Nintendo World Store has a hard drive Wii

While gamers wait for some sort of storage solution for the Nintendo Wii, the Wii kiosk in the Nintendo World Store in New York already has one... and it is amazing. Especially impressive is the fluid way in which clerks can browse through Wii titles pre-installed to the hard drive to demonstrate to customers. Nintendo: just figure a way to mass produce this and you've got your next Wii revision.

[via Kotaku]

[#1 posted by shutz , October 22, 2008 10:50 AM]

I don't want them to make a customer hard drive. It would cost too much (look at the 360 hard drive) and would be prone to all sorts of malfunctions.

All they need to do is add support for using SD flash cards and/or USB flash memory so that we can run VC and WiiWare titles from them. If they're worried about performance, they can always just add in a small tool where you insert your memory card or USB key, and then it tests the speed at which it can be read and written to. If it passes a particular threshold, it becomes "certified", and a small key file is saved to the device so that the Wii will know it can use it as supplementary storage.

Since the Wii is not meant for watching movie downloads like the 360 is, and since the games are not in HD, the need for hundreds of GB of storage is not really there.

Oh, one more thing: if we do get more storage this way, we need a better way to manage "channels". Something like a 2-level navigation would be welcome: set a particular channel as a "folder" or "category", and then drop up to 12 channels into it. This would mean faster navigation than the current 4 screens of channels, and offer more room for channels. I would still force the disc channel to be on the root screen, but the rest should be movable.

All this should be easy to do, Nintendo! And if you're worried that this makes the Wii too complicated for the "non-gamers" you sold so many Wiis to, consider this: most of those people don't have a storage problem, so they can just keep doing things like they've been doing it before. Those of us who need the extra storage and more channel slots know enough not to get confused.

[#2 posted by musicalwoods , October 22, 2008 4:10 PM]

They should release the HDD mod and game ripping that that Wii showcases... oh dreams...

[#3 posted by evildoug , October 22, 2008 6:38 PM]

Did you say Wiivision?!

[#4 posted by WeightedCompanionCube , October 23, 2008 8:47 AM]

SHUTZ - Small HDDs are actually pretty cheap.

If you have a 360, you'll need an HDD to use all the features of the upcoming dashboard overhaul, so MS will be selling diskless Xbox 360 owners 20GB drives for $20:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081014-microsoft-undercuts-wii-value-with-20-xbox-360-hdd-promo.html

One of the features the new dashboard will have is caching games on the drive to speed up load times. Of course, you'll still need the disc to boot, and I don't think a 20GB is going to cache many games.

I just got a Wii not too long ago, and I can't put Twilight Princess down. Also, HDD or not, I love the Homebrew Channel! The homebrew emulators are more accurate than VC games, not to mention you can use your own ROMs and cheats.

Nintendo has always done custom consoles for kiosks. Does anyone remember the 12-cart NES? Every Toys-R-Us had one installed for years.
http://www.engadget.com/2007/04/11/rare-nes-kiosk-goes-up-for-auction/