Yup, Nintendo is going to have to release an HDD at this point.. Unless they want people to actually be unable to purchase their stuff. Which seems like a bad idea. I'd look for it coming out around E3.

@GiantEnemyCrab: And it'll be new and brilliant and something that only Nintendo would think to bring us.

Yeah, I'm sure it's going to come. Until then, I'll be buying World of Goo for PC, as well as Strong Bad - just in case they don't come out with the hard drive, I'd like to have plenty of space.

I'm just using a 1 gig SD card, and its working out just fine.

I just wish the data didn't take so long to transfer though.

When first purchasing my Wii, I also bought the 2GB SD card. Since said purchase, it has sat collecting dust. Looks like I'll finally get some use out of it!

Harddrives and online gaming are not the future of gaming.

I bought Lostwinds, am loving it, and have plenty of space for it. I'm putting off space concerns until they become actual concerns for me.

Hmm, it's interesting that that trivia game takes up the most amount of space.

The homebrew scene seems to be experimenting with USB mass storage device usage, hopefully we'll be able to quickly swap out channels from hardrives eventually.

How about a WiiII?

@GusherKid: There's, what, 3000 questions? Not too surprising.

Lostwinds is amazing. Definitely worth making space for.

@GiantEnemyCrab:
Well either what you said or keep deleting and redownloading the stuff you already bought when ever you feel like playing a game you had to delete for lack of space.

@Archavious: Yeah, less than two years after the first one's release.

Great idea.

@Maldron: Like a hard drive that requires gimmicky input.

Yes Nintendo will reinvent storage space with this new "Ide" technology it's working on.

I agree. Using the SD card works just fine. However it just takes too long to transfer files. I copied Sin & Punishment onto it to make more room, and it took something like 15 minutes. That's time I'd rather be playing something. Oh well, hopefully Nintendo decides to stop being so stubborn about the whole external HDD thing.

@Americo: You have to point and drag the stuff you want onto your harddrive with the Wiimote while also introducing a sound that manages to be more obnoxious than the Virtual Console download noise.

*buys a SD card* problem solved. Whining reduced.

you know what; enough is enough in this nintendo bs game weve been playing for going on 2 years now. From the get go they have made it their number one priority to convince us gamers that they aren't trying to compete with sony or microsoft. Because of this we have obviosly lost out on so many levels. online play direct quote: (Our online is not for hardcore gamers)- and yet they continuosly try to make it hardcore ex medal of honor heroes 2, and Brawl. And of course the HDD where they continuously try to convince us there is no need when I on a yearly basis do more downloading on Wii than any other console. Seriously Nintendo; no matter how hard you try, you ARE competing in the bg 3 so stop trying to convince us and more importantly yourselves otherwise. DONT PULL A GAMECUBE AGAIN!!!

I don't own a Wii, but I suppose people can use SD caards? Still, if Nintendo knew that they were going to offer this virtual console catalog of games plus the new WiiWare games, why didn't they include an HDD? You would think that they would have had the foresight, but no, it's Nintendo who has to sell critical components seperately until the next console generaation (I'm looking at you Gamecube broadband adaptor.)

And don't tell me that the broadband adaptor was only used for PSO even if that is true. I know that, but if internet was built in, maybe companies would have found it more lucrative to design games with online play.

well its not as much as i expected it to be...

but if you count wii channels + save data then you will see a problem there =(

@GiantEnemyCrab: By comparison, the downloadable games for the Wii don't require too much space, so I think you'd be all set with a 2GB or 4GB SD card. No need for a full-fledged hard drive just yet.

Of course, once you begin purchasing SD cards for your Wii because there's not enough internal memory, you've effectively turned it into a PSP. Bummer.

@Americo, Len Bias Cocaine Surplus:

Really wasn't going for that. I just feel they'll approach it in a manner that made it seem like it was always their intention to introduce a hard drive, and disavow earlier comments about how it might be unnecessary.

@xxabadabaxx:

You do know Medal of Honor is third party, right? Also, what are you trying to prove? You didn't really complain about anything in specific.

@CarbonFalcon: @xxabadabaxx:
LOLZ go plai ur 360s and PS3s

Seriously, you Bought the system knowing what it had and did'nt have. its like buying a car with no engine and then complaining that it wont take you anywhere.

@xxabadabaxx: How many years did it take them to drop Carts for CD/DVDs?

On a side note, I find it just a teensy bit irritating that Nintendo opted to measure the Wii memory in blocks (like your PlayStation memory cards from 1996, remember?), rather than going with MB/GB.
I understand that they're catering to a younger demographic, but it's still a little annoying.

@crazyorloco: Except... not really. You can't play the content that's on the SD card, and copying it back and forth takes a hell of a lot longer than it ought to. Also some games have large save files (100+ blocks) that are copy protected for whatever brilliant reason. It's a nasty predicament no matter how you look at it. I had trouble fitting the Nintendo Channel on my Wii, let alone these WiiWare games. If they're encouraging us to spend money on downloadable content but refuse to make the storage of this content work as we'd like it to, how should the consumer feel?

I bought a 4GB SD card for my Wii and then found there was little to use it for. Ended up pinching it again when I got a new digital camera. Ah well, SD cards are cheap enough.

I highly doubt the solution will be an external HDD. My guess they'll do something with the firmware that would allow play off an SD card, if they do anything at all.

I just cant see them coming out with some bulky external hard drive unit that you have to sit behind the Wii plugged in via USB.

@Len Bias Cocaine Surplus: Is that sarcasm or no?

I simply cannot believe they actually launched WiiWare before any kind of solution to this gaping storage issue.

i just don't understand you nintendo, i just don't.

Free SD card Giveaways for people who buy all launch titles! 2GB SD cards!

@cpmui99: If you must ask you cannot know.

Yeah, there is SD support but people here don't seem to realize that you can't run games off of it. For frequent VC consumers such as myself who've long since filled up the Wii's harddrive it becomes an issue of constantly downloading, transferring, and deleting things just to play the games I want. The games that are sitting on my SD card, in my Wii right now. There's NO reason for me not to be able to run games off of it, absolutely no reason.

I was just thinking today that they really should have swapped the SD card thing for some kind of memory unit. Think about it, that SD card reading unit takes up as much space as five or six SD cards. The two gig SD cards can hold something like 15,000 blocks of memory which is already way way more than we already have. Imagine removing the card reader and just putting in 90,000 blocks worth of memory into the thing...

Just a crazy scheme I was pondering.

@Nobuyuki: Except it takes too long to read from. There's not a lot that can be done about the fact running anything off an SD card is impractical. Next step: hard drive.

I've got about 30, yes 30 VC games. So Wiiware's most likely OotQ

This is how it works;
Pay
Download
Play
Delete
(and if you wish to play it again, just download it again. Youve already bought it after all.)

I never play more than MAX 3 games at once anyway, so works great for me. My games are stored on the internetz if I want to play em again, instead of a HDD. Not much of a difference, ne?

I don't know about the Wii but are SD cards that slow in general? Memory Stick certainly is fast enough to play games off so I expect SD card should be too.

Don't know where Nintendo could plug a hard drive into the Wii either unless there's a port lying around I've missed.

Where the heck is pokemon ranch?

I'm not even kidding.

For the most part I'm pretty much over complaining about Nintendos stuff. Usually when you complain a company reacts quickly to make things better. Nintendo is rolling in dough/yen/euros/other monies and could care less about your cries for more space. I've just stopped buying their stuff. It saves me the headache of dealing with arbitray limits and Nintendo won't even notice.

I will be buying Pokemon Ranch though. I need that. :O

Also, I blame Ninendo for not explaining properly that you CAN delete games and still "own" them. ( And also keep the savefiles.)

I honestly dont think more than half of the people complaining know about this "feature".

On top of not being able to run anything off an SD card in the Wii, the slot also does not currently support SDHC. As such, the limit is 2GB cards.

I am not sure if this will be fixed with a firmware update, but if the Wii does have SDHC hardware, I cannot imagine a reason to not have it enabled from the start.

An external HDD is the only option. I am sure Ninty is in no hurry though, what with the piles of money that the Wii and DS are already bringing them.

I'm holding off on buying an SD card (even though they are way cheap online) until they solve the storage issue. If it takes 15 minutes to transfer a game to or from the card, I might as well just redownload it - which is hella annoying.

@GiantEnemyCrab: y'know i don't play ANY of the 9 VC games i bought.

@MattB: usb, in the back. there's 2.

Wow. Interesting downloadable games on a console with no real hard disk. That's kinda like having online play without a universal friends list and chat....ohh...right.

@eastx: I don't know why it took that guy 15 minutes, for me it takes like, four minutes at most.

@eastx: 15 minutes to transfer a game to an SD card? Wow. That is broken. Glad I never downloaded any VC stuff then.

@ItsHammerTime:

"Also, I blame Ninendo for not explaining properly that you CAN delete games and still "own" them. ( And also keep the savefiles.)

I honestly dont think more than half of the people complaining know about this "feature"."

Oh, I know that you can do this. I also know that having do constantly having to delete data to make room