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Wii to Get New Hardware - Possibly Hard Drive?
HoboBob writes "It has been suggested that Nintendo will be unveiling some new hardware for the Wii at the E3 media festival, and some are speculating that it could be a hard drive. According to the article: 'Confirmation back in April that Neo Geo games will begin being added to Wii's Virtual Console download service adds weight to the speculation, considering Neo Geo games are huge — some clocking in it at up to 330MB. One of those bad boys would put serious strain on the Wii's memory.'"
Duuuuude. I would almost kill for some Samurai Shodown. Dag.
Canthros
While I think having more space would be great, I'd hate to lose the Wii's small form factor in my entertainment cabinet. Maybe it'll be somewhat modular rather than an external box attached via USB or some other wire?
NINJA SPIRIT - The Ancient Art of Insanity
you'd almost kill for samuari showdown? lol. why not get a wiikey, then you can have it.
I'd rather see a software upgrade to support SMB. Then my Wii could access files on my server. While we're at it, they could add a DivX channel for video playback. Oh yeah, and a Java VM ... and a pony.
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neo geo games were maximum 330 mega BITS, not megabytes.
every _exit() is the same, but every clone() is different.
If they add a decent sized micro-drive (8G should be enough), and DVD playing abilities I will be a tad irritated. My lovely new toy getting a serious update this soon after it being released is not nice.
USB HDD support would lessen the blow, as would good support for movie formats, and Flash 9 support in Opera.
Wow, I should not post when knackered.
I hope they just do a firmware update so that I can use a usb drive or the sd card. I doubt I will personally use the virtual console to go beyond 4gb that an sd card can give me. The only reason I would want an hdd would be if it could play movies and music. I really wish that there was a way to get some type of 5.1 sound (not pro logic II) and some DVD software. I know everyone has a dvd player but it would be nice to have just one magic little box to do everything. And a wireless nunchuk would be cool too
to release new hardware? or to release a patch to let us use network or USB storage? or to re-encode all the redbook audio and fmv with real codecs so that those games don't clock in at anything over 50MB? speaking of, how the hell hard is it to whip up a usb keyboard driver?
I hope they come out with some Sega Saturn games, such as NiGHTS or Dragon Force. That would certainly fill a great hole in Virtual Console's arsenal.
Whatever optional add-ons Nintendo comes out with for the Wii will just add to the system, not take away from. For it is my option if I want the hard drive to play all the old games I grew up with, but for others they have played those games and are not going to spend the money for the nostalgia of owning them again. Either way I decide whether or not I want to pay the money for the HDD. I'm not being told you must have it for our platform. The same goes for HD-DVD. If I am happy with my DVD collection, and it would cost me thousands to get the same collection in HD format I am probably not interested. If I don't have a DVD collection, then maybe I am highly interested in HD-DVD.
Main point is its my choice.
I want to be retired when I grow up.
I swear I got an email about this the other day. It's a sort of pump attachment you place on the Wii that claims to make it twice as powerful and much larger, presumambly to bring it into line with the 360 and the PS3. Unfortunately, I read some customer reviews that said it only worked for ten minutes or so and the results were dissapointing.
Two tears in a bucket. Motherfuck it.
Don't tell me these games aren't compressed. Even old school NES games compress like a mother. Are these roms stored without compression? That's quite a few less games I can be buying from VC if I'm filling up my Wii with uncompressed data. Especially N64 and NeoGeo.
I think as a big F U to the other two console giants (which, don't get me wrong, I enjoy the 360 and the PS3 as well...to put a play on teh_pwnerer's words, any device that plays games I enjoy) Nintendo should release a 100 gig add-on hard drive, and charge only 100 dollars for it. Or, include it in a bundle with the wii and only charge 75 dollars extra for it.
That likely won't happen, but eh I can dream
Living With a Nerd
Just come out with a nice firmware update to more fully utilize the USB support.
a) USB HD
b) USB keyboard
Do that and I am peachy keen fine with the world.
I'm a fiscal conservative, it's a pity we don't have a political party anymore
start releasing some of the games we all used to love playing! more contra, metroid, zelda, early final fantasy games...dragonquest anyone? The current selection is getting better but on the whole it's mostly a bunch of old old old games that i either don't remember ever being released or couldn't care less about much less pay 8 dollars a game for!' Why not battletoads? kid nikki, Xanadu etc etc etc. no more systems until you release a more extensive line for all your systems currently on there. And seriously ... bond for the 64 ....
common!
I'd like DIVX, MPEG4, MPEG1,2, JPEG, MJPEG
and
I'd like to be able to wave the control in a circular clockwise fashion to fast forward, anticlockwise to fast reverse, and as I slow down the rotations it would slow the frames down. I'm sure they can come up with a million actions you could do to manipulate the video in a whole new way.
That would be real sweet, if it had the same codecs as my cheap $30 DVD player (Divx, Mpeg4, 1,2,3 MJPEG, MP3, and a few others) that would be perfect. I have my Wii on a wired ethernet connection rather than wireless, playing straight off the PCs or Mac without extra HD would be even better.
Or even off a network attached storage, so I can connect one of those cheap 500GB drives and plug it into my router (which has a NAS USB port).
Forget the large cartridges, the HDD would allow downloading of classic CD-ROM based games, such as TurboGrafx CD, Sega CD, or (dare I say it) Sega Saturn. Who cares if S-E is going to be a bitch about Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest games when we could get our Ys and Lunar fixes? And Saturn VC support would have a lot of potential for bringing over all those games that were previously never released outside of Japan.
Not to feed a troll, but I tried Excite truck at a friends on Sunday. Since I absolutely loved the game, I'll be going out to purchase it this weekend. I'm sure it will be played quite a bit at parties, but I'm buying it for the single player action.
It'll most likely be peripheral improvements:
- Wireless sensor bar (many people myself included have made one.)
- Light gun attachment (seen at last years E3 but never released.)
Or how about a Wii WebCam (eToy type device) that would fit with the big N's new ways to play philosophy.
I doubt Nintendo will add DVD playback as it makes the console less of a console more of a home entertainment system (PS3) which isn't what Nintendo wants, they have no devision telling them to include video + music playback like Sony do. Hard drive... probably not, I just can't see Nintendo releasing a separate device that plugs in, besides a 4gig card works fine it's not like you can't add any extra space.
Ok, seems a bit of overkill to make a harddrive attachement for use only with the Virtual Console. The majority of people using the Virtual Console will never purchase anything larger than an N64 title (max is about 64 megabytes).
Let's assume they use a 10GB 1.8" harddrive (or flash equivalent) that's integrated into the angled stand that ships with the console (if one can even purchase bulk quantities of those anymore). That would let you buy roughly 150 of the largest N64 games to fill that storage space. Or over 100 of the largest Neo Geo games. That seems to be more purchasing than the smallest tiny niche portion of the Wii market would buy. This argument disappears if original downloadable content ever arrives for the Wii.
So, if you are going to come out with a harddrive attachement, give it a "normal" size of 80 GB or larger, and allow us to "store" our Wii disc based games on there. Now you would have the ultimate system for lazy people like me that click around in the Wii menu to play old VC games instead of getting up and walking across the room to put in a new Wii disc to play something different. It would be great if we could "surf our Wii channels" and have access to all of our games.
Listen, I realise that sometimes you may have trouble keeping your Wii up, but that is no reason to get discouraged and stop using it! After all, life without a Wii... well it's tough.
Two tears in a bucket. Motherfuck it.
I'm sure there are plenty of people who want a 100% genuine oldskool experience, but from my experience with emulators, older games often look so much better with some scaling, especially the hq*x kind. If there'
Here's hoping for a cartridge slot to blow into to bring back the old-school feel.
Just started playing Twilight Princess about a week ago, and my wife just purchased Mario Party 8 this week.
What I'm wondering is: Why is playing alone with the Wiimote any more silly than playing with a typical controller? If you are bothered by playing with the controller by yourself, it sounds like you're not interested in the game enough. If you're interested in the game, the controller should just disappear.
I find many of the younger gamers (the XBOX(360) / PS2(3) crowd) lose interest in the Wii because they don't really enjoy the games. While I still enjoy playing God of War, FIFA, etc. on my PS2, I also enjoy some of Nintendo's stuff. My wife, and many of our friends, were never into any other console, but still enjoy Wii. It also isn't a regular activity, as we all have full time jobs and kids eating up our time (not to say you don't).
This sig was generated randomly by one million monkeys with Speak 'n Spells. . .
Perhaps the best way would be if Nintendo sold a USB harddrive with, say, 25 of their top selling Virtual Console games already installed on it. All you'd have to do is plug it in and play. A Wii software update would ensure that the machine could read the drives well before they hit the shelves. To move units they'd make it slightly less than cost of drive + cost of 25 games downloaded. Who knows, maybe they could even put something unique to the drives like Folding @ Home for Wii on there. (No doubt Folding @ Home for Wii would be available to the general public 6 months later to reward early adopters.)
A gripe: Why the hell didn't they put a Z button on the VC classic controller? I don't appreciate having to shell out extra bucks just to play a few games on the *exact same system*. Hell, if they had dropped the GC sockets on the top of the Wii they'd probably have room for a hard drive! It all strengthens my belief that Nintendo is deliberately manipulating things to ensure that they sell off their GC stock of products.
I've been reading the comments and the three letter acronym popped out USB.
Single USB support for flash disks or hds would kind of pwn, it won't make the console bigger, and you would be able to... ...BACK YOUR DATA UP! , my last console was a playstation I and I know how painful it is to lose your game data...
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
The Wii supports SD cards... considering I can get a 4 GB SD card for less than $80 (a fraction of the price for 360 memory), I don't think storage is much of an issue to save a couple hundred MB.
Detachable Wii?
While we're building a wish list - I'd like to see a small keyboard (to use with Opera) that plugs into the WiiMote and uses the WiiMote's bluetooth interface.
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What I'd really like to see is some classic adventure games from Lucasarts brought to the Wii's virtual console.
Navigating the user interface with the wii-mote would be super duper nift-o-rific.
If they can bring back old console games, whats to stop them from releasing old computer games that can fit into a small chunk of memory quite nicely? Plus I'll bet George Lucas would be down with it.