Nintendo's Wii Little Space Problem

November 07, 2007

by: Cameron Brown

The following editorial is a part of AMN's "Your Turn" guest editorials series. This editorial does not express the opinion of AMN or its staff.

Several weeks ago, after reading the incredible reviews for the N64 import, Sin and Punishment, I made a virtual trip to the Nintendo Virtual Console store to download Treasure's masterpiece for myself, but I received an unexpected surprise after clicking the "Download" button—not enough Wii memory available for the purchase.

I knew that this day would come eventually, but I always counted on a solution arriving before my need for space became an issue. The SD slot was a bust because it required swapping out files through the system menu rather than direct access from the channels, and the external hard drive solution that was hinted at early and often is now clearly going to be a no-show.

" The solution is for Nintendo to take their fridge analogy seriously -- to take it to the next level and make it intuitive."

Nintendo's stance on the memory problem is that users are smart enough to manage their files, with Nintendo using the refrigerator analogy of throwing out old food in your fridge to make space for new food. It's a pretty good analogy, except that when I'm at the checkout register of the grocery store, the clerk doesn't refuse to sell me a watermelon until I first go home and clean out the head of lettuce I left sitting in the vegetable crisper for the past two weeks.

And while I'm smart enough to go to the Wii's system menu to delete games in order to make room for new purchases, it's a hassle and it goes completely against Nintendo's Blue Ocean philosophy of making the Wii simple and easy enough for even your grandma to use. Wasn't that why it made a controller with a minimum buttons? Fiddling around in system memory is going to be just as intimidating to my mom as a 30-button Xbox 360 or PS3 controller would be. And it's also likely that mom might not be able to distinguish between the folder of game saves and the games files themselves because the layout is very similar. Also, you might be able to re-download that Sonic game, but restoring that Level 8 game save means starting over from scratch.

Sure, mom and grandma aren't currently the main audience using the Virtual Console, but it's a good bet that many of the upcoming original Wii Ware titles will be tapping into the casual gamer market, and it's also safe to assume that these game files will be much larger than the classic console games—probably even bigger than Sin and Punishment. My space problem this month becomes everyone's problem next spring.

I get why Nintendo is hesitant to bring out an external storage solution. Extra peripherals don't have the best track record in longevity and support (just ask PS2 owners who got stuck with the Final Fantasy Online drive). I also understand why it closed off the SD slot from being accessed directly to prevent piracy. So how does it solve this huge upcoming storage dilemma?

The solution is for Nintendo to take their fridge analogy seriously—to take it to the next level and make it intuitive. The Wii system should be updated to work behind the scenes, so it can clean your fridge out for you—to be your very own personal refrigerator maid. When that new download of Majora's Mask maxes out your memory, the Wii knows to toss the Donkey Kong Country game you haven't played in months. DKC will still show up in your channels, but the next time you click to play, you'll just need to wait a few moments for it to automatically re-download—no return trip to the VC store necessary—and Tecmo Super Bowl gets shuffled off the system memory to return some other day.

If Nintendo tweaks their system ever so slightly, it will be able to make the Virtual Console and Wii Ware channels work seamlessly, for both the hardcore gamer and the casual one—no external memory needed.

One option is to allow us to have online accounts (for each country) and let people put save files and VC games there and access them anytime (without losing save file progress). Then we can move VC and WiiWare titles from the internet and our Wii.

Well it is at least an interesting idea that I think I would rather skip as I handle this myself. I have so far managed to deal with this on my own by just swapping those old games to my SD card. I think the real issue for Nintendo is how necessary is this, who is buying VC games and do they need this sort of help. I guess I would have no problem with this as a feature but I would hope that I could turn it off.

Very good read. But Nontendo will probably have a solution on the way. A HardDisc was hinted at in the blurred screens of SSBB and Iwata said to use the Channels more like an iPod, which hints more at something like the above. So which of those 2 it will be I don't know, but something definitely will happen before WiiWare arrives. Developers are very enthousiastic about WiiWare and Virtual Console is very popular. Every internet conncted Wii has 2 on average.

I think Nintendo was caught of guard about the succes of the Wii and downloads in every way. That's why there catching up.

It was one of the first things I thought of when people brought this up actually, and to answer your situation smallflyingtaco it could easily be an option in the Wii Menu..simply "Wii Storage Manager" Enable/Disable, etc...

Its definitely a way of handling the situation but I don't think I would call it a solution which is why I never gave it much stock. They are still going to run into problems as the size of files we want to download gets bigger and bigger. I think this step of a storage manager is important and probably a great way to handle the situation but adding the ability for even a proprietary external Hard Drive adapter would be nice. The reason I specificy adapter is because I don't want to be stuck with a single size of drive and should be able to swap, so just providing an enclosure would be plenty and let me choose/buy my hard drive on my own...of course options should also exist to let people get the adapter with a drive (but I happen to have spares!).

Thats my take anyways.....

How many games have you downloaded from VC?
I don't think alot of people will end up buying that many, but the refrigirator idea is quite good. You delete some games you haven't played for a while and insert new ones, and when you feel like playing the old ones just repeat so process and download them again from VC.

This sounds like a pretty good way to handle the problem, although I'd prefer if it asked me what I want to delete before going ahead and guessing which game I won't be needing. Both ways should be possible to implement with software updates.

It's only a matter of time before we get a hard drive though. I know they just denied it, but which do you think is more likely: Nintendo having us redownload stuff constantly and put stress on their server (N looses money), or releasing a ridiculously expensive 2-10GB hard drive that's of course the only one that's compatible and charge us an arm and a leg for it (N makes money)? In the best case scenario they'd let us use our existing hard drives, but I'm not too optimistic about that.

With all the Wii Ware stuff and DS demos they're going to be offering, I simply cannot see them not offering us a hard drive. It'd be an incredibly stupid move from a company that's been doing everything right for the last two years or so.

Has anyone ever seen a bachelor's refrigerator?  Most men don't throw stuff away until it is able to walk away on its own.   Mine is 75% full of beer and it is bad karma to throw beer away.

In all seriousness, what percentage of people are pack rats?  I don't have an answer for that, but I would guess with all of those easy storage places available it would be a high percentage.   All they need to do is fix the SD card slot, allow USB thumb drives, or allow for a USB hard drive.  Make the system use the 512 MB of fast access memory to act as a swap file.  

 

 

BengaBenga said: Very good read. But Nontendo will probably have a solution on the way. A HardDisc was hinted at in the blurred screens of SSBB and Iwata said to use the Channels more like an iPod, which hints more at something like the above. So which of those 2 it will be I don't know, but something definitely will happen before WiiWare arrives. Developers are very enthousiastic about WiiWare and Virtual Console is very popular. Every internet conncted Wii has 2 on average. I think Nintendo was caught of guard about the succes of the Wii and downloads in every way. That's why there catching up.

 You're wrong, SSBB uses SD cards.  The blurred pink button is "Submit" for your "MyNintendo" channel.  Go check the slide now that Nintendo updated it.  I wrote Soriku private mail about it as soon as I saw the pink button.

I don't think "the fridge" will ever get a harddrive, might get more flash memory though. Bandwidth will increase and the fridge concept getting better over time.

I can see some kind of "fridge" being used for DS2.