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Nintendo says there is no Wii hard drive in the making

2 November 2007 19:58 by Andre "DVDBack23" Yoskowitz | 23 comments

Nintendo America has shot down any rumor that the Nintendo Wii will be getting a hard drive to facilitate upcoming WiiWare titles.

"The way that we look at it is, we really don't want people storing every single game they buy on their drive," PR manager Eric Walter said.

"When you buy a game, it's yours forever, so you can delete it, and go back and get it at any time you want. In a way, we liken it to putting music on your iPod; you listen to it for a while, and then you get tired of it, and you pull it off, and you put some new stuff on" he added.

Gamers have complained about transferring data between the console's 512MB internal flash memory and an SD card and depending on the size of the WiiWare games, a significant amount of space may need to be cleared in order to have room for the titles. Walter however, does not see this as a problem.

"A lot of the games for WiiWare that have been submitted so far are smaller in size, so they�re not gonna take up a ton of your drive," he added.

Source:
GI.biz

Permalink to this article | Topic: Consoles

At least 100 WiiWare games are currently in development (2 June 2008)

Nintendo launches WiiWare in Europe as well (13 May 2008)

Nintendo launches WiiWare, six games available (13 May 2008)

No DVD-playing Wii for holidays (12 November 2007)

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Discuss this article!
oofRome (Senior Member) 2 November 2007 21:07
*Quote:* In a way, we liken it to putting music on your iPod Except Ipods have hard drives... [ + quote]
bobino (Newbie) 2 November 2007 22:26
*Quote:* *Quote:* In a way, we liken it to putting music on your iPod Nano fixed [ + quote]
o0cynix0o (Newbie) 2 November 2007 22:57
*Quote:* *Quote:* *Quote:* In a way, we liken it to putting music on your iPod Nano fixed [ + quote]
o0cynix0o (Newbie) 2 November 2007 23:00
*Quote:* *Quote:* *Quote:* In a way, we liken it to putting music on your iPod Shuffle fixed Fixed again. [ + quote]
vinny13 (Inactive) 3 November 2007 0:48
Make sense... If you run out of space, just buy another SD card! It's like 4GBs for like $2.00 lol They're so cheap these days... [ + quote]
ZippyDSM (AfterDawn Addict) 3 November 2007 2:14
*Originally posted by vinny13:* Make sense... If you run out of space, just buy another SD card! It's like 4GBs for like $2.00 lol They're so cheap these days... more like 20-60$,the cloned reader/writers are 2$ LOL but still the WII dosent really need a HDD, if they make a store and start selling vids/music then ya make a 50$ 80-150GB HDD stand to put the WII on or something but untill then theres no real need and when the system is fully hacked 3rd party makers will be happy to fill the gap! [ + quote]
mododaz (Junior Member) 3 November 2007 2:21
*Quote:* *Originally posted by vinny13:* Make sense... If you run out of space, just buy another SD card! It's like 4GBs for like $2.00 lol They're so cheap these days... more like 20-60$,the cloned reader/writers are 2$ LOL but still the WII dosent really need a HDD, if they make a store and start selling vids/music then ya make a 50$ 80-150GB HDD stand to put the WII on or something but untill then theres no real need and when the system is fully hacked 3rd party makers will be happy to fill the gap! The Wii can't play games via the SD card, it must be on its HDD or currently Flash-Memory [ + quote]
ZippyDSM (AfterDawn Addict) 3 November 2007 2:27
*Quote:* *Quote:* *Originally posted by vinny13:* Make sense... If you run out of space, just buy another SD card! It's like 4GBs for like $2.00 lol They're so cheap these days... more like 20-60$,the cloned reader/writers are 2$ LOL but still the WII dosent really need a HDD, if they make a store and start selling vids/music then ya make a 50$ 80-150GB HDD stand to put the WII on or something but untill then theres no real need and when the system is fully hacked 3rd party makers will be happy to fill the gap! The Wii can't play games via the SD card, it must be on its HDD or currently Flash-Memory flash mem is the SD card yes? [ + quote]
oofRome (Senior Member) 3 November 2007 3:26
No. The Wii has 512mb built in flash memory, the rest has to be saved in a separate SD card. [ + quote]
ZippyDSM (AfterDawn Addict) 3 November 2007 3:39
*Originally posted by oofRome:* No. The Wii has 512mb built in flash memory, the rest has to be saved in a separate SD card. this makes as much sense as MSs HDD lock >> when will they learn............will let you buy it and store it but you can only play it this way and it might be easier to waste our bandwidth to redownload it..... morons...... [ + quote]
mododaz (Junior Member) 3 November 2007 4:28
*Originally posted by oofRome:* No. The Wii has 512mb built in flash memory, the rest has to be saved in a separate SD card. Lol i actully don't know [ + quote]
ZippyDSM (AfterDawn Addict) 3 November 2007 4:43
Do they even realise the traffic they are wasting letting people re download stuff? (not talking abotu the you bought it you can redownlaod it at anytime but making people re download it when they want it and other things is just silly, at least offer a alertive) this is the same lack of innovation and ease of use that makes them give up after the dual motion stuff, no configurability nothign extra just a limited game machine its stuff like this that makes me not want to buy in to their crap... [ + quote]
neo1000 (Junior Member) 3 November 2007 16:04
Actually it�s very easy to transfer files between the sd card and the build in memory and it is suposed that you transfer the games you don�t to play anymore or play the less. [ + quote]
DoomLight (Newbie) 3 November 2007 17:13
add a harddrive and no one is gonna by the Wii anymore cause it will "cost too much" its already 250 right now if they slap on even a 20 gig notebook hard drive. it will put the Wii in the category of price thats the 360 premium and arcade edition is in. yanno maybe i hope they do it. cause im tired of the Wii this and Wii that. that ancient hardware needs to disappear. [ + quote]
ZippyDSM (AfterDawn Addict) 3 November 2007 17:20
*Originally posted by neo1000:* Actually it�s very easy to transfer files between the sd card and the build in memory and it is suposed that you transfer the games you don�t to play anymore or play the less. yes but it takes time to do this time to find the SD card time to put it in time to setup a new download...... *Originally posted by DoomLight:* add a harddrive and no one is gonna by the Wii anymore cause it will "cost too much" its already 250 right now if they slap on even a 20 gig notebook hard drive. it will put the Wii in the category of price thats the 360 premium and arcade edition is in. yanno maybe i hope they do it. cause im tired of the Wii this and Wii that. that ancient hardware needs to disappear. if soemoen wants to spend 50-100 for a HDD for the WII let them its not like nin is loseing money on it. [ + quote]
spydah (Junior Member) 4 November 2007 1:42
If they made a bigger SD mem card that wasnt so costy that would work. But i do agree a hard drive in a system who main selling point is its nun chuck controller I think that would kill its joy. [ + quote]
Andrew691 (Senior Member) 4 November 2007 4:05
*Originally posted by spydah:* If they made a bigger SD mem card that wasnt so costy that would work. But i do agree a hard drive in a system who main selling point is its nun chuck controller I think that would kill its joy. 512mb Flash is worth near nothing these days, how hard would it be to stick another GB or so in there? I saw a 1gb flash drive a few days ago for $24 my currency, which is a lot less (around 1/2) in USD. If they're making a profit off each console sold (not selling at a loss like everyone else) then why cant they add a few extras to sweeten the deal. Makes no sense at all. [ + quote]
Mr-Movies (Member) 4 November 2007 23:21
As cheap as flash memory is they should have at least a 2GB flash but I would think you could use a removable USB/HDD unless for some reason their USB doesn't support it. I have a couple of 4GB and 40GB notebook drives I could easily try, I'll have to do that. [ + quote]
borhan9 (AfterDawn Addict) 14 November 2007 23:17
I still dont understand how this is going to work without storage unless its used in ram that goes in and out as normal apps do. [ + quote]
ZippyDSM (AfterDawn Addict) 14 November 2007 23:46
*Originally posted by borhan9:* I still dont understand how this is going to work without storage unless its used in ram that goes in and out as normal apps do. a simple DRM setup would lock play from anything they dun like. [ + quote]
Mr-Movies (Member) 16 November 2007 13:20
I'd rather not transfer my profiles and saved games you are asking for trouble if that is your practice so it would be nice to have a HDD. The Wii doesn't even look at the USB ports for data, pictures, or whatever through their GUI. You would think you could at least transfer/look at pictures through the USB port and a card reader. My camera uses CF memory no slot on the Wii for that so it would be convenient if I could use a CR as an interface. This is a very short sited approach by Eric Walter and I would hope he gets some heat on this philosophy. It was also dumb not to support SDHC standard being limited to 2G is BS in my opinion. Hooking up an external notebook drive through USB didn�t work of course, unfortunately! [ + quote]
ZippyDSM (AfterDawn Addict) 16 November 2007 13:26
*Originally posted by Mr-Movies:* I'd rather not transfer my profiles and saved games you are asking for trouble if that is your practice so it would be nice to have a HDD. The Wii doesn't even look at the USB ports for data, pictures, or whatever through their GUI. You would think you could at least transfer/look at pictures through the USB port and a card reader. My camera uses CF memory no slot on the Wii for that so it would be convenient if I could use a CR as an interface. This is a very short sited approach by Eric Walter and I would hope he gets some heat on this philosophy. It was also dumb not to support SDHC standard being limited to 2G is BS in my opinion. Hooking up an external notebook drive through USB didn�t work of course, unfortunately! What good are pictures? I never understood why you would want to put pictures on a console...anyway besides "media" aspects they overlook control over the control(control options) just think the spike in VC sells if they made the WII fully remapable and let people customize controls for any pad to any game, this a a revolution in gaming long time coming,its somewhat standard on PC(at least some games let you remap however you want glares at the whitcher and Bioshock) [ + quote]
Mr-Movies (Member) 17 November 2007 21:55
You must live in a tunnel because your vision seems to be affected, tunnel vision. by Zippy "What good are pictures? I never understood why you would want to put pictures on a console..." You really can't see plusses in being able to display pictures on your TV. Some Examples Are: 1) I'm going to my friends and want to show them new pictures of my kids and we are going to play Wii games too. All I have to do is take my flash from the camera pop it in and show the kids off. 2) I went on a trip with my friends we took many pictures during the day and know we all want to enjoy them. There are many reasons this could come in useful and much nicer then using your camera especially using the Wii pointer. As to customizing your controls on PC's, yes you've been able to do that with any game for some time now but why do games only provide support for the mouse these days, mapping mouse functions to a gamepad, joystick, or wheel doesn't always work well especially with driving type games, now that is pretty dumb. [ + quote] This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 17 November 2007 21:55