There is a Wii Storage Solution, and it is Convienent!
Last summer, Nintendo announced that a solution to the Wii's storage woes was on the way. Amidst all the initial hype surrounding the announcement, only a few people noted that the only thing Nintendo really said was that you could download games directly to the SD card. Rampant speculation abounded about whether or not you would be able to actually play games off of an SD card. The Nintendo faithful cried "yes!" while the more even-minded said "maybe" while the jaded said "it'll be a cold day in hell."
I know I was on the edge of the cynicism camp, but for practical reasons. It just seemed unlikely that Nintendo would do anything that could risk making the Wii vulnerable to piracy, even though the pirates didn't really need their help to begin with. So I was just as surprised as anyone when it was announced at GDC (or more accurately, leaked before the official announcement [correction: it's been pointed out to me that Nintendo themselves told the gaming press this before the keynote]) that yes, you could play games off of the SD card. Simply copy the channel file to an SD card, and you're ready to go. Oh and said update is ready for download now.
My inner cynic still held strong though, because there was no way Nintendo could make it that easy. There had to be some sort of catch. So instead of scouring the blogs for more information, I did the practical thing and downloaded to see how it in practice. It turned out that Nintendo actually did make it that easy.
All you have to do is move the game to SD card and select the SD card option at the home screen. That will open a window where you can play the games currently on the SD card. After selecting a game there is a brief pause while the game is loaded into the system's flash memory, but then you're good to go.
As far as I could tell, there was no degradation of the play experience. Meaning there was no added slowdown and save functions worked like normal. I can't say my experimentation was completely through, but I did try test both a VC game (Bonk's Revenge) and a WiiWare game (Gyrostarr), and I had no problems with either title.
I should also note that the update technically specifies Wii channels, not just games. Meaning the Nintendo Channel has finally become a practical option. I can't say whether you'd actually want to download it, but the option is there.
There actually are a few catches, but it's actually nothing out of the ordinary. You can't play a game that was not originally downloaded to your Wii, regardless of whether or not you own the game as well. The game's save files must be kept on the Wii (which makes sense, and most casual player probably don't realize their save data is stored in a separate place anyway). I would also suspect that this probably wouldn't be a good option for the Wii's Opera Browser, but I haven't tested it myself.
The real question now is what are the new limits? I've heard the Wii supports the 32-gig super SD cards out there, so raw storage space isn't (as much) a problem anymore. What I'm interested in is whether there is a limit for for the system's flash memory. Right now the only game I can think of that might hit it is Space Invaders Get Even with all of the DLC packs, but I haven't tested it to be sure.
If that game doesn't have have a problem though, then will there be a limit in the future? Or has the sky itself become the limit for WiiWare development? For that matter, will they now release games that can't actually fit on the Wii's internal memory, and therefore must be downloaded to an SD card?
The part of me that grew up loving Nintendo wants to cry out, "yes, yes, YES!" but the part of me that realized I'm no longer Nintendo's target audience says, "probably, probably not, and most assuredly not." However, that latter half was just proven wrong today, so who knows what the future might hold?
That being said, I wouldn't hold my breath in any case.
Announcement technically via my brother, but confirmed by Joystiq
I know I was on the edge of the cynicism camp, but for practical reasons. It just seemed unlikely that Nintendo would do anything that could risk making the Wii vulnerable to piracy, even though the pirates didn't really need their help to begin with. So I was just as surprised as anyone when it was announced at GDC (or more accurately, leaked before the official announcement [correction: it's been pointed out to me that Nintendo themselves told the gaming press this before the keynote]) that yes, you could play games off of the SD card. Simply copy the channel file to an SD card, and you're ready to go. Oh and said update is ready for download now.
My inner cynic still held strong though, because there was no way Nintendo could make it that easy. There had to be some sort of catch. So instead of scouring the blogs for more information, I did the practical thing and downloaded to see how it in practice. It turned out that Nintendo actually did make it that easy.
All you have to do is move the game to SD card and select the SD card option at the home screen. That will open a window where you can play the games currently on the SD card. After selecting a game there is a brief pause while the game is loaded into the system's flash memory, but then you're good to go.
As far as I could tell, there was no degradation of the play experience. Meaning there was no added slowdown and save functions worked like normal. I can't say my experimentation was completely through, but I did try test both a VC game (Bonk's Revenge) and a WiiWare game (Gyrostarr), and I had no problems with either title.
I should also note that the update technically specifies Wii channels, not just games. Meaning the Nintendo Channel has finally become a practical option. I can't say whether you'd actually want to download it, but the option is there.
There actually are a few catches, but it's actually nothing out of the ordinary. You can't play a game that was not originally downloaded to your Wii, regardless of whether or not you own the game as well. The game's save files must be kept on the Wii (which makes sense, and most casual player probably don't realize their save data is stored in a separate place anyway). I would also suspect that this probably wouldn't be a good option for the Wii's Opera Browser, but I haven't tested it myself.
The real question now is what are the new limits? I've heard the Wii supports the 32-gig super SD cards out there, so raw storage space isn't (as much) a problem anymore. What I'm interested in is whether there is a limit for for the system's flash memory. Right now the only game I can think of that might hit it is Space Invaders Get Even with all of the DLC packs, but I haven't tested it to be sure.
If that game doesn't have have a problem though, then will there be a limit in the future? Or has the sky itself become the limit for WiiWare development? For that matter, will they now release games that can't actually fit on the Wii's internal memory, and therefore must be downloaded to an SD card?
The part of me that grew up loving Nintendo wants to cry out, "yes, yes, YES!" but the part of me that realized I'm no longer Nintendo's target audience says, "probably, probably not, and most assuredly not." However, that latter half was just proven wrong today, so who knows what the future might hold?
That being said, I wouldn't hold my breath in any case.
Announcement technically via my brother, but confirmed by Joystiq