We know that we'd like a hard drive on the Wii-- and while we're dreaming, we'd like it to be free and preloaded with Sega CD games-- but we don't have any real evidence that one's coming. We first heard some unfounded speculation about it back in March, from a Japanese magazine.Now the rumor is back, with just as much to back it up (nothing). IGN editors speculated in a podcast that Nintendo might show one at E3, and CVG saw the fact that Neo Geo games are big as evidence. Then, of course, everyone picked up on the rumors-- including us, right now. Not to say that there's no chance of a hard drive in the future, but we'd like to remind everyone that SD cards exist and are cheap.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
6-05-2007 @ 2:46PM
vidGuy said...
SD cards being cheap is relative. If Nintendo releases a proprietary HDD like MS, then forget it, I'm sticking with SD cards. But if Nintendo opens up the support for any USB harddrive, I have a extra 20GB hard drive that will be slapped into a $20 enclosure... now that's cheap.
If nonproprietary USB drives are allowed, consumers will have the ability to access gigs worth of pictures, music, and VC games on hard drives that go for less than $1 per GB, versus around $20-30 per GB on an SD card.
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6-05-2007 @ 2:52PM
Dan Russell said...
Hard Drive = XBox Live on the Wii
That's all that's stopping the Wii from having a top-notch online service with full-game, TV show and movie downloads. Just enable the USB port for our own choice of HDD (take that, XBox's "all about choice") and it'll be even better than anything out there now.
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6-05-2007 @ 3:56PM
Ben Mullinger said...
Yeah SD cards exist and are cheap, but you can't run VC games from them!! So unless they release an SD Card Channel, then I'll be buying an HDD, as my Wii is full!!!
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6-05-2007 @ 4:19PM
Billy_McBong said...
a hard drive would be awesome my Wii is starting to run out out memory
and #1 "$20-30 per GB on an SD card." no search amazon there are dozens of 1GB SD cards for under $5
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6-05-2007 @ 5:07PM
otsego said...
ok it might just be me not keepin up with the jones' but, i could swear E3 was dead.. i thought it was renamed something very lame and more consumer oriented..
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6-05-2007 @ 7:12PM
vidGuy said...
It was, I forget what it was called but most are either still calling it E3 or the lovable min-E3.
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6-05-2007 @ 7:23PM
B-Ry said...
My wii will be out of memory pretty soon especially after a summer of great games and i would love for a hard drive to be released....hopefully a cheap one
For free wii points http://www.ezyrewards.com/?id=161820
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6-05-2007 @ 9:35PM
theLoneYoshi said...
Actually, E3 still exists, but it's much smaller, and focused more on the industry. This year's E3 is in July.
http://www.e3expo.com/
The new consumer oriented video game expo is called E for All, and starts this October.
http://www5.eforallexpo.com/
As for the hard drive rumors, I also hope that they just release a firmware upgrade that gives the Wii compatibility with consumer external hard drives. It really would be so much cheaper as vidGuy said.
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6-05-2007 @ 11:34PM
will said...
right, nintendo open their console up to 3rd party hard drives...that's like saying MS is gonna offer free online service or a reasonably priced hard drive. just ain't gonna happen
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6-05-2007 @ 11:51PM
vidGuy said...
They opened it up to 3rd party SD cards, didn't they?
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6-06-2007 @ 12:03AM
samfish said...
I'd love to buy an HDD for the Wii.
...but I'm not paying more than $80 bucks for it. Any higher than that and it's a rip off.
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6-06-2007 @ 12:15AM
Brian said...
I could definitely see this coming
http://technosyncraticblog.blogspot.com/2007/06/various-nintendo-e3-rumors.html
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6-06-2007 @ 5:38AM
Almadi said...
I cant believe you didn't use this picture for this post:
http://madiart.blogspot.com/2007/03/wfgn-11-sega-love-edition.html
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6-06-2007 @ 5:40AM
Tom said...
I bought an 8GB SD card off Newegg for $75. I'm hoping for a Wii firmware update that will allow me to run games directly from it. Until then it remains in my camera.
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6-06-2007 @ 6:55AM
Badtz said...
I'd love for Nintendo to debut an external drive or firmware to use third party drives. But I think the more likely scenario is for Nintendo to release a new Wii.. a 'WiiSP' so to speak. Part of Nintendo's business plan seems to be that they release a piece of hardware, wait to see if it becomes successful, then when everyone seems comfortable, they drop a newer version that fixes whatever flaws the original had. They did it with the GBAsp (brighter screen, smaller form factor, better buttons) and the DS lite (smaller, lighter, better battery, better design). They could easily make a new Wii with a larger internal drive and DVD playback.
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6-06-2007 @ 8:19PM
Will said...
sure they opened it up to 3rd parties for SD cards, only because there's no way to have an SD card not work on another device...it wouldn't be an SD card!
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6-06-2007 @ 11:46PM
vidGuy said...
Wrong, I'm not talking about the form factor but about the media format. Nintendo could have easily locked out 3rd party SD cards by only allowing the Wii to save to an SD card with a special (proprietary) file system.
A proprietary hard drive would look like a regular HDD physically, but would have a different file structure that prevents it from being used elsewhere and from any other HDD (not correctly formated) to be used in the console. That's what both the XBOX and 360 have going on, though I think the PS3 may be wide open because you can supposedly upgrade drives.
Nintendo could have made it so the Wii reads all SD cards (allowing them to still use the Photo Channel and provide MP3 support) but only writes save data and VC games to "NINTENDO MEMORY SD" cards. But they didn't.
Honestly, I'm surprised the console didn't come with USB hard drive and thumb drive support out-of-the-box.
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6-07-2007 @ 7:19AM
Lou D said...
or they could release a Wii with 8GB of internal flash AND enable larger SD cards as well...
also on the Wii's channels menu, they could let you go down instead of just across and the lower set of 48 channels would come straight from the SD car port...
...then could also make an upper set for external HD...
there is flexibility in the Wii's channel menu design...
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