Japanese Nintendo Direct touches on storage capacity for the Wii U
Go learn Japanese and watch the actual Nintendo Direct Wii U video...
Okay fine the Wii U Basic has a total of 3 GBs and Wii U Premium has 25 GBs of usable space. The Wii U supports up to 2 Terabytes from a single external hard drive connected via USB, and the number of hard drives allowed for use will go up to 2 in the near future.
Also, the SD card may only be used to store WiiWare, Virtual Console, and Wii game save data.
Editor's Note: I've embed the video for those who've taken the time to learn Japanese.
I just watched the NEW Wii U Nintendo Direct (11.14.2012), which explained more hardware specifications, so I'll just talk briefly about this.Due to the data conversions (Don't know the actual terms but I know how it works.), the REAL flash drive space of the consoles have been revealed.
Now, including the data already included in the Wii U at factory settings, which includes User Data, Settings, Default Software, etc. taking up a total of approximately 4.2 GB...
The Wii U does support external hard drives, but "only" up to 2 Terabytes. Now, you could use an external hard drive bigger than 2 Terabytes, but the system will only recognize up to 2 Terabytes for use with the console. At launch, the system, will only support one external hard drive at a time, but on a later system update, the system will be capable of handling two external hard drives, and allow you to transfer data from hard drive to hard drive through the Wii U itself.
It is also important to note that the external hard drives with their own power supply are recommended, and those which get the power from the console itself may have the chance for some malfunctions, and when the hard drive is of that type, it it recommended that you have a "Y-cable type" hard drive which have two cables to connect directly to the system.
One last thing, the SD card will be used solely for the storage of WiiWare, Virtual Console, and Wii game save data, and not for full-game downloads. Also, these types of games are not compatible to play with the Wii U game pad (this is a given.), but they are planning a Wii U Virtual Console Shop in the near future which will allow people to play with the Wii U game pad. (More info yet to be revealed on this topic.)
What do you guys think of this limited storage space of the Wii U itself? People were already complaining how little space there was to begin with, and now these facts are revealed! Well, at least we can have up to 2 Terabytes of storage from a single external hard drive.
» Source: http://www.nintendo.co.jp/wiiu/direct20121114/index.html
» Tagged In: #community showcase, #Nintendo, #Nintendo Direct, #Storage Space, #Wii U
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g1 DISCUSSIONS
albert25
Can't I chose the data location storage I want? I would rather use some cloud service to store it, the space offered by Nintendo will never be enough for me and to be honest I don't want to depend on some hard drive to store my data.
Holymoon
I've already bought my WiiU a 750 gigs external hard drive... that should be enough to last me for awhile... I hope.
SSBBrawler
Actually, I’ve done the math, and I have come to a conclusion that may or may not put this whole storage concern to rest. A quick disclaimer: I have no formal knowledge of electronic storage, and I was using my 3DS for my calculations. Give me a break, it’s all I have at the moment.
Right now, my 3DS has an SD card worth 2 gigs of memory. On that card is 7 games, each using varying amounts of storage space (the lowest being Sonic Triple Trouble with 52 blocks, the highest NSMB2 with more than 2,700). With more than 6,000 blocks of memory left, I figure that I can download a minimum of 4 more games (assuming all use around 1,500 blocks) before my card finally runs on empty. This makes a total of 11 games for 2 gigs. Applying this to the basic package Wii U, assuming it runs on the same principles I’ve been working with, through calculations that would take too long to explain here, I’ve deduced that it can run a minimum of 11 downloadable games worth 1,500 blocks each, with somewhere around 1,100 leftover. Now I can’t imagine the retail games will take up too much space on the console, not more than 10 or 15 blocks worth of save files. By my calculations, that amounts to about 73 retail games minimum.
Now, as I said, I have no real idea if what I’m saying is even accurate, and even when the console is released, I still won’t have any real idea how the whole storage space thing will work. That said, if the real thing is anything like what I’ve described here, even 3 gigs should be plenty for the average gamer.
yggdra324
I have so many UBS drives I have more than enough space (UBS drive wise)
X-rider
In the old ps2 days all you needed was an 8MB card for just game saves. Now you need hundreds of GB for DLC, full game downloads, mmusic, media, ect. Atleast nintendo is supporting cheap non-proprietary formats like SD for 3DS and USB 2.0 hard drives for wii u.
Mr.McMister
While I find their use of non--proprietary formats nice I do find reason for complaint on 2 grounds. 1 external media just adds another device to be sitting under your tv and more cables to deal with. 2 usb 2.0 is dogged slow compared to a direct sata connections(by a factor of near 18x for sata 3) Ultimately I would have liked them to at least add eSata and at best a 3.25" sata drive. The reason for the ommitance of something like this has to be mostly cost related and a bit asthetic(size/shape), but it's a shame they didn't consider the IBM power architecture they are using in the cpu has native sata support and adding the extra traces+ports+plastice would be around $8 a unit.
penisbutterpussycutter
WiiU Diskdrive reads data with up to 25MB/s. An USB2 Port (one of four) can read data up to 30 MB. There is no need for more speed when downloading and starting a game from HDD.
A native SATA Port is of course allways great (see PS3), but its unnecessary in this case (like on PS3 actualy). YES you want to do other stuff with it, but nintendont XD
Gliffie
For SD cards, can't you use one of those USB docks? That works for Wii homebrew
beyondthestars
Sounds reasonable
Janos
Something I forgot to mention. Mr . Iwata says that USB memory sticks are not recommended even though it could store some save data. The read-and-write limitations on the USB are too strict for flexible use with the Wii U apparently.
Also, SD cards. Another thing I forgot to mention, is that SD cards are also used to transfer some files from PC to Wii U and back and forth.
I wonder if this is going to open up an another chance to homebrew...