Nintendo's Wii Storage Solution — SD Cards

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.

Comments

Lies, Damn Lies, and News Reports

[AKAImBatman]

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

TFA is a lie. Iwata stated that the solution would be direct download to SD Card + a solution that will allow users to quickly copy from the SD Card to main memory. Early in the morning, the HOPE was that it was a translation issue and Iwata meant the Wii would cache the game in internal memory before running it.

Unfortunately, Reggie dashed those hopes. He repeated Iwata's solution in plain english. From the Wired article:

9:21: Instead of dealing with the current hassles of Wii storage, you'll be able to download Wii software from the shopping channel to your SD card, and the process of transferring that software will become "dramatically easier."

So don't believe everything you read. Half the stuff coming out of these press conferences is pure malarky. (e.g. 2 touch screens? False. 3 Megapixels? Disputed. New Pikmin? False. Street Fighter IV? False. Launch from SD? False.)

The good news is that the GameCube remakes are going to include Metroid Prime 1 & 2. So if you liked the control scheme in Metroid 3, you'll have a chance to go back and play the previous titles with those controls! (Whoo hoo!)

SDHC?

[Mr. Sketch]

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

Re:SDHC?

[AKAImBatman]

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.

Re:"Proprietary"

[AKAImBatman]

1. I had no trouble getting a Wii without a bundle. Neither did anyone I know. In fact, it seems that those who fell for the bundle deal were in the minority. FINDING a Wii in the first place was the greater challenge.

2. The article means SD Cards in general. No proprietary card is needed.

3. The article is wrong anyway. No expansion solution was announced. All that was announced was the ability to download directly to SD Cards + an "easy" way of copying games to main memory. In effect, nothing has changed.

No SDHC

[tepples]

I don't know what version of the wii you have, but all my SD cards work.

None of my SDHC cards work, which I believe was AxemRed's point.

Re:No SDHC

[the-stringbean]

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.

Save game protection

[daveywest]

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.

Re:Save game protection

[Yosho]

You can back up most save games to an SD card, however there are some games you can't - SSBB and Mario Kart, and probably others too. I have no idea why these saves are "special", but they are. Maybe something to do with unlocking new content or something?

Nintendo doesn't allow games that have online play to be copied. The official stance is that it's because this would enable cheating; in games that have changing characters or tradeable items and equipment, it could facilitate the duplication of that equipment, but I have no idea how one would go about copying a game to cheat in SSBB's crippled online mode. Nonetheless, that's the official word.

Re:blah

[poot_rootbeer]

Is SDHC really a hardware thing? I've had plenty of devices that have enabled it with a firmware update.

SDHC is electrically compatible with SD and uses the same pinout, but they use different addressing modes; with vanilla SD, each address value represents a single word; with SDHC, it represents a block.

Depending on how the device has implemented I/O, it may or may not be possible to add SDHC support with a firmware or driver update.