but the biggest reason for them is if it could be played off the SD card it will be a security breach so in order to compensate they will make the moving more streamlined and less annoying which is fine by me.
This is all they need to do as far as I'm concerned. I never had a problem with the Wii's small onboard memory, just the incredibly annoying process of moving stuff back-and-forth from the Wii to the SD Card.
Title: Re: Nintendo's Storage Solution
Post by: BranDonk Kong on October 04, 2008, 12:46:43 PM
Yeah copying to the SD card is absolutely ridiculous, even if you have a "fast" SD card. This isn't too bad of a solution, as 2GB is certainly a lot better than 512MB, especially since a good chunk of that space is always unusable anyway.
Title: Re: Nintendo's Storage Solution
Post by: DAaaMan64 on October 04, 2008, 02:39:12 PM
The Wii's main screen should just automatically load channel buttons of the SD card, and when you select to play them, it loads them onto the wii system real quick. Giving it the appearance that they are all on the Wii already.
Title: Re: Nintendo's Storage Solution
Post by: Flames_of_chaos on October 04, 2008, 03:28:32 PM
Well I think they can do this since the Wii has 88MB Ram and the max size so far is 40MB how about loading it into RAM? They are already doing this with DS download play functions.
Title: Re: Nintendo's Storage Solution
Post by: ATimson on October 04, 2008, 05:37:20 PM
Well I think they can do this since the Wii has 88MB Ram and the max size so far is 40MB how about loading it into RAM?
That wouldn't work with anything using more than 48MB of RAM. VC titles should be fine, but WiiWare titles might not be (especially if their content is compressed in storage but decompressed on run, or is procedurally generated).
Besides, I don't think you'd see a significant speed savings skipping the RAM->Flash step of the process...
Title: Re: Nintendo's Storage Solution
Post by: Flames_of_chaos on October 04, 2008, 05:46:23 PM
The point is because of Wii's security features on games stored on SD cards they probably can't be booted from the SD card. So loading a game off a SD card is essentially out of the question.
Title: Re: Nintendo's Storage Solution
Post by: NWR_Lindy on October 04, 2008, 10:56:33 PM
Yup. No recent interviews (example is Kohler's interview with Dunaway) have made any mention of it. All they say is "you'll be able to download directly to the SD Card".
Title: Re: Nintendo's Storage Solution
Post by: Flames_of_chaos on October 05, 2008, 07:24:51 AM
I have a feeling that someone will try to ask if brawl can load stuff off a SD card and some games can load MP3s or music files off a SD card are dead wrong because obviously your MP3s won't be encrypted while games are encrypted in a security scheme for obvious reasons.
Vicarious Visions already said that the DLC in the Wii version of GH:WT are going to be in a custom Wii file type so the song loading should be a little similar to brawl's loading off a SD card. I wonder if Rock Band 2 will do the same thing or something similar.
Title: Re: Nintendo's Storage Solution
Post by: NinGurl69 *huggles on October 05, 2008, 12:25:15 PM
In other words, easy to crack.
Title: Re: Nintendo's Storage Solution
Post by: Flames_of_chaos on October 05, 2008, 12:55:12 PM
Well hey even the mighty "unhackable" 360 got hacked easily.
Title: Re: Nintendo's Storage Solution
Post by: GoldenPhoenix on October 05, 2008, 01:04:23 PM
I wonder what percentage of people actually pirate stuff like the 360? Wouldn't it be a hassle considering the 360's HDD is not easily modified to work with the computer? The Wii on the other hand has SD cards which are universal.
Title: Re: Nintendo's Storage Solution
Post by: BranDonk Kong on October 05, 2008, 02:41:23 PM
Technically the 360 itself is still not hacked. You can play backups, and downgrade the kernel using a timing attack and a ~45-wire chip, but the system's core security still has not been cracked. The system the Wii uses (for DLC), however, is pretty easy to crack, which is why they're taking their time, making an update that will hopefully resolve these issues.
Title: Re: Nintendo's Storage Solution
Post by: NWR_Lindy on October 05, 2008, 06:41:41 PM
The original 360 took a while to crack as well, right? I have a buddy that still has the Xbox rigged up with with an Xecuter and Media Center, but that was years after its release.
Title: Re: Nintendo's Storage Solution
Post by: BranDonk Kong on October 05, 2008, 08:12:27 PM
I think the original XBox took just over a year to crack...the Wii is probably the fastest hacked console ever (at least for backup games), taking all of just over 3 months, though homebrew took much longer. XBox Media Center is probably the greatest piece of homebrew ever made, besides MAME.
Title: Re: Nintendo's Storage Solution
Post by: Smash_Brother on October 06, 2008, 01:32:08 AM
Technically the 360 itself is still not hacked. You can play backups, and downgrade the kernel using a timing attack and a ~45-wire chip, but the system's core security still has not been cracked. The system the Wii uses (for DLC), however, is pretty easy to crack, which is why they're taking their time, making an update that will hopefully resolve these issues.
I've heard rumors that people have a hack that can literally steal Wiiware downloads. No idea if it's true or not.
Title: Re: Nintendo's Storage Solution
Post by: DAaaMan64 on October 06, 2008, 01:56:54 AM
I think the original XBox took just over a year to crack...the Wii is probably the fastest hacked console ever (at least for backup games), taking all of just over 3 months, though homebrew took much longer. XBox Media Center is probably the greatest piece of homebrew ever made, besides MAME.
Fasted "hacked" console ever will probably forever be the DreamCast. I think.
Title: Re: Nintendo's Storage Solution
Post by: Pale on October 06, 2008, 11:52:20 AM
Well I still want to know what streamlining the copy process means.
If I STILL have to go into memory management to do it, even if it's faster, I still won't be happy.
There is nothing stopping them from adding a VC channel that lists all the games on the SD card, and then invisibly manages memory so that if you pick a game that isn't on your internal memory, your load time will be longer and it will make space by moving your least played games off internal memory. If the game you pick is already on internal memory, your load time is super fast.
That wouldn't be that difficult to implement in my opinion and would be the perfect solution. It would also make for a nicer organization method than having each game being it's own channel.
Title: Re: Nintendo's Storage Solution
Post by: BranDonk Kong on October 06, 2008, 03:30:16 PM
You can't steal VC channels anymore. You used to be able to do it because they only checked to see if you had a valid ticket (which can be created/hacked) for the VC channel (and WiiWare), and if you did, you could redownload the title for free. Now Nintendo checks your accounts purchase history, so if you didn't buy it, you can't download it from the shop.
And the Dreamcast took about a year to hack, I believe.
Title: Re: Nintendo's Storage Solution
Post by: ATimson on October 06, 2008, 11:36:34 PM
You can't steal VC channels anymore. You used to be able to do it because they only checked to see if you had a valid ticket (which can be created/hacked) for the VC channel (and WiiWare), and if you did, you could redownload the title for free. Now Nintendo checks your accounts purchase history, so if you didn't buy it, you can't download it from the shop.
That's not the only way, that was just the easiest.
Title: Re: Nintendo's Storage Solution
Post by: Spinnzilla on October 07, 2008, 01:00:15 PM
I really don't have an issue with having to move everything from the SD card to wii. As long as they speed up the copy (or for the love of god, just make a "move" option) process, it wont be a problem. I'll just move everything thing I can to to an SD card and move it too the wii when need be. Also being able to read SD cards larger than 2 gigs would be nice too.
Title: Re: Nintendo's Storage Solution
Post by: NWR_insanolord on October 07, 2008, 01:41:02 PM
The problem for me right now is that we have to wait until "Spring" for this so-called solution but that doesn't help me during the current deluge of great WiiWare and VC games.
Title: Re: Nintendo's Storage Solution
Post by: GoldenPhoenix on October 07, 2008, 01:47:27 PM
I have some great advice for everyone. Let's wait and see what it actually is before freaking out. ;)
Argh, edited instead of quoted again... ~Pale
Title: Re: Nintendo's Storage Solution
Post by: EasyCure on October 07, 2008, 01:59:19 PM
The problem for me right now is that we have to wait until "Spring" for this so-called solution but that doesn't help me during the current deluge of great WiiWare and VC games.
I'm not trying to criticize the way you store your games, but do you really have that many VC and WiiWare games that you're playing at one time? You should be able to easily fit 4 or 5 "large" games on your Wii at once (and a plethora of small games). Is it the ideal solution? HELL NO. But it's hardly an excuse to miss out on any good games.
Title: Re: Nintendo's Storage Solution
Post by: NWR_insanolord on October 07, 2008, 06:00:01 PM
The problem for me right now is that we have to wait until "Spring" for this so-called solution but that doesn't help me during the current deluge of great WiiWare and VC games.
I'm not trying to criticize the way you store your games, but do you really have that many VC and WiiWare games that you're playing at one time? You should be able to easily fit 4 or 5 "large" games on your Wii at once (and a plethora of small games). Is it the ideal solution? HELL NO. But it's hardly an excuse to miss out on any good games.
As my signature indicates, I buy way too many VC and WiiWare games, which means I tend to be in the middle of a lot of games at the same time. The storage crisis doesn't prevent me from buying games that I really want (I've blown almost 5000 points in the past few weeks alone) but it does keep me from experimenting too much with things I'm not sure about, which is one of the things I love about the VC.
