Topic: Wii Players Soon to Play DLC Straight off 32 gig SD Card!!

I just read this at WiiNintendo. Says so on Kotaku too. Retail game can use this with Guitar Hero 5 being the first.

Great! Guitar Heroe 5 ftw!

But no link to either. Gee, thanks. Finding that stuff on this browser on my own would be a REAL pain. But I'm guessing this doesn't have any effect on already-released games' DLC reading?

I don't have any info on whether they'll allow this for Wiiware. I thought it would.

Edit StuffGamer-Sorry. Using my Wii. Don't think I can link.

Awesome! This short coming always bothered me on GH4

Or Samba De Amigo, which I believe can only run DLC from the console memory.

EDIT @bboy2970: Do you mean GH4 couldn't read from SD at all, or just not from one that big? I know Rock Band 2 could read straight from SD, but I wouldn't know about the card size limit. I don't play those games on Wii anyway, so my info on the matter is relatively limited.

I guess this is coming out by this Spring.

Here's the link to the IGN article: http://wii.ign.com/articles/101/1013118p1.html

Thanks, Zaphod! This sounds like some pretty sweet tech, and just the kind of thing the Wii needs! I'd love to see Nintendo apply this to VC and WiiWare (especially the latter, because they could theoretically remove the 40MB limit), though I doubt they will. At the very least, I hope many more games release that make use of this feature, including Nintendo titles (who didn't want easy-access DLC for Brawl and Mario Kart? Now new games could finally have it!).

The thing is, when the console launches a game it copies it from the SD card to the internal memory so the limit is still necessary.

Hurray!! If Nintendo uses this for more games, then fanboys will have one less thing to complain about!

I was so happy when I heard about this. Direct streaming is PERFECT! Maybe Pop 'n Music could implement it and if DDRHP3 gets DLC then that could implement it as well!

cool i guess

@nintendoduffin: I know that's how they do it right NOW, but who's to say they couldn't change that with firmware later? In light of this news, it certainly seems possible. Then, once games DID stream directly from the SD card, they COULD drop the 40MB limit easily!

This is sweet. Nintendo is learning from it's competitors and this is a big step. The price of sd cards makes this a reasonably priced option vs hard drives. Patience paid off here!

Hopefully nintendo will now get DLC for some of their upcoming games... or Brawl.

@SSBFan 12: Though I'm sure you realize this already, I'll say it anyway: Brawl wasn't programmed to accept DLC, and the Wii has no title update capabilities, which means that Brawl will not be getting any DLC, much as we might want it.

Like Stuffgamer1 says, if they do drop the 40MB limit to WiiWare titles then brilliant. Even if they decided to double or triple the upperlimit, it'd unlock a whole new level of titles!

Have you any idea how bad that would be for the Wii's NAND Flash? The SD card menu is very bad for the NAND Flash because it keeps reading, copying and deleting all the time. Nintendo called the SD card menu a solution, but I think it's not. It's only destructing the NAND Flash.

Maybe at this point, but they still have to learn some things. Like Stuffgamer1 mentioned, the Wii can't get any updates for disc-titles. Nintendo had blocked this from the very beginning. I also heard the DSi is compatible with a new kind of access point security, but if you use that access point you can only use it in DSi exclusive titles. For example, if you want to play Mario Kart DS online, you can't use that DSi-only security. This means Nintendo can't improve their games!!! (in that way)