GDC 09: Nintendo announce Wii Storage solution

Mike Bantick
Thursday, 26 March 2009 06:50

Your IT - Entertainment

News from the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, how to expand the storage of your Nintendo Wii.

It has long been the bug-bear of Wii owners trying to push their Nintendo consoles to the limit.

Out of the GDC in San Francisco come the news these owners have been waiting for, sort of.  Not exactly the HDD we were hoping for.

At his keynote address, Nintendo President Satoru Iwata revealed –amongst other things – details of the ability to expand the Wii’s storage with SD memory cards.

What follows is are the details from Nintendo:

As the library of downloadable WiiWare and Virtual Console™ games continues to grow, Wii owners have asked Nintendo to provide easy, expanded storage space. Starting today, Wii owners will be able to save downloaded WiiWare, Virtual Console video games, and Channels directly to High Capacity SD cards, in addition to SD memory cards. To play games that have been saved to SD cards, consumers will be able to select and launch them from an SD Menu icon on the Wii Menu. (Note that when launching games or channels from an SD card, an equivalent amount of internal Wii memory is required. To clear space from the internal memory, users can transfer games or channels from the Wii Menu to the SD card). This feature is included in the latest version of the Wii System Menu Update, which owners will receive immediately after performing a system update today.

Gamers will be glad to have that additional storage space, as the Virtual Console will expand to include the arcade versions of classic third-party games like STARFORCE by Tecmo Ltd., and Mappy, Gaplus and Tower of Druaga by Namco Bandai Games Inc. starting today.