For the purposes of this discussion, Hobbits are now synonymous with Reggie Fils-Aime.

“We are working on a storage solution and it is especially important inAmerica because our consumers are using Wii Points for the VirtualConsole and WiiWare. I want the people to have the right expectations;We have never said that it will be a hard drive nor have we mentionedhow we will fix this issue, but we are going to deliver a better way tostore the games.”

Nintendo Everything

So, am I the only one a little befuddled by this? Hard drives are incredibly inexpensive now, and it wouldn't take an enormous drive to expand upon the pittance of solid-state-internal the Wii has. They could sell a 20GB drive, and make a killing, it's not like there's demos, or HD content to take up loads of memory.

There is the off chance that Reggie is simply bullshitting us with the usual Blue Ocean nonsense, but it seems to me like after all the time consumers have been pining for a storage solution, if they'd decided on a HDD, they would have made an announcement sooner.

Your thoughts?

They probably just want to prevent piracy.  Nintendo has always taken extra steps for this. 

Really? I've felt that they've been rather lax this generation. I mean... they don't even have a warranty sticker on their consoles (at least they didn't when I took one apart), and it's near impossible to pirate on a console without chipping or flashing.

Does the Wii even have a way to hook up a hard drive?  How much solid state memory is already in there?  Enlighten, please.$0$0$0

Agent Ghost


They probably just want to prevent piracy.  Nintendo has always taken extra steps for this. 

Thats why on certain unnamed sites you can find every Wii game made for download with step by step instructions on how to mod?

Chee Saw


Does the Wii even have a way to hook up a hard drive?  How much solid state memory is already in there?  Enlighten, please.$0$0$0

2 USB ports and a small 512Mbs of Flash Memory.

Yup.

Like VF said, there's 2 USB ports, and 512Mb of flash memory. More than enough ports to allow a simple solution. Their losses in piracy would be minimal if they allowed you to format your own external HDD for usage with the Wii, and it'd be much cheaper than having to actually produce one.

It's a win-win situation, but it won't ever come to fruition. Plugging a 2.5 drive into an enclosure, and then having to format it would just be "too technologically exclusive to be viable", or however corporate would choose to write it off.