Nintendo's Wii Storage Solution — SD Cards 79
Lucas123 writes "After gamers complained for the better part of a year, Nintendo finally came out with a solution to the Wii's lack of storage capacity — a 2GB SD card from which users can execute games, adding to the console's measly 512MB of onboard storage. The card is expected out in the Spring. With the ability to download, the card should allow users to store up to 60 games."
This news came out of the same press conference that announced the Nintendo DSi we discussed earlier today. They made a number of other announcements as well, including Gamecube remakes for the Wii, updated to make use of the Wiimote, Club Nintendo coming to North America this year, and the Wii Speak Channel, an online voice chat utility.
Backup Save Data (Score:1, Insightful)
Hopefully with this solution, I can now backup my save data. Currently the Wii doesn't allow you to back up saved data from any Nintendo Wifi enabled game. If the internal memory gets corrupted, you lose all your Super Smash Bros. Brawl records.
blah (Score:3, Insightful)
SDHC? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think a better solution would be to add SDHC support so we can use cards larger than 2GB.
Re:SDHC? (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't understand. How is that a "better" solution? A 2GB card already holds nearly 20,000 blocks of memory. To put that into perspective, WiiWare games tend to range between 100-400 blocks. That's where the 60 games figure comes from. That's a lot of space, to be honest.
The real issue is the fact that you have to rearrange the Wii's memory every time you want to play a game. Think of it like having a PC with a 1.6GB hard drive. You can install a few games at a time, but if you want to play more than 2 or 3, you have to start uninstalling game in order to install others. If you have more than 2 or 3 you want to play at the moment, you will find yourself uninstalling/reinstalling A LOT. That's the situation of Wii owners today.
Re:Ummm... (Score:2, Insightful)
However, one thing about the other systems is that they're also designed around being a media center (such as they are), waiting to store and play MP3s, movies, etc, etc. The Wii isn't. Without all that, 2GB isn't THAT bad. True, still somewhat small, and the rather slow access time of SD cards is more than a bit painful (or at least the rather slow access time of the Wii's SD card reader), but I consider it a somewhat decent patch solution until, say, they get an external HD option or Wii2 or whatnot.
Offtopic note: I like your sig, given I know where it comes from and the fact that it's rather a bit obscure.
Save game protection (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No SDHC (Score:3, Insightful)
Third party 2Gb SD cards work fine already on the Wii. I have a San Disk Extreme II 2Gb card and it works fine - the only cards that don't work are SDHC cards (which Nintendo have never said they would support).
Regardless of how fast your SD card is the controller in the Wii is painfully slow. Hopefully what Nintendo means by "dramatically easier" copying is some firmware tweaks that improve the transfer rate to something half decent.
SD slot speed is pathetic (Score:3, Insightful)
Has anybody else noticed a ludicrously slow transfer speed when transferring files to and from an SD card? I have a SanDisk 2GB card -- not exactly a no-name brand -- and copying even a small Virtual Console game to the card takes minutes. If a block is roughly equal to 128k (that's an estimate given that a 2GB card holds roughly 20,000 blocks), I calculated the transfer rate to be about twice the speed of a 1.44MB floppy drive. Nearly 100 times slower than the theoretical maximum transfer rate of an SD card.
Maybe they're trying to keep that retro experience going by giving you mid-1980's transfer speeds too.
Re:Backup Save Data (Score:2, Insightful)
I bet it's to prevent stat savescumming but that's REALLY not worth doing. It's understandable for something like PSO where they are worried about item duping (though that still failed due to cheat devices) but when it's just stats that's stupid.
Re:SDHC? (Score:3, Insightful)
To be fair, back in those days, the actual files were small; a 'normal' installation of a game from a CD to HD would take up fifty or sixty megabytes. The CD was used for FMV and Redbook audio.