Nintendo Uses Colored Beads to Explain Wii U Storage

[RaikuFA]

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.

Xbox did that back in the day I believe. The external hard drive went on the top.

 

[DrOswald]

want to ***** about something, ***** about the lack of USB 3.0. That is the real problem here and currently my biggest reservation about the Wii U. Will the practically required external storage option be prohibitively slow in coming years because it runs on USB 2.0?

This, right here, is the biggest reason why I'm railing so hard against this. I wholeheartedly agree that this wouldn't be as much of a problem if the hardware supported USB 3.0.

Hell, I wouldn't have come to that big bottlenecking issue I mentioned elsewhere [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/jump/7.393822.15930156] in this very topic. Granted, 3.0 wasn't really a thing when I made that experiment, but considering all I've read on 3.0, running a game off an external drive seems less like science fiction now.

Running a game off of an external drive using usb 2.0 isn't unrealistic, at least not now. Especially if it is running on a separate power source or using a y cable (as is strongly recommended with the Wii U.) I have experimented with this a lot, and most games run just fine on my computer. Load times can be a real problem depending on the game, but if the game was specifically designed with the assumption that it will be running off of an external usb 2.0 drive I don't see why it could not be done with clever use of hidden loading.

My concern is that as games become ever larger over the next 5 years that the USB 2.0 will become an insurmountable problem, thus greatly shortening the life of the console.

I am actually wondering about the 4.2 gb install. Flash memory is very fast. So fast that some hardware manufactures are looking into replacing conventional DRAM with Flash memory for certain devices. I am wondering if Nintendo might be getting really clever here, with a portion of that 4.2 GB (lets say 2 gb) reserved as a kind of half way between RAM and the Hard drive. Data that is accessed frequently could be stored here so the Wii U only has to access that data on the external drive once. That could mitigate the USB 2.0 problem, though I doubt it would solve it completely. This is all, of course, pure speculation.

By the way, I have a 3 TB USB 3.0 drive that I use for all non steam game installs. It runs games with no noticeable difference from an internal drive.

Edit: Ok, I went and looked up a few things.

The average read speed of a typical USB 2.0 device is 30-42 MB/second. This is actually pretty good when it comes to streaming games. For comparison, the PS3 slim optical drive uses a 2x Blue ray player that reads at 9 MB/second. So, theoretically, any game that would properly stream from a blue ray disc would easily work off of a USB 2.0 drive. Interesting.

 

[Scrythe]

want to ***** about something, ***** about the lack of USB 3.0. That is the real problem here and currently my biggest reservation about the Wii U. Will the practically required external storage option be prohibitively slow in coming years because it runs on USB 2.0?

This, right here, is the biggest reason why I'm railing so hard against this. I wholeheartedly agree that this wouldn't be as much of a problem if the hardware supported USB 3.0.

Hell, I wouldn't have come to that big bottlenecking issue I mentioned elsewhere [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/jump/7.393822.15930156] in this very topic. Granted, 3.0 wasn't really a thing when I made that experiment, but considering all I've read on 3.0, running a game off an external drive seems less like science fiction now.

Running a game off of an external drive using usb 2.0 isn't unrealistic, at least not now. Especially if it is running on a separate power source or using a y cable (as is strongly recommended with the Wii U.) I have experimented with this a lot, and most games run just fine on my computer. Load times can be a real problem depending on the game, but if the game was specifically designed with the assumption that it will be running off of an external usb 2.0 drive I don't see why it could not be done with clever use of hidden loading.

My concern is that as games become ever larger over the next 5 years that the USB 2.0 will become an insurmountable problem, thus greatly shortening the life of the console.

I am actually wondering about the 4.2 gb install. Flash memory is very fast. So fast that some hardware manufactures are looking into replacing conventional DRAM with Flash memory for certain devices. I am wondering if Nintendo might be getting really clever here, with a portion of that 4.2 GB (lets say 2 gb) reserved as a kind of half way between RAM and the Hard drive. Data that is accessed frequently could be stored here so the Wii U only has to access that data on the external drive once. That could mitigate the USB 2.0 problem, though I doubt it would solve it completely. This is all, of course, pure speculation.

By the way, I have a 3 TB USB 3.0 drive that I use for all non steam game installs. It runs games with no noticeable difference from an internal drive.

Wait wait, are you suggesting that this decision on Nintendo's part could possibly provoke a push for gaming hardware to run it's main component software with flash memory?

Let me rephrase that: Do you think solid state is just on the horizon?

Because I would be the happiest little girl if that was the case.

 

[DrOswald]

Blah blah blah

Wait wait, are you suggesting that this decision on Nintendo's part could possibly provoke a push for gaming hardware to run it's main component software with flash memory?

Let me rephrase that: Do you think solid state is just on the horizon?

Because I would be the happiest little girl if that was the case.

I really hope so. The Wii U technically has a solid state drive, but it is so small that we really can't count it. If current trends hold the next Sony and Microsoft console will be significantly more powerful than the Wii U. I don't think it is unreasonable to expect flash memory to be used in the successors to the PS3 and 360.

Other interesting info (I put this in an edit of my earlier post, but I wanted to make sure you saw it)

The average read speed of a typical USB 2.0 device is 30-42 MB/second. This is actually pretty good when it comes to streaming games. For comparison, the PS3 slim optical drive uses a 2x Blue ray player that reads at 9 MB/second. So, theoretically, any game that would properly stream from a blue ray disc would easily work off of a USB 2.0 drive.

I really don't know what to think about all this. It certainly is exciting.

 

[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.

Funny, I just looked it up on the internet and it didn't seem as easy as "plus USB into hard drive and other USB into system."

Perhaps you and I have different ideas of what easy is?

That 111 GB of internal memory is also on a HDD instead of Flash memory. The Flash memory is much better.

Yet I can plug an external hard drive into my PS3 and use it. My point is either Nintendo has found a way to compress files a whole damn much or they're making people go out any buy more storage. They're trying to promote the third party titles and then they just shot themselves in the foot.

 

[Guffe]

Blah blah blah

Solid State what??.

MB per second and all that

You guys haave a very very interesting discussion going on which I read through... and understood a very small amount of so I am very proub of myself...
Can you answer my question below, please?

Is it just to buy any simple/normal USB devoce like a memory stick as an "external harddrive" or must it be a special brand or type of harddrive?