Nintendo Uses Colored Beads to Explain Wii U Storage

[-Dragmire-]

4.2 GIGS FOR PROFILE/SYSTEM DATA?! What the hell?

I can install Operating Systems (with useful programs) that use half as much space. I really hope there was a misunderstanding somewhere. Wow.

I got it! It's gotta be reserved space for all the potential Miis that you can share with your friends!

 

[Rad Party God]

and let me guess, you can only use nintendo licensed external hard drives...

did you know back then when console gamers used to tell you that you wouldn't had to fight with a dozen of wires like on a stupid pc to get it running?

and did you know how well it turned out for sega to have different expensive devices you had to connect in order to play "the latest and visually stunning games"?

ah, god old times.

i wonder how long it will take pirates to exploit the external hard drive option.

and also wonder how long you will be standing before loading screens since it seems like it uses usb 2.0 instead of thuderbold or usb 3.0.

By that logic, then Microsoft has gotten away with it for 7 years, if you bought an Arcade Edition back then, you were pretty much screwed, because you needed to buy a bigger HDD 3 times as expensive as a regular one and God forbids you if you wanted to use wireless internet, you needed to buy a shitty peripherial 3 times as expensive as my home router.

If Nintendo are embracing external drives from the beginning, that's a serious big plus for me and really, a regular HDD isn't that expensive if you really need one.

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

Sure, it's great that this functionality is present. But what it basically amounts to is "the Wii U has practically no space, so you'll have to supply your own media storage". Which is irresponsible of Nintendo as far as I'm concerned.

 

[shintakie10]

Sure, it's great that this functionality is present. But what it basically amounts to is "the Wii U has practically no space, so you'll have to supply your own media storage". Which is irresponsible of Nintendo as far as I'm concerned.

As SupahGumah pointed out above, Microsoft has been doin that for years with the Arcade edition. Except they actually fuck people over because you have to buy only Microsoft brand HDD's and wireless routers that cost nearly 3 times as much as a non Microsoft brand counterpart and are shittier all around.

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

Sure, it's great that this functionality is present. But what it basically amounts to is "the Wii U has practically no space, so you'll have to supply your own media storage". Which is irresponsible of Nintendo as far as I'm concerned.

As SupahGumah pointed out above, Microsoft has been doin that for years with the Arcade edition. Except they actually fuck people over because you have to buy only Microsoft brand HDD's and wireless routers that cost nearly 3 times as much as a non Microsoft brand counterpart and are shittier all around.

Then that's irresponsible by Microsoft as well, and worse because they're reaming customers at the same time. Doesn't make Nintendo much better. To be honest I had no idea, because I haven't bought anything relevant from them.

 

[Strazdas]

the beans on the table symbolize the lost packets due to poor nintendo network protocols.
so funny they advertise that.

also, any machine with no internel memory to speak of deserves to be laughed out of existence. just look at what happened to mobile phones who though 10mb was enough and you have to buy sd card....

Then that's irresponsible by Microsoft as well, and worse because they're reaming customers at the same time. Doesn't make Nintendo much better. To be honest I had no idea, because I haven't bought anything relevant from them.

microsift is pro when it comes to ripping its costumers. did you know that for example you cant plug a normal 3.5mm headphones into xbox. you need a special "microsoft headophones" that cost 10 times as much and break faster.
PS3 has no such problem.

 

[Maxtro]

If wonder how much of a performance hit, if any, would happen if you loaded games from an external.

Right now I'm wondering why I should pay $50 more for 24 GB (Basic vs Deluxe) instead of using that $50 to buy a 500GB HDD.

Also lets not pretend that 32 GB is a significant amount of space either. Odds are people who install a lot of games to their deluxe would have to buy an external as well.

 

[Davroth]

So any word on if it only supports Nintendo sanctioned harddrives or not? :/

 

[Fasckira]

Using Nintendo's bead system I am able to show the number of fucks I give about this news:

Nah, Im just being facetious. It does mildly bemuse me that they need to put out a video like this however, cant help but feel if the lower model is likely to impact the storage in that way then it just shouldn't exist.

 

[Sonic Doctor]

I think Nintendo is improving, but they still seem to think their fans are downright stupid when it comes to technology.

Remember the days when games just cost a few beads? I find it harder and harder to now...

I don't know about where you are at, but I don't think much has changed.

I'm 27 and I've been gaming for about 23 years. Yes, at four I was already jumping on goombas and koopas.

Now that I think back on now much games use to cost(my parents never hid how much it cost to get me a game), I can safely say that game prices really haven't changed that much.

I remember back to having my old grey brick Gameboy, which I still have , and my aunt had flown in for Christmas. Her family diced to go to the mall for some last minute Christmas shopping. We entered a game store and she asked if I wanted anything in particular. I saw that the store had Paperboy for Gameboy. She ended up getting it for me and I remember it costing around 30 dollars.

So in that respect hand held games haven't changed in price that much. I got Pokemon White, when it came out, for 34. I also remember getting SNES and N64 games for around 60 to 70 dollars. Considering the N64, prices of games have come down for consoles.

PC is pretty much the same except for in the AAA department, which keeps up at 60 most of the time, thought with Steam and its sales, one only has to wait a few months for a sale to get the AAAs for much less.

 

[Treblaine]

I think we see the market that Nintendo is targeting here: people who are essentially innumerate as they have to explain things with freaking beads and tubs rather than simple numbers.

Not the entire target market, but a significant proportion.

Snark aside, I appreciate that Nintendo offers unlimited external storage. Unlike Xbox 360 that caps any external USB storage at 16GB (minus 512MB for drive formatting). Which is utter BS.

 

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

SNIP

You completely lost my point. I was refering to the beads in terms of storage space. <.<

 

[Sonic Doctor]

SNIP

You completely lost my point. I was refering to the beads in terms of storage space. <.<

Sorry, misunderstanding.

If you look at what you said, you said "games just cost a few beads", that is why I thought you were talking about game prices.

I acknowledge that the beads as memory space thing went over may head, even though I did read the article. Total derp moment.

It would have been more clear, if you put "of space" at the end of what I put into quotations up there, but I understand that you were trying to make a witty joke. Sorry that I took it too literal.

 

[MrHide-Patten]

I absolutely am 100% for the ability to use external hard drives for my consoles. Why hasn't anyone thought of this before? Though this does basically tell me that when I get a WiiU I might as well get the elite package anyway just so I don't have to buy a hard drive right away.

My PS3 can do that easily and yet it still has 111 GB of internal memory to use.

 

[DrOswald]

"You should probably invest in external memory, because we can't be arsed to include it ourselves."

Cheap for them, but not for you!

Actually it is cheap for you.

A hard drive will cost you about $50 if you just get a mediocre one, giving you about 500gb of storage. If they made it so you could buy a 32gb model or 64gb model, then you would be paying $100 for about 1/10th of the storage.

And all of this would cost me absolutely nothing on the side if it was internal!

Parts used for consoles, including the hard drive, are special made for the console. They are not mass produced in the same way as other parts. Because of this they are much more expensive to produce. That cost is passed on to the consumer in one form or another. If they included larger more expensive hard drives the price would be that much higher. By including cheap to produce parts and allowing you to use standard mass produced parts in conjunction with their hardware they keep their costs and our costs lower. We get more for our money this way.

 

[DrOswald]

I absolutely am 100% for the ability to use external hard drives for my consoles. Why hasn't anyone thought of this before?

I can guarantee that people probably have. And they may have been held back by external drives typically being quite slow until fairly recently unless you had a SATA or good firewire connector. I'm a bit surprised actually since the WiiU has USB 2.0 ports which aren't the fastest thing in the universe these days (and never have been really). I guess it depends on how ambitious the digital titles get and how quickly they need to stream data from the drive.

Who the hell said anything about stream?

Yes, you can use an external Hard Drive for storage, but no-one ever said you could play games off that. Basically, every time you want to play a digital game, you're going to have to uninstall something from the main hard drive, and install a new game on it. Then you can play it - won't that be fun?

Which would essentially mean that games which are bigger than the 3 or so GB available (such as the one listed in the article) would still be completely unplayable. Are you sure this is what you'd have to do to play anything that's on an external hard drive? Because if that's the case then Nintendo is recommending a solution which is only slightly less useless than the built in storage.

I can only tell you what I've read.

You can play games off of an external drive (but flash drives can only be used for storage.) This has been confirmed by Nintendo.

Also, Nintendo is saying it would be a good idea to use an external with an independent power source or to use a y cable.

 

[Baresark]

snip

You seem to be hating on Nintendo simply so you can hate on Nintendo.

You realize that the reason Nintendo are doing things the way they are doing things is because if they simply said "buy external storage, the Wii U doesn't have a large storage capacity", people who might not be big users of Computers or other consoles probably won't understand what the hell Nintendo are saying and will in turn suffer after they buy their console?

The videos are not aimed at you, I don't see why you're complaining about Nintendo trying to put things as simply as they can.

If you don't like the company, that's fine, but at least have some valid points for not liking the company other than "The video was too childish and they use laymen terms for memory"

You quoted me why exactly? I don't actually have any problem with Nintendo, but I am critical of stupid and poor decisions. I'm fine with them encouraging people to buy external storage. And their inability to see their user base consist of adults and kids who already speak in terms that pretty much everyone knows, is idiotic.

 

[theultimateend]

4.2 GIGS FOR PROFILE/SYSTEM DATA?! What the hell?

I can install Operating Systems (with useful programs) that use half as much space. I really hope there was a misunderstanding somewhere. Wow.

No offense but, but you seem a little anal when it comes to beads.
see what I did there?

I didn't so I googled to figure it out.

After a few hours of research.

I now see what you did there.

"You should probably invest in external memory, because we can't be arsed to include it ourselves."

Cheap for them, but not for you!

Because the price of a bigger hard-drive totally wouldn't have been factored into the cost of the system. But then, Heaven forbid that I should expect someone to look at the big picture of things.

Literally. It literally forbids it.

One of the lesser known commandments.

 

[Baresark]

snip

snip

You quoted me why exactly? I don't actually have any problem with Nintendo, but I am critical of stupid and poor decisions. I'm fine with them encouraging people to buy external storage. And their inability to see their user base consist of adults and kids who already speak in terms that pretty much everyone knows, is idiotic.

Not everyone speak those terms though. You think that they do, but they don't. You're definitely not critical of stupid and poor decisions, you're critical of decisions which don't make sense to you.

That is part of the human condition, you should get used to it. Two people see the same thing happen but see two very different outcomes. Dan Ariely, Danial Kahneman, Michael Gazzaniga have all written extensively about it. You don't agree with me, so you think I'm wrong. I can safely say this: If someone doesn't know the difference between a kilobyte and a megabyte, then speaking in terms of blocks also reveals little or no information to them.

Edit: Really what I'm saying is, it's ok if we don't agree. I don't hate Nintendo, but even if I did, it's ok for us to have two different opinions on the matter.

 

[Baresark]

That is part of the human condition, you should get used to it. Two people see the same thing happen but see two very different outcomes. Dan Ariely, Danial Kahneman, Michael Gazzaniga have all written extensively about it. You don't agree with me, so you think I'm wrong. I can safely say this: If someone doesn't know the difference between a kilobyte and a megabyte, then speaking in terms of blocks also reveals little or no information to them.

Edit: Really what I'm saying is, it's ok if we don't agree. I don't hate Nintendo, but even if I did, it's ok for us to have two different opinions on the matter.

Except it's not opinion. It's fact.

It's a FACT that more people will understand the storage of the Wii U with a simple video like this. It's not my opinion that I think that they might, I know that it helps some people as a FACT. You are FACTUALLY WRONG if you think that this video will help no one who wants to buy a Wii U.

I never said that people wouldn't understand better with the video. I never said anything of the sort. I said they need to drop the whole "block" talk and start using terms that everyone else uses. You need to chill. Because you seem like you are getting worked up over nothing.