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Forums - Nintendo - Harmonix on Wii: It Needs a Hard Driv

windbane on 09 April 2008
mrstickball said:
windbane - Go on Youtube and type "Rock Band" in, and see how many online supergroups record and play videos. There are quite a few.

Theonestarr - Nintendo was NOT some sort of "small company" that suddenly came into it's own due to the Wii/DS, and somehow had to come up with all of this money for online networks, and the like. Nintendo has been in the business longer than Sony, longer than MS, longer than just about anyone still making games, yet is the LAST company to give you ANYTHING when it comes to online play. Why is that?

Nintendo has made hundreds of millions of dollars PER YEAR for the past 10+ years. It's not a lack of money, folks. It's a lack of desire on Nintendo's part to intergrate something "foreign" that someone else did first, and better, quickly into their system: just like Optical-Standard media of the CD and DVD (N64 and GC ring a bell?) for consoles. Nintendo doesn't want to change, unless it's by their own desire. And that's bad, because you'll never get the best of both worlds.

And for the HDD added cost, and such: how much do you think a 4gb SD card would cost Nintendo to add to the Wii, as opposed to the 512mb SD card? $5? $10? Nintendo makes lots of cash off of each Wii sold, why not throw the consumers a bone and give them a bigger SD card? After all, you're going to easily make your money back, from the added DLC and VC/WiiWare games the consumers would download with a bigger SD Card.

I know I never post on the Nintendo forums much (as I don't want to troll), but Nintendo is online and hard-drive incompetent. You can justify it all you want, but when the PS3 and X360 are doing both rather easily, without issues (and PSN doing it free), it shows you how far behind Nintendo is. They could easily decide to devote a portion of the millions of dollars a day they make into upgrading their online infrastructure and hardware components, but choose not to. And why are you trying to defend that?

I'm sure people use the online features, but it's just not the ideal setup to have fun with. Who is going to get the Wii version to break score records if it doesn't have the DLC, though? There are also people on youtube that can 5-star the hardest songs on expert but that's not the average user either. Again, the SD card is not the ideal setup for DLC anyway unless Nintendo improves the transfer speed and allows in-game use of it. It's also not big enough. I agree with you that Nintendo just chooses not to catch up (much less innovate) with online features.



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windbane on 09 April 2008
Onyxmeth said:
Is there any evidence that the Wii is allowing DLC to be booted straight off an SD card? This is a real question as I seriously don't know. The only thing that has booted off my SD card are photos and saves. I heard games and game content need to be loaded back onto the 512MB of memory before it could be of use, which sort of ruins the idea of having the SD cards in the first place. Anyone have an answer to this?

Yep, you can't play VC games until you transfer them back to the Wii. And it's slow. In fact, I laugh at anyone that would be willing to do that every time they want to play a different game if they've ever complained about PS3 or PC game installs.



windbane on 09 April 2008
thetonestarr said:
The Wii is capable of reading data straight off of an SD card during gameplay. Recall Excite Truck? You're able to select songs - on your SD card - to play while you're racing.

Thus said, the Wii is capable of using DLC straight from the card. It may require a minor firmware update to make it optimally practical, but it's definitely doable.

Headsets are also doable but Nintendo has yet to support those for the Wii despite the DS supporting voice chat.



dschumm on 09 April 2008
thetonestarr said:
The Wii is capable of reading data straight off of an SD card during gameplay. Recall Excite Truck? You're able to select songs - on your SD card - to play while you're racing.

Thus said, the Wii is capable of using DLC straight from the card. It may require a minor firmware update to make it optimally practical, but it's definitely doable.

 Finally someone with their head on strait. Excitetruck was a launch title and they did it. 

If it wasn't a lazy PS2 port this would not be a problem. They could have made a Rockband Channel, DLC could have gone to and been read from the SD card with a minimal firmware upgrade. If Nintendo was a real stick in the mud they could sell song packs on sd cards in stores, or make them downloadable on your computer to the sd card then pop it into the Wii. The were also considering building in some flash storage into one of the instuments. But they were far too lazy for that. We get the PS2 version 8 months later.

 And for all of you bitching at Nintendo. Let it go. It is not about them being small or big, or so xenophobic. They just don't see a lot of money in it. They like making big money. What do you think will make them more money, producing another 1st party game, or adding a harddrive. Online is low on their proiority list just like High-Def. They will only get to those things when they are super mainstream.

  Nintendo has no intention of trying to copy the hardcore consoles. Nntendo has always been the local multi-player console of choice. I have give up online play forever as long as I kep getting quality local. T



Final* Word on Game Delays:

The game will not be any better or include more content then planned. Any commnets that say so are just PR hogwash to make you feel better for having to wait.

Delays are due to lack of proper resources, skill, or adequate planning by the developer.

Do be thankful that they have enough respect for you to delay the game and maintain its intended level of quality.

*naznatips is exempt

Gamerace on 09 April 2008

I've had a Wii since launch and I've yet to have any storage space issues, and I have a lot of VC titles. I also stream songs off an SD card for Endless Ocean and levels for Brawl so there's no problem with load times for it.

I agree totally, lack of HD drive (while an optional HD drive would be nice) is just a total BS excuse. Seems to me a lot of 360's don't have a harddrive either (core/arcade) - yes people could get one, but by the same token, Wii owners can get an SD card, cheap, which will hold dozens if not hundreds of Rockband songs.



 

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CaptainPrefrences on 09 April 2008

yup, it really does need a hard drive.



azrm2k on 09 April 2008

Alright Harmonix that's completely understandable. Unlike that karoake game that can stream songs off their servers RB DLC is too big for Wii's storage system. Nintendo sucks at online implementation I agree.

Now find a way for me to use my GH guitar in RB and you have my money. Unlike the PS3, Activision can't block you considering their guitar is a classic controller shell. It's not a proprietary controller that they have the rights over.

Also online play would be nice but i'm willing to forgive that in favor of local play if my damn Les Paul will work with the game.



Kyros on 09 April 2008

"The faster there is a storage solution, the better!"

It doesn't help much. That train has left the station when they solf 23m consoles without hard-disc in this generation. Pretty idiotic really.



largedarryl on 09 April 2008

Well there numbers don't really add up. So there are 3 song pack that are roughly 100MB. Well that means I should have enough space on my Wii + saves + channels + 9 (maybe 12) songs. Not to mention that playing from an SD card could have more songs than any 360 or PS3 owner have downloaded.

Like others posting here, I smell bullshit.



TheBigFatJ on 09 April 2008

What's wrong with using an SD card? 

SD cards are cheaper, per gigabyte, than Microsoft's Xbox 360 hard drive.  Now that 4GB cards are $15, and 16GB cards are cheaper than the 360 hard drive, there's really no good technical reason not to use the SD card.