Reggie kills off Wii HDD rumors, promises “better solution”
Monday, September 8th, 2008 at 4:09pm by Jack
What do you do if your company has had nothing to say on its console’s lack of a storage solution for the past two years? If you’re Reggie Fils-Aime, and your company is Nintendo, you tell a European journalist that HDD’s aren’t necessary, and a “better solution” is on the horizon.
Translated and corroborated by GoNintendo:
Says Animal Crossing is not casual and that they’re gonna have GTA on the DS for the hardcore gamers. They’re not making a “hard drive” but will come up with a better solution. They ask him about the Microsoft avatars and says “copying is a way of flattering, so we’re very flattered.” Says a console redesign is when the sales go down, not up when asked about a DS redesign.
At this point, it’s lose-lose. Nintendo could release a HDD, or a direct mind-to-console interface device, and either would still fall short of the Internet’s lofty expectations.
So what’s better than a hard drive, Infendo?
September 8th, 2008 at 4:14 pm
Public internet servers, sponsored by Nintendo.
For the entire community abound, players can rent server space to store all their files, and retrieve them/directly play them through the Wi-Fi connection.
So if you don’t need to purchase a whole lot of games to download, then the 2GB SD chip is for you, but if you’re a mega-gamer, and want to download a bazillion games, then for a small investment, you rent space, download the file there, and it’s encoded with your Wii Serial Code/Friend Code to make it accessible only by you, and there you go.
No hardware to buy. Just a sensible price for monthly/yearly rent.
September 8th, 2008 at 4:15 pm
I’m guessing they’ll offer some sort of basic online storage for free or a small fee where you can upload and download your saves to main memory. Maybe they’ll partner up with google or something.
September 8th, 2008 at 4:16 pm
Ubiquitous storage at the user’s whim:
Any USB device or SD or local network internet storage location, complete with free storage space hosted by Nintendo.
No Nintendo-made drive means no artificial surcharges on 1st party like their competitors, and no proprietary crap like Microsoft.
September 8th, 2008 at 4:18 pm
“At this point, it’s lose-lose. Nintendo could release a HDD, or a direct mind-to-console interface device, and either would still fall short of the Internet’s lofty expectations.”
Man, you just love to take shots when you can, huh Jack? I’ve gone from disagreeing with you regularly to being disgusted, frankly. Boy, it sure is a lot to expect some sort of storage solution given how easy it is to rapidly fill the meager Wii storage even if you’re not a “geek or otaku”. Yeah, the internet has its share of whiners, so what? Anyone that disagrees with you or is not totally satisfied by their Wii gets called out as one by you anyway.
September 8th, 2008 at 4:24 pm
I’m guessing we are going to get an anal probe. Well, that’s what it feels like, anyway.
September 8th, 2008 at 4:27 pm
“I’m guessing we are going to get an anal probe. Well, that’s what it feels like, anyway.”
@Fuzz: Now that’s a comment I can get behind.
Wait a second…
September 8th, 2008 at 4:32 pm
Holographic storage?
September 8th, 2008 at 4:42 pm
The big in thing right now: SSD - Solid State Drive. ’s what the macbook air uses. it’s a hard drive. But instead of a disk, it uses solid state flash memory or battery powered DDR RAM.
Can get SDDs upto 32GB on the high street, theoretical limits of up to like 2TB.
September 8th, 2008 at 5:01 pm
I believe the storage solution will be all online.
September 8th, 2008 at 5:15 pm
Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but the idea of online storage doesn’t make any sense at all to me. Transfer rates for most people just aren’t good enough to make this a viable solution for on-demand gaming, are they? Especially given the Wii’s low amount of built-in RAM. It seems to me that we’d be no better off than where we are now (download from shopping channel again when you want to play a game) and that just doesn’t make sense.
What would be better than an actual Hard Drive? Making SD cards work the way we all wanted them too originally. If a (major) firmware upgrade could upgrade the read speed and allow us to play VC/WiiWare games directly from SD cards, it would be huge win for Wii owners. Cheap, customizable, non-proprietary storage solution for the masses? Do want.
September 8th, 2008 at 5:21 pm
@ejamer:
There doesn’t need to be an update to the SD drive to make it read or play directly from the SD card.
The design is there; they just haven’t flicked the switch on it.
GH:World Tour allows you to play the songs directly from the card, Excite Truck allows you to play songs directly from the card while playing the game - you can play the games directly from the card but someone just needs to enable it.
Nintendo’s probably got a good reason for not allowing people to do such right now.
September 8th, 2008 at 5:29 pm
I think they are going to open the Wii drive to let us burn games to DVDr. Or maybe they will allow us to take the game files out to our computer, copy them to DVD and let the Wii load them from DVD.
Whatever, they do, it’s not going to be a hard drive. That’s just a little “Nintendo knows best speech” from Reggie.
Some people still don’t have high speed internet and by VC and Wii Ware games when they take the Wii to a friend’s house. They shouldn’t make a storage solution on the assumption that everyone has high speed internet.
September 8th, 2008 at 5:32 pm
I believe Nintendo’s answer is…. 8-inch floppy disk….
Hey if we are going crazy for the soon to be released 8 bit masterpiece Mega Man 9 why not show some love to the old 8-inch floppy disk…
I thinks this is another case of there’s not going to be a DS redesign. Nintendo loves selling us their accessories why not another one.
September 8th, 2008 at 6:15 pm
SSD just come to mind.. it will be disgustingbly expensive if that word exist
September 8th, 2008 at 6:33 pm
I really don’t understand what’s so FREAKIN’ HARD about enabling external HDD/SD Card/USB Flash Drive support.
I don’t WANT a better solution that I have WAIT FOR and almost surely PAY FOR, Nintendo. I want my damn solution NOW.
And I’m [b]NOT[/b] DELETING MY OLD GAMES!
I haven’t bought a Wii Ware game since Lost Winds when I had to delete my N64 games. I shouldn’t have had to do that AND I’m almost out of space already!
September 8th, 2008 at 6:39 pm
“either would still fall short of the Internet’s lofty expectations.”
Please, somebody fire this guy. His allegiance to Nintendo is more disgusting than the Disney reps who came to my school to recruit us for cleaning their toilets. In their eyes, the company couldn’t possibly make mistakes.
Considering the 360 and PS3 have both had reliable storage solutions since mid 2006, the “internet” is certainly not out of line here.
September 8th, 2008 at 7:12 pm
A SSD would be better, or assing SDHC support via cheap hardware in combination with complete and total software support for using data from SD cards and usb storage devices.
A HDD was crazy to want anyway, it would add quite a bit of bulk, it wouldn’t be as fast as the other options, and it wouldn’t be too cheap (or if it was, some would complain about it’s low amount of storage capacity).
Nintendo likes to keep things relatively cheap (which to Nintendo means acceptable o buy from a decent amount of people, some of their items just ain’t cheap), small, and with little to no moving parts for increased stability transfer rates (hdd’s can be fast, but you’ll sacrifice in storage or price, neither I nor Nintendo would make in this case).
September 8th, 2008 at 7:48 pm
I personally think Nintendo is working to allow us to play games from SD card. It’s not a hard drive based solution and would allow us to expand our storage significantly.
September 8th, 2008 at 8:03 pm
Wow
the online solution seems pretty sweet
here’s hoping for that!
September 8th, 2008 at 10:08 pm
Well, the simplest (which occham’s razor says is usually right, tells me some sort of USB flash drive solution. They’re just gonna want to set up some sort of DRM system to make sure it doesn’t feed the pirates. That’s pretty much where the hang up is all around in allowing an external hard drive. No matter how well you encode it, someone’s gonna hack it. I’m sure they’re already regretting putting that SD slot on there.
But let’s talk more creative. The big thing in tech right now is Cloud computing which (for those who aren’t epic tech obsessed geeks like me) allows you to store your information on the internet. I doubt Nintendo will charge for it, at least more than an initial connection charge. They’re good like that. Others have proposed that and I think it’s very likely at least some factor of what Nintendo’s got in mind (consider it’s already practically there considering you can download games you’ve deleted whenever you want, but maybe they’ll just make a library system that’s more user friendly than going to the store every time).
But what about a real fantasy approach. What if they could use that cloud to store game data. Not just your saves, but actual levels. It’s not entirely impractical these days that entire puzzles or even dungeons for say a new Zelda could be linked into online. Not necessarily a Zelda MMO (but sweet!), but imagine each month having a fresh new dungeon, town, or mission to explore that instead of being “downloadable content” actually streams from the internet. They’ll have to have a very good engine designed specifically for that, and god forbid if you have dialup, but that’d be really sweet and be a huge leap to the future of gaming.
September 8th, 2008 at 10:57 pm
@ Jibaro009
That would be great. The floppy drive would dwarf the Wii.
September 8th, 2008 at 11:04 pm
Magic storage monkeys might be better than a hard drive. But I’m not holding my breath.
September 9th, 2008 at 2:34 am
A wireless solid state drive accessed by wi-fi. It could be placed in the back of the room, out of view of the Wii.
I don’t know, I’m just up too late.
September 9th, 2008 at 2:46 am
I’m betting money of a DD disk being used some how or USB carts being used. Very simple to do but it has to be hacker proof. I wonder if their would be enough to have an on board GPU in there also that along could provide the data encryption and have an FX chip effect on the Wii so we can get mode 7-2
September 9th, 2008 at 3:25 am
I see Nintendo the same way I see Apple, they love what they are doing so much, that they want you to use, what they make, the way they intended, If they released a HD, people like you/me could eventually figure out a way to hack into all of its capabilities (or the lack there of). If you had a mass storage space intertwined with the Wii itself, Im sure someone will have every NES, SNES, N64, SEGA, or Indie game ever on it and playable, probably overnight, and thats bad news for Nintendo, I think this really scares Nintendo, obviously on slowly they’ve crept into Online gaming as well, with friend codes…
September 9th, 2008 at 10:36 am
The only way I can see Online working was if they were to rehash all of the downloads they currently have and split up the games so it only downloaded what it needed at that time. I have a 1mb connection which I realise is slow broadband but even still I know a lot of people that use a similar speed of connection. It took me nearly 10 minutes to download Ys. And anyway. It’s hardly reliable, our connection goes fuzzy when it rains hard. So I can’t play when it rains?
Oh that’ll be great for the kids, go outside and play, nope, can’t it’s raining.. Then play on your games console inside? Can’t - it’s raining. It’s like HD TV, people just aren’t quite ready for it. companies won’t spend all that money on HD equipment on the off chance that a decent amount of people that would want to watch their program have a HD TV set. the same applies to the internet. Not enough people a stable or fast enough internet connection to force it as the only solution.
SSD or SD with DRM ftw
September 9th, 2008 at 11:55 am
I doubt streaming data directly from offline would be their solution, so my guess is either allowing SD cards to be used directly for data or come up with a USB device that fixes that issue (as long as it’s speedy flash memory to rival HDDs).
Whatever the case, do it NOW.
September 9th, 2008 at 4:36 pm
Enable SD cards NOW!! I have all my VC and WiiWare on a 2GB card (10 pages of titles) with room to spare, just can’t play the damn things!!!
September 9th, 2008 at 5:43 pm
A better solution? Is Nintendo going to pull a rainbow out of their ass?
September 9th, 2008 at 6:07 pm
Solid states USB drive for sure, because then Nintendo can make the drives “themselves” and cash a lot of extra money because nobody will pay the Nintendo premium for a HDD - everybody knows what a HDD costs!
But solid state drives… nobody knows what they cost, so Nintendo can make a lot of extra cash.
September 9th, 2008 at 6:18 pm
“At this point, it’s lose-lose. Nintendo could release a HDD, or a direct mind-to-console interface device, and either would still fall short of the Internet’s lofty expectations.”
Actually, the internet’s “lofty expectations” IS an HDD, so you turning it into another chance to bitch about the internet’s bitching shows what you’ve shown before, that when you get down to it, you’re no better than those you constantly whine about.
September 9th, 2008 at 7:15 pm
@Elias That’s possible right now, the hacks are already there for it to happen.
September 9th, 2008 at 11:09 pm
I can’t imagine why it is even taking this long for them to fix this issue. The answer is obvious, use the SD slot! 2GB isn’t a ton more space though but if they made it so the channels would update depending on what card you had in the slot it would be a bit better. Even if you could swap cards it is less of a solution than just allowing external storage other than the SD slot.
When the Wii came out, I didn’t care that it wasn’t hi-def and I didn’t give the lack of memory a lot of thought, but it is very telling how hard Nintendo tried to keep the cost of the device down so that if the Wii flopped, at least they wouldn’t have lost much money
September 10th, 2008 at 3:29 pm
They’re not making a “hard drive” but will come up with a better solution.
Everyone is reading way too much into this statement. Solid State is very expensive compared to standard platter type hard drives, but I consider both “hard drives” and I count them out, regardless.
There is a lot of speculation about “cloud” storage. I initially scoffed at this, because that’s pretty much what we already have. Need room locally, just delete a game, its there for you to re-download later. Now what they could do with that is redo the interface to streamline the whole process, so that you don’t have to go to the shop channel to manage those games. You download something new and the Wii automatically deletes the least used channels on your menu. Those channels would be grayed out so you know that they’ll take a little longer to load the next time you use them. So yeah, I could see that being a possibility if they just streamlined the whole channel management thing there.
SD cards seem to be the quickest easiest solution and I’d be totally happy with that, even if I needed to get a couple extra cards to save everything.
What I really want is just plain USB drive support. When I read into the quote with laser beams, I see them opening up the console to using any old HD through USB. The quote just denies a Nintendo HDD.
The burning disks idea sounds interesting, but its too complicated.
Whatever the solution is, I think that it’ll carry with it a Wii Menu redesign, because think about it, you’re going to have channels that exist on an add on piece of hardware. There is oppurtunity there for the media that is holding a particular channel to be absent. How will this be handled? Will there be icons showing unavailability? Will there be browsing by drives similar to the desktop computing experience?
Whatever the case, I’m hopeful because file management on the Wii needs an overhaul and I can see some sort of change coming with this storage solution. Ever tried to delete any significant amount of message board photos? Its a pain. Ever wish you could do anything else with said message board photos (MP3 screenshots need to find their way to my computer, badly)? Ever wish you could move a channel to a full page of channels and just drop it onto a slot, making the channel thats sitting there swap positions with the one you just moved? Why does rearranging my channels feel like a puzzle game? I can only hope these issues will be addressed when this storage solution finally comes, and when it does arrive, I won’t wine because it wasn’t everything I dreamed it would be, I’ll be perfectly content, because anything is better than the frickin fridge!
September 10th, 2008 at 6:31 pm
If it’s not a hard-drive solution, it has to either be a USB thumbstick, which is unlikely, or some sort of SD thing. Online storage solutions are pretty much what they already have, and nintendo needs to address the idea that people will want to use their games when the WiiShop channel is gone in 10 or 20 years. (We all know that online support for wii won’t be around forever.)
I guess if I had to choose it would be something I could attach to the system and forget about, but i DO like the idea of running games straight from the SD card, because it means Nintendo could sell dedicated SD card games or something if they felt like it. It would be kinda like having cartridges again. Or maybe that’s a stupid idea. I don’t know.
September 11th, 2008 at 10:31 am
The solution is to simply release a new Wii base (the gray thing beneath our Wii’s). The base will have a usb port coming out of its’ rear and plugging into the Wii. The front will have a usb port and an SDHC card slot. That combined with a software update will fix the solution. That’s better than a hdd.
September 13th, 2008 at 1:42 pm
Clearly stated by most of the comments here, Nintendo has several ideas.
IF nintendo were going to allow people to store their files to an outside source such as a server, I would be a bit nervous. Simply because if that server goes down and everyone’s stuff is somehow deleted, there would be a chance of having to repurchase everything, or Nintendo would have to give all user’s x amount of wii points for free so that they can redownload stuff.
But I think Nintendo would be smart just to release a firmware update to allow users to attach a thumbdrive or external drive to the system and that way users can use any USB storage they already have on the system and not buy a new drive. And for those who wouldn’t be able to get said update could just as easily go out and buy a Nintendo brand drive that has the firmware ready to install.