Nintendo: we recognize you need storage, but Wii don’t have any
Casual gaming doesn’t require any substantial storage, right? Wrong. The gamers have spoken, and Nintendo’s response is rather lack-luster. Nintendo knows the Wii is in need of storage, but there aren’t any external storage deices in the works…unless Nintendo has some brilliant cloud storage scheme up it’s sleeve, what are Wii left with?
Before Nintendo actually made its non-statement about storage, Nintendo’s own Laurent Fischer made what he calls a joke when discussing the need for more storage on the Wii by saying that only “geeks and otaku” need storage, according to GamesIndustry.biz. That pissed off quite a few dedicated (and assumedly not geeky or otaku) Wii users.
Fischer apologized, making light of the situation as some sort of lighthearted joke gone awry. He said, “Definitely there’s no plan to issue hardware, an external hard drive, but we know that we have an issue in that area…It’s very obvious and we’re perfectly aware of it, but there’s nothing we can say beyond this.”
I have to say that’s left me scratching my head for two reasons. First, doesn’t the idea conflict with the concept of “casual gaming” as Nintendo now defines it? Granted, save points and things like that are necessary, but if you add external storage to increase functionality, won’t it look like you’re drifting into PS3 and 360 territory?
Second, how exactly do you plan on handling the situation of storage if you aren’t planning on releasing an external solution? Sure, you could build a little hard drive into a new Wii, but you’d have a bunch of unhappy first-gen Wii adopters to deal with.
I think pushing for storage could be detrimental for Nintendo in a few ways. First, by admitting there is a need for more storage (as defined by Nintendo customers) says that Nintendo doesn’t have a miracle console. I think 360 and PS3 owners will agree with me in saying the Wii fluffing by the press about it being the most successful console is getting a bit old, as the console is far from perfect.
Continuing that idea, the way Nintendo goes about delivering storage (or not) could speak volumes to its continued dominance of the market. As Nintendo recently debuted the WiiWare games channel, anyone interested in downloading anything will have to stock up on SD cards to get the experience…or just switch to another console with great mini-games and arcade titles and sizable storage.
The last way this could adversely affect Nintendo is that Nintendo has brilliantly maintained Wii PR hype since the release of the console. Why people still believe any of the viral nonsense, I’ll never know. However, this might be the first time both critics and the community have brought forward a legitimate issue that needs a remedy, and Nintendo has responded with tasteless, pretentious jokes and statements that amount to absolutely nothing. Maybe this time the media can stop ingesting the crap Nintendo has been feeding it and take an objective look at the lack-luster little box.
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9 Responses to “Nintendo: we recognize you need storage, but Wii don’t have any”
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June 17th, 2008
The people who want storage (myself included) are probably the vocal minority that own more than a Wii & PS2 (yes two).
The Wii’s main meat and potatoes market probably don’t splash out THAT much on VC/Wiiware to fill the internal storage.
This would be far less of an issue if the Nintendo Wifi network was WAY faster and instead of that stupid Mario nutting the blocks we could get a speed counter and % total.
June 17th, 2008
What a silly little article!
To have the ability to actually use SD cards (USB 2.0 high speed technology version) or an external hard drive would be a huge benefit.
If they supported up to an 8GB USB SD stick as an extension to the Wii channels (i.e. things stored on the SD Stick are now playable as Wii Channels), then problem solved. A hard drive would be ideal…but something that could store and allow for playback for up to almost 200 max sized WiiWare games would be awesome.
Or how about a few gigs of DLC on an SD stick?
Or save data?
Or music?
Seeing as how GH IV World Tour will allow DLC for the Wii, this is a good thing. Only a blinded fanboy irrationally bigoted towards the wii would see more storage as a bad thing.
But I understand…if a comet was heading towards the earth unopposed, I would probably suggesting that the fact it was poised to hit Iceland was bad for the comet since it might be doused by a geyser erupting just before impact.
June 17th, 2008
This is the beginning of the end for Nintendo! When the casual market realizes the PS3 has a much larger HDD they will move over in droves. They may like Wii Fit and Mario Kart now but with option like MGS4 and GT5 Prologue who in their right mind would want a Wii.
June 17th, 2008
what casual gamers are going to buy a ps3 (ones who clearly just play things like wii fit, wii sport, mario kart etc occasionally) just for MGS4 and GT5? I think you don’t understand the definition of casual gamers.
June 17th, 2008
Pretendo has basically painted themselves into a corner, but then adding to the fire with those comments and admitting to the need for storage was like turning out a pack of wild dogs on that poor trapped painter.
Pretendo’s arrogance wont affect the hordes of children and confused old folks who have flocked to their sad little console, but I predict that the core demographic will leave in droves.
They have basically screwed the success of Wiiware as well.(Why redownload games you own, when you can keep them on your PC as a ROM?)
That’s the definition of arrogance, did Krazy Ken Kutaragi Join the ranks of Pretendo?
June 17th, 2008
Everybody will buy a PS3 because of it’s awesome super computing power!
June 18th, 2008
“Second, how exactly do you plan on handling the situation of storage if you aren’t planning on releasing an external solution?”
Could this Blog please be written by someone who has a wee bit idea of the wii?
The Wii has this wonderful SD-Slot, where you can put cheap SD-Cards. If Nintendo would make is possible for WiiWare and VC-Games to start from SD-Cards all problems are solved.
June 18th, 2008
what exactly do users need to store on the wii? I don’t have one so this may seem like a dumb question but aside from save points i mean, why do users need to store things? And i agree, if there was storage created it would totally enter 360/ps3 territory, however not so much for people to choose the ps3/360 over the wii because of choice of games, and overall casual image of the wii.
June 18th, 2008
To Bourne:
Wiiware games, VC games, Downloadable content (a la GHIV, the final fantasy CC Wiiware game) along with save points and new Wii Channels.
This would not put the Wii into 360/PS3 territory, because only the core gamers would be downloading that much content from the Virtual Console, WiiWare and only they would heavily use DLC.
A simple SD Card in the USB 2.0 port would suffice. The only thing lacking is the ability to run games from anything but the 512MB Flash. So right now the SD Card might as well be a tape backup, cause you can only use it for archival storage.
The Wii doesn’t need 20GB or 60GB of HDD space, though it would be cool to have the option. Wii games will not need to install to a hard drive because that would totally skew the entry point for certain gamers. Where as a USB SD Stick is something many non-gamers are familiar with, but would still be optional as most of the casual crowd won’t have a Wii cluttered with VC and Wiiware games.
These new casual gamers don’t give two s***s over HDD space as they really ain’t gonna pony up cash for a PS3 or 360 just because things look realistic or “mature”. They don’t want to become gamers, they just want to play games. And they don’t want to own multiple consoles…so in some ways, Sony and Microsoft’s attempts to Wiicessorize their consoles is sort of laughable.
Now for me, after suffering enviously as a Nintendo only fanboy the past generation (I had no real issues with the N64 for the most part) and watching with tears as the Gamecube got stiffed constantly…there was no way I wasn’t going to go multi-console this time around so I get to play whatever I want on the the consoles now.