Nintendo Wii owners have long awaited the official announcement of Nintendo’s “Storage Solution,” for the Wii. Previously limited to playing games stored on the console’s internal memory, Wii owners were often forced to “clean out the ‘fridge” to download new WiiWare and Virtual Console games. The process of transferring games back and forth from system memory to SD card was time consuming, cumbersome, and aggravating – but that problem ends today.
At today’s 2009 Nintendo Keynote at GDC San Francisco, Nintendo announced the WIi System Menu 4.0, available for download today! The new menu adds an “SD” menu where WiiWare and Virtual Console games can be viewed, booted, and played directly from the SD card. The update also adds SDHC support, which means your Wii is now capable of supporting high capacity SD cards – giving you up to 32 gigabytes of additional storage for your Wii! What does this REALLY mean? It means that with a 32GB SD card and Wii System Menu 4.0, your Wii can hold an additional 240 Wiiware and Virtual Console titles.
This update is long overdue, and although we’re happy to have it – it should have been introduced in the same quarter as WiiWare.
What are you going to do with your newfound space? Does this solution work for you? Tell us what you think in the comments!
If a publisher could sell there games on SD cards some how this would be even bigger! Imagine a RPG for the Wii and all the DLC can be save to the actually disk that you bought for the game. I'm sure it beats optical streaming data.
I think I'll wait for the 32GB SD cards prices to drop, cause $100 is just too much.
Although I think 16GB would be enough for me, and those only cost like 35 bucks.
finally downloading world of goo and tetris party
I think this is great. I agree that it is overdue but better late than never. I can finally play all the games that I have on my SD card right away with out having to go through the annoying process of pulling games off and putting games on.
Word of advice!
From what was mentioned to me, thse ultra-large SD cards may not work with Rock Band and/or GH:WT yet.
So if you just want to super-expand your WiiWare/VC library, go ahead.
But you may want to hold off on game music track storage for a little bit.
It DOES make a difference since I'll update my console as soon as a I get home and download the rest of Space Invaders Get Even, World of Goo, Alien Crush Returns, Bit.Trip.Beat and MaBoShi.
2D Boy go give Nintendo a big kiss because I'll finally be downloading your game.
Now I'll actually start buying some WiiWare games. I've been wanting to buy Lost Winds and World of Goo.
Does this mean that "uncopyable" save files can now be moved to the SD card? I've got a handful of save files (Excitetruck comes to mind) that I do not want to delete, but I do not want them cluttering up the system memory either.
Still, this is pretty awesome. Better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, anyway.
The Wii just got more competetive.
About damn time.
I'm happy.
Does this work with any SD card or do you have to have the high capacity SD card?
I am actually glad that this got announced, it was long overdue. I haven't run into the storage problem but a lot of people have. I bet this also has to do something with Rockband and GuitarHero publisher who were probably telling Nintendo to do something as those games have been selling well on the platform. It seems like they came up with something that works, and 32 gigs is plenty.
Does anyone know what this update does to a soft-hacked wii? I have the homebrew channel and I don't want an update to limit the applications I can use.
Oh I forgot mention, this also means that WiiWare devs can now really bring out more hefty games. 🙂
Yes, this definitely affects me as three months ago I was going to give Nintendo more money, but I didn't have the storage space to download another game! (OK, they already have my money, but leave me my illusions.) Now it doesn't matter! 4x the internal storage capacity, here I come! Of course, like many others who heard this announcement, the first thing I thought of was "Woo, 32GB card! All right!" However, I'll wait on that considering the high cost (and a 4GB card is less that $15 right now anyway).
KillerHeroes, I would assume this solution will work with any SD card the Wii can currently handle.
J_man86, from what I've seen this update, like many previous to it, only affects the Twilight Hack and new installs of the Homebrew Channel. I was initially concerned, but there was a video walkthrough I just saw of this SD card solution, and their Wii had the HBC installed! Besides, this update is just too cool and mission critical to not jump into right away. If it means I can't play ScummVM on my big screen for a while (or never again), I'll get over it.
So would it not be great if America finally got the 64DD and the F-zero track maker?
This would let you do a whole mod on the actual card! Seriously nintendo needs to bring out a small development tool for any one to buy on the Wiiware service so we can make our own 2d games! We have the room and interfaces to do it now!
I was all excited for it, then it said my SD Card would not work. It worked before the update. It is a Mini-SD from my phone. Bye bye all of my game saves and games on it.
REALLY!!!!!?????? I love you, Nintendo.
@ Ninja:
You can still reclaim DLC from the Wii Shop Channel if you deleted them from the Wii system memory.
I don't have enough Wii Points for World of Goo…
It was totally useful for me, with my SD Card of 4 GB, I've 30,000 blocks, I don´t think to need more in the wii's life.
1GB is enough for most of my games, I guess. 10000 blocks is probably enough.
This is the update that many of us have been waiting for. Now Nintendo will sit back, relax, and reap the monetary benefits because many like myself have not purchased a Virtual Console or WiiWare game since the memory was full on the Wii. For myself, I would say this is the first games that I have downloaded in about 8-10 months. I filled up the memory pretty quick and always hated transferring the games back and forth between SD & Wii. I for one am looking forward to downloading games again. Now if only they would put out some Wii demos, not just the DS demos from the Nintendo Channel. We have the space now.
@ J_man86
from what ive read from other forums, firmware 4.0 does not affect the homebrew channel or backup loader but it has disabled the use of twilight hack at least for now.
"Oh I forgot mention, this also means that WiiWare devs can now really bring out more hefty games."
Not really, we still have to have room in the Wii Memory Storage to play our games from the SD card. Though, they could raise the maximum file size a little bit more now that the Wii can breathe freely.
At first I didn't mind the storage solution to now, but I must say it is a great convenience to have ALL of the games available to me to play. Plus, I look forward to the new arcade games we will be getting later.
Ok, updated and downloaded Bit.trip.beat, Alien Crush Returns, PopEmDropEmSameGame and Onslaught.
I have a 2 GB SD card and currently have 7,000 blocks free with 300 blocks of back-up save games, 2,000 blocks used for GH: WT songs and 5,700 on Wiiware and VC games.
I'm seriously thinking about buying a 16 GB card and copy everything on the 2 GB SD card over there, but don't know if that can be done on a PC or I would have to re-download everything to the new SD Card…
About time we got this. Great to see and can't wait to utilize it.
All I Have To Say Is That
Nintendo Had Better Be Doing Some Massive Extensions To The Wii Shop Channel In Order To Justify The Fact That 32 GB SD Cards Can Now Work With it
@EdEN, from my experience, you can back up and merge the content of separate SD card used by the Wii if (I guess) the contents are not conflicting (same game files).
The root folder is "private/wii/" if I remember right, and I think every game, and every game save has its binary file from there. But the files have non descriptive names.
I know some programmers created applications to manage PSP files backups with icons, etc. from your hard drive. I wonder if it can be done with the wii.
Ah, I remember getting the update as if it were only tuesday, oh wait it was. Every tuesday I have a routine where I boot up the Wii throw my votes in the voting channel, check out what's new in the Shop, then check out new nintendo videos.
Well, Tuesday I woke up to the glowing of the Wii. Checked out the message to discover a new update. After installing the update, I finally have a reason to pick up an SD card (don't have one and still don't, but now I do knowing that they are actually useful now.) So that was a pleasent surprise. But going to the Nintendo Channel and seeing a video for a new Zelda game made my day. Nintendo did a good thing this year already, let's see if they can keep it up.
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