Wii Storage is becoming a "Mainstream Problem"
One of Nintendo's best qualities is that they do things their own way and tread their own path. It's an ideology that has given us the quirky, fun games that we know and love and not generic shooter #1356. However, it's also one of Nintendo's worst qualities that causes them to ignore innovations that others have championed and makes them adopt new ideas a lot slower than they should.
Now I've explained my position on the Wii storage many times, and while I don't see the 'major problem' that others see I completely understand that it could be a lot better and more user friendly - especially for people who are used to having large hard drives where they can store lots of things. More importantly is the fact that most games now have downloadable content that won't make it to Wii because of the programming hassle. In that vein it's nice to see that Reggie, and by association Nintendo, realize the urgency to do something about it.
From an Americas-centric perspective, here is the reality we see. We have a consumer base who loves virtual console. We have a userbase who really is enjoying WiiWare content. So for us really our challenge really is how do we satisfy all these consumers who are loving all of the product we make available on a download basis? As we continue to have things, as you point out, like ‘Mario Kart’ that has its own channel when you’re playing from an Internet perspective, we’re just making this challenge tougher and tougher. So in our view this is becoming much more of a mainstream problem, which is why we have a sense of urgency to solve it. - Reggie Fils-aime, NOA
To those people desperate for some type of Wii hard drive Reggie's comments sound pretty good, but you have to interpret that under their philosophy I explained above. Nintendo's solution to providing more storage could be anything. Just look at how they implemented voice chat - instead of simply allowing headset use (like everyone else), they create a peripheral so many people can chat at once. Totally unexpected.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that Nintendo's solution has a high probability of disappointing the people who expect some sort of traditional fix. Of course Nintendo has to actually implement said fix and not just throw words at people's faces, but I guess that's also part of the new super secret Nintendo.
