According to Nintendo's Japanese site, SD cards can't be used to expand the console's storage. You must use a USB hard drive for that.
Also, Wii software (Virtual Console, WiiWare) must be purchased on the Wii Shop Channel, which is accessible through the "Wii Mode" app. The content won't be available on the Wii U eShop.
This goes against what the 3DS eShop does, where both DSiWare and 3DS games are available from the same place.
Title: Re: Bad news for the Wii U eShop.
Post by: BlackNMild2k1 on November 08, 2012, 11:29:31 PM
source?
Title: Re: Bad news for the Wii U eShop.
Post by: Mop it up on November 08, 2012, 11:49:01 PM
I think it'll just be temporary. WiiWare and VC can't be played outside of Wii Mode and so until that changes, there's not much reason to unify the shops yet.
Title: Re: Bad news for the Wii U eShop.
Post by: Shaymin on November 08, 2012, 11:57:33 PM
There will be demos early on.
Bad news for the eShop.
Title: Re: Bad news for the Wii U eShop.
Post by: tendoboy1984 on November 09, 2012, 12:05:34 AM
I think it'll just be temporary. WiiWare and VC can't be played outside of Wii Mode and so until that changes, there's not much reason to unify the shops yet.
See, that's the stupid thing. I don't have to put my 3DS in "DSi Mode" to download and play DSiWare games. Everything is accessible from the eShop, and it downloads directly to the 3DS menu.
Why couldn't Nintendo unify the Wii and Wii U software and shops like that?
Title: Re: Bad news for the Wii U eShop.
Post by: NWR_insanolord on November 09, 2012, 12:18:16 AM
You also couldn't access the 3DS eShop until several months after launch. I think a lot of this is going to be patched in later on, and Nintendo's just getting the essential stuff out at launch.
Title: Re: Bad news for the Wii U eShop.
Post by: broodwars on November 09, 2012, 08:38:29 AM
Nintendo just baffles me sometimes. We know why the 3DS was released unfinished, as Nintendo was trying to get it out to prop up the end of a fiscal year. But they've been working on the Wii U for at least two years while barely supporting the Wii. So why does it still feel like the Wii U is being rushed out the door unfinished in key areas like this? :-\
Title: Re: Bad news for the Wii U eShop.
Post by: Oblivion on November 09, 2012, 12:28:48 PM
I don't see how this is a problem.
Title: Re: Bad news for the Wii U eShop.
Post by: ShyGuy on November 09, 2012, 01:01:24 PM
Are SD cards not fast enough to play games off of?
Title: Re: Bad news for the Wii U eShop.
Post by: NWR_insanolord on November 09, 2012, 01:47:20 PM
Are SD cards not fast enough to play games off of?
That is actually a good point. On Wii the eShop games were limited to roughly 40MB, I didn't bother buying anything WiiWare so I don't know about the loading times on slow SD cards.
Since you can purchase full retail games on the eShop I think Nintendo wants to forego the extra hassle when it comes to customer service. Can you imagine people going out buying the biggest and cheapest SD cards, downloading a game on it and then waiting forever for it to load, then calling up Nintendo to say their Wii U is broken.
With USB flash drives and hard disk drives the minimum read speed is consistently higher than that of SD cards. Also you get more storage capacity for your money.
I imagine Nintendo will strike a deal with USB drive manufacturers to to get some of them specially marked with "suitable for Wii U". In doing so they can guarantee a minimum speed that is suitable for Wii U games. I remember Buffalo routers having markings on the box saying it was suitable for Wii and DS.
The 360 has its own specially made USB flash drives that guarantee a minimum working speed but they are ridiculously expensive. Such is the case when a company tries to sell a product they aren't equipped to manufacture.
Title: Re: Bad news for the Wii U eShop.
Post by: Kairon on November 09, 2012, 03:35:29 PM
According to Nintendo's Japanese site, SD cards can't be used to expand the console's storage. You must use a USB hard drive for that.
Where exactly does it say that? God I wish I could read Japanese.
Title: Re: Bad news for the Wii U eShop.
Post by: AV on November 09, 2012, 09:45:49 PM
wow i'm pissed about sd card storage because that's cheap compared to USB. I don't want to carry around a external drive, or have a usb thumb drive sticking out from the back.
Title: Re: Bad news for the Wii U eShop.
Post by: Kytim89 on November 09, 2012, 09:55:18 PM
wow i'm pissed about sd card storage because that's cheap compared to USB. I don't want to carry around a external drive, or have a usb thumb drive sticking out from the back.
It would be nice if some third party came up with a console stand that hooked into the bottom of the Wii U and you could place a HDD inside and hook the stand into one of the rear USB ports on the back of the Wii U. It would look ssoemthing like the Gamecube Gameboy adapter of the N64DD, but much smaller.
Title: Re: Bad news for the Wii U eShop.
Post by: NWR_insanolord on November 09, 2012, 11:19:07 PM
I'm sure we'll see something like that, but it'll probably be with the hard drive built in, or maybe a bay for any 2.5" drive.
Title: Re: Bad news for the Wii U eShop.
Post by: Spenczar on November 09, 2012, 11:22:33 PM
But we can use USB externals, right?
Title: Re: Bad news for the Wii U eShop.
Post by: stevey on November 09, 2012, 11:32:25 PM
Are you able to connect USB storage media to extend the storage memory on the system?
You can expand the memory storage by using USB storage media. SD card are not available as a recording media to extend the main storage memory. More information about USB storage media that have been tested will be announced at a later date on our website .
Title: Re: Bad news for the Wii U eShop.
Post by: KDR_11k on November 10, 2012, 03:58:56 AM
Sony's excuse for the overpriced Vita memory cards is that SD speeds vary too much. Digital Foundry found that Sony's memory cards aren't much faster either, I suspect the massive prices are just to subsidize the lower-than-retail prices on the PSN store.
Title: Re: Bad news for the Wii U eShop.
Post by: TJ Spyke on November 10, 2012, 08:52:21 AM
Sony has a long history of preferring their own memory cards (Memory Stick Pro Duo), we all know it's purely profit driven reason. They can say it's about speed, but they want the extra revenue from selling their over-priced memory cards.
Title: Re: Bad news for the Wii U eShop.
Post by: tendoboy1984 on November 10, 2012, 06:37:18 PM
Are you able to connect USB storage media to extend the storage memory on the system?
You can expand the memory storage by using USB storage media. SD card are not available as a recording media to extend the main storage memory. More information about USB storage media that have been tested will be announced at a later date on our website .
But that contradicts what Nintendo did with the DSi, Wii, and 3DS. If you can't use SD cards to store (and play) downloaded software, then what do you use them for?
Title: Re: Bad news for the Wii U eShop.
Post by: BranDonk Kong on November 10, 2012, 09:49:09 PM
Who the Hell buys a Wii U to play Wii games anyway? It offers no improvement to visual quality and just seems like a hassle.
Title: Re: Bad news for the Wii U eShop.
Post by: EvilMario on November 10, 2012, 09:58:37 PM
We've known about Wii Mode and why it exist for a while now. The WAD files used for the Virtual Console games are specifically designed for the Wii, which is why you're forced to run through this mode. It's a relative nightmare splitting the Wii Shop Channel and the Wii U's eShop, especially if they end up asking people to buy the same titles once more on Virtual Console.
I'm not sure how temporary it is either. Nintendo doesn't have a great way to transfer licenses from Wii to Wii. So moving them from Wii to Wii U, so you can load Virtual Console games directly from the Wii U (enabling Game Pad play, easier access, etc), in the future is not going to be a cake walk.
At this point though, backwards compatibility is going to be tougher and tougher each generation. Not just for Nintendo, but for everyone moving forward. It's a scary part about the digital future we face on consoles, at least for me.
Title: Re: Bad news for the Wii U eShop.
Post by: Kairon on November 10, 2012, 10:53:08 PM
Yeah EvilMario. I personally have no hope of this situation improving. In fact, I'm thinking that the SD card support exists SOLELY for the Wii backward compatibility and that I need to buy an external hdd.
Title: Re: Bad news for the Wii U eShop.
Post by: tendoboy1984 on November 11, 2012, 02:00:25 PM
We've known about Wii Mode and why it exist for a while now. The WAD files used for the Virtual Console games are specifically designed for the Wii, which is why you're forced to run through this mode. It's a relative nightmare splitting the Wii Shop Channel and the Wii U's eShop, especially if they end up asking people to buy the same titles once more on Virtual Console.
I'm not sure how temporary it is either. Nintendo doesn't have a great way to transfer licenses from Wii to Wii. So moving them from Wii to Wii U, so you can load Virtual Console games directly from the Wii U (enabling Game Pad play, easier access, etc), in the future is not going to be a cake walk.
At this point though, backwards compatibility is going to be tougher and tougher each generation. Not just for Nintendo, but for everyone moving forward. It's a scary part about the digital future we face on consoles, at least for me.
Nintendo could have easily fixed this problem by making the Wii U run those "WAD" files natively. Again, the 3DS can run DSiWare games natively; no need to boot the system in "DSi Mode".
The Wii U has the Wii hardware built into it, so why does it need to emulate the Wii's OS?
Title: Re: Bad news for the Wii U eShop.
Post by: MegaByte on November 11, 2012, 02:08:46 PM
3DS boots into DSi mode for DSiWare games, but yeah, you don't need to navigate a second OS to do it.
Title: Re: Bad news for the Wii U eShop.
Post by: tendoboy1984 on November 11, 2012, 02:12:10 PM
3DS boots into DSi mode for DSiWare games, but yeah, you don't need to navigate a second OS to do it.
That's my point. The Wii U has the Wii's hardware built into it. Therefore, backwards compatiblity should be automatic, like the 3DS (and every other BC system before it). Why should the Wii U need to emulate the Wii's OS when running Wii games?
Title: Re: Bad news for the Wii U eShop.
Post by: MegaByte on November 11, 2012, 02:26:13 PM
Because Wii games require Wii OS functions and drivers to operate. However, that doesn't mean they couldn't have bypassed the whole menu system.
Title: Re: Bad news for the Wii U eShop.
Post by: shingi_70 on November 11, 2012, 02:37:56 PM
I'm going to wait until june of next year and hope this gets resolved. Not having a wii one of the big reasons I was excited for the Wii U was the VC and wiiware stuff I missed.
But this is the type of the stuff that is making me wait. I can't see my self paying to be in two seprate eco systems for one console. Would rather them find some way to do it like the 3DS does with the dsi stuff.
Title: Re: Bad news for the Wii U eShop.
Post by: NWR_insanolord on November 11, 2012, 03:15:11 PM
It's funny, because I think Wii backwards compatibility is a much bigger deal to the average person than DSiWare compatibility. This screams of Nintendo just not having the time to implement it properly. I do wonder if they'll go back to it later on. Even the GameCube compatibility on Wii was handled better than this.
Title: Re: Bad news for the Wii U eShop.
Post by: MrPhishfood on November 11, 2012, 03:26:09 PM
In the Iwata Asks concerning the hardware it was mentioned that the hardware for Wii backwards compatibility is also shared by the Wii U. I think this means the console cannot be in Wii U mode and be using Wii backwards compatibility at the same time, or at least there are some big hurdles to overcome before that happens.
Title: Re: Bad news for the Wii U eShop.
Post by: NWR_insanolord on November 11, 2012, 03:30:53 PM
The same is true with the 3DS and DS backwards compatibility, and that works a lot better than what they're doing here.
Title: Re: Bad news for the Wii U eShop.
Post by: Kairon on November 11, 2012, 04:17:41 PM
I'm hoping that somehow in the future they give us an easy way to enter and exit Wii Mode from the regular Wii U Mode and integrate the two shops. That sort of seamless user experience would be very appealing, even if we never get to play Wii VC games on the GamePad.
Honestly though, the most disappointing thing here for me is that my 32 GB SD Card can't be used as Wii U storage space, and thus I need to buy an external USB Hard Drive sooner rather than later. Urgh. I have no idea how to shop for a good Wii U compatible USB external Harddrive other than "Is it 1 TB?" and "Does it support USB 2.0 out of the box?"
Title: Re: Bad news for the Wii U eShop.
Post by: Disco Stu on November 11, 2012, 04:20:35 PM
I was really looking forward to having save states with some of my Wii Virtual Console games...doesn't look it's gonna happen now.
Title: Re: Bad news for the Wii U eShop.
Post by: ThePerm on November 11, 2012, 04:58:54 PM
im sure wii mode will be better then gamecube mode. They can always update the os for wii, but not for gamecube. It probably won't be a big deal, it would be like going into a wii channel.
Title: Re: Bad news for the Wii U eShop.
Post by: Mop it up on November 11, 2012, 07:48:08 PM
I have no idea how to shop for a good Wii U compatible USB external Harddrive other than "Is it 1 TB?" and "Does it support USB 2.0 out of the box?"
Isn't that all you need to know? Aren't they all compatible?
Title: Re: Bad news for the Wii U eShop.
Post by: rlse9 on November 11, 2012, 07:58:49 PM
A little research on the internet showed that read speeds are a legitimate reason for not using SD cards for additional storage on the WiiU. The majority of SD cards out there (the ones that are on sale every Black Friday) are Class 2 cards, which are only rated to read/write at 2 megabytes per second. Even the more expensive Class 10 cards guarantee only 10 megabytes per second. A typical hard drive has speeds in the 80-100 megabyte range. USB drives seem to be somewhere in the middle, in the 20-30 megabytes per second range.
Title: Re: Bad news for the Wii U eShop.
Post by: tendoboy1984 on November 11, 2012, 08:12:26 PM
Yet despite the slow read/write speeds, both the Wii and 3DS can save and load game data from SD cards. In fact, the 3DS requires an SD card for many of its features. So why does the Wii U restrict SD card usage?
Title: Re: Bad news for the Wii U eShop.
Post by: Mop it up on November 11, 2012, 08:21:48 PM
The Wii has tiny file sizes and the 3DS is a portable and too small for a hard drive. The Wii U will have retail game downloads that could be up to 50GB in size, though will probably be more in the 8-25GB range. That's a lot larger than the Wii's 40MB limit.
