Yes, the Wii SD Update has finally arrived, and is likely the most important update the console will receive in its lifetime. This update has added support for SDHC cards and adds the new 'SD menu' to the Wii system menu. However, while SDHC support is impossible to screw up, I'm left saying 'One step forward, two steps back' in regard to the SD menu.
Seriously, it's impossible to botch SDHC support, assuming there are no bugs with the card reader itself any game that has support for an SD card should be able to take advantage of the largely extended storage capacity offered by 4GB and up SDHC cards. I, as a frequent buyer of DLC songs for Rock Band 2, am glad to know that I'm not going to be running out of space anytime soon (it's more likely my wallet will). People who enjoy in-game support for playing MP3's off a SD card should be happy to keep a larger selection on as well, because Excite Truck's included soundtrack sucks.
But the SD menu, that was easy to screw up, very, very easy. I'm not sure if Nintendo has no faith in the read speed of SDHC cards, or if they can't catch a clue that DRM fails and they're trying to prevent piracy or homebrew. But in any case, the SD menu doesn't actually allow you to do much aside from automate the process of copying a wii channel to the system memory and then launch it.
Yeah, this long awaited update that was supposed to let us actually USE our SD cards for something aside from DLC still depends on the internal system memory to play our games. There's not going to be any 1,000 block games, no real ability to just use an SD card instead in case your system is full of 100 black save files from games like Brawl.
I really don't see why Nintendo did this, Rock Band 2 can stream, in real time, a 25MB song off my SD card without any issue at all, why can't I run a 4-10MB virtual console title of the bloody thing?!
I really have no way to wrap up this rant right now, but suffice it to say that I'm at least happy that progress is being made, but I can't believe the incredible blunder Nintendo just made.
Comments
not an issue
I don't know what are you talking about. You are picky at some problems only in your imagination, or at least not likely happen to *regular* (99%) gamers.
The SD Card Menu works GREAT!
Yes, it is
The prime issue with the requirement to copy the game to the internal memory is we are still limited on the size a VC or WiiWare title, which isn't fair to the WiiWare developers who want to make larger games. Also, I find it ridiculous that I have to wait a good 10-15 seconds before I can launch a moderately sized N64 game from my SD card.
Stefan Nuxoll
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