Nintendo comments on Wii storage issue
Saturday, May 24th, 2008 at 12:01pm by Jake
Infendo Reader, Marc did a little reconnaissance concerning the current state of Wii storage space. Normally questions of this sort are answered with Nintendo’s default, “We have not announced any such things at this time”, but lucky Marc must have caught Nintendo on a good day.
Hi Marc,
We appreciate your feedback regarding the Wii console. At this time, we haven’t heard of any plans to offer a way to expand the memory capabilities of the system. I will, however, be happy to pass along your e-mail to the appropriate department for further review.
If we announce plans in the future for an external storage device (such as a USB drive or an external hard drive), or a way to save to, or transfer data from, an SD Card, we’ll be sure to post this information to our website (www.nintendo.com). Be sure to check our site often for all the latest Nintendo news.
Thank you for your e-mail.
Nintendo of America Inc.
It’s still not a confirmation by any means, but it at least confirms that Nintendo is thinking about the subject. I don’t see an external hard drive coming, but support for flash drives, and external USB drives looks to be a strong (and easy) solution.
Thanks, Marc
May 24th, 2008 at 12:55 pm
If were lucky, they might even reveal something during E3.
May 24th, 2008 at 1:15 pm
Well it’s a more detailed canned response, i suppose that’s a good thing.
May 24th, 2008 at 1:40 pm
You’re buying that load of crap response? That’s a canned, pre-written, fill-in-the-blank madlib form letter. They just know that the storage expansion issue is one of the top complaints about the system at the moment so they’ve gone ahead and pre-written a response so they don’t actually have to deal with anyone on the subject.
If they do arrive at a viable solution, though, I’d personally prefer it just be the SD cards. That way, no one has to manufacture anything new (good for Nintendo) and the consumer gets limitless options on where to find the storage and what brand to use (i.e. cheap…..you can 2GB for like $20, technically a hell of a lot cheaper than memory cards were for the Gamecube or N64).
May 24th, 2008 at 2:04 pm
@Kale The Wii already uses SD cards, how could that be a solution if it’s already not working? Maybe I don’t understand your point.
You can’t use the save data off the SD cards like you could with memory cards, you have to actually transfer the data off the card just to access it and vice versa to save. This is annoying and time consuming, it’s fine for backing-up but not for playing off save data. Some kind of solution where you don’t have to transfer data back and forth but can actually read the data off a drive would be wonderful.
I hope Nintendo does confront the issue soon and comes up with a solution in the not-too-distant-future… even though this is a canned e-mail at least they recognize there’s a problem and aren’t totally denying it. I’m tired of deleting VC downloads just to create save data for new games. It’s making me think twice before downloading Wii Ware games too, suddenly the few blocks I have left have become very precious.
May 24th, 2008 at 2:26 pm
Hm. Luckily this isn’t an issue for me just yet, I still have plenty of room. But it’s still strange to me. It seems like since they are the ones that built the system, they should already know what the correct solution to storage on the Wii should be. I’m not sure why they haven’t already released something yet, I guess maybe they’re trying to figure out the least expensive and most profitable way for them to release extra storage? I dunno.
May 24th, 2008 at 5:03 pm
As a child I wrote to Nintendo almost monthly. My replacement for a pen pal… or a life… They’ve always been fantastic about writing back and not giving canned answers. Unfortunately I think it’s just because they really don’t know anything and are just trained in fantastic customer service to make their fans happy. But who knows, they get so many letters about a Hard Drive I’m sure that they’ve at least started an internal petition.
May 24th, 2008 at 5:17 pm
Maybe Nintendo wants to be more careful this time around. Not sure if anybody remembers the Nintendo 64 expansion pack.
May 24th, 2008 at 6:25 pm
The people who run out of space are probably in the minority, but those people are also among Nintendo’s best and most loyal customers. They really had better come through for us, and offer an improved storage option. USB drive seems good to me.
May 24th, 2008 at 7:50 pm
This wasn’t an issue for me until WiiWare started. Until then I had only downloaded 12 VC games and had plenty of room. Since then I’ve downloaded 2 Wiiware games and my Wii is full to the brim. If i want to download more, something has got to go. Hopefully Nintendo are already on top of this and will make an announcement at E3.
May 25th, 2008 at 3:44 am
Seriously I think piracy is their main concern here. I mean we got keyboard by way of the usb and no one told us we had it. With the TP hack floating out their they do not want a dreamcast situation. I’m sure they will have some thing but I think they may also be trying to find away to include this add on with a great game that every one will want.
I’m think Wii music may be this game? How about a sequencer and a place to store your written music? Or maybe some form of MMO? It has to include a service every one wants though. Maybe it becomes way to revamp the entire Wii channel system to run off of the HD and to use the 512 of flash for game code and streaming ram? Either way they will have to make some thing so it is hard for the pirates to make software that simply runs on your normal Wii after you download it from the web.
It’s coming hell they had the first modern systems with rewritable media in the 64DD… It was not really a problem for me with VC games because they are all stored on my PC anyway I have different sets and SD cards too. Yet large storage solution that maximizes the speed of that USB port would be cool. Too bad there is no firewire back there!
May 25th, 2008 at 5:30 am
Regarding Gausser’s comment, that’s why I sent the e-mail to Nintendo in the first place.
I’m in the UK and WiiWare was just released this morning (no flashing blue light or anything for me though!), and after hearing several complaints from the US users of WiiWare about the space, I thought it’d be best I voice my concerns.
(I e-mailed Nintendo of America rather than Nintendo of Europe, well because NOE aren’t that reliable!)
Without sounding preachy, I do advise every reader to go on over and voice your opinion on this topic, or any other really. It’s so simple and takes all of 5 minutes to complete
Here’s the link straight to the webform:
http://www.nintendo.com/consumer/webform.jsp
May 25th, 2008 at 5:39 am
i feel bad that you missed the memo on the storage issue.
nintendo has already commented twice, once by iwata, and i think again by NOE head. basically, iwata acknowledges that a small percentage of people have storage issues, and nintendo is considering the issue. it was not a typical response actually, it was worded to sound like an external memory solution was coming. i expect to har something at E3.
May 25th, 2008 at 9:14 am
All I ask is that we can use the save wiiware/vc titles to and play them from the SD card, as well as use the SD card for game saves (choose as an option instead of the wii internal memory) for both Wii games and gamecube games(so i can ditch my old gamecube memory cards).
May 25th, 2008 at 1:16 pm
What bugs me is that the internal storage of the drive appears to be far below the 512MB they say it is.
Example: When I pop in a 512MB flash card, it reads as somewhere around the area of 7000 blocks of free space. However, even if I delete all of the VC games and added channels (some I cannot delete), I only get around 2000 blocks of free space. I haven’t done a full memory format yet, which I plan to do soon just to see what happens, but yeah, it just seems like there isn’t as much room as there should be in there.
May 25th, 2008 at 4:24 pm
@ waltermh…
don’t feel bad… I heard the memo too
My note to Nintendo was more a “me too!” than an attempt at pointing out something new to them. Consider it a petition of sorts… the more signatures, the better!
May 25th, 2008 at 8:56 pm
I think I’ll submit a form also in the same spirit of “me too”. I would be happy to give more of my money to Nintendo, but if I have no space left on my Wii I can’t even download anything! While only a minority of us are running out of space right now, the majority is going to catch up very fast and the problem is going to get a lot bigger.