Lack of a Wii hard drive: Top 5 negative aspects

The gaming community has been filled with buzz at the possibility of a hard drive over the past few months. Wii owners are beginning to grow tired of clearing out their virtual fridge and have been begging for a storage solution. The lack of a hard drive has definitely caused a huge amount of problems. Here are our top 5 complaints that the lack of a Wii hard drive has created.

5) Nintendo is losing money

At the end of the day, the addition of a Wii hard drive would help Nintendo rake in more money. Numerous Nintendo representatives – including Satoru Iwata himself – have noted that the current storage solution affects an isolated number of Wii owners. Regardless of the validity of this belief, all types of Wii owners will catch up with the hard drive issue in due time (yes Nintendo, casual gamers included!) If Nintendo continues to develop channels for the Wii, and as long as Virtual Console/WiiWare titles are released, there is a lingering guarantee that people will download them. Unfortunately for Nintendo, there is a common consensus amongst the gaming community that once casual gamers reach their storage limit, they will become confused/frustrated with having to remove content from the Wii menu. In the end, the Wii would lose some of its accessibility, which is something Nintendo has wanted to avoid on the Wii front at all costs.

4) Lack of real downloadable content

While it’s great to be able to receive new levels in Super Smash Bros. Brawl and being able to participate in Mario Kart Wii tournaments, we can’t help but wish that these gifts can be revisited. In Super Smash Bros. Brawl, levels are recycled each day. This means that you may encounter a fan-made creation you absolutely love, only to see it disappear forever in a twenty-four hour period. The situation is similar with Mario Kart. New tournaments will be available every few weeks, but once the deadline passes, forget about being able to replay them. Basically, we want content which can be kept and revisited at a future date. Having to part with unique content is very unfortunate and is something we know can be addressed in future titles with a hard drive solution.

3) Companies aren’t supporting downloadable content

Wouldn’t it be nice to wake up in the morning, power up your Wii, and know that some original content is available for the game you’re playing? For most, the answer would be yes. Sadly, however, very few companies are supporting downloadable content. Up to this point, only Nintendo has been a true supporter of add-on functionality. However, it’s tough to put the blame on companies for the lack of support because there is no acceptable area to store original content. Fortunately, Vicarious Visions has announced downloadable content for Guitar Hero: World Tour; although, this announcement does bring up the question as to where the new content will be stored – We’re praying that this is a sign of a hard drive announcement in the future.

2) Deleting channels

From the moment the Wii released, Nintendo has provided its fans an opportunity to download five unique channels. Nintendo generally promotes them when they first become available, encouraging players to download them for free. However, these channels come at a virtual price. The Internet channel alone requires 270 blocks of your Wii flash memory. Granted you have downloaded all of the channels and purchased a few WiiWare or Virtual Console titles, you will be forced to delete some channels to conserve space. This means that channels which are actually worthwhile to keep such as the Nintendo Channel, Internet Channel, Mario Kart Wii Channel, and Wii Fit channel, may end up being deleted.

1) Having to deal with re-downloading/transferring games

The classic mantra from Nintendo regarding concerns about a storage solution has been blunt. As has been said countless times, users can simply transfer content to their SD card or re-download content from the Wii Shop Channel. Sadly, Nintendo has yet to recognize the huge amount of frustration both of these methods cause. Copying data to a SD card is an extremely aggravating process. A file which consists of 250 blocks takes more than a few minutes to transfer. Moreover, some save files (such as the Super Smash Bros. Brawl data) cannot be copied. Obviously, this is a serious problem which needs to be addressed, particularly when you consider that re-downloading games isn’t any more convenient than transferring data to a SD card.