Rumor: Reggie promises 'storage solution' -- not a hard drive?

by Christopher Grant on Sep 8th 2008 3:19PM

The saga of the Wii hard drive continues. While "geeks and otaku" everywhere wonder – often aloud – why Nintendo hates them so much, Nintendo's Reggie Fils-Aime tells Latin American Nintendo magazine Club Nintendo (roughly translated by Nintendo Everything and corroborated by GoNintendo), "We are working on a storage solution ... We have never said that it will be a hard drive nor have we mentioned how we will fix this issue, but we are going to deliver a better way to store the games."

If it's not a hard drive, then what is it? Super futuristic holographic storage mayhaps? Or USB mass storage support, so you can use that external HDD you've already got? Hell, we'd settle for enabling game playback from the totally under-utilized SD slot. Then all Nintendo needs are some halfway decent WiiWare titles, and we've got ourselves a deal.

Source – Reggie: We never said the Wii storage solution is a hard drive
Source – Reggie says no hard drive...but a better solution

Tags: Nintendo, Reggie-Fils-Aime, Wii, wii-hard-drive

Reader Comments (78)

"Or USB mass storage support, so you can use that external HDD you've already got?"

This will get me to come back.... when the Wii is $150.

Since we're about 40% through the Wii's lifespan, its possible it may not even hit that price before, say, 2010

If that

LOL, threads about the Wii tend to have the best photos...these always crack me up.

Maybe they'll let you store things on your computer's HDD through your WiFi connection. Nah...

Heh that'll get hacked so fast. I think that's what they're struggling with - if they put things on a HDD or something a PC can easily access, then they're going to deal with hackery.

You can already transfer a game to an SD card and then put it on a computer hard drive. It's still linked to the Wii it was downloaded from and won't play on any others.

It seems pretty obvious. Nintendo announced a while back that they were going to have a premium online service that would cost money (kinda like xbox live) but also keep the free online service that they currently have. Well if you want more storage you gotta upgrade to the premium online service where you get something like 2 GB's of storage space and you can just login and play the games remotely..dont have to install them back onto your system. If you go to a friends place you can just login to your account and play your games there or access your pictures/miis/game saves/retro games from there and can save all but the games onto your friends wii.

Sounds pretty simple.

Yeah, so obvious. We must all be stupid as hell!

The Pay-For-Play thing turned out to basically be their name for downloadable content. A few games are already out under the Pay-For-Play label.

Yeah, as a regular at ScoreHero, I have seen countless Wii players freaking out over the Pay AND Play logo on the box of Guitar Hero: World Tour.

Its just DLC, and optional. It is up to the developer rather to have priced content for their games, be it DLC or Online Play. I doubt Nintendo would let developers have pay Online Play, especially on a multi-platform game such as GH:WT.

Then again, I doubted that Nintendo would let their only supporters throughout the Gamecube generation down.

It's impossible to predict the future with Nintendo. I love my Wii, but poor management of both consumer bases will ruin their future plans... if they have any, anyway.

Online "cloud" storage- like .mac or mobile me. Your Mii profile, along with games and DLC would be accessible from the Wii- and FUTURE wii's and DS's etc. Would be a great solution for people worrying about downloading the same games over and over and over when they purchase the next wii console. plus they love apple.

By the time this "solution" comes out I'm pretty sure my Wii will be sold.

They're still trying to optimize a way that they can add storage without just doing the obvious (but lethal to PR) move: Releasing a new SKU with more space, but also without embracing any sort of open standard, since that (in their mind) would lead to piracy on such a scale that they would make no money at all

Such is their paranoia

Ah well. I'll just keep buying stuff until i hit 500 blocks (enough memory to store game saves indefinitely through the end of the generation), and then stop, and if they want more money, they'll get back with a solution

I can tell it's you because you never capitalize your letter "i" when you refer to yourself :P

I got spoiled by Word's auto-correct. Once i started figuring out that it capitalized i's for me, i just stopped doing it after a while

Still capitalize for the start of sentences, though.

Whoa, get a room already.

Whatever.

I am tired of Nintendo's games (both corporate and their actual games).

I sold the Wii this week, and am getting a 360 ASAP.

Wow, for such an innovative gaming company, they sure continue to drop the ball in so many ways. Nintendo is still winning with the Wii on certain levels. It's not for me, though, but I don't knock it. Now, as for them continually dropping the ball, eh, I'm glad they do. The world would have never been intro'd to the Playstation if negotiations between them and Sony to produce a CD rom for the SNES didn't go up in smoke....but still, Nintendo, ur doing silly things, again. Give a sensible storage medium and not some ridiculous homemade ridiculousness.

"It's not for me, though, but I don't knock it."

Tmac, killjebus, other haters. You're out there somewhere. You readin' this?

Just let us use SD cards and be done with it. How hard is this?

A simple system upgrade adds an SD Channel, which allows direct access to the SD Cards. "Sharing" of such games is prevented through use of small, single-block software keys. If the corresponding key is in the system memory, it will allow the App in question to be loaded. If not, it won't

Probably the easiest, hassle free solution they could come up with. As long as the software keys were impossible to copy, but easy to re-download if you lost them for some reason.

Psh...lame. There just holding us on a leash. With them not releasing any solution...I continue to refuse to buy anything. And that Strong Bad and Mario Rpg is yummy lookin...but no, I still refuse to buy.