Topic: Zero Game Downloads and No Hardrive SpaceLeft

And if nintendo doesn't think that's enough... What magical storage format are they using?

Ahhh it all makes sense now.

That 8 on the box is a misprint. It should be 3.

Mr Awata, get the sales people in the store to put blue tape over the front half of the figure eight.

It's because people simply don't know better and will buy that shiny colored flash drive they saw at walmart for 5 dollars and think it's good enough. When they take it out of it's packaging it's already wobbling from the plastic and within a year it dies.

Hard drives and ssds don't have the problem of exceptionally bad knockoffs flash drives do so Nintendo is probably playing it safe by saying don't use a flash drive because they don't expect people to know what is good and what isn't.

I bought a new 32GB flash drive - Toshiba model - for $25 and installed in in my Wii U 8GB Basic Edition console.

So now I have a Wii U Deluxe Pro Plus Edition with 40GB system memory.

The stick sits in the front USB port for convenience.

It took 2 seconds to format.

The Pikmin 3 game downloaded over my wifi to the external flash drive in 30 minutes.

The game runs perfect.

I would like to know what happens to an external hardrive with say 100GB of downloads that stops working or is lost.

Say your internet plan allows 25GB data per month, do you need to wait 4 months to restore all your games and stop using all other internet services in the meantime..

At least with multiple flash drives of lesser capacity, it would be potentially easier to redownload any lost games.

And just remember, not everyone is blessed with cable or plans with lots of monthly data allowance.

Get another pen drive and run a backup from time to time - only way to keep your save data anyway.

As an earlier poster suggested I used the opportunity to upgrade my media drive from a 2TB USB drive to a 3TB FireWire 800 drive and used the 2TB one for my Wii U - given I've used less than 400GB thus far I think I'll be okay for the life of the system. My 2TB externally-powered Seagate cost me £70 three years ago. Early this year I bought a 1TB USB-powered Toshiba disk and a y-cable to use for backups for less than £40. I can't say I care how this compares with PS/BONE because I wouldn't buy a games console based upon price, I would base my purchase upon whether it had games I want to play on it.

If someone is backing up their games, has a 25gb a month plan, and needs to redownload their collection for whatever reason, if they're smart they'd download the games they want to play first, then wait until the next month to continue. If they're not smart? Then they can look up a strategy guide telling them to download the games they want to play first.

↑ This... Just think of it as having games stored in Nintendo's cloud

Perhaps Nintendo could offer a retail free download service where you bring your Wii U in and they can download all the games you need in super quick time.

Another thing too.

When is Nintendo going to bundle preloaded games on a flash drive instead of on physical discs or otherwise be including eshop codes.

In this way, the consumer can be up and running in no time with a flash drive keyed to the Wii U console in the box. No downloading or dramas with buying a storage device.

Little Johnny won't be happy next Christmas opening up the Wii U only to leave it lying like a useless brick under the tree because he cant make the game play.

I would smack that Wii U over little Johnny's head

Then they should get a better plan because 25GB is ridiculous. If you had 25GB you'd burn through most of your quota simply by choosing to download one big retail game. Or if they wanted to download anything at all really. If you only have 25GB of quota you can basically forget downloading retail games from the eShop. Period.

One would presume with a download limit that restricted they aren't watching much streaming video either, but yeah if you're downloading your games that's pretty much a non-starter - unless you're not downloading big retail games.