WiiWare Games To Be Directly Downloadable To SD Cards

Really? As far as I was aware, you'll be able to download games from the Wii Shop directly to the SD card, but I didn't know you'd be able to play directly from the SD card. If you can, though, that's fantastic, even if we do have to wait until Spring. Probably to coincide with the DSi launch.

YES!!!
Finally =D, this is going to be an amazing update..
Also... Man, I was right about a new DS coming =D.. I'm going to just wait for it now =)

YEAh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

YES!

I have, like, 2-4 gigs, and the Wii is about half a gig, right? This will be able to store so much! WOO HOO!

finally they solved the problem so all of you guys will shut up about it

It's about time! It wasn't so hard Nintendo, was it?

I really haven't got any problems before these few months: Bomberman, Megaman, Strongma... I mean Strong Bad and this whole WiiWare-thing... That "copy game & delete game" process is annoying, needs some calculations and takes time! But now... this is really good news! Thank you Nintendo!

At least a good solution. I spected months ago the solution for memory was going to be like this.

Party time!

Finally, no more cleaning out the fridge. Now we can just play off the sd cards. I wish it was sooner though.

Best news I've heard in ages.
Just a shame about the long wait, and the fact that Kid Icarus Wii wasn't announced

Cipher is correct. Nintendo announced direct downloads to the SD Card with an "easy copy to main memory". While that might mean caching in main Flash memory (due to the intricacies of language translation) it is not yet clear that you'll be able to play directly from an SD Card.

having to wait: thumbs down
finally getting a solution: thumbs way up

I peed myself, then when I read about the new ds, I pooed my self.

If it only lets you download them to SD then that is a load of crap. Seriously! I hope it does mean playing straight from the cards...

We'll know more after Nintendo of America's press conference at 12:30 EDT. If for no other reason than they speak English.

@ cipher and thewiirocks:

I think you guys are getting to the bottom of how this is actually going to work. Ironically enough, I pretty much felt that this was confirmed when the DLC method for GH4 was announced, even though nobody seemed to make the connection that WiiWare and VC games could work the same way.

Here's how I understand that the GH4 DLC will work:
There will be a 200 block space reserved for the song that you will be playing so that that song is being played directly off of the Wii's internal memory. All of the songs you download will be stored on SD and seamlessly streamed to the reserved space on the Wii internal memory as they're selected.

I expect the VC and WiiWare storage to work the same way. If you store any software on the SD card, you'll be required to keep a certain amount of free space on the internal 512mb for these games to be copied to and run. I still believe the SD card reader is too slow to run games right from the card, so this solution is ideal and only really presents the user with a slightly longer load time when they fire up a game.

So basically all this does is streamline the act of moving games around. It'll be nice, but what I hope the update brings with it is much better file management.

Yay! My SD card will get better use instead of going to waste! (The odd thing is that that solution was under our noses this whole time... )

Hn... someone said that the Wii should automatically add channels when we run out. I hope that concept comes to frutition.

2ptolemy-I also suspected good news with GH4's DLC announcement. This is great news. I have half my Wii filled up and a 2 gig card that I am using to store the rest. Being able to play from the SD card is great news. I wonder if there will be a "SD Channel" that runs the thing or something? Spring seems like a long time, but hopefully the rest of us will see something soon after. At least they announced something!
EDIT: Maybe now we can get games like Penny Arcade and Braid, games WWW did articles on about being too big for the service. (See previous articles.) That'd be cool if we could get bigger games.

This is great. finally the (Storage) solution to our problems

@thewiirocks
Wait, NOA haven't done their conference?

@Ptolemy - I suspect the same thing. Which is why I mentioned caching. But there is no confirmation yet. So until the NOA conference, we won't know for sure.

@Terranigma - Correct. NOJ had their conference at 1:30 local Japan time. (12:30 AM EDT this morning.) NOA won't have their conference until 12 hours after NOJ's conference. Soo... (checks watch) 1 hour and 45 minutes from this post.

Ok thanks for saying that. I wonder if NOA will reveal anything different. Maybe they will finally reveal to us Kid Icarus on Wii.

This is like Nintendo Gamers Heaven today.

@terranigma-Heaven indeed! This is a very exciting announcement. This week, we've had a great wiiware game come out of nowhere and now we have a possible storage solution. I'm expecting the next Zelda to be announced sometime today! Maybe two...

Hmm, Thats strange, because when I emailed nintendo about this matter, their response was "There are so many different SD cards being made that the transfer rates are always different and therefor unreliable."
I was thinking they were going to go with online storage, which would be awesome to have a LIVE-style gamertag with your mii.
Even worse, we have to wait until spring. SPRING, really? This has made me not buy as many VC/WiiWare games as I was. Nintendo always cheats themselves out of money. How sad.

True, it hasn't been mentioned yet whether we'll actually be able to play games from it, although I think it'd be pretty stupid if all we could do then is download directly to SD card and nothing more. Now that'd be pretty pointless.

I'm somewhat optimistic that this is what we've been waiting for, though. So, what's a good SD card brand to have for such? I haven't really bothered with one before, for obvious reasons.

@Pegasus-The one that WWW has a pic of is the one I have. It's a very nice card with pretty decent transfer speeds and you can often find the 2Gig one (Shown) for only $20-25. I got mine this summer and I'm glad I got it. I have all my wiiware, VC, and channels (cept the useless Ninty one) on it and it's not even 25% filled. Plus you can use it for the Photo Channel if pics and music are your thing, but file types are limited...

Has anyone noticed that the Wii's management interface is abysmally slow at SD Card transfers? Transferring to the same card on a computer is instantaneous. Similarly, homebrew folks have reported near-instantaneous transfer with their own SD Card software. So I have to wonder if Nintendo isn't doing something wrong.

My first thought is a byte by byte copy rather than a buffered and/or paged copy. (Bad, bad, bad.) Others have suggested encryption issues. To my knowledge, the Wii's ciphers are straightforward elliptic curve cryptography that signs the various files. I'm still not certain this could add dozens of seconds to minutes to a copy, but it's a possibility.

YES!!!!! This is the news I was waiting for, just need to get more SD cards incase I'm out of space on the first one. This is why I think SD cards are better. You can easily remove them than hard drives!

However, would you still only access 48 channels?

UPDATE #1: I'm not happy now. I like the other idea that you can play from them!
UPDATE #2: @ #87 (thewiirocks) - I'm starting to get confused which system is going to happen for SD cards in the spring of 2009.
UPDATE #3: @ #93 (Twilight Crow) - We'll just have to find out in 2009.

To see what I was going to say on this article, click to Dazza's VC-R link on comment #1.

Thanks for pointing that out Mr. Cheez. It reminded me to say, "Nintendo needs to fix the lack of SDHC support on the Wii. We want >2G cards supported!!!".

About time really! im happy with that but not sure it should take until spring to sort it out. hmmmmm

Mr. Cheez, I simply copied my comment....

This is just too freakin' cool! I have so many games on my memory card. It will be awesome to have them all in there own channels. I just hate it when I'm craving a quick game session but then remember that I have to delete a game and then transfer the new game back onto the wii. It's such a pain. I usually end up just playing what's already on the wii if I play at all.
Also, I can't wait for the new "WiiHD." Metroid & Zelda will kick serious butt when they go HD.

Let's face it, playing games from the SD Card should have been a feature from the start. Let's just hope that's what this news means instead of only being able to download directly to the SD Card.

Grr... will Reggie PLEASE say something about this? Him and Cammie are yammering on and on about Wii Music. I need to start going to these events so I can personally poke Reggie with a pointy stick until he tells us what we want to know.

EDIT: Ok, here's what Reggie said as reported by Wired: "9:21: Instead of dealing with the current hassles of Wii storage, you'll be able to download Wii software from the shopping channel to your SD card, and the process of transferring that software will become "dramatically easier."

Stupid. They should have copied the GHIV scheme.

Even worse, we have to wait until spring. SPRING, really?
This confirms a firmware update (no surprises there). The ETA is so long becuase Nintendo like to be control freaks rather than give out new features.

3.3 was in testing for 3 months because they had to be sure blocking freeloader didn't block any legit releases and also their anti-twilight hack system didn't delete any legitimate Zelda saves...the latter was cracked in just 3 days.

Starwolf_UK-san: "3.3 was in testing for 3 months because they had to be sure blocking freeloader didn't block any legit releases and also their anti-twilight hack system didn't delete any legitimate Zelda saves...the latter was cracked in just 3 days."

Wwikipedia said that the anti-Twilight Hack system got circumvented 8 hours after the system got released! (Then again, the Twilight Hackers may have started before the release of that system...)

i can not wait for this to come on the go and more games to add companies are going to see more money roll in as i may purchase more games from vc perhaps catch them all lol

I still think that waiting until Sping, AKA, 2.5 years after the Wii's release is ridiculous for this feature that should have been there from the get-go. I want to download more games than I currently do (MY last download was early August.) and when this releases I think I will, so maybe they should work a little harder/faster and have it up for the Christmas season! And yes, i named it, but thats just me. Anyone else think that this update will become the SD Channel or some equivalent?

I can live with that. Thank you Nintendo!

It's not the SD card that is slow, it's the Wii's SD slot. I can copy a 40 Megabyte game in 10 minutes from the Wii to an SD card. I can copy my entire Wii data (which is 521-point-something Megabytes) from my computer to the SD card in 7 minutes.

All right, finally! I heard about this a little while ago on a different website but cool all the same. Btw, this new DS, the DSi, isnt coming to america for a while. Could somebody tell me a good site to go to to import one? I dont know who to trust when it comes to that and I DONT want to buy one on ebay.

@mmarkster - As I already stated, homebrewers have reported much faster speeds using their own SD Card drivers. It's not the slot that's slow, it's the software.

@mmarkster and the wiirocks--I don't know about you guys, but even though my Launch Day Wii does some weird things (sometimes blacks-out randomly for several minutes before going to the game or software) the SD speed is apparently much faster than anyone else. It copies around 7 blocks a second by my calculations. So, games like FFCC:MLAAK take about 2 min. to transfer. Also, my new computer can transfer 1-2 Gigs in about a minute...so maybe it's unique to each Wii? probably not, just continuing the conversation.
@jangonov-Well, it IS coming to the US, just not until early/mid 2009. But if you must, import from play-asia.com (which is often advertised here.) They are a great import site.

THANK GOD!! And luckily I already have a 1GB SD card for the Wii, meaning 1024 more block of storage.

@bjection_Blaster - 7 blocks per second is extremely poor for an SD Card. Each block is ~128KB of space. 7 blocks/sec works out to 896KB/sec. I've got network lines that transfer faster than that, much less solid-state storage devices. SD Cards are typically rated for speeds of 10-20MB/sec. That's more than 10-20x the speed of the Wii!

You see the issue?

Also, it doesn't seem like everyone quite caught it. You will not be launching games from your SD Card. Reggie confirmed that they'll provide an "easy copy" from SD to internal mem. The only thing that really changes is that we'll be able to download directly to SD Cards. Which (to me) seems of limited utility.

@thewiirocks-I know thats a slow rate, I was just pointing out that the wait wasn't as bad as certain people have complained I agree it's slow compared to, like I said, 1.5 GB in a minute like on my computer. But the other thing you mention is my main reason for replying: what's wrong with "Easy copy" to internal memory? Sure, it could be better, but it allows you to play off the SD, your wii just has to pull it from the card beforehand, which it would have to do anyway.

I'm not really sure what you mean about "not as bad". 30 second to 2 minute copies is what everyone has been complaining about. That's far too long. It's also too slow to use directly.

As for the easy copy, it's not really playing off the SD Card if you have to shift around games like you do today. I'm not sure what interface Nintendo will provide, but having to muck with the files in the Wii's flash memory is not what I had in mind. Ideally, the system would show games on the SD Card and allow you to choose one to run. At worst, it would then cache the file in the Wii's flash like GHIV does.

An "easy copy" suggests that the user will have to explicitly make the transfer before playing the gmae. Which leads to the same shell game we play today. i.e.

Step 1: Move any games you don't immediately need off the Wii's flash memory.
Step 2: Copy the game you want from the Flash card into the Wii's internal flash memory.
Step 3: Launch the game.
Step 4: Rinse and repeat for each game.

A better solution would have been:

Step 1: Click on SD Card menu.
Step 2: Choose game from menu.
Step 3: Game is automatically cached and run. If another game was cached, that area will be overwritten with the new game.

Thats gonna be good, but also bad. People will be able to download games off of sites, so they will get games (VC and WW) for free.

Wwikipedia said that the anti-Twilight Hack system got circumvented 8 hours after the system got released! (Then again, the Twilight Hackers may have started before the release of that system...)
So it is, I was going by when the fix was released.

Thats gonna be good, but also bad. People will be able to download games off of sites, so they will get games (VC and WW) for free.
So whats new? People can do that already.

Anyway, if Nintendo were to have unencrypted executatables (I think they will be encoded still but less agressively) it wouldn't be a case of copy to another SD card as the other Wii system won't have the download ticket instaled on it.

Whatever. We still can't play directly off of the SD card. When I download a game I want to play it right away, not put it on my SD card and forget about it until I get around to rearranging the fridge.

Wii can has real storage solution plz?

I'm not very excited about this, sorry for being sceptic, but they haven't mention anything about playing games from SD cards. I think that what they meant to say with this new is like "kids, why are you asking for a HD? Use the freaking SD cards!" They may have found a faster way to copy the encrypted files but that's not an storage solution.

Finally I'll be able to bring Gyrostarr back from the brink! I never would've played it again without this( I really don't want to give up what I got now).

Edit: Crimany you can't play it? That blows! It'd have to speed things up a lot in order to make me go back to using the damn thing again, otherwise I'll just redownload like I usually never do.

E3 sucked so much but at this, it was just awesome. They know how to make people lose faith then make them happy all over again.

This doesn't really solve anything. >_< All it does is cut out one step and it's one that you only have to do once per download. I think it's safe to say we will be swapping games back and fourth between the system and SD card for the remainder of the Wiis lifespan. Hopefully Nintendo will do better with their next console. Hardly "better than a harddrive" as Reggie has been quoted saying in the past.

Other than this half arsed storage solution, the Nintendo conference was what E3 should've been for Nintendo. Between Punch-Out!!, Sin and Punishment 2, Endless Ocean 2, Klonoa, Demon Sword, Mario and Luigi RPG 3 and news of GCN rereleases with 16:9 and Wiimote functionality added, I am completely floored. Welcome back Nintendo!! We've missed you.

OKay, now that the article has been updated: what the hell is the announcement? We can d/l to the card whoopdie****do! What does that change?! God, I thought Ninty finally did something right.

@Marky V. I could've done that, but I was in my study hall (I couldn't resist visiting this site.), and I had other stuff to do, so I was kind of in a rush, and I was too impatient to save my posting till I got home.

Now I'm just too lazy.

@Everyone that thinks this update is pointless. You know you can copy save data as well as channels, right? Most of the bigger games (the likeliest canidates to be deleted) save your progress. Though I would've liked it if Nintendo made it possible to copy suspend point data, the games that benefit most from it (the ones that save by enormous passwords or don't save a t all) likely won't free up much space anyway.

EDIT: Wait, I misread the article. I thought it said it lets you play games from an SD card, not DL them directly to the SD card. Ah well, it's...sorta helpful, I guess... ^{better than a hard-drive my ass...}

Aw......... I was all excited when I saw this post in class! Man... I thought they finally decided to fix the problem. I guess this is a start..?

This is good and all but it wont solve anything....We should be able to play the games directly from the SD Card. Instead of having to copy them to the wii all the time.

wow massive let down.

at least i won't have to close out of the shop jsut to move stuff then load it back up, but still, big let down.

This is awesome. it just sucks that you still won't be able to play the games from the SD Card

You answered to your fans Nintendo! But you answered incorrectly by not letting us play them directly from the SD Card!

@Note: We originally said games would be playable directly off of SD cards. Sadly, this is not true - Our apologies!

NOoooooooooooooo!!!!!!!

@ObjectionBlaster - My Wii also occasionally goes black for a minute or two before a game starts. I got it on eBay near launch, so maybe that's why. Thanks for shedding some light on that.

@Note: We originally said games would be playable directly off of SD cards. Sadly, this is not true - Our apologies!

OH COME ON!!

I can see how you guys made that mistake. It makes SENSE to be able to play directly off of an SD. Kind of a half assed fix if you ask me.

Eh, kind of half-assed. Its STILL ridiculous that if I download like 4 or 5 WiiWare titles, I have NO ROOM on my Wii. If Nintendo wants to continue the WiiWare service they need a SERIOUS storage solution.

Nintendo We wanted a storage solution not a way to download easier .

What we wanted was to play straight form the cards themselves while this may make downloading easier its no storage solution .
.
I wouldn't be surprised i see many people getting SD cards & backed everything up scratcjhing there heads wondering why that they deleted so many games let all the files takes up less than 512MB all because they dont realise that some memory are used for message board but leaving them with less than 300mb for other files .

If games load from the SD card similarly to the way GHWT manages to do it then it should be a pretty decent, if not perfect, solution.

You download the game straight to the SD, when you intially purchase it from the Shop Channel, and then hopefully in some new 'SD Channel' or whatever, you select the game you want to play and it streams it in the background so you don't really notice it's loading the game into the Wii's internal memory.

So basically it would kinda feel just like you are inserting a new disc into the system each time you choose a different game and it takes a second to 'spin the disk' (load the first block of the game) and then you are away and it loads the rest of the game invisibly in the background as you play through the first parts etc.

You just have to remember to always have a bit of room left on you Wii's internal memory.

Edit: Maybe you can still choose to either have a specific Channel for each game that is loaded onto you Wii's internal memory, as per usual (up to the normal limit), or alternatively and additionally you can use a seperate SD Channel (or whatever it might be called) for games that are actually still on the SD card but that you want to play without "cleaning out the fridge" or loading onto your Wii and dedicating a permanent Channel and memory space to, and you just click the game from within that SD Channel (maybe by selecting it from a list or whatever) and it then streams the game so that it becomes the current game playing on the SD Channel, or something like that. If you choose to play a different game from the ones that are still on your SD card it immediately deletes the last one you had loaded and replaces it with the new one streaming it in the background as you go. So you only ever have one SD card game actually playing/loaded in the SD Channel at a time.

Just throwing in some ideas...

I'm going to guess this is going to be their only solution -_o
They have nothing more planned.. they probably thought we were having trouble getting their games in general with games already downloaded.. they don't understand that we hope to actually beable to play them all at will one day =|

well this is kinda great,but its still pretty pathetic,let us play the games off the SD cards nintendo!

Seriously! Nintendo keeps releasing Wiiware games and VC games, and yet they don't think that people will run out of room? Do they hate making money? My main deterrent the past, what, like 6 months, from buying VC or Wiiware games was that I just didn't have enough room on my Wii. The only things I've bought in that time is Ys I & II and Megaman 9, and I had to delete an N64 game and some other SNES game from my wii to make room for them! But, there are countless others I WOULD have bought if I had had room, but I chose not to because I didn't want to delete anything I currently had on my Wii.

@clayfrd-I know, it's weird! Glad my story helped make sense of that bizarre little error we get...though it's random and I see no fix.

WTF!!!

this is f*#$ing terible i want a real solution!!!!!!!!

I have to assume(hope) that this update will at least enable faster transfer speed to and from the SD cards.

I was thinking about this press release and ...

It turns out to be that Reggie is the biggest LIER in a while:

"We are working on a solution better than a hard drive", when did 2GB (at most) became better than 100, 60 or in the worst case 20GB? not to mention the lower speed on an SD card.

"Redesigns are launched only when sales drop", and now a couple months we get a DS redesign just when "The sales are on their peak" (As he stated during E3). NOT that I am complaining about this new DS version in fact, I LOVE it, my point is that such a lier SHOULDNT be on top of the NOA staff.

And it wasnt the first time he does this, just remember his unfulfilled promise of "A big name game on E3" just to mention one. I know maybe I am not quoting exactly his words but those were the main ideas of his declarations.

well until/unless its confirmed that you can play the games from the SD card this is not that great a news. sure you dont have to fumble with space on the wii (unless you want to swap a specific game) but my 2gb sd card is full already (about 6 months ago) and im not sure if the wii takes SDHC cards so I don't know about anyone else but i'm still fncked

p.s. it's spelled "liar"

soz but to add, the distinct lack of space on the wii is definately puting me off buying vc and wii-ware games unless they hold some personal preference. so listen up NINTENDO.... more cheaper... faster space the a useless 2gb sd card.

"We are working on a solution better than a hard drive", when did 2GB (at most) became better than 100, 60 or in the worst case 20GB? not to mention the lower speed on an SD card.
A hard drive having to ruin the sleek image for 18 Gigabytes of space i'll never use plus it'll probably have to be a $100 Nintendo hard drive seems worse than an SD card to me. 2 Gigabytes in enough to hold 50, 40MB WiiWare titles. Fifty is a hefty number.

Also the article you are citing is nothing more than a sexxed up translation becuase the magazine said nothing.

@mummydaddy. In future if you need to add to your post, using the Edit button is usually a good way to go.

im not sure if the wii takes SDHC cards so I don't know about anyone else but i'm still fncked
The Problem with SDHC is it could potentially break games that use the SD card (or have undesirable effects). Going by the fact every executaable has to have the home menu functionality bulit into it, the SD card drivers are probably bulit into software rather than using the Wii OS...

What...?

Is this for real?

First of all they cannot release this till next year? LOL ?

Then the most important part...it doesnt solve anything?

Are they actually retarded? WTH does allowing to save to SD card but not able to play off them solve. The space on the wii is still limited and you will still have to swap game fromt he wii to SD card. HOW IN THE HELL DOES THIS OLVE ANYTHING???

I am hoping you are wrong...coz that doesn't solve anything...hence whats the point in doing it?

@stedaman: This new update will mean that WiiWare titles / Virtual Console games / Channels can be played directly from an SD card, so you don't have to transfer the title back onto your Wii before playing. Hope that helps

@WiiloveitOnline - Try again.

@Mummydaddy:

I also filled my 2GB SD long ago which along with its low speed makes me complain about this storage 'solution' which is more like a 'Shut up Geeks and Otakus' solution.The Wiktionary spells the word as lier.

@Starwolf_UK:

Well as I said above I DID filled my first 2GB SD in less than a year and if you add the fact that the Wii has at least 3 more years of live (More game saves, channels, WiiWare and VC games) many users as me would actually pay more than $100 for a hard drive. I know few players may be in my situation but we are still a sector in N's market and they may realize this when the downloadable content demand begin to fall. Again... not to menmtion the speed differences.

I am mexican like the interviewer magazine, so I read the original interview in its original language which happens to be my primary language, therefore there are no chances of missunderstanding its content. I could be easier that you have missunderstood me.

By the way, nice avatar.

@ WiiloveitOnline

That's what it should be...but according to:

"Note: We originally said games would be playable directly off of SD cards. Sadly, this is not true - Our apologies!"

It isn't...

From Gamespot...
9:23] "Iwata is addressing the problem of Wii storage," he says. "Soon you will be able to download and store virtual console and WiiWare titles directly on your SD card, and play them off your SD card. This will make the Wii download experience much easier."

So yes, we will be able to play off it directly.

Ok, I found the article. Here's the full text of what GameSpot says Reggie said:

"Iwata is addressing the problem of Wii storage," he says. "Soon you will be able to download and store virtual console and WiiWare titles directly on your SD card, and play them off your SD card. This will make the Wii download experience much easier."

Which is the first time those words have been claimed to come from Reggie. Other reports have said it is "dramatically easier" to copy games to main memory.

EDIT: I cannot find any confirmation of GameSpot's article. It would be wonderful if I'm wrong, but does anyone have another source to confirm?

EDIT2: Here's Kotaku's translation of Iwata's speech:

"We will make it so that, when there is not enough room on the Wii's internal memory, you will be able to purchase and download Virtual Console and WiiWare software directly from the Shopping Channel to an SD memory card. We will also make it so that you will need to go through just one process in order to transfer Virtual Console or WiiWare software stored on an SD card to the Wii console and then be able to play it. We would like to deal with this issue utilizing two methods. Since the updates to realize these new structures will require significant revisions to the Wii system, and these changes need to be made by taking care of a variety of different angles, this method will become effective beginning next spring. For some of you, this may be considered late. But please know that we really appreciate your cooperation and understanding. We are working hard so we can begin the service as soon as possible."

(Emphasis mine)

EDIT3: Cammie Dunaway does not appear to clarifying:

“We don’t know the timing yet, but as Reggie said, it’s going to enable a much more seamless use of the SD card, which is pretty bulky and complicated today. And you’ll be able to save from the Virtual Console straight to the SD card. So we’re excited to hear it.” - On the Wii storage solution

EDIT4: IGN weighs in with:

"Reggie talks Wii storage solution. Can now store downloads directly SD Card. And the process of storing on SD card will "become dramatically easier," says Reggie."

I can't find any confirmation of what GameSpot says. Every other website is reporting that the big news is direct download to the SD Card with a "dramatically easier" process for transferring data. I don't think direct-run off of SD Cards is confirmed yet. Not until Nintendo comes out and says as much. (Video of the conference would make this much easier.)

I'm sure there will be a sort of SD manager channel of some sort.

That's the storage solution? It's an improvement, but definitely not the solution. It's a drop on the hot stone...

FYI, I emailed Chris Kohler of Wired. He confirmed that he did not hear the GameSpot quote. After the show, Dunaway confirmed the "easy copy" solution with him. Soo... case closed.

thewiirocks-san, you just found your minimum two witnesses for me to recognize the "play off the SD Card" ability.

By the way, from what I have read from the press release, the "play off the SD Card ability" will come in a series of updates, so we may get to that goal one piece at a time.

Oh, and no bother, Mr. Cheez and Duyn-san!

(P.S. This Sunday, I will change my avatar into somethine different yet expected.)

@MarkyVigoroth - I'm not quite sure what you mean. I just disproved the "play off SD Card" theory. Which sucks.

@thewiirocks
Even if it sucks, knowing the truth is much better, thank you for all your research.

Your #87 comment says that you are allowed to play off the SD card.

Also, I hope that speed optimization of the Wii SD slot becomes a piece leading to the "play off the SD Card" feature!

I was following up with Drizzt in post #86. He didn't link to the article, so I found the link, then tried to find corroborating evidence. Out of the various sources I pulled, not even one corroborated GameSpot's quote. Conclusion? GameSpot may have published incorrect information. Thus it became important to prove that.

Next step, I emailed someone who was at the event. He confirmed my suspicion that GameSpot's information was incorrect. (Though I suspect that WiiWare World spoke with their Ninty representative prior to changing the article. So they may have already been certain of the correction when they published it. )

@Twilight Crow - Thank you for the compliment. It is very much appreciated.

So are we screwed or not? Is this useless or not? I hear "copy to SD" and "Play from SD"

Play from SD: FALSE
"Easy Copy" to Main Memory: TRUE
GameSpot Article: FALSE
WiiWare-World Article: CURRENTLY CORRECT

Does that clarify?

Umm Can't we already store games on SD cards? I know we can't play off them but we still won't be. Is Nintendo just trying to remind us that we can store them on SD cards?

So I'll say again? Solved nothing...bar it made the process a bit "faster" ?

Not being able to play the games off the SD card does not make it better!
Nintendo : "We have something better than a hard drive"

where is it?

pff

@ thewiirocks: Darn Gamespot. Making things up...
This isn't much of a solution if this is it.

Well as I said above I DID filled my first 2GB SD in less than a year
And this SD card is only used for the Wii shop. I'm impressed. It must mean you own well over 100 Wii Shop titles.

Thing is most people have currently bought nothing (Nintendo have realised the error of their way hence the DSi coming with free points) and of those to have bought stuff very few of them have any storage problem. Thats kind of why this isn't a huge priority for Nintendo.

Nintendo's solution is likely to be pressure from developers as much as it is pressure from its fans.

Edit:
http://gonintendo.com/?p=58164
Two rights make a wrong...wait thats not right at all...

@ Starwolf_UK :

, yes ... I am glad of all my Nintendo collection (physical and virtual)

About that translation of Mr. Iwata's words he speaks about only ONE process which leads me to conclude that the games will launch off from SD... I really hope this to be true on 09 (Its not a 'better than hard drive solution' but its better than a sole 'easy copying process'.

is it even possible for nintendo to fix things to launch from a GAMECUBE memory card? whats the storage space on those anyway?

I've got a 56 and a 1019, and the 1019 is nowhere near full

Wait... What does this solve...?

You'll still only have the small amount of memory on the Wii, so you'll still have to free up space and you'll still have to worry about putting games on your SD card. Doesn't all this just take away the step of putting it to your Wii then SD card? What does this solve?