Nintendo Wii may have sales going through the roof, with the latest "big" release, Wii Fit, sold out virtually everywhere, but the Wii is regularly said to be a console that isn't for "serious" gamers. While games are available through online offerings like WiiWare, the lack of true online interactivity other than Mario Kart and reasonable storage space is holding the console back.
Nintendo's European marketing chief Laurent Fischer spoke with gamesindustry.biz and acknowledged that the 512MB limit on the Wii's flash storage was a growing concern for gamers, and that the company is taking these concerns seriously. However, in the interview, he states:
"Definitely there's no plan to issue hardware, an external hard drive, but we know that we have an issue in that area. It's very obvious and we're perfectly aware of it, but there's nothing we can say beyond this."
He also mentions using Nintendo to "store things for you," in other words, deleting a download and downloading it again for free later. But if there is no plan to release an external hard drive, yet Nintendo is working on a solution, there are really only two possible solutions. One is a new design for the Wii that includes a hard drive, but that answer is sure to anger current Wii owners who would be left with a paperweight that they most likely stood in line to get. The other possibility, however, could be hinted at with the kludgy solution of deleting and re-downloading games: a cloud storage subscription service. Nintendo could certainly build out a solution that would allow users to set up a paid "channel" on the Wii that would allow them to access their games online, allowing a nearly indefinite amount of storage space and solving Nintendo's biggest Wii problem.
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Comments
um... nintendo hasnt given us a thumbdrive yet.. and youre assuming cloud storage?
how about, flash drives, what about expanded use of the SD slot... I think there are much more reasonable solutions before one jumps to cloud storage.
Or.... more obviously, they could simply be allowing us to use our own usb drives. Or opening the SD card slot to allow playing games from it.
"The other possibility, however, could be hinted at with the kludgy solution of deleting and re-downloading games: a cloud storage subscription service. Nintendo could certainly build out a solution that would allow users to set up a paid "channel" on the Wii that would allow them to access their games online, allowing a nearly indefinite amount of storage space and solving Nintendo's biggest Wii problem."
This comment highlights the ignorance of the media in the current "Wii lacks a hard drive" craze.
I'll be the first to admit that I've downloaded many games off of the Virtual Console and Wii Ware services; so many, in fact, that I can't keep them all on my Wii.
However, Nintendo already planned for this and already allows you to delete the games on your Wii while still being able to download them again later from the Virtual Console and Wii Ware channels.
As far as I can tell, the only actual issue that anyone is having with Wii storage space is that certain (often large) save data files cannot be copied to the SD card for some reason. It only occurs when users connect to Nintendo Wi-Fi through the corresponding game. I could see Nintendo releasing a patch for this: either unlocking these files so they can be sent to an SD card, or separating these files into a large unlocked portion and a small locked portion which contains the sensitive online data.
The other potential solution that I could see would be a channel that would handle swapping Virtual Console games to and from the SD card based on their usage. Personally, I see this as the most likely thing that Nintendo will release.
It's true, it appears this reporter doesn't realize that the solution of re-downloading games is referring to how you can re-download any games you've already paid for directly from the Wii Shop Channel. It wouldn't make sense to add a separate cloud storage channel, and I'm pretty sure they weren't hinting at that.
They've already given their "refrigerator" analogy, where you should delete games from your Wii when you're not playing them. Then you can either store your games on an SD card and take them out or re-download them from the Wii Shop Channel when you're ready to play them.
But, the people out there downloading several games want to have instant access to all of their games directly from their Wii, and since transferring games from Wii to Wii isn't allowed, the only logical solution is some kind of drive support (SD, thumb, usb external, whichever) for the geeks and otaku. This can be done like Randy says, with a swap channel. Maybe it can reserve some space in memory to load the game temporarily from the drive, if it really is impossible to play directly off the drive.
Or Nintendo could setup a firmware update that allows games to be played of SD memory cards and run whatever else of SDs
the reason nintendo won't let you play games off your sd card is because they are worried about people stealing the games
On the subject of file backup, sharing and storage ...
Online backup is becoming common these days. It is estimated that 70-75% of all PC's will be connected to online backup services with in the next decade.
Thousands of online backup companies exist, from one guy operating in his apartment to fortune 500 companies.
Choosing the best online backup company will be very confusing and difficult. One website I find very helpful in making a decision to pick an online backup company is:
http://www.BackupReview.info
This site lists more than 400 online backup companies in its directory and ranks the top 25 on a monthly basis.
I fail to see how it makes more sense for Nintendo to have you deleting and re-downloading games than it does to offer a cloud storage solution they can get revenue from. I realize that this is a culture of free, but every time someone downloads a game again, both sides are going to take a bandwidth hit. Nintendo is going to want to recoup that cost.
As for people not caring about it, wait until Time Warner's experiment with tiered bandwidth pricing takes off and other providers start charging by use as well. I'll bet that users such as yourselves will start clamoring for a cloud storage solution when you start seeing monthly bills for overage.
Kevin, I absolutely understand what they are talking about and why it's a kludgy solution that gets annoying very quickly.
Anime, you hit the nail on the head. The second they start letting you play games off a thumbdrive or SD card, they open the Pandora's box for mass piracy of the games, and they aren't about to let that happen. I'm already finding myself buying games for the Xbox 360 over the Wii simply because of the lack of downloadable content, and I can't be the only person weighing options, realizing that if I want more songs for RockBand I can either download a la carte via Xbox Live or for the Playstation, or wait for a new bundle to be released for Wii that costs $30.
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