If Nintendo do release a usb hard drive and not allow any old hard drive to work, it will have to have some pretty nifty features to justify it.

Seriously I doubt that Big-N will allow users to play theyr VC-games from any medium that does not carry theyr brand. I mean, after all I'm still paying about €20 for a GC-Memory, and that's for the small version, so why would they let users have space to save now for free?!

On the other hand, I hope whatever Nintendo comes up with will not be to costy- after all what good could it be if a Wii+external memory all of a sudden costed the same as a basic 360 with a 20Giga harddrive built in!

Plus, when they come up with theyr external drive I hope they use it to make it easier to use everything else that concerns memory- like storing .mp3 on it or allowing GC-savegames to be read from it!

I don't care if I have to buy a Nintendo brand USB device or not, JUST TAKE STEPS TO FIX THE PROBLEM, NINTENDO!!! I have 65 VC games and I'm sick of playing card tag and it terrifies me to think what it'll be like once I start downloading Wiiware titles.

I agree. I went to download Lords of thunder yesterday and couldnt because i was out of precouis memory. I had to tranfer Wave Race 64 to a sd card (which took quite a long time) in order to dl LoT. Come on Nintendo, give us an external hard drive or something. I wont have any room to buy your wii ware games!

In theory SD cards should be fine. Good brands have sufficient access speeds (and if they don't the USB ports should be able to handle 8MB/s assuming they are USB2.0). I think the reason it takes so long to copy on the Wii is that it is encrypting/decrypting the games on the spot.

A more tempory solution would be to make the most of the psace that is available by employ file compression on the VC titles (if it isn't being done already). F-Zero currently takes up roughly 3MB for instance. I think it can be gotten down to lower than that without much trouble.

@Damo. You copy it to your SD card and look at how large content.bin is (it'll be in a folder called JACE or sometihng like that)? You've got to remember its not just the ROM but also the emulator and an instruction manual (thats probably where the space vanishes to). Of course that is assuming the encryption doesn't somehow bloat it :S

I agree with this whole issue, at first 512MB didn't seem all that bad for VC tittles, but with all the new content coming down and channels and everything you can really eat through that space in a short time. Nintendo would never officially allow 3-party HDD support as they would be terrified of the possibility of playing games on other systems without paying. I can see them coming up with their own drive that would work for about 3-months until someone cracked the encoding.

I hope we do get generic USB HD support, as I have a 60gb external that I have no use for at the moment, and I'd obviously much rather use that than buy a new, official, Nintendo HD.

Even if Nintendo don't allow it, I'm sure hackers would make third party HDs work with Wii, but then I'd be worried about new firmware coming along and bricking it.

All that said, there's no Nintendo USB keyboard so far, and the company seems happy to let people use their own with Wii... for now.

Something NEEDS to be done.
Really. 14 months in, we have 200 VC games. At this rate, we will have probably 300+ games by the end of THIS year. We'll also have a good handful of WiiWare titles by the end of this year as well.

That's also not including new channels. We are still getting that "Everybody's Nintendo Channel" WiiFit comes with a channel, and I'm sure they have a few other channels they have in mind.

What in the world are they thinking?! I understand it came out as 512mb to reduce cost, but man. I would of gladly payed $80-$100 more if the system came with an 8-16gb at LEAST!

I'd like to see an official Nintendo drive released but I'm worried they might take the micky slightly with the price.

I feel everyone's gripe here.

But I personally think that Nintendo would/might make a new Wii first, with a larger harddrive, and of course finally have the Wii's in different colors, and possibly the DVD drive that was rumored long ago, it was supposed to be provided by sonic-something if I'm not mistaken.

Then I see Nintendo doing an external drive after they might announce a new system. For some reason, Big N likes to do things backwards...(at times). And hopefully allowing the ability to play off the SD cards and allowing other external media storage components later on. Aside from the memory thing, Nintendo really has to fix the game save dilemma too. "They" say that some games don't save because it has Wi-Fi features, but I have some games that don't save at all and it's non-Wi-Fi. Wad up wit that!

Back on track, yea, I agree, they really do need to fix up this mess. What will happen if we start downloading Wii demos into our systems!

Also, Rock Band is on the way for the Wii,......expand the drives asap please!!!!! Wii want downloadable content for our music games!!!!!

I wouldn't think that there would be a problem for Nintendo to allow any HDD to be attached to the Wii. They currently let you attach any SD card you want and most wireless keyboards work with it. So there should be no problem.

If now we can use third-party keyboards, and third-party SD cards to copy our games, why couldn't we use third-party hard drives?

I think Nintendo will allow that.

This is not an accesory for exclusive use with the console, it's something a lot of people already have.

I don't really understand Nintendo's fears of piracy with VC titles. People who are already interested in pirating old games are, and probably have been doing so through emulation and roms on the internet for some time now.

Yes, it does seem silly to put a generic socket (USB) on the thing, only to enforce a specific kind of hardware. If they wanted to do that, then why not have a proprietary expansion port?
So yes, there could easily be generic HD support through the USB, but games companies, Nintendo included, have done foolish things in the past, so you never know!
While I could see generic USB HD support added, I can just as easily see them pi**ing everyone off by only allowing official drives, because sometimes companies do dumb things.

The days of video games being tangible objects that you buy, sell, and own are almost over. Not too long from now we'll be streaming them off the internet and paying monthly charges to play them.

Along with increasing storage memory and accessibility, I hope Nintendo releases a "Virtual Console Channel". Instead of scrolling through 4 pages of channels, just go into the VC Channel where it lists all the games you have on the drive and SD card and play them and manage storage from the channel.

nintendo neeeds to bring out a 40 GB ext. hard drive via usb for the cost of a new copy of galaxy say...because it's their fault the wii drive is garbage im going to have a ps3 within about a year and it will be heavily competing for my gaming dollars so ninty needs to get with it

"Surprise! We actually packaged an inactive 5GB hard drive with every Wii. For the small price of 6000 Wii Points, you can activate your NintenDrive channel!"

Ha! I wouldn't be surprised!

I personally don't want a hard drive humming in the background sucking up juice. Some of the things I like about the Wii is how it's compact, quiet, and use very little electricity in comparison to my 360. Thus, I favor the SD solution as it is seamless.

Nintendo needs to develop a 160GB External Harddrive that allows people to play their VC games & WiiWare stuff.

How about instead of just additional storage, the Wii could sell a USB attachment with hard drive and graphics enhancement, much like Sega's 32x (but good)?

"Along with increasing storage memory and accessibility, I hope Nintendo releases a "Virtual Console Channel". Instead of scrolling through 4 pages of channels..."

Hear, hear! Actually when I first got my Wii I thought that this is how the VC would work. It definitely could make things a bit more organized.

I don't really care what type of solution Nintendo may come up with, as long as they create one, period. I'm already at the point at which I'm shuffling around games to and from my Wii's flash drive, and that with less than thirty games on hand. Once WiiWare will be released it'll start to become a huge pain if Nintendo decides not to release some sort of storage expansion.

I'd say as long as everything can be re-downloaded all over again (and forever... also in 30 years from now) it would be o.k. to increase the download speed. If there are ways of course. Gaming itself is a touch-and-go issue for nintendo. Obviously.

by the way... does anyone know how long a purchased liscence of a vc title is valid.

I found out via mag that I read that the Wii USB ports can be used to charge ipods. Now if only there was some sort of Apple/Nintendo collaboration. I mean, the Wii was designed (aesthetically) with the ipod in mind...

I think that the problem could be in the emulations process, I am just typing out loud so to speak, but if you allow an outside source that is not directly connected to the original hard drive to access and play games then I believe that it would be much easier to hack the wii's personal coding and allow for an emulator to be a phantom wii hard drive. responding with the owners liscence to play the games, but from an external source, and then placed onto the usb drives. I can understand if the internals to thier hard drive are directly accessible to the information that is only on the drive associated with that particular wii, but when you start allowing outside drives to access that information I can see people taking advantage of the hd images and speading near and far, for everyone to share.

I have been wondering how they would keep this from happening in the future with everyone wanting to use the least expensive way to run thier programs, but to keep the wii security alive per system.

Sorry just rambling.....

I don't think Nintendo will make us buy an official Nintendo external HD so that 3rd party software can be put on it. They could just do the same thing they've done with SD cards, there's no way to run 3rd party stuff from that, so what makes HD's any different?

I would think the reason Nintendo doesn't want us to be able to play games from SD cards or copy games from external storage should be obvious. They don't want someone to buy a VC game and then give it to all his friends. There are a lot of ways to work around this problem, of course. I'm sure Nintendo is going to be addressing storage sometime in the future. It's something that'll be really easy to do and really lucrative. We don't need to worry, just be patient.

If Nintendo is worried about people downloading games to SD cards and then copying them onto their friend's Wiis, then I have a solution. Make it to where you can play games on any Wii off of any SD card (It would be no different then taking a CD game over to a friends house), but only be allowed to copy the game to the Wii that it was bought from. Then you could share the games with friends, but not be allowed to copy them onto your friends Wiis. Everybody wins that way.

brooks, problem with that is you could copy the games to multiple SD cards and you wouldn't need to copy to the Wii drive

I don't want an External Hard drive lie around the console.. or a USB memory... sooo clumsy.. Cheap memory but.. Why don't make it possible to play the games on the SD card and with the SD"HC" or also known as "SD 2.0 format" and 32 gigabyte memory.. I'll be satisfied.. =) If they don't release xbox or Sega Saturn games on the wii..

What would be nice is if the external drive keeps with the minimalist theme running with the console, so rather than have a box that sits next to it, incorporate a flash-based drive into a re-designed stand, so to look at it, nothing would appear different, except for a thicker base. Obviously a short discreet lead that plugs into a USB port actually connects the two at the back, but you wouldn't see that anyway.

If its flash based, that should keep the price down surely, plus no extra noise or power consumption?

Seems like a simple logical solution to me. I assume that most people sit their Wii's vertically so this shouldn't be an issue? I know personally I sit mine horizontally, but that's only due to the fact that it sits perfectly in a space I had spare and am too lazy to find it a new home so it has its intended orientation, lol!

Oh, and whilst they're at it, hurry up and release a wireless nunchuck & classic controller please, I don't mind paying out for extra batteries! Wires are soo last century..

Just wondering, could a gamecube memory card work? Saving to it may cause problems if you plugged it back into the old cube, but is it even a viable option?

Why the heck can't we play our own games off of the SD card, anyway? I don't think the transfer speed should be an issue because of that encoding theory and the fact that the entire game could, in most cases, be copied to the "game-in-progress" memory on the system. We already can't copy our games from our SD cards to our friends' systems, so it should be easy to let us play them from our cards on our Wii's but not our friends' systems. I don't know too much about the tech involved, but shouldn't that be ridiculously simple to do (assuming Nintendo had the brains to)?

I´m very selective when it comes to choosing VC games. That´s part economy, part storing space dilemma. I have plenty space right now, but of course I want a storage media I can play games from! SD cards and this "download again" feature isn´t going to make me happy once my Wii is "full".

If what I've heard is right, every time you download a VC game, you're downloading a new copy of the emulator to run that game as part of the file. If that's true, then that's madness. Surely the big 'N' can licence each emulator and send them - once - as part of a System Update? That'd reduce the storage space needed pretty considerably. Or is that just too easy?

@Clayfrd. Gamecube memory cards have a pathetic amount of memory (8MB is the capacity of the official 1019 block card) and their access speeds seem fairly poor as well.

@DarrenSW. Emulators don't take up much space. From a coding perspective it is easier if you make an emulator work for one game as opposed to many. It is possible in getting one game to work you would break another. Also if my understanding of how the channels work (each is a self-contained executable) you might actually need the emulator each time.

I haven't run out of space yet, but it isn't going to take too much longer. I wish there was an external storage option, but.. I can see a couple things that kind of suck.

For one, if your Wii goes kerplunk, and you either have to buy another one, or they ship you a replacement, all the games and stuff that are on your external (or SD cards) will be completely useless anyways, and then I'm sure they'll be able to confirm the purchase via your original Wii Shop account, but... you'll still have to re-download everything.

The only thing I can see as being extremely beneficial, is if Nintendo ever decides to take some games away, and then you'll always have your copy saved elsewhere....

Dunno, I wish they would have given us ample harddrive to begin with, I would have gladly paid another $50-$75 up front just to have a 40gb+ harddrive in it.....

I decided to try out the sandisk extreme III 2 gig sd card after reading about it being really fast,(read and write speed of 20mb a sec) it copies nes games in around 15 seconds, snes, megadrive and turbografx games in 30-40 seconds and neo geo and n64 games in around a minute inc sin and punishment which is a really big game. Its still not the perfect solution but hopefully if enough people kick up a fuss things may change. new to the forum so hello to everyone

Keep in mind max storage that can be used is 2GB for SD Card.. 4GB won't work.

At this point I'd be happy with any memory solution, even if it is limited and overpriced, so I guess "mission accomplished" on that one, Ninty.

Let us use USB solutions and my thumb drive will work just fine. So long as the Wii reads USB devices fast enough, I'd favor this solution. An official WiiDrive (or whatever) would inevitably release, although I think it'd be a pricey and rather dumb choice.

Bit of a late addition to comment on the topic, but I just wanted to share 2 thoughts of mine...

First of all, I PERSONALLY think it would be cool if they gave out a proprietary HDD that looks JUST like the Wii and can stand next to it in a nice dual stand and the front blue light of the Wii's drive (but on the HDD) would instead be a bar indicating how full the HDD is (sort of like the circle on the WD MyBook series if you know that one)

I would love seeing a nice vertical blue line that grows from bottom to top at how full the drive is (and be willing to pay for an aesthetically pleasing external HDD )

My second thought is that it would be helpful and nice if VC-Reviews would include the number of blocks a game is big in the reviews... So I can see up front if it'll fit in my remaining space and so forth... You know, along the side of the game review that lists the cost in points and release date per region etc...

Has Nintendo ever "officially" announced any kind of HDD expansion or anything related?

What with the Net browser, N64 and GEO titles, Wiiware and SSBB's huge file size, we're all going to be needing a HDD.

But Ninty being Ninty, it'll take years to get one and it'll have to be a Ninty one to be used with the Wii.

"I personally don't want a hard drive humming in the background sucking up juice. Some of the things I like about the Wii is how it's compact, quiet, and use very little electricity (...)"

I personally would be happy if modern consoles still had descent on/off switches like they used to. I can't switch my Wii off via wiimote since I went online, it only ever goes into that orange-light "still on-line mode" until I keep the power botton pressed for about 5 secs, and then I must pull the plug to have the red light finally go out o_O. I can hardly call that economical.

Furthermore, the internal ventilation fan of my Wii produces just about as much noise as my PC- if not even more.

So, if they make an external HD I won't care- but I wish Nintendo took a rescent climate debate into consideration and made it possible to switch it off when not needed. I'm no eco-fanatic, but I care about ongoing cost as much as about the buying prize, which will be hefty enough anyway >:/

just get the blasted thing out there and we'll buy it. They know we will. Just stop making us delete/transfer the VC games off our Wii Menus! This is getting annoying!

I could really careless, and it's not that big of an issue; just Nintendo didn't prepare the laziness of gamers.

Besides, if we were given an update for a HDD; what will make them to have the VC/WiiWare games to be played off of the HDD. IF they did, then everyone will complain there won't be any room in the Wii Menu. More stupid, unnecessary cycles, and I still stand that the SD cards are good enough.

How fast is the USB port on the nintendo and a memory stick? Don't think The USB memory is faster than a SD card.. 19meg/s or less like a SD card... And.. Don't think a USB harddrive is the fastest either... But its cheap memory and clumsy! And i don't think nintedo will make games that doesn't fits in the wii memory.. You can make good games today with 32 megabyte..
Think about a DVD-ROM, 16x speed... 177.3 Mbit/s or 21.1 MB/s.. And A Playstation 2 game doesn't ned a speed over 20meg/s to work... =P So i think a SD card is fast enough. =) i think Its the hardware and the Ram memory in the wii you need to look at.. =)

The SD card solution would be best for me, seeing as I've permanently got a 2gb one inside the Wii already (it can pull pics, music and video off SD cards pretty damn quick anyway so why not VC games?) The USB solution is alright but not exactly the most practical.

I had an idea that Nintendo might do which would be VERY ANNOYING to those of us that already have a Wii... what if they... launched a redesigned Wii like they did with the DS, which has an internal hard drive, also comes with DVD playback and proper HD support... wow, if that was true it'd be a big kick in the balls...

i have downloaded 81 VC games to date and would really like to see a Harddrive released or being able to play them straight of the SD card. We need something!

tanktank - you and I would still buy it though mate!

We really need this resolved pronto and is an incredible oversight on the part of Nintendo. If I purchase a VC game or WiiWare, I want it shining away on my Wii for instant access. The trouble with it being on a SD card is that you have to copy it back to the Wii for it to even show on the channels! Speaking of which, will they introdcuce a patch for more channels? I am swiftly running out!

I don't see any reason games couldn't be played directly from the SD card. You can use MP3 files from your SD card for Excite Truck, so it seems speed would not be too big an issue.

Agreed, "Wii need memory now!". Truth be told, I'd be happy enough if they figured out a way to transfer a game from a SD card to the Wii before playing it, but in some sort of automatic way... for example creating an "SD Channel" that shows the games, and you click the game, there's a small loading time because it's transfering the game back to the Wii, then you can play it. Of course, you'd have to have some space left on your Wii, otherwise the console would ask to make some space.
It doesn't seem to be the easiest solution and I don't know if it's possible, or profitable , but I supposed it could work.

This is the biggest problem i have with the Wii.
I hope they release some sort of way to fix this soon.

I would love to Download Ocarina of Time but since I already have it on my N64 and that my Wii is almost full on memory... I have decided to take the more better option of having an AV Switch so I can safely switch to playing my Wii to my N64 to my GameCube to play all of the GBA games on that GBA Player on my GameCube.

Problem fixed with a bit of shifting around things in my lounge room.

I got a 2GB SD card always in my Wii and got two more that can be used. My Wii isn't full of memory yet and I got still one full page for VC games and three boxs left on the second last page. But I can see this being a problem in the future.

I've went as far as to looking into the possibility of a hardware hack to remove the 512MB and replacing it with a larger chip. I don't know if the Wii would recognize a larger chip, but even if it did it wouldn't expand the number of pages on the default select screen. It would be labor intensive to desolder the old chip and solder a new one then download all 80+ or my games again, but it'd be worth saving the time when I play a game immediately upon turning on my Wii.

I do know that the Wii's memory is a bit lacking, but those of you that say that you have 60 plus VC games just will have to face the facts. You will have to delete some games in order to make room for more. There is no way anyone can play that many VC games at the same time. Or do you guys just like having all of your channels filled up? LOL!

THe channel-limit is another thing to worry about. I vote for the option of having one channel that contains a list of all downloaded games. You could have a channel for VC games, one for WiiWare and one for the others like Miisharing and such.

Or, perhaps, Nintendo could make it possible to arrange your number and channels and the games in them yourself, so everyone can make 'playlists', like 'all fighting games' or 'all games from a certain console'.

That's just me, dreaming. But how boring would life be without dreams... ^{z^Z_Z^z}

Mike, of course I can't play all my 80+ games at once, but on their original consoles it was easy and quick to swap carts and play a different game. On Wii I have to copy and delete games before buying new ones and then when I want to play an old I've already put on SD I have to make room for it on the Wii then copy it back. That's a big waste of time.

Ideally, I'd like to have every game I've purchased available to play whenever I want to, but I have to narrow my selection down to the best of the best. Nintendo needs to forget about the irrelevant DVD add-on and shift their focus to what matters most - the games. Seriously, if I have to buy a stand-alone DVD player, why would I purchase a Wii add-on?

I recomend a Transcend - Flash memory card - 4 GB - Class 6 - SDHC which i got for £6.69, such a bargin and i can use it on my wii and ps3..

(Moderators: Please do not consider this advertising, i a simplying showin the members a cheap sollution to memory)

Rossi, according to what I've read NA launch Wiis only supported 2G SD cards. Do new or EU versions recognize larger SD cards?

This could be different if they gave the Wii a decent amount of space since the beginning.They lacked vision to foresee this.

Well, they always wanted the Wii to attract the casual/family market. Most of the people who are in that audience probably don't download much...

On the topic of data management, did anyone else have a problem with a Datel sd memory card?

I am worried about filling up my pages... I only have one left

Well, I am certainly full now and still have 2400 points to spend
What are we supposed to do? I do actually play almost all my games, usually a few different ones per day.. and I guess deleting them and downloading them isn't a huge issue until my internet dies...

Question, how long does it take to put/retrieve a game (say a large one, like a neogeo) to an SD card? Is it longer than say the time it might take to download from a moderately fast internet connection in comparison? Just wondering if I should bother to purchase an sd card or wait to see what nintendo has in store for us (cause you know they'll be doing something sooner or later).

I liked what someone said about having a channel that would list the downloads. maybe they could have a NES channel, a SNES channel, etc... This would make it very easy to access all of your VC games for a particular system. Now if they would just increase the memory!

wow 1st comment in 9 months

And still, Nintendo hasn't done anything about it...in 9 months!