Topic: Zero Game Downloads and No Hardrive SpaceLeft

I have like 20 games on my Wii U (32 gig) and still have about 8g left over. I'm thinking about getting a 64 gig flash drive- it's only $32 on Amazon. That should work for me b/c I pretty much get the physical copies and eShop titles are generally less than a gig a pop.

This is why I buy games on disc and only download VC games. VC games don't take up that much room so I can have a bunch of them on the deluxe Wii U hard drive.

That is true, yes, but aren't all Blu-Ray devices future proof for reading multiple layers? A disc can hold 25 GB per layer, but you can have multiple layers (up to 8?)

Actually, if memory serves, LEGO City: Undercover used roughly 23GB. SSB4 will almost definitely smash (no pun intended) through that high, if that even is the highest data amount for a Wii U game so far.

Regardless, you payed for 8GB. You got 8GB. External drives, even SD cards and Flash Drives, cost next to nothing, really. I got a 16GB SD card for my 3DS for something like $20, and it'll probably last me for years because I don't buy full downloadable retail games unless there's a specific advantage to it (i.e., price reduction only on eShop). I think you can get a TB for... $100ish? And that'll last you virtually forever, unless you buy every other Wii U game that comes out, and you get it through the eShop.

Finally, almost any Wii U gamer could've told you what you just describes as a problem before you bought the system. It's your own fault for not doing the research, or, if you did, not heeding it. It's not Nintendo's fault; they offer a 32GB version for a reason, and there are SD/USB posts for a reason. Go out and buy a hard drive, stop complaining to us.

Thanks for the links. Just some questions, how long have you had it, and has it given you any issues so far?

I don't want to get a 500GB when I'm not going to be downloading retail titles.

But the more games come out, more data and saves will accumulate. Not to mention the eshop titles.

My only complaint is that I wish I could still use flash cards for storage; if they worked with the wii u I'd have the ability to add a buttload of easily upgradeable storage without changing the U's form factor

Nah the 2TB drives are around $99 (JB HiFi), 1TB are ~$70-$80. I should know, went and got a 2TB over the weekend as my 32gb is pretty much full (not going to use all that so I transferred a 1TB drives contents over in order to use the smaller drive)

Nintendo do not recommend using an external flash drive because of the limited read write lifetime of this kind of memory.

This is what they say:

10. Can I use a Flash/Thumb drive as an external storage device?

•Because these devices have a limited number of rewrites and are not suited to long-term storage of important game data, we do not recommend the use of Flash/thumb drives as an external storage device solution. For best results, we recommend using a hard drive with its own power supply that connects to the Wii U via the USB port on the console.

•Commercial Flash memory has a limit on the number of times you can write over it and we don't recommend flash memory devices for long-term storage of important save data.

However, it would make some sense to reduce the wear and tear on an external flash drive to improve its useful lifetime.

Perhaps the Wii U could read the game itself from the external flash drive but copy the Save Data to internal system memory.

If I am correct, the console would load in the game from the external flash memory as required, and then save the critical game save data internally so even if the flash drive craps out, the game save data is maintained when the game is redownloaded onto another flash drive.

And one more thing, for those who think I am complaining - you are right about that.

But I bought my Wii U on impulse from a second hand shop because they just reduced the price to $140. Otherwise I would just be another fence sitter like those many others who haven't bought one but are thinking about it. I took a chance on the Nintendo name relying on the company reputation being empathetic, thoughtful and considerate to its wide ranging customer base. I am a Wii and 3DS owner too.

I can absorb the pain but many others would find all these known unknowns a bit of a trap. The public are not all hard core gamers who are willing to suffer for the sake of their brand, and neither are they really interested in becoming IT experts, or reading manuals before they bought the console or even visiting gaming sites.

I will be taking up the external flash drive option and see how it goes.

This is a bigger scam than Windows XP not being able to use 4GB of RAM

You don't have to be IT expert to know that to have more than 4GB RAM back in 2000s was utter waste of money - it's just you being stupid to expect something this old to give more power to something that isn't advanced enough to process it. Back then 1GB made you a boss, and 2 a badass with waste of power, because there were no applications using this much power (also the system's kernel etc.). FYI, the MAX is 4GB for any game, so more RAM is little waste. It's the same with HDD, you have to go "around" to make XP install on HDD bigger than 500GB.

So where did my 8GB system memory go

Something around 200MB is gone because of the 8GB - it's counted as 1000MB = 1GB on the box, because it's simpler, even though it's 1024. Also updates. You thought were those go?

reading manuals before they bought the console

It's in your interest to know what you are buying. You know that, right?
Also, it has it right on the box that it has 8GB HDD, so if you expected this to last you forever, you have no one to blame but yourself.

They did it to cut costs. You can get a 1TB for like $60. Ifyou want HDD space, it's like 2 shelves away at the store, or you could always buy online. If you wanit, you'll get it.

First things first it's Kryder's Law not Moore's Law. Secondly the fact that storage costs halve every year doesn't help your whine in the slightest. Infact if anything the fact that storage is constantly getting cheaper makes the approach Nintendo took even more sensible.

I know it's hard but think about it for a bit before you whine some more. The fact that you can add storage as you need it means that you're paying the price of the storage as it was at the time you need it. For example for the same the price of a 2TB drive when the Wii U launched you could easily get 3TB now. I know that's way too much storage for games but most people have spare external storage laying around. Throw that old 250GB-1TB drive on the Wii U, treat yourself to a 3TB drive for backup.

Hey, it's better than paying a premium for 500GB of built in storage that you didn't use for a year or already had lying around. It's better than having an unnecessary mechanical component in the console prone to failure that you can't replace

And with one sentence any and all of your tech cred went out the window. If you had more than 4GB on XP then you were wasting your money on either XP or the RAM. Huge miss-match in time there my friend. Plus it wasn't a "scam" it was a limit on the amount of memory you can address with a 32bit OS. They kept 32bit so that driver compatibility didn't go out the window, people who went for 64bit XP were brave, crazy and/or stupid.

BTW 64bit has a memory limit to. It's just massive.
32bit = 2 ^ 32 bytes = 4.3 billion bytes
64bit = 2 ^ 64 bytes = 18,446,744,073 billion bytes......

by the time that amount of RAM becomes a real "limit" we probably won't care because we'll probably be using multi petabyte SSDs that rival the speed of RAM anyways

scam??? lol. you are aware you can plug any flash drive into it right??????

i would think they would realise the thing hase 4 usb ports. new tv's have usb ports. i think they will realise it takes flash drives.

Do you magically expect the OS to not take up any space. Windows 8 can take up nearly 20GB.

Sounds like a consumer ignorant on how technology works wants to blame someone else than instead of admitting they forgot or didn't know that the magic box doesn't store the programs needed to make it run in the sky.

PS: you can connect any USB stick and use it as storage space.

They hardly cut costs at all doing that.

@Aluwolf, still advertising it as 8GB when only 3GB are actually free for the user to use borders on false advertisment..... the standard on devices is that at least 70% of the advertised size is free for users to use...... in the Wii U basic is less than 50%

I knew this would happen. Thankfully I had a spare hard drive I was saving specifically for the Wii U.

This seems to pop up a lot but it's an inaccurate myth. Google Flash Drive stress tests.

Any flash drive from a reputable source will last 100k writes. Let me break that down. You could save 27 times a day and it would still last ten years.

It depends. If they would have put a proprietary drive in there, then it might be saving money in comparison.