| Sal.Paradise said: I understand why some people aren't upset about the external HDD thing, but it's not personal preference that matters here, it's the market. Why would a developer choose to release their content on a downloadable platform where the storage is an optional extra? You'll fill up that 8-16gb with only a handful of retail downloads, after that there's another price wall between the customer and the content. Of course I have no idea at this point what sort of crowd will buy the Wii U, but if ta large number of owners are there for the casual or Nintendo titles with a few third party ones on the side, I'm betting the adoption rate for extra storage will be poor. The only way I see it taking off is if a Nintendo first party title requires you to get past that pay wall (ala SS with Motion Plus), but I don't expect that to happen soon - for the same reason a developer wouldn't release their game on the service in the first place. |
Because it doesn't cost them any more money to do so. They'll likely pay the same fees for disc or Nintendo digital release versions. But on digital it'll be based on actual sales whereas discs are based on shipped orders. Its the same reason EA created Origin. Its the same reason any PC game at this point is pretty much available via Steam. Digital distribution is FAR cheaper with a FAR lower risk for a publisher/dev.
External HDD is the superior option when coupled with a decent amount of built-in memory.
