Nintendo have now ramped up the production on their downloadable games with the release of WiiWare. Here comes the immediate problem of storage. The Wii is a very bare bones system and it appears that Nintendo’s short term solution of an expandable SD slot hasn’t worked. Carrying only 512Mb of internal storage, it won’t be long before Wii’s everywhere will be full of virtual console titles, extra channels and now WiiWare games. The long term solution? A USB Hard Drive.

Although its only a rumor and one that has recently surfaced, it does make sense. The Wii lacks the storage and an external source of space would be appropriate considering a remodeled Wii with a built one isn’t really feasible. Nintendo can hardly keep up with demand of one version, never mind two and not all Wii owners use their Wii’s online anyway.

What would make sense is releasing an official Wii Hard Drive (much like the SD cards) but allow any external HD to work with it. It doesn’t sound like it would be that taxing because the official drive would be similar to any third party one and as long as it didn’t require drivers you would be good to go. I guess this would go against the whole casual, approachable angle that Nintendo are going after but seeing as a large majority of the Wii owners online would have to be pretty hardcore anyway, I don’t see this being an issue.

Nintendo releasing a Hard Drive really doesn’t have any downsides unless they lock it so you can only use Nintendo official hardware with it. The only real downside for Nintendo is that by allowing any hard drive you open it up to hackers or modders but from the news reports from the Wii-Mod scene the SD expansion slot has provided enough of an opening.

We have to remember that this rumor steamed from a Nintendo job posting. It required people to work on the Wii with USB expansion in mind, meaning that it could be another USB add on thats possible. Web-Cam anyone? In the meantime we can dream about plugging in a Western-Digital to store our WiiWare games.

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