Nintendo dismisses Wii HDD rumour

[wraggster]

via eurogamer

Nintendo has dismissed reports that it's going to release an external hard disk drive for the Wii so that people can transfer some of their stuff off the machine's internal flash drive, but it has confirmed that the DS is about to get a voice communication headset.
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Japanese magazine Gamelabo claimed that Nintendo Japan executives had met recently to discuss the hard disk drive, but Nintendo UK told our sister site GamesIndustry.biz that that's "pure rumour and speculation".

External storage is handy for Wii owners who like to buy games via Virtual Console, as the 512MB internal drive can quickly fill up. At the moment, users can invest in an SD flash-card to help store some of their software and save-game files away from the main system.

Meanwhile, Nintendo told gi.biz that reports Pokémon Diamond and Pearl will be released alongside a headset peripheral for online voice chat when they arrive in the US next month were true.

The company couldn't confirm plans for a European headset release, but it seems highly likely we'll see one when the games go on sale later this year..

[philr359]

Nintendo always has a way of making statements that say nothing in either direction.

[bmemike]

It's important to note that Nintendo didn't say "we're not going to make an external HDD", just that the current rumors were just that - rumors.

All this confirms is that Nintendo hasn't made an official statement about the external hard drive being in development.

[philr359]

^^ exactly

[sonikku88]

It's important to note that Nintendo didn't say "we're not going to make an external HDD", just that the current rumors were just that - rumors.

All this confirms is that Nintendo hasn't made an official statement about the external hard drive being in development.

What's the point of them making a HDD? They should just enable the USB ports on the back to allow storage devices, like external HDDs.

[bmemike]

I don't think it's as easy to just "allow storage devices". I'm not even sure if the Wii is running any sort of OS that has native support for this sort of device - and it likely doesn't in order to run an as-streamlined-as-possible code base.

On top of that, consoles do make a decent amount of money through peripherals and I don't have a problem paying for them if 1) they're reasonably priced and 2) of decent quality.

Besides, if any Wii HDD support will come, it'll come by Nintendo first for them to get some revenue for it. We may see third party stuff later on, but the Nintendo-branded items almost always come first - and that's what we need to hear an announcement on first.

[jameshisaus]

I wish they would just get on a make a HDD. I think the Wii needs demos and a HDD would make this one step closer. Also demos of VC games would make more people buy them, why have they not worked that out yet!

[bmemike]

I'd never considered demos of VC games.

I think the vast majority of the market falls into two categories:

1) "Older" gamers that know exactly what VC titles they want and know the gameplay just by the title.

2) "Younger" gamers that simply wouldn't be too entertained with the older games and stick to the "next gen" titles released for the Wii.

With the abundance of ROMs from older systems, it's not like people can't try out a game "just to see if they like it" and purchase if they do and delete the ROM if they don't.