Oddworld: New 'n' Tasty Wii U Delay Seems to be Due to 8GB Basic Model

Don't they know that users can attach a USB hard drive that increases the Wii U memory?

facepalm

Of course they do, but casual users browsing the eShop may not, and those are sales lost.

that's pure waste of time (and surely waste of quality) to make it fit 8gb because it's completely improbable that basic model users dont already have other softwares taking space into their consoles.
anyway it wont fit ...

The people who bought an 8GB Wii U, have no intention of buying eShop games, because 8GB is actually LESS space for mandatory updates and save data. So don't cater to the people who bought an 8GB Wii U, because they're not interested. And if they ARE interested they would have gotten an external hard drive, so there's no problem anymore.

That's a big thing to say it's a waste of time. I appreciate what they're doing here. Making sure everyone who owns a Wii U, no matter which model, will be able to play the game. I salute 'em for that.

I've a 32gig model, and STILL bought a 2tb external harddrive. Most consumers have a little forethought with regards the product they are buying (and its limitations/available upgrades.)

Didn't stop Microsoft from releasing Halo 4, whose multiplayer mode requires an install too large for certain models of the XBox 360.

I'm glad Nintendo allowed external HDD support from the gate- I have a 32GB Deluxe Wii U + 500GB external hard drive.

Nonetheless, I do wish they had made the Basic model with 32gb, and the Deluxe with 128gb - 256gb. I think Nintendo has finally realized the impact of digital, and I would be shocked if their next home console did not include substantially more hard drive space.

I get what they're doing, but if they get it barely under 5GB or however much space people with the basic Wii U have, then those people would need to have not downloaded any other games in order to fit Oddworld...seems unlikely.

So is this going to be digital only?

I seen this last night. Do they even know that after the firs initial update out of box that there's barely 3 gigs left?? Just make the game and let the consumer decide if they need to upgrade.

@rjejr Ha, beat you to that comment by 2 mins!

Shouldn't an article about this list the size of the game somewhere? I'm wondering how much of this story is actually true considering how many games are already out there that wouldn't fit on the 8GB which is really only about a 4GB b/c of the Wii U OS taking up the other 4GB.

I'm wondering if it's more of an issue that they can't figure out how to make it run off of the external HDD like other games do and they are just trying to blame their incopmentce on Nitnedo's small storage?

I got the 8GB Wii U system and I also have over 50 32GB flash dongle that I can use for my Wii U anytime so just bring it out. No excuses.

@SanderEvers
Well a 1TB SSD would put the cost at around $1000 minimum.

Solid state is still too expensive to utilize for large hard drives. I could see them doing a 128gb SSD, but even that would add $75 at manufacturer's cost. If they could deliver a 128gb SSD console for $350 though they would hit the nail on the head. I'd be totally okay with that. If they were to use a normal hard drive though, you could add 500 gigs for $30-50.

I don't know, we'll have to see how much SSD costs come down by the time next generation comes around. It seems Nintendo is not fond of using a hard drive with movable parts, and I can respect that. I'd rather have 128 GB of flash memory or solid-state drive than a terabyte using a traditional hard drive. If they are just going to use a traditional hard drive, I'd rather them not and let me buy an external.

Nintendo to be blamed here too. These days 8GB is a bloody joke for a console memory. Though this game would better be released both in physical as well as digital format

@Dipper723

Sure, but we're talking about solid-state hard drives, not traditional hard drives.

I bought a TWO terabyte hard drive for $100 for my PS4, but again, that was not a solid state drive.

Foolish of Nintendo to think an 8GB model would be a smart move.

@SanderEvers No they should have put a 256GB SSD in the Wii U (And accepted the extra cost as totally worth it).

Or made it an option (One I would have certainly taken). e-sata port even would have been just fine.

@Dipper723 I deliberately bought an 8GB system as Nintendo made the crazy decision to not make the 32GB in white.

This being said, I have had no problem with the many many games I've downloaded onto my external hard drive. It's not just "casual" people who picked up that system.

well done, nintendo. 8Gb today is a joke.

@JaxonH Yeah, I misunderstood you for a sec, I thought you meant external harddrive.

@Katzii I'm not talking about the people who bought an external hard drive, I'm talking about the people who bought the 8GB model and that's it.

I have an 8GB model with a 2TB external hard drive. Any Wii U owner is going to have to get an external hard drive at some point.

You really have to wonder what the numbers are for people with an 8GB console who would:
1. Actually buy stuff from the eShop
2. Go for this type of game
3. Not be okay with buying an external HDD
Because you'd have to assume that it's a negligible number, come on...for the love of Arceus

Even xbox one owners and ps4 owners are gonna need extra storage if they go mainly digital. This is where gaming is going and i'm sure this gen has really made Nintendo take notice.

I always figured the 32gb model was for those that didn't intend to download much. 32gb is nothing in this day and age. Heck, it was nothing 9 years ago when the 360 launched. If you want to get digital releases, you'll need an external HD, so why bother spending extra on the internal memory that won't be needed?

They could get round this in 1 of 2 ways:

1) Do what other eshop games do and put a disclaimer on the page listing how many blocks are required and that you may need a hard drive.
or
2) Release it on a disc (maybe throw in HD Abes Exodus on the same disc hint, hint).

Don't care what they do, moving Abe around is still like controlling a snail covered in glue - not gonna get this one either. Hated the series since the first one - but that's just me...

Maybe we count with our fingers who bought the 8gb model...

Anyway we just have to wait for It to be cancelled...

Oh come on this is waste of time, its already been said but, if a person has an 8gb model and doesnt have an external drive then are probably not going to be buying a large download only game anyway

Well at least it's not cancelled. Nice to see passionate 3rd parties unlike some people i know

@LexKitteh those casual users probably don't buy eshop games anyway.

The developers have posted a new tweet, saying that the 8GB system isn't a deal breaker:
https://twitter.com/OddworldInc/status/523166326747955200

uh, can you not download eshop games to an external drive just like retail games via the eshop? i mean the whole external drive thing is a pain, but at least its a way to make it all work....or you could have just bought the 32gb model to begin with, where did you think you would put downloads with only like 4g of available space?

16 GB flash drive.
15-20$.
How hard is it for these devs to get it?
This isn't a legitimate excuse.
It's the barrel scraping of someone delaying their game for a bigger install base.
They're obviously pushing this to December when Smash has boosted those numbers.
Apparently, his 'that's just one hurdle' comment in a later tweet was supposed to prevent people from coming to that conclusion.
General Nintendo gamers won't buy it and I think they get that now.

Many are missing the point. With such a low installed user base for the Wii U (how many, less than 9 million?), chances are that those who bought the 8GB version make up for an sizable percentage of this number. Factor in the amount of players interested in this type of game and Wii U owners looking forward to buy this game shrinks a lot.
I have a neighbor who bought the 8GB version with the Skylanders game a year ago, and doesn't feel the need to add a HD drive.

@ouroborous I would think so considering some games are bigger than 8 GB

@maceng
And in your opinion, would he or she be the type of consumer to a) use their credit card to buy games digitally and b) be interested in a rather 'core' platformer like New n' Tasty?
The issue isn't that there are those who purchased the 8GB model. The issue is thinking that there are those who purchased the 8GB model, don't have an external drive and still would be interested in this title.
It's like with the Wii Sports bundles. How many of those people, those Wii Sports bundle purchasing people, legitimately spent money on the Wii Shop?
I'd say it was quite the small number.
For the 8GB model, I'd venture that maybe, just maybe, 400k systems were sold.
It was cancelled by Nintendo in less than a year. It got dusty on store shelves while quite a few locations sold out of black consoles for the first little bit.
Skylanders WAS Wii Sports. If it were exclusive to the Wii U, it would sell systems.
Nintendo didn't grab long term customers with Wii. That was gaming's gateway console. Now, those types of gamers buy stuff like Skylanders. And that's pretty much it (50-75$ game and portal, 12$ figurines).
This isn't a game that's going to sell consoles.
And it's not going to be grabbing those Skylanders / Wii Sports gamers either.

Nice to see them trying to make it easier on the 8GB users but just give them a note that an external hard drive is going to be needed.

I sure hope that when Nintendo's next home console comes out, 32GB is the minimum.

Another aside: the game isn't exactly cheap. At, what 30$, there's now WAY too many titles on the eShop that are half that and still just as much (if not more) fun.
This is a remake. Inflated because the devs are funding it out of pocket.
Their price point alone is negating 'casual' gamers, gamers who can spend the same amount and get an Assassin's Creed IV (a properly advertised title), Rayman Legends (which looks more family friendly) or I don't know.. take their family out for dinner and enjoy their time.
It's a single player game.
No single player gamer purchased the basic without an external drive.

8gb wii u? aint nobody got time for that

@ogo79 Lol!
Oh THANK ODD(world) its NOT cancelled!!! I appreciate them keeping every single Wii U owner in mind, trying to maximize their sales, but the wait is killing me. I also never got to play Stranger's Wrath so, yeah, I'm ready!

I hope that with Nintendo's next system, they go at least 64GB flash and 32GB SSD. Leave room for an external drive and call it a day.
Oh and a 10 core, 3 GHz CPU
3 GB GPU
16 GB RAM
Optical out
HDMI 1.4+
USB 3.0 (and a higher thoroughput for power)
More powerful cooling system and better ventilation
Oh and built in Wi-fi AND 10/100/1000 ethernet
They went for cost effectiveness over performance and with every Borderlands, Wolf Among Us, Evil Within that goes by, the more I regret the Wii U. Nintendo will have different management if they survive this console generation.
If not, they'll make a killing off the 3DS now and make an all-in-one handheld with TV output later.

Oh well...time to get it on PS4. :/

I'll be waiting!

I just ran out of room on my 32gb version. All retail titles have been purchased on disk. My WiiU is full of only indie titles. I'd love to make this my first game utilizing a new hard drive, but I guess I'll be waiting.

By the time they overcome those issues, everyone will have gotten the game in other systems (or don't care about the game anymore) so they will lose a ton of sales. A lot more than just the sales of the people who have the 8GB model.

And anyway, just how big this one is anyway? I still find amazing that EAD Tokyo can fit 3D World in less than 2GB and other devs struggle to keep file sizes reasonable.

I'd like to assume that anyone who got the 8GB model (such as myself, since it was on sale) probably purchased some sort of USB external storage device. Of course, there's always a handful who don't realize this. You don't want to exclude people.
Then again, by the time it comes to the Wii U, anyone who would have purchased that version may have already bought it on some other system.

Hmm good thing i went with the Deluxe set,thanks Obama!

Well it's a pretty poor situation all around! Nintendo need to take a long hard look in the mirror for creating this mess (32/64gb I think would have been sensible) but on the other hand.....whilst the thought is appreciated from the oddworld team.....they are making a mountain out of a mole hill since the problem is not theirs. It's up to the consumer and suppliers of hardware to decide what is best for them! I bought the 32gb model on release day because I only like black hardware. Memory was not in my thinking- I bought a 32gb data stick for my demos and junk and I've got plenty of room.....for now! =/

I would actually much rather have the option for adding harddrives the way nintendo has made it- whereas i think the developer should release the game regardless of size- the fact that it is so EASY to add a big usb hd is awesome to me- right now i have the 32gb model with a 500gb hd on back with the option for another if i ever need, hds are so cheap now a days, and with a 4usb hub plugged into the wall behind my WiiU, I can even just add a USB stick and it will recognize it.

@Dipper723 I got an 8GB model at launch, but I also had a 320GB ext drive that I plugged in immediately after setting up the system. Having an external storage device nowadays is not uncommon, even if you don't do much with computers.

@Spoony_Tech agreed release the game and let the consumers decide or buy an external HD.

@sinalefa 3D world is a labor of love and they took the time to learn how to properly utilize the WiiU which unfortunately i dont believe some devs consider it worth the time to do when its easier to just have the cpu do most of the work

@rjejr seems Toys r Us has a promotion for SSB WiiU preorder and get a free amiibo! nintendo must have finally heard you

http://m.toysrus.com/skava/static/product.html?type=TRU_product_us&url=%2Fproduct%2Findex.jsp%3FproductId%3D41442366&domain=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.toysrus.com

@SahashraLA I believe that you would be happier with a Microsoft or Sony console. They are the ones that are going to chase the flashy specs and shove everything including the kitchen sink into their console. They are also the ones that will charge you an high dollar for the privilege.

Nintendo on the other hand chooses a concept and a price point. Then they build the best piece of hardware to execute that concept that the price point can afford. They do not appear to care what the latest bleeding edge tech is, because they seem to realize that in a month that tech will be outdated and surpassed by the PC. They focus on delivering the best experiences they can with their product, not using marketing to sell crap.

@adrenochrome Exactly what i was thinking, pretty stupid to delay a game due to this, it could be the case with external HD as well, if its full it wont work so why bother with this silly 8GB version. The requirement should just be met for installing the game. External HD is super cheap these days anyway.

@sinalefa spot on, great post!

I'm glad this is still coming to the wii u. I try to get the Wii U version of games when ever possible so I don't mind waiting.

moreover if fitting into the stock basic model is so important, nintendo would have made it mandatory into the eshop rules.
Remember tekken tag tournament 2, one of the first eshop game, didnt fit at all the 8gb model

wiiu users > 8gb model users > who didnt bought an HD > who never bought an eshop title > who will buy this game
probably the number corresponding to this subset of wiiu users is near to zero

A developer says that he wants to male the game run in the basic models, even if it isn't mandatory and all of you are already showing your arrogance against "casual users2 (whatever tf that means) and making tantrums against nintendo.

way to go guys, way to go.

I rolled with white on day one just cause I like the look better.
Was getting a hard drive either way.

@minotaurgamer : not "all", please
i have nothing against the amount of internal disc space choosen by nintendo : i consider this space is for saving games of storing small apps
i have nothing against casual gamers too, all those who dl games already have an external hd
i only have a problem with the excuse of "fitting the 8gb model", an info that have already been modified according to the twitter post mentioned upper by @jariw , now "other challenges" has been added. it seems it was only an quick excuse that still need to be clarified

So, they need to compress all data from the original 8.5 GB game into roughly 4 GB max (the other 4GB is for Wii U software update/save data.)
That means they must cut the game in half, or bring the textures down from hi-res to blurry-mess. Or maybe much framerame stuttering from in-game graphics decompressing? It's contraproductive to do extra work to make a worse version. Every Wii U owner interested in downloading games has their external hard drive hooked up.

And we want the best version of this game that it can be.

@WanderingPB - Hey man thanks for the link, now this is what I'm talking about, advertising.

And speaking of, 1st 2 pages of Game Informer mag were for B2. The really obviously anti-Nintendo mag also had reviews for HW, SSB for 3DS and the last 2 pages were Fantasy Life. That's like an entire years worth of Nintendo coverage for that mag.

Release it as a retail disc. Problem solved.

Seriously though, what an idiotic reason to delay a game. There are plenty of games on the eShop that well exceed the remaining 3GB of storage space remaining in the basic Wii U console. There are Xbox 360 and PS3 consoles that wouldn't be able to run the game without an external hard drive but that certainly didn't seem to deter them from releasing the game on those platforms. Heck, the Arcade model of the Xbox 360 had less internal memory than the original Wii did! (256MB vs. 512MB)

I'm sure that most owners of the 8GB console aren't interested in eShop games to begin with so they really aren't missing any potential customers there.

How much longer do they intend to delay the game while it has been available on other platforms for several months now? My interest in this game is rapidly diminishing, and if they stupidly decide to release a gimped version on Wii U as so many other third party developers have before them, then I won't support this. We've had enough of that sort of B.S. on Wii U and I won't support it any longer.

there was no point in nintendo chasing the horizon with 64 gig/ 128/512 all become obsolete and add no real value to the gamer. the ability to add an external drive is precisely the right approach. mechanical parts are innately less reliable and ssd is not good value
if you want a bigger faster drive buy a pc.
stoked to be finally able to play these great games on my nintendo

excuses, I mean, what is the % of people who actually own the 8gig model? and does the delay not hurt the game as well?

@rjejr no worries but im curious if TRU will also have the SSB amiibo bundle? or if it can be combined so u could get two amiibos…but like u said happy they're offering some incentive to get consumers to pre-order from them now we need Ninty to spread the word!

im happy Cereza & other Ninty games are gettin sum love in GI magazine for a change…also incase ur interested they have finally restocked the extended battery in the Nintendo store for NA. doubles the charge time of the original gamepad battery.

https://store.nintendo.com/ng3/us/po/browse/productDetailColorSizePicker.jsp?categoryNav=true&navAction=jump&navCount=39&atg.multisite.remap=false&productId=prod150204&categoryId=cat10008

I have the White model with a 1.5tb drive attached..... Even if I had the 32gb version I would have attached an external HD by now. 32gb isn't going to give you much space as it is.

Besides if someone wants to play this game on an 8gb model they can plop on a cheapo 32gb thumb drive and be done with it by now.

Before you guys say any..nvm I may've been a tad late. This isn't because of nintendo DL limit. (well maybe minus to those unfortunate souls that cant afford a 32 gig model/hard drive) in fact that's what they're going for. I mean have you SEEN Bayonetta's download size?

I hope that nothing important get lost in the process. Kudos to them!

Whats the obsession will massive digital downloads by game producers.

They are just trying to shift extra costs to users, and save themselves money - instead of providing proper retail distribution through physical media.

One thing that hasn't really been considered is the download whack from the internet services provider. If you don't have a good service, with either a big monthly download limit or a high download speed, then you have to suffer or go without.

This situation could apply to many potential customers.

The obsession is with cutscenes. (That I skip immediately nearly all the time).

physical media is not a solution because there is the awful fan noise.

Well, that's sweet and all, but those people should just get a hard drive.

@minotaurgamer It's obvious that the developers are using the 8gb model as a Scapegoat. This game is on the PSvita which it's base Memory Card is 4gb (which is actually more like 3689 mb)

I agree with those above me questioning the source behind the delay.Anyone who bought a 8gb model and didn't upgrade their storage capacity is not going to buy this game anyway.

Nintendo should never have released an 8GB model, especially considering it only has about 3GB remaining after the operating system is taken into account.

(This from someone that owns the 8GB model, but has an external hard drive.)

I have the Basic model and I'm proud of it! I bought it second hand on times when Trine2 was the best game on WiiU and I got external hard drive cheap from my brother-in law and I've regretted nothing! My only worry was that I'd had to pay for WWHD but MK8 offer saved me from that. With the money saved I've been able to get more good games. Having Basic model with external hard drive is not bad at all:)

And the Basic model suits well with my also white Wii, especially now when GC controller adapter doesn't work with WiiU's Wii mode (I hope that changes and the GC VC becomes reality.)

With all the updates... there isn't any space left with 8gb. Seriously...
I DO understand, that 8gb + external is as good, but if someone thinks they can go on with only the console... well of course if nothing from eSHop.

I am bit annoyed that you need the space when you buy games from eShop. You cannot buy and install later. Noticed this last Christmas, when tried to buy RER. Thankfully sales brought 1TB WD for me for 70e.

NBA 2K13 is for example 20GB - but of course, you can buy it physical.

This is stupid. Nintendo made a decision not to include any reasonably sized storage. . . so gave us external HD support. There's no prob here. Release game - people that have basic model will buy a £5 flash stick to play it! Other companies release larger games on eshop!

I'm using a spare 128 SSD on my 32GB Wii U. I might swap it to the 256GB on my laptop later since Bayo 1&2 is 35+ GB and I'm already going all digital.

I agree with others here, those who have 8GB model are inclined to get an external HDD anyway if they are buying eShop games.

Just one more example to show that Nintendo goofed when it specced the Wii U system. No wonder it's not seeing third party support when it's just so much hassle for these developers to get their games on the system. No reasonable person can expect that all developers can simply afford the money and manpower to go off and make completely different versions of its games just to support one system when the normal versions works perfectly fine on multiple other platforms without needed to change lots of stuff. Nintendo really should have known better.

Even vc games warn that you might need to install an external harddrive for memory space. This is a waste of time.

The delay will make them lose sales as if you are eager to play it and have a playstation, you will end up buying it for that. They should have released it the time as playstation.

Then again if they are foolish enough to be serious about this get some help from Nintendo. How small was 3D world again?

Well I think they're doing the right thing. I mean, do you know how many people own a Wii U basic model with unupgraded memory? There are hundreds....... literally, hundreds.

I got my brother's external hard drives for this specific reason!

Don't do this to us Lanning!!!!

@Hero-of-WiiU No, by next gen it should be higher than that because textures, models etc. will be made more complex and require even more space.

I just heard about this game and looked it up. Fell in love with how it looked and the gameplay concept... Then I heard about the dumb controls. </3

I suppose if the game is eShop only, and doesn't exist in physical firm, they are right to make it fit on the 8GB model. People shouldn't HAVE to have an external harddrive to play your game.

DKCTF doesn't fit on the the 8GB model, but then you do have the option of buying it physical copy.

If basic model users are in fact buying off eshop they either have a hard drive or are buying games like Spikey Walls and other cheap, more casual diversions. OddWorld is more for the Shovel Knight owning crowd that has an insatiable appitite for quality.

@Pod Firmware updates from nintendo itself are somewhere around 5GB, so basically the game needs to be less than 3GB to fit a basic wiiU model.

@SetupDisk They are using Unity. (Anything using Unity seems to be massive compared to everything else).

I bought the white 8GB Wii U since it really didn't matter which one I got; I knew I'd be hooking up external storage either way. By the way, the 8GB unit had only just 2GB of usable space after OS updates and such. The developer here catering to the scenario of a customer with an 8GB Wii U and full storage capacity of 2GB remaining seems like an odd choice. I expect most other 8GB owners will also have external storage, and if they don't, then they're not buying downloadable games.

Yeah... 8GB, or even 32 was never a good idea. You should be able to buy at least a few downloadable games without having to shovel out more money for a hard drive.

If they want to include people who bought an 8GB model and don't own an external drive, release it on disc. 99% of those people wouldn't consider buying a large retail download anyway. If they were the type of people that would consider that, they would have either bought the 32GB model or (more likely) an external hard drive!

@NavySpheal It was a great idea if they wanted to keep the price of the system under $450, which they did. Regardless of the type or size of the drive they put in the system, they would have had to charge more per GB than the consumer would pay by buying an external drive of their own choosing. Ex: You can get a 1TB external HDD on Amazon for under $80. If Nintendo had chosen to include an HDD, they would have had to increase the price of the console by a minimum of $100, and the hard drive would have been at most a quarter the size of the one I could get myself for less.

Also, 32GB is enough for people who are planning on buying most of their games in disc form but want to purchase a few smaller games off the eShop from time to time. I have both a brother and sister in that situation and neither had problems until my brother decided (a year after purchasing the system) that he wanted to start getting digital versions of retail games. At which point he spent $50 on a 500GB external drive. Problem solved. Your statement might sound good on paper, but it's not true in the real world.

the 8GB model is a complete waste of time and offers no value.

The premium model is a joke with the 32GB on offer. no reason for nintendo to offer such low memory.

Sony launch price of PS4 shows that nintendo could and should have offered more memory.

Nintendo got the right idea to not include an hdd, in the last two years hdd price lowered a lot (4 months ago i got a 32gb usb2 pen drive for 10$ and a 3TB Seagate usb3 hdd for 106$ tax included) and even the 32GB model doesn't allow you to buy many games but the fact that they're talking about the 8gb make me think something else:

• the game is larger than 5GB clearly (not actually a hard problem)
• the game has many hours of low compressed 1080p video
• the game has MegaTexture! (in that case the low speed usb2 drive will have a lot of problem and maybe cannot run the game but why the hell a game like that had to use megatexture!!!!)
• they have received a visit from an archangel that make a prophecy: "You will not release the game on wiiu and your bank account will raise!"

Why are they doing this not Strangers Wrath HD first anyway it looks miles better.

Ridiculous excuse

I'll keep waiting, plus Stranger's Wrath is the one I really want. I'm getting ready to sell my PS3 for more Wii U and Xbox One software so I don't really see a reason to worry about getting PS3 games at this juncture anyway.

@WaxxyOne
The problem with that is flash memory is actually more expensive per gigabyte than traditional HDDs. So following your logic, they'd actually have to charge even more than for the equivalent mechanical drive.

They deal in bulk and one would assume directly with the manufacturer, so they wouldn't necessarily have to charge more, unless they wanted to pull an Apple.

I think in Nintendo's case, they went with the best they could do on the budget they set for it. If they say, only wanted to spend $30, then they needed the best storage they could get for $30. They probably could have went with 250GB or something, but even that is worth piddly poo these days. If people are just going to end up upgrading anyway, then why not opt for flash to go with peoples' mass-storage of choice? People already do that on PC, so its actually pretty forward-thing on Nintendo's part.

@NavySpheal Doesn't it work the same way as on the Wii where you store your save files and most of your downloads on an SD card? In that case, they just need the game to fit the size limit so that it can be temporarily transferred over to the system memory whenever you choose to load the game.

People with basic models and no hard drives are highly unlikely to buy such a niche download game anyway...

Even with mentioning the Vita (which had 4GB cards are the smallest form) to argue against this excuse, there are plenty of Wii U digitally-distributed games that take up more than what the 8GB SKU has (after taking roughly 5GB for OS operations).

All in all, the 8GB SKU is a budget SKU, and not meant to be the de-facto standard for the Wii U. And as it is, anyone that got the 8GB SKU and wants to go digital will have bought a companion ext HDD (like me), so this is no excuse.

So dumb. People who have the 8GB unit (I'm one of them, by the way) either don't buy these kinds of games or have already sprung for a cheap hard drive. Really that 8 GBs is more like 4 anyway. Sure, maybe you could fit a game like this on there, but then there'd be no room for anything else (your save files, patch updates for other games, etc.).

There's just no point in worrying about this.

@WanderingPB - I can't see myself ever spending $32 on a battery. Fortunately there's a socket next to my chair that I've been sitting in for the past 13 years so I'm good.

I have an 8GB unit and had a drive day one. If this game is over 5GB in size I'd say it's basically a retail release. When you buy a large game like that doesn't the eShop tell you if you lack space? I don't see the point in catering to anyone who isn't serious enough about buying download titles not to have some kind of additional storage. Shame Nintendo didn't make it a wee bit easier by allowing installs to SD rather than limiting that to Wii mode - would have made things even easier.

Ridiculous.

So either this comes very late, or not that all. My hopes have gone from 100% to 10%. If this still arrives someday, we are in luck!

Why do Nintendo make things so difficult in the first place?

@Reusinck
Damn, it's that crazy by now?

I've got an 8GB Wii U with a 320 GB External Hard Drive. I'm good.

Seriously though, it's not like the 8GB Wii U was completely useless, people. If you go purely physical, 8GB is more than enough space for save data. I only have my hard drive because eShop titles were interesting to me and Assassin's Creed IV had a 1500 MB update. Otherwise, 8GB got me from 18 Nov 2012 to just this summer.

I just want to play this game! I've always been interested in OddWorld but never got to play it.

Nintendo doesn't even make the 8GB model anymore, and there are other games on the console that are larger. Is this a Nintendo standard?

What a weird problem to have. There's such a tiny, minuscule percentage of end users who have a white Wii U without any form of external storage like SD card or USB HDD. I'm all for a developer "doing things right" rather than half assing but this seems like such a non-issue as a whole.

This is by no means a serious statistic but I know 12 people with Wii U's and all of them are the black Deluxe edition.

@mjc0961 I never said it was useless. I was saying I, personally, am interested in downloadable titles and the space ended up getting taken away by those and the Assassin's Creed update.

For someone not interested in downloads with games that don't have 1 GB updates, the 8GB will last a while.

I was saying that even WITH all of the downloaded titles I got, it wasn't until this summer that I figured I needed a hard drive.

Should Nintendo have released an 8GB console in 2012? Not necessarily, but Microsoft does have their 4GB 360 (which most recent games require a hard drive to play)

@SahashraLA @Quorthon
Wrong. They just stated that they are restocking the 8GB model to several gaming outlets.Also, the Skylanders' version comes in a 8GB Wii U package.

I stand corrected. More consoles that the game can be played in, the better. Even if it means 50,000-100,000 possible sales.

Nintendo does not provide a breakdown of type of consoles sold, but I'll venture and say, based on price (which everyone seemed to forget was a sticking point in the Wii U poor sales), that there is a least 2 million units of the 8Gb model.

I wonder, how big may this game actually be?! I don't really believe in Lorne anymore. He whines about the industry, that's why he went download only. But it took him ages to bring this game, wich is just the same game with some improved graphics, to the market. Should it take THAT long? Should it be THAT big? If its 10 GB for example, that takes days to download on Wii u (Wii u has a TERRIBLE download speed). And when is that game coming about the Oddworld shepherd? Never, I guess!!