Point/Counterpoint: Is saving to SD the right way to keep Wii fridges fresh?

i wonder if someone could make an adapter that would change a usb drive cable into an SD card interface...hmm i guess SD card are pretty small.. maybe mice scientists!

If Nintendo REALLY wanted to sick with SD cards, they could at least have added SDHC support, so I could just buy a 16 or 32GB card, and forget about it. As it stands, having a few WiiWare games and a bunch of GH:WT DLC will easily fill up a 2GB card.

But I still think support for any USB drive would have been the best way to go.

I think both guys make good points. It's an imperfect solution, Nintendo should've just had the foresight to pack in a 5-10 gig hard drive at launch. But then that would've either cut into their profits (oh noes!) or forced them past the $250 price point.

And that's assuming you'd even get to pick your own hard drive. Chances are, for Nintendo's granny-friendly console, they'd produce their own external hard drive, which would certainly cost a lot more than the cheapest no-name unit you could grab from Fry's.

That's a pretty weak argument and it accepts that console manufacturers will screw us over on accessory prices. Sony lets PS3 owners transfer stuff from the USB hard drive quite easily I hear.

The final verdict will be given when the update is released and we can see this in action.

Hopefully it will hold time between then and when they have an actual solution ready(please be working on one!!). I'm getting kind of scared to download 3 games when I get my next points card...
I wish they would have it out by Christmas though. Do they really need to wait until Spring? And that's very vague also, that could mean anywhere from March to May '09.

The transfer speed will probably improve with the update as it is a coding issue, so it wouldn't be as slow(or painful) as it now.

Quite satisfied, i must say, as i'm still 2 or 3 games from brushing up against the limit, and i'm not crazy about downloading everything i can

Though you have to see the brilliance of allowing you to download directly to the SD Card. It opens the idea of impulse-buying off the Wii Shop Channel back up

The transfer speeds will be higher once the update hits. I have over 20 Virtual Console and WiiWare games (many of them N64 games) and I still have 4200+ blocks left on my one gig SD card. I'll be fine, thanks.

Mixed feelings. On one side - I just don't purchase that many games online. I want to make sure I'll use it before buying. On the other, I think this was a pretty lame "solution". It's just too small for any real use due to the limits on the SD hardware. Had they opted for SDHC support, I'd probably be more in favor of this as it's faster and supports relatively large storage cards. As it is, you could possibly go up to 4GB if you can find a 4GB non-HC SD Card. Otherwise, you're limited to 2GB at a time.

For me, it's not a huge issue at the moment. I do feel somewhat insulted that this was their solution, though. I think it is too limiting for the potential this console has. They could have allowed much larger games to be distributed via WiiWare had their been a different storage answer. Better online gaming and downloadable content would have been available. As it is - we're stuck with the 512MB onboard and 2GB expansion. It just feels wrong.

Yes, it's better, but just not that much better than what was already available.

I thought the transfer speed was a hardware issue. IIRC, most SD regular capacity readers are limited because of hardware, not software. Hey, if they can improve it via software great, but I'm not going to hold my breath.

I'll take SD cards. I would prefer SDHC, but so be it. a USB HD is yet another device to hang off of my machine. it ruins the Athsetics and is failure prone. Not to mention, a Nintendo provided drive will likely cost more than a Hard drive should.

I have a question on this whole SD/Wii memory storage issue. When the update comes out, you will be able to download games right to the SD card. But my question is whether you can play them right off the SD card or if you have to transfer back and forth.

I still think that it is a vocal minority that is having problems with this. Many people I know that have a Wii, have two games, neither of which are VC/WW.

This could be a decent solution, especially for free.

Even though you won't be able to execute from the cards, I'm hoping Nintendo has the forethought to still SHOW those games on the Wii menu(perhaps greyed out to show they are not 'installed'), and then on the banner screen of that game, the "Play" button would be replaced with "Copy and Play". Pressing the button could, in one step, copy the game to the internal memory and launch it. In the case that there is not enough memory, they could copy *off* the smallest channel that will free up enough memory before copying that game on. After you finish playing, it could offer to automatically replace the game it copied off.

If it's close to that.. I'm gonna be fine with this solution.

@Peter S: the transfer speed is a software issue. Homebrew on the Wii doesn't suffer from the same slowdown.

SD cards are the way to go. If you manage to fill one up you're clearly not interested in actual Wii games and need professional help. Still, I'm glad I don't have to buy some dumb peripheral to satisfy my memory storage issues.

This really should of been expected, and I don't think it will hurt the Wii very much at all.

Though when I first read the SD news I thought it meant you could play directly off of the card, but I guess thats not true?

Well as long as I dont have to wait forever for games to transfer back and forth I'll be happy

No easier than tranfering on the Wii Shop.

yes And no for me too sd cards yeah they are good and a solution is a solution but a portable harddive would be better put in some movies and music and it would be wicked but for some reason nintendo dont play it like that they could possibly make the wii into a media centre but i for one am not holding my breath

Im thinkin myself of buying an xbox 360 using it as a media extender there is something nintendo sould be looking at its killin me

:(
I've only downloaded three games (WiiWare, no VC) and in order to avoid doing the SD shuffle I had to delete some old game save files in order to create enough room for all three of them on the Wii's internal memory (bye bye Elebits save). Additionally I've had to transfer other save files to the SD card. Bomberman Blast I play just about everyday (online). Helix I play every other day (workout). World of Goo I'll start as soon as I finish De Blob. Now, World of Goo, once I complete it, will get stored on the SD card without any real issue because I rarely replay games that I've recently beaten. But once I get Tetris Party (online), that'll likely make three WiiWare games that I play almost daily. That means that I will have to do the SD shuffle just about every single goddamn day (possibly even multiple times) if I ever download and want to play anything else after that. The tranfers to and from SD had better be lightning fast, or else this really is a non-solution from Nintendo. Does anyone know how long approx. it takes to transfer a 300+ block game from the Wii to the SD card and to then transfer a 300+ block game from the SD to the Wii in order to play it using homebrew ( I'm assuming that Nintendo's fix will be similar in speed to what homebrewers have achieved)? That's probably how long I'm frequently going to have to wait before playing a WiiWare game.
:(

Wow, sorry about the big wall of text guys, I didn't realize I was being so long-winded and there doesn't seem to be any sort of edit option on here. That is one fugly, borderline unreadable post.

It's a step in the right direction, but they really do need a hard drive (or release a newer version of the Wii with a built in hard disk). They haven't put the USB ports on the back of the system to use yet, they might as well start with a hard drive, a nice little white one that looks like a mini version of a Wii or something. That doesn't cost an arm and a leg. That would be nice too.

You know a certain homebrewer was trying to make a usb sdhc based mass storage solution, with the homebrew channel awhile back, click on the link to go Sven's Blog to see how's it going if you want and it's already filtered for wii usb based blog topics, and start by reading the bottom post, as it's sorted in ascending order.

http://svenpeter.blogspot.com/search/label/USB

The built in memory is a non issue.

out of ALL Wii owners how many do you think have filled their memory? US.

We aren't a massive percentage of Wii Owners. Most Passionate yes. But w/e if its still a problem deal with it. Wii 2.0 will be out soon enough

I guess that that I've just accepted it, got used to it, and made the best of it. Actually, if your transfer speeds are decent, it isn't that bad. I just kind of look at it as a minigame to play my games.

And of course, there is always this:

http://digg.com/nintendo/The_Inclusive_4GB_SD_Card_Workaround_Solution_for_Wii

^_^

When i first heard the solution i was content because i thought that they were saying your could play Wiiware and VC titles off the SD not just save them there, but after reading into it a little more i came to a conclusion "THIS IS NOT A SOLUTION!" come on the Homebrew channel can play games through the SD card and can do it pretty damn fast i would hope Nintendo's engineers and programmers could come up with the same system.

I have a question for this SD card and the external hardrive, see i have a 250GB USB hardrive and when this new update comes out will they make it available to use the external hardrive to save games and that stuff on it?

You can't run stuff off the SD card. That makes it completely pointless.

let's get real, the reason why Nintendo is opting for this solution is to prevent those damn people who love to copy games and download them to their hard drive without paying for them. If the Wii would get a 40-60 GB hard drive it would compel/promote pirating issues on both WiiWare and Wii games(as Wii games uncompressed is a measly 4.6 GB and some games don't even use that). I'm perfectly happy with the solution as a hard drive like what someone had already brought up would ruin the aesthetics and make the Wii bulky and cumbersome!!!

Why on earth did people, Nintendo, make such a big deal about this 'solution'? It's not a solution, it's the same shit we've been putting up with since launch.

If I recall, aren't they making it so that you WON'T need to transfer between the SD card and the Wii in order to access content? I think that was the biggest improvement over the current system that was being talked about. In that case, I'm satisfied with this solution, though I personally don't have a storage problem with how I put my Wii to use.

This is not a solution at all! They need to enable direct play from SD card. Add a channel to the main memory or something that gives us another loads of channels off the SD card?? Anything but swapping back and forth!! I suggest everyone who posts also writes to Nintendo Customer Services to complain!

"is to prevent those damn people who love to copy games and download them to their hard drive without paying for them."

Yeah, like it's SOOOO hard right now... At least the pirates can play old games from SD.

Anyway, a lot of people are saying that a harddrive would be too big. As far as any machine knows, a hardrive is the same as a pen drive, and everyone's got too many of those, so USB would still be a lot nicer.

At first I, like most people, thought that you'd be able to save and play directly from the SD card. And I was satisfied with that.

But once I realized their "solution" is little more than simplifying of the SD transfer process I became a lot less satisfied.

It is good that you'll be able to download something without having to make room first and doing the SD shuffle will be faster. But that's not enough to call it a solution at all IMO.

Yeah... it'll be nice when it doesn't take upward of 30 minutes to backup titles like World of Goo... especially when you can download the same title in under 5 minutes over the internet.

One of the better sentences any of us has written on this site:

"Nothing could ever satisfy the vocal chorus of eternal whiners about Wii storage, unless a Tanooki-suited Mario flew from house to house like Santa Claus and hand-delivered free exabyte hard drives preloaded with Earthbound."

Nice, JC. :-)

If anyone with web site creating skills wants to help me, I was thinking of starting a boycott on all wiiware and vc games until Nintendo lets people play games directly off the sd card. There have already been games that I didn't buy because of storage issues. Switching games back and forth is tedious and pointless. Some of these Wiiware games take up huge chunks of memory. World of Goo alone is about 350 blocks! (you could download up to 20 nes games for that amount of space). If they expect to be able to keep selling Wiiware games, they REALLY need to do something about this. Not to mention games with downloadable content like the next Guitar Hero.

I think WAY more downloading is done by core, rather than casual gamers. The type who need that storage. The type who are willing to make a fuss.
If we can get a good percentage of those core gamers to stop buying Wiiwae and VC games, it will make a very noticeable impact on sales.

Nintendo needs it shoved in their face that they are just wrong. Hitting them in the pocket book is the best way to get their attention. If anyone wants to help me organize this, I'd appreciate it. I think it could work.

contact me at

dereklafferty@comcast.net

i think they should use the 2 gb sd card as ram expansion and add a usb 60 gb hdd for games saves media files and of course the hard core gaming they could do that and make it so you could use any 3rd party hdd.. wii would be over popular xbox 360 and ps3 would never touch it....