Finally, SD Storage for Wii confirmed.

[Oobgarm]

http://www.joystiq.com/2009/03/25/gdc09-nintendo-updates-wii-shop-channel-with-sd-card-channel/

The new Wii update introduces use of up to 32GB cards for storing channels, which can run if you have available memory on the system. Sounds pretty nice.

Good news also that it doesn't seem to trash the Homebrew Channel.

[heybtbm]

This is a great solution for VC/Wiiware games. Common sense really. I'm not sure why they didn't just do this from the start.

[TonyTheTiger]

I think it's pretty obvious why. Nintendo knows that the Wii's security is junk and supplying large capacity storage options would only exacerbate the problem. They don't even have secondary protections like MS does with Xbox Live bans because the Wii's online system is so primitive.

[Sabz5150]

It's about time! I just updated and it works like a charm. Didn't botch my Homebrew Channel, either :D This will definitely assist in my VC purchases.

[joshnickerson]

Just got the latest update. I tried a few WiiWare and N64 games; they actually loaded rather quickly, only about 20 seconds at the most!

[Ponyone]

I'm kind of surprised this isn't being discussed here further. There have been many a topic clamoring for more space on the wii. I updated as well, and everything is still there (homebrew channel etc). Good update.

Now they just need to make some worthwhile wiiware games.

[Icarus Moonsight]

:villagepeople:

Once upon a time, in March, the gods listened, hearing the plight of man and responded in kind... Oh, nevermind. It was actually Nintendo. Just as impressive though. LOL

[heybtbm]

Anyone else notice the prices for SD cards on Amazon went up since this announcement?

Coincidence?

[rpepper9]

So to read between the lines, does that mean I can take my Virtual Counsel games from my Wii, put them on a SD card, and play them at my friends house? Seems like this goes against everything that Nintendo's anti-piracy act was attempting to stop.

[Neil Koch]

So to read between the lines, does that mean I can take my Virtual Counsel games from my Wii, put them on a SD card, and play them at my friends house? Seems like this goes against everything that Nintendo's anti-piracy act was attempting to stop.

The VC games on a SD card are still tied to the console you originally downloaded them from.

I don't know much about the Homebrew Channel, so maybe if you have that on your Wii, you could load someone else's VC games from a SD card - but people that have the Homebrew Channel can get emulators/ROMs anyway to run from it, so it's kind of a moot point.


Anyone else notice the prices for SD cards on Amazon went up since this announcement?

I don't know about Amazon, but I've seen the opposite at stores like Target. You can pick up 2GB cards for under 10 bucks, which is plenty of space for lots of VC/WiiWare games.

[poloplayr]

Yay!

Just spent some time re-downloading all the stuff I bought from the VC since launch onto a SD card. Very smooth loading times.

And thank god that the Homebrew Channel is not affected. Yay!

[Phyeir]

It's about damn time. My Wii has been practically about to burst with how long it's been. Nintendo just kept teasing me, but now my Wii can feel the sweet release... as I now have more storage.

[TonyTheTiger]

Something isn't making sense here. This is the first really substantial Wii update ever since the Homebrew Channel came out. And, yet, when Nintendo had the perfect opportunity to crush it and silently say "Well, if you want the goodies we're offering you have to ditch the HC (until they inevitably counter our update)" instead it leaves the hacks completely unchallenged. Does Nintendo not care about the Homebrew Channel or are they just morons?

[Icarus Moonsight]

Sometimes it's best not to make certain fruit forbidden. People tend to want what they can't have. Besides, there are legal applications of the homebrew channel and flashcarts etc. Maybe they're off the warpath and diving into their money pits for fun like Scrooge McDuck. :)

[Iron Draggon]

I just found this article and thought that it was interesting. are 32GB flash cards really that cheap now? I still don't even have any over 1GB yet! LOL

I'm not planning on buying any DLC for the Wii yet, but I might buy some in the future. So I guess I have another upgrade to do on my Wii already. I just did one when I set it up last week, but I guess that was to be expected, since I was starting out a few years behind on the latest system updates.

http://weblogs.variety.com/the_cut_scene/nintendo_wii/

"More storage means Nintendo can become the digital entertainment powerhouse.

The biggest news from Nintendo president Satoru Iwata's keynote today, without a doubt, was that the Wii will now work with high capacity SD memory cards. Why? Because now the most popular home video game console in the world -- which has shipped over 50 million units -- is a digital media gateway in the living room.

Sony and Microsoft built their current consoles with the goal of having a "trojan horse" to do the same thing. Microsoft, thanks to the excellence of Xbox Live and decent sales for its console, has made solid progress in that space. Sony, thanks to the problems of Playstation Network and its struggles to sell devices, has not.

Nintendo doesn't seem to have thought about that at all with the Wii -- There's virtually no built-in storage and no home networking capabilities. It doesn't even play DVDs.

Playing online multi-player games has also proven to be a major pain on the device. But downloading casual and classic games on the console is easy. And popular. The only drawback has been storage -- the console comes with a miniscule 512 MB of flash memory and only works with 2 gigabyte storage cards.

Now with a system update coming today, it's compatible with 32 gigabyte cards. Which means the ability to store downloadable games is limitless. With just a few of those cards, in fact, Nintendo owners can get more storage than the hard drives on the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 (both those devices work with storage cards, but the user interface doesn't connect as seamlessly as on the Wii).

Which means users can download unlimited numbers of games. And there's theoretically no reason they need a size limit, at least in terms of storage. If gamers are willing to wait, they could download a title as big as a standard disc (9 gb) or even bigger. (see update below)

And remember when I wrote that the Wii might start offering movie and TV downloads or streaming soon? With unlimited storage, that becomes a lot easier.

Of course, most people probably aren't going to spend the money to do this. But the brilliance of Nintendo's strategy is that most people don't have to. The huge audience that just wants to spend $250 and play "Mario Kart" or "Wii Fit" can do that. But some who start with that mindset -- and thus buy into the Wii -- may find themselves interested in more. And now Nintendo can upgrade them to 360/PS3-size storage and beyond.


So yes, Iwata's description of Nintendo creative guru Shigero Miyamoto's design process ande philosophy was fascinating. The DSi (which I've seen before and will try to write more about soon) has some fun new features that will undoubtedly prove popular. And the announcement of a new "Legend of Zelda" DS game (photo borrowed from MTV Multiplayer) was cool (the last one, "Phantom Hourglass," was phenomenal).

But long term, I think we'll remember today as the day that the Wii became able to do much more than an underpowered videogame console with accessible games and innovative controllers. Nintendo is now poised to become the centerpiece of the digitally connected living room that Sony and Microsoft wanted to be. And it did it by focusing entirely on games for a couple of years and then adding the one missing element: storage.

Update: An astute reader pointed out to me that it may not be technically possible, at least for now, to play games bigger than 512 MB, because it would need to utilize the system's flash memory while being played."

[joshnickerson]

Welcome to yesterday... Population... YOU.

http://www.digitpress.com/forum/showthread.php?t=129595

[Rob2600]

with a system update coming today, the Wii is compatible with 32 gigabyte SD cards.

So for $74 (the current lowest price of a 32 GB SD card), Wii owners can get more than 1.6x the storage of a 20 GB PS3 or Xbox 360 Pro...and almost as much storage as a 40 GB PS3. Pretty cool, but what took so long?

[Purkeynator]

I did a little checking and I can't see how you could even use a 16GB card due to the limit in the number of pages for downloaded games. Any card you put in will have a maximum of 20 pages with up to 12 games per page. I did a lot of looking through the virtual console and wii ware game downloads and the largest games are only 300 blocks or about 30MB. Even if you filled every game slot of the 20 pages with a 300 block game you will still only need in the neighboorhood of 7.2 GB before you run out of space due to the 20 page limit. 8 GB SDHC cards run in the neighboorhood of around $15 shipped on newegg and that is the largest card I would buy for Wii.

[Rob2600]

8 GB SDHC cards run in the neighboorhood of around $15 shipped on newegg and that is the largest card I would buy for Wii.

So according to you, for $60 ($15 x four 8 GB SD cards), Wii owners can get more than 1.6x the storage of a 20 GB PS3 or Xbox 360 Pro...and almost as much storage as a 40 GB PS3.

Again, pretty cool, but what took so long? I guess it doesn't really matter now that this feature is finally available.



I did a lot of looking through the virtual console and wii ware game downloads and the largest games are only 300 blocks or about 30MB.

Maybe now that the Wii can support multiple 32 GB SD cards, Nintendo can approve larger Virtual Console and WiiWare games. Maybe we'll start seeing more Neo Geo CD, TurboGrafx-16 CD, and Sega CD games.

[PapaStu]

Merged Iron Draggons thread with the one already in progress.

[heybtbm]

I did a little checking and I can't see how you could even use a 16GB card due to the limit in the number of pages for downloaded games. Any card you put in will have a maximum of 20 pages with up to 12 games per page. I did a lot of looking through the virtual console and wii ware game downloads and the largest games are only 300 blocks or about 30MB. Even if you filled every game slot of the 20 pages with a 300 block game you will still only need in the neighboorhood of 7.2 GB before you run out of space due to the 20 page limit. 8 GB SDHC cards run in the neighboorhood of around $15 shipped on newegg and that is the largest card I would buy for Wii.

LOL at the people who rushed out and bought a 32 GB card.

[Sabz5150]

I did a little checking and I can't see how you could even use a 16GB card due to the limit in the number of pages for downloaded games. Any card you put in will have a maximum of 20 pages with up to 12 games per page. I did a lot of looking through the virtual console and wii ware game downloads and the largest games are only 300 blocks or about 30MB. Even if you filled every game slot of the 20 pages with a 300 block game you will still only need in the neighboorhood of 7.2 GB before you run out of space due to the 20 page limit. 8 GB SDHC cards run in the neighboorhood of around $15 shipped on newegg and that is the largest card I would buy for Wii.

Homebrew :)

Now, someone needs to modify this firmware to recognize USB mass storage devices and allow direct execution from them.


So for $74 (the current lowest price of a 32 GB SD card), Wii owners can get more than 1.6x the storage of a 20 GB PS3 or Xbox 360 Pro...and almost as much storage as a 40 GB PS3. Pretty cool, but what took so long?

The technology. Our "drive" is the size of a postage stamp. Not to mention we can swap 'em out at will. Pull the drive out of your PS3 while it's running.

[Sabz5150]

So to read between the lines, does that mean I can take my Virtual Counsel games from my Wii, put them on a SD card, and play them at my friends house? Seems like this goes against everything that Nintendo's anti-piracy act was attempting to stop.

This is why it works how it does.

The game gets loaded into the Wii's internal memory temporarily, so it still requires a valid signature to execute. At your buddy's place, your game would load into memory and refuse to work. Granted its a bit Rube Goldberg and still limits what you can put on your Wii's internal memory, but I'll gladly accept it at this point in time.


Something isn't making sense here. This is the first really substantial Wii update ever since the Homebrew Channel came out. And, yet, when Nintendo had the perfect opportunity to crush it and silently say "Well, if you want the goodies we're offering you have to ditch the HC (until they inevitably counter our update)" instead it leaves the hacks completely unchallenged. Does Nintendo not care about the Homebrew Channel or are they just morons?

Maybe they, I dunno... trust their userbase? Do they realize that the time and resources spent battling the tiny bit of piracy outweigh the "calculated" losses of said piracy? Or it could be that they didn't want to upset a sizable chunk of the "hardcore" gamers (grandma and 7 year old granddaughter aren't gonna know nor care how to install the HC). I'm quite happy with their decision to not mess with my system, and with all this extra room I can now buy those Wiiware titles I've been gawking at.

See how that works, developers? :)

[Rob2600]

Pretty cool, but what took so long?


The technology.

But the technology was already there, built into the Wii from day one.

[TonyTheTiger]

Maybe they, I dunno... trust their userbase? Do they realize that the time and resources spent battling the tiny bit of piracy outweigh the "calculated" losses of said piracy? Or it could be that they didn't want to upset a sizable chunk of the "hardcore" gamers (grandma and 7 year old granddaughter aren't gonna know nor care how to install the HC). I'm quite happy with their decision to not mess with my system, and with all this extra room I can now buy those Wiiware titles I've been gawking at.

See how that works, developers? :)

Well they can't trust them that much. They did try to put the kibosh on the Twilight Hack. Maybe because Nintendo makes money on every console they have less to worry about. Unlike how Sony was getting royally owned whenever somebody bought a PSP and absolutely nothing else for it, Nintendo makes at least some money on even the most hardcore pirates.

[rbudrick]

This means mucho for games like Rock Band. Finally DLC will be attainable with games like that.

-Rob

[joedick]

This means mucho for games like Rock Band. Finally DLC will be attainable with games like that.

-Rob

Rock Band Wii already has DLC. They figured out how to save to SD without assistance from Nintendo.

[rbudrick]

Rock Band Wii already has DLC. They figured out how to save to SD without assistance from Nintendo.

Right, I should have rephrased that...I mean REAL DLC, like tons of songs ala the 360 version.

-Rob