Unexpected Wii U Nintendo Direct Details Storage And Online

out of nowhere haha

If only I was fluent in Japanese lol

Hopefully this will answer any questions about playing games directly from external hard drives, etc.

I hope they'll do a translation video soon. Lots of useful information in this video it seems.

At least, there is finally the confirmation, there will be a Wii U Virtual Console and its games will be (as far as I understood) playable on the Gamepad.

This Nintendo direct has shown up just in time to explain all the rumours regarding storage.

Well from this we can assume NSMBU is 2gb. Nintendo land is 3.2. Also it looks like you can't use all the memory for games. It sucks, but whatever.

Much better. Now we can stop the witch-hunt.

@Bluezealand Yup - Nintendo has plans for Wii U Virtual Console and those games will be playable on the GamePad.

I have no clue what they are saying..

So there is going to be a new Wii U Virtual Console. Expected and I hope the rollout is fast.

HDDs used in the wii have to be formatted to not work with PCs and are only guarntted to work with the a Y style cable.

the nintendo network points can be used on the 3ds eshop. Meaning the 3ds will probably get a firmware update to have NN as well as NN is replacing club nintendo.

Looks to me like anything from the Wii can only be stored and played from the sd card and can't be controlled from the gamepad. Well that's the gist I get anyway.

Here's a TRANSLATION of everything.

Thanks but no thanks. Only 32GB storage. No HDD option. No wired LAN. No in-game voice chat as standard. No Gamecube compatibility. Lo-res pad screen. No multi-touch.

@joker94 Why even bother stating that out loud?

It said you can't play Wii downloads on the game pad. Good lord that stinks. I'm not surprised though.
@snax007 you do realize that the 360's voice chat came later on as a update. I don't even think multi-touch is that big of a deal. The gamepads screen are low-res because you wouldn't see a difference if it was HD. I'm pretty sure there will be a lan adapter later on. Oh yeah, the memory can be expanded too. (almost forgot)

@snax007
What do you mean 'no HDD option'? They just confirmed you could use up to 2tb HDD's..

And the GamePad screen has a high PPI ratio (of about 158) which is going to look gorgeous.

Keep an eye out for more details guys, we're working hard to bring all the information to you!

@Tsuchinoko I suppose it wasn't that nessesary to say, but whatever..

@19Robb92 I ment internal HDD. Besides, you can't play games directly from external HDD.

People defending the lo-res screen with "can't see any difference" should wake up. it's only 480p (=standard def). This is 2012, not 2007

@Shining-Void Not true. In-game voice chat was standard for all 360 games from day one... 7 years ago!

Only Wii U Virtual Console games can be played on the Gamepad; not Wii Virtual Console or WiiWare games as you can only play them on the TV.

@snax007 You CAN play games directly from external HDD. One of the main points of the Nintendo Direct broadcast was to clarify that - watch the video, you'll see Iwata clearly point out on the Wii U Menu an icon for New Super Mario Bros. U, stored on the Wii U console, and an icon for Nintendo Land, stored on an external HDD. That would NOT be displayed if you couldn't boot games right from the external HDD. Forget everything you learnt from ONM's shoddy journalism earlier in the week, because frankly, most of it was bull.

@snax007 Actually... watch it.... I'm pretty sure you can play games saved on an external.

@snax007
You can't? Where'd you get that? I know it's not possible with SD cards anymore, but I'm pretty sure the whole point in formating the HDD to suit the WiiU system is due to being able to play games off of it.

But why does that matter to you? The consoles streams a HD image to the pad, the PPI is all that will matter. As long as the PPI is high, it'll look great. It's not like the pad is standalone hardware, the console is doing all the processing.

I don't know if this is good or bad... I mean, this USB thing looks so complicated now! DX

@Magnet_Man018 It's not quite as complicated as it's made to sound. The vast majority of HDDs should and will work, but from what Iwata's saying, it sounds like any external HDD that has its own power cable will definitely work, and if you use a Y Cable (with 2 USBs on the end), that's also a pretty good bet. Might be an idea to wait for NOE/NOA to offer some guidance here, though.

What! So they'll be two tiers of VC games: those original VC games not playable on the gamepad and new VC games that are? Is Nintendo expecting me to reinvest in VC games that I've already purchased just for the privilege of playing them properly on the gamepad?!

@Peppy_Hare I literally JUST replied to that on the GamePad thread. You're misunderstanding, I've explained why in the other thread.

I liked the little bit of music heard when it showed the warawara plaza. It sounds so futuristic!

@Cipher thanks for the response Cipher, but I understand perfectly well. Two tiers (catalogues) of VC games: one playable on gamepad, one not. My old VC downloads playable, but defunct, and not playable on the gamepad. Nintendo is strong-arming us to repurchase VC games for the privilege of gamepad support. It's infuriating!

@19Robb92 Thanks for that.

My biggest take-away - only about 3.8 GB usable after OS install on the 8GB. But I wonder if that is before all the day 1 updates such as Miiverse and backward compatibility. And I need to buy a Y cable, b/c I'm not hooking up a USB external HDD that needs to be plugged in.

If I plug in Wiispeak or my Wii USB ethernet connector does that mean I can't use a USB powered HDD? (I forget how many USB ports there are.)

@rjejr
No problem.

There's 4 USB (2.0) ports available on the WiiU, by the way.

Not being able to play Wii VC games on the gamepad stinks! Not, however, simply because the WiiU won't beam the game image to the pad, but because Nintendo seems to be confirming that, going forward, there will be two tiers of VC games (Wii VC and WiiU VC). Old Wii VC downloads will be playable, but in a "second-class citizen sort of way". You will be encouraged to purchase WiiU VC games and your old VC games will eventually go unsupported.

@Peppy_Hare Perhaps Nintendo will be generous and let you download Wii U VC versions of games you already own for free...

Or maybe not.

To whoever wanted to also store stuff on the HDD...you could in theory make a second partition. Only way to know if it works is to try it when the system comes out.

oops, that was in the wrong thread, wasn't it? sorry about that.

hmm. I like the visual demo. basically universal language for: "There ain't room for squat in here, do we have to say it again? Oh, and retail games will soon be available to put on the external HD that you will have to buy, surely it'll look cute crammed under your tv as long as it doesn't have our logo on it."

So did it state that whether or not the USB ports will power an external HDD that doesn't have a power supply? I think my hdd is USB 2.0 and 3.0 compliant .

WHY is Nintendo making all this stuff so convoluted and complicated?!

There should be one central online eShop where I should be able to buy ANY WiiWare or VC games and play them on my GamePad (obviously excluding any Wiimote motion controlled specific games). This should all be simple, intuitive and fun. Not confusing and frustrating.

Instead they split the store in two, don't let us use the GamePad for WiiWare and VC games...ask us to boot separately to play Wii games, don't let us save games on SD card, make us load games saved on USB onto the system before we can play them, take up half the available memory with day one updates and system resources...

The list of stupid and utterly confounding decisions goes on and on...

They do actually want me to buy this system, right?

Didn't see that one coming!

These Japanese directs just annoy me. No offense to people who do understand but the system releases in Japan last so I dont understand why they haven't included an english version of this direct first. Furthermore english speaking systems sold would of course outnumber japanese systems sold.

@Funkynugget Because the headquarters are in Japan. Japan usually gets games first, too. Don't worry. It'll be clarified in English soon enough.

I'm waiting until the system is actually released and people are actually using it to really decide. If anything, I'll wait longer, because 1) I don't have much money at the moment, and 2) systems aren't really up to speed at launch. Don't know why people expect full potential at launch when they know that consoles tend to have features added and issues resolved over time. Keywords: over time.

From what I gathered, you can play software straight from the hard drive, but not from SD. The internal flash memory sure is sucky, but it's good to see Nintendo admitting it's shortcomings in such a visual way. Now to get a decent HDD...