Nintendo Wii Fanboy

Kind of weird how storage issues never came up at the E3 keynote, huh? We thought so, too. And, when Shigeru Miyamoto got cornered by the folks at IGN, they asked him about the lack of storage love.

"There isn't anything that we can announce today, but we have been thinking along a variety of different lines regarding this matter for some time now," Shiggy said. "So my hope is that sometime in the not too distant future we will be able to discuss some concrete solutions." So, all hope is not lost. Nintendo is at least still on the case. It's just that they're taking longer than we'd all like.

The internet, as it tends to do on occasions, went and got itself in a great big tizzy last week, after Nintendo of Europe's Laurent Fischer suggested that only "geeks and otaku" cared about the Wii's storage issue. It wasn't the smartest move of Fischer's career, and it attracted considerable bile -- and not just from Nintendo fans.

God of War creator David Jaffe, as he tends to do on occasions, got narked, and expressed his annoyance over the comment in a colorful entry on his blog. After dedicating a hefty part of his amusing rant to comparing Fischer's remarks with 1987 film Can't Buy Me Love, Jaffe accused Nintendo of "arrogance [...] that should make the company very ashamed," and suggests that Fischer "has no real clue" about games -- all while getting Fischer's gender wrong (" ... she really needs someone to sit her down and explain to her ... "). Brilliant.

Anyway, just as Jaffe was about to hoisted onto the shoulders of Nintendo fans everywhere, Fischer went and spoiled all the fun by apologizing ... sort of. "I have huge respect for those who, like me, share a common passion for Nintendo and want to make it clear that I would never use and I didn't use this terminology in such a context or way to cause offence," Fischer blubbed. "I regret that this misunderstanding has created such offence and disappointment within the community."

It's not the most heartfelt apology we've ever heard, but we'll take it. Now give us a hard drive, Fischer.

[Via Eurogamer]

Are you running out of storage space on your Wii? Then Laurent Fischer of NoE thinks you must be a big nerd. When asked about storage dilemmas at a recent press event, the managing director of marketing replied that only "geeks and otaku" want this issue addressed. Burn! We're not denying that we're geeks, mind you, but considering how much money video game addicts like us pump into Nintendo, you'd think they'd try to be a bit less dismissive.

Edge Magazine also points out some other flaws in the WiiWare service. For one, Nintendo is leaving it up to bloggers and journalists to promote WiiWare titles, as the company doesn't plan to spend much money marketing the service or its games. Another issue is the interface for the shopping channel, in which WiiWare titles can get lost easily once a lot of games start showing up -- just look at the problems that XBLA is facing.

Although we enjoy the service, WiiWare can certainly stand to be improved in a few areas. Let's just hope Nintendo is willing to meet developers and consumers halfway.

[Via MTV Multiplayer]

With both E3 '08 and the midpoint of this generation fast approaching, while it may be a bit premature, we wouldn't mind seeing a few changes in the Wii hardware. Within their lifetimes, the PS2 slimmed down, the Gamecube parted with a port, and the DS shed its baby phat, so it's not unreasonable to expect some sort of alterations to the Wii.

A compact box that's already inexpensive to produce (and continuously remains in greater demand than supply can keep up with) may not cry out for revision, but there are a few bits that can be nipped and tucked to enhance the appeal and value of the Wii. This week Revolutionary goes Revisionary.

Every other week, Mike Sylvester brings you REVOLUTIONARY, a look at the wide world of Wii possibilities.

If you're smitten with the Virtual Console, one thing we're sure you aren't in love with is having to swap games between an SD card and your Wii's internal memory, or even worse -- deleting games to be re-downloaded later. WiiWare is on its way and it's hard to imagine My Life as a King demeaning itself to share its estate with less noble games. And certainly not with it bringing microtransactions to the royal ball. And wouldn't it be dandy if some of our multiplatform ports had somewhere to store that downloadable content that everyone is raving about on other consoles?

We want need more storage, and some of you have gathered to plead with Nintendo to sell a Wii Hard Drive. It appears that your cries just fall on deaf ears because they seem hardly driven to provide one. In this edition of Revolutionary, we'll examine why Wii can't have a hard drive.

We've talked about the hard drive issue before, but now we're curious as to how much space you have left on your Wii. If you have the time, you can turn it on and give us an exact amount, but estimates are fine, too! Are you almost full already? Do you still have tons of space left? Or, are you somewhere in between?

There's been a lot of speculation about a Wii 2.0, i.e. a half step up from the Wii, ala the DS Lite to the DS ... and of course, as soon as consoles debut, some future-watchers start looking immediately ahead to the next generation. In light of that, we wanted to ask you about your predictions, from practical to utterly wild, about Nintendo's next console move. Will we see a Wii-plus, complete with a hard drive and some other increased functionality? If so, when, and for how much? Or will Nintendo skip straight ahead to the next generation? If so, when will we see that, and what will it be like? The possibilities blow our minds.

[Thanks for the idea, vidGuy!]

In another section of Stephen Totilo's E3 interview with Reggie, this chunk focuses mostly on Nintendo's perceived favoritism to the Japanese market. With that region receiving lots of titles that we only get to hear about, Stephen asks Reggie if we should even be hopeful that such games will be localized.

The discussion then moves to Wii Ware, where the question of storage space on the Wii arises. Stephen asks Reggie about the possibility of a Wii hard drive, to which Reggie responds "could there be a market for a Wii hard drive? There certainly could be."

Catch the video embedded past the break.

Even with a diminished E3, there's no controlling the wave of rumors that hit the Internet every year before the show. Why fight it? From now until E3 hits, we'll be posting one piece of wild speculation every day. Some may be patently ridiculous, and others just might turn out to be true. Even some of the ridiculous ones might turn out to be true! Rest assured, everything will be totally made-up and unfounded. Except, of course, when we speak about all the ass Reggie is going to kick. That part? Totally true.

Rumor: Aw, just kidding, guys ... we're releasing hard drive options. We just like to make you sweat.

After today's revelation of WiiWare, the new original content download service, the idea of an add-on hard drive for the console seemed much more likely. Until, that is, Nintendo UK unequivocally said, "no." Looks like it's time to start employing a wee army of SD cards, because with all the downloadable goodness, that 512 MBs of space is going pretty fast.

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.

Another day, another completely speculative rumor. This time, the word is that there's an external hard drive in the works for the Wii,. This rumor is brought to us by a Japanese magazine called Gamelabo, which, according to the media watchdogs at NeoGAF, is not necessarily a trustworthy source.

Our take: those USB ports have to be used for something sooner or later. Also, if this rumor turned out to be true, it would lend a lot of credence to those other rumors about Saturn games and demo downloads-- but using one rumor to support other rumors does not receive the Wii Fanboy Seal of Approval. We want it to be true, though! That trumps logic, right?