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Nintendo's Wii Storage Solution — SD Cards

Posted by Soulskill on from the 2gb-ought-to-be-enough-for-anybody dept.

Lucas123 writes "After gamers complained for the better part of a year, Nintendo finally came out with a solution to the Wii's lack of storage capacity — a 2GB SD card from which users can execute games, adding to the console's measly 512MB of onboard storage. The card is expected out in the Spring. With the ability to download, the card should allow users to store up to 60 games." This news came out of the same press conference that announced the Nintendo DSi we discussed earlier today. They made a number of other announcements as well, including Gamecube remakes for the Wii, updated to make use of the Wiimote, Club Nintendo coming to North America this year, and the Wii Speak Channel, an online voice chat utility.

4 of 79 comments (clear)

  1. SDHC? by Mr.+Sketch · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I think a better solution would be to add SDHC support so we can use cards larger than 2GB.

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    Things you think are in the Constitution, but are not.
    1. Re:SDHC? by AKAImBatman · · Score: 3, Insightful

      a better solution would be to add SDHC support

      I don't understand. How is that a "better" solution? A 2GB card already holds nearly 20,000 blocks of memory. To put that into perspective, WiiWare games tend to range between 100-400 blocks. That's where the 60 games figure comes from. That's a lot of space, to be honest.

      The real issue is the fact that you have to rearrange the Wii's memory every time you want to play a game. Think of it like having a PC with a 1.6GB hard drive. You can install a few games at a time, but if you want to play more than 2 or 3, you have to start uninstalling game in order to install others. If you have more than 2 or 3 you want to play at the moment, you will find yourself uninstalling/reinstalling A LOT. That's the situation of Wii owners today.

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  2. Save game protection by daveywest · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'd just be happy if I could backup my SSBB save file. That or if they would require the pin number before my 3 year-old gets in and deletes everything he can find.

  3. Re:No SDHC by the-stringbean · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Third party 2Gb SD cards work fine already on the Wii. I have a San Disk Extreme II 2Gb card and it works fine - the only cards that don't work are SDHC cards (which Nintendo have never said they would support).

    Regardless of how fast your SD card is the controller in the Wii is painfully slow. Hopefully what Nintendo means by "dramatically easier" copying is some firmware tweaks that improve the transfer rate to something half decent.