The next time you pay a visit to the Nintendo World Store, we advise taking a balaclava and a glass cutter. As the above video demonstrates, the outlet now boasts a bunch of hard drive-equipped Wiis, each of which has around 20 games stored on it, ready for instantaneous selection; generally really good games, as well.
Judging by the menu from which you choose titles, these are identical to the Starlight Foundation Fun Centers that have been getting installed in hospitals. Now, you can try one out for free, without even having to break one of your limbs or anything.
During Nintendo's conference, Satoru Iwata announced the long-awaited fix for the Wii storage "crisis" -- but rather than the Wii Hard Drive peripheral or the pipe-dream "you can use any USB hard drive!" update that Wii fans dreamed of, Nintendo has chosen to refine the current SD card implementation. Basically, you can now save things from the Wii Shop Channel directly to the SD card. The act of transferring from the SD card to the Wii's internal storage and back will be simplified, as well.
Despite not being exactly what people wanted, will it serve our needs? Is saving to the SD card the right solution? Two bloggers have copied their thoughts on the subject over from their internal memory.
You heard it boys and girls: Nintendo's storage solution is coming in 2009. But, is it too little, too late? With the system only supporting 2gb cards, is this a viable solution to a growing problem? Sure, you can buy a bunch of 2gb cards, but who wants SD cards all over the place? What we're wondering is will this be enough to satisfy those of us who need more than 512mb of storage space?
Nintendo's Satoru Iwata and his company have come up with a solution to the biggest issue for Wii gamers: storage. Iwata announced during the Japan fall press conference that, in the spring of 2009, gamers can expect to have the ability to load and play software direct from your SD card in your SD slot, as well as download items directly to their SD slot. For those of you with more than 2gbs of downloaded goodies, we only have one suggestion: buy a bunch of 2gb SD cards.
Update: Just to clarify, you won't be able to play games direct from the SD card. You'll merely be able to download items directly to it. Sorry for the mixup.
If your Wii's teensy amount of storage space currently resembles an overflowing suitcase, then Guitar Hero: World Tour isn't about to make life any easier.
According to Vicarious Visions' Karthik Bala, the game allows you to download songs to an SD card, but you'll still require "about 200" free blocks of memory to be used as a "content cache" for the song you're playing through. Once you've finished with that track, you can clear the cache and transport another of your downloaded songs to your 200 reserved blocks. Transferring songs, explains Bala, happens "pretty quickly."
It sounds like a workable solution, but 200 blocks? That's the equivalent of six Mega Man 2s or three Super Metroids, and is bigger than some N64 games; we're also curious about Karthik Bala's personal definition of "pretty quickly." Protip, Nintendo: if you were thinking of announcing a storage solution in the next decade, next week's Japanese Media Summit would be the ideal time.
This update just appeared in Nintendo of Europe's RSS feed, yet mysteriously leads to a dead 404 link when clicked. As such, we can only really draw information from the title and brief description (at the time of writing, there is nothing on Google about this story), which suggest Nintendo will soon be selling music -- specifically music from artists signed to EMI -- in return for Club Nintendo Stars!
So what's happened here, exactly? Well, we suspect Nintendo has accidentally released a story, and then swiftly pulled it again. Either way, downloadable pop music isn't really something we'd have expected from the Wii, and raises new questions about Nintendo's storage strategy (unless these are playable on your PC). Keep your eyes here for updates as we learn more!
In a recent Club Nintendo interview, Reggie Fils-Aime and Shigeru Miyamoto both touched on some important things on the mind of all Wii owners. The first thing that many are still asking about is the lack of a hard drive. Well, Miyamoto commented that the company is still working on it and exploring all of the possible technologies, to which Reggie added that the company hasn't specified a traditional hard drive or another kind of storage, but will create a solution that is "better than what we have now."
Miyamoto was also asked about MotionPlus and incorporating it into future Zelda games. Miyamoto said that Nintendo was working on a new Zelda game (and also Pikmin), but would not comment as to each title supporting Waggle 2.0. He also commented that we shouldn't expect any new peripherals any time soon, seeing as how there are so many available for the Wii now. We're glad for that, because our limited closet space has meant that storing them all has been a big hassle.
So, the biggest thing to come out of this piece for Club Nintendo is more of the hard drive talk, although we guess we can't call it that, since Nintendo may want something different than a traditional hard drive. What other kind of technologies could they mean? What could be a comparable storage solution to a hard drive and yet not be a hard drive?
And statements don't get much vaguer than that, do they? Lazard Capital Markets analyst Colin Sebastian has published an investor note concerning the next round of consoles, full of words such as "may" and "could." According to Sebastian, new hardware is most likely to appear from the industry's major players in 2012, though he thinks Nintendo's next home consolemay release sooner, and could be an upgraded Wii with increased processing power, greater storage for moaning geeks and otaku, and DVD playback capabilities.
Our problem with this? Sebastian seems to automatically assume that Nintendo will simply produce a box stuffed with superior technology. Anybody who has followed Nintendo over the last five years will know that that is probably the last thing the company is likely to do.
And by "Wii hard drive" we actually mean "portable air conditioner." This image emerged from the bowels of the internet earlier today, purporting to be a Nintendo-designed hard drive for the Wii. The pranksters responsible for this didn't count on the razor-sharp observational skills of one JC Fletcher, who located this familiar-looking air conditioner at Amazon Japan. Nintendo had earlier dismissed the image as "rumor and speculation" when CVG inquired, but this pretty much nails it.
Not that this forgery is good for nothing -- for example, it does give us an excuse to once again raise the issue of where the heck our storage solution is, Reggie, and also a chance to guide you into our Wii mockup gallery of lulz.
Yamazen portable air conditioner here Nintendo's denial here
Holographic storage is a technology that we totally don't understand well enough to explain. Apparently, it's a method of storing data in which data is stored throughout the whole volume of a medium, rather than just the surface, allowing for more storage space on a disc. Basically, storage media with multiple-terabyte capacity.
Nintendo's name has shown up as a joint applicant on a patent application by InPhase Technologies for a scanner to read such holographic discs. Is Nintendo planning to solve the hard-drive issue with massive overkill, or are they planning to introduce a new format for their next system's games -- with massive overkill? Maybe nothing will come of this. Or maybe nothing will come of this for a long time.
Reggie recently sat down for a little chat with Stephen Totilo from MTV Multiplayer to discuss what's on everyone's mind. No, not the company's showing at E3, but rather the storage issues of the console.
He said that "from an Americas-centric perspective," the Wii's storage limitations are becoming a "mainstream" problem. Again, he reiterates that the company is working on a solution, but isn't ready to reveal any specifics yet.
Seriously, Nintendo, how long are you going to wait? Each week, more Virtual Console and WiiWare content releases and gamers can't download because they have no space!
That "storage problem" bingo space is going to be pristine forever -- no marking shall touch it. Even if the bingo card extended out of the keynote and across E3 (unless they make a surprise announcement later or something). Nintendo senior director of corporate communications, Charlie Scibetta, told a combined Fanboy/Joystiq Interview Squad that the company isn't planning to fix the VC/WiiWare/DLC storage issue anytime soon. Scibetta repeated the unchanged company position:
"We hear gamers loud and clear on that. What's great about the songs and the games that you can download is that the system remembers that you did that. So if you need to clear off space off your SD card, you can. It's not like once you delete them you've lost them forever and you have to pay for them again. It's just a matter of managing the space you do have and keeping the stuff on there that you play the most while clearing up when you want to bring new stuff on."
This puts Sega, who planned to "cross that bridge when they come to it" with the Samba de Amigo DLC, directly in front of a bridge.
Keep an eye on Wii Fanboy for more of our interview with Mr. Scibetta.
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.
When the Wii was released, it was small, especially compared to the behemoth consoles manufactured by the competition. But after the wheel and the zapper and digging out the GameCube controllers, and finding a place for the balance board -- and don't forget, you'll need those maracas, too -- does it feel like the tiny system has grown a little? Is it taking over the living room? How do you manage all the extras?
After screwing up and subsequently apologizing, Nintendo Europe's Laurent Fischer wants to get back to work. He does so by addressing the ever-present desire for extra Wii storage space. Yeah, kind of a touchy subject to bring up so soon after Fischergate, but there has to be some big revelation, right?
Well, apparently Nintendo are "working on a solution," but "there's no plan to issue hardware." Fischer is referring to an external hard drive, a device that geeks and otaku gamers are eager to get. Iwata gave everyone hope, but those sentiments have been pretty much squared away in the bollocks box. There's always talk, always rumors and speculation, but still no storage -- and now, no plans.
Check out the full feature for more details, but beyond telling us what we already know, Fischer and Nintendo aren't revealing anything.
That "storage problem" 
When the Wii was released, it was small, especially compared to the behemoth consoles manufactured by the competition. But after the wheel and the zapper and digging out the GameCube controllers, and finding a place for the balance board -- and don't forget, you'll need those 
