SD cards for the Wii useless?

There are some articles floating around and some unhappy bloggers calling out the big N’s lack of SD support for the Wii and I’d like to point out a few things.

  • One, SD cards didn’t even work when the system was launched. It took a system update for just backing up to SD cards to be enabled/added.
  • Two, the branded Wii SD cards are a rip. They are SD cards through and through. If you pay $20 more for a white card that no-one can see because it’s in your Wii that’s your fault.
  • Three, it does suck that you can’t run game saves and VCs from the card but you can at least play music and photos off of it. And you can play movies off of it as well through motion jpeg encoding and playing through the photo channel.
  • Four, my theory is they disabled this type of feature because they don’t want pirating of the VC games. Somehow the process of transferring the VC game from SD to the system is doing some kind of authentication test and just playing the game off the card that process isn’t happening. Game saves might help the process of hacking as well, no-one knows.
  • Fifth and final, while it might be useless now it doesn’t mean it’ll be useless in the future. One of the first things that I’d like to see enabled is Mii backups through SD, making it a lot easier to e-mail and transfer a ton of Miis between people.
Asides

January 05

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About the Author, Dan Cameron:

I'm the owner and solution engineer at Sprout Venture, a web solutions company that specializes in web development including WordPress.

I started my first blog in 2003 and transitioned to WordPress in 2004. Since moving to WordPress I've written a few plugins and themes for public consumption. Lately I'm busy engineering/building/coding and have only been able to share a few code snippets.

If you're in need of some web development, web design or custom WordPress plugins and/or themes contact me, I'll be happy to discuss it with you.

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  • Nate
    Whoops, seems the video linked to the page link I posted has been removed.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYK3gOC3drY

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DitvyLWxROU
  • Nate
    "Turns out that first update for the Wii did a couple of things. It changed the boot-up screen, tinkered slightly with a couple of menus and added the ability to manage the data on your SD card. In particular, you can now transfer game saves and virtual console games to and from an SD card as advertised. Brian Crecente"

    http://kotaku.com/gaming/gizmodo/managing-sd-ca...
  • Dan
    Maybe I didn't emphasize it enough; I agree (with your more recent 2nd paragraph), I just don't care for it since I don't expect them to dumb down any other top ten list. And like I already tried to say, it's not annoying that they put a debatable #1 game at the top it's that they put extremely questionable top 30 games in the top 10.
  • JaredB
    Whether the general public buys video games / systems or not I think is debatable. Even though there is a large dedicated "grown up" portion of the market, I don't know whether that's bigger than parents buying games for their kids yet. Of course, the kids probably tell the parents what to buy, but still...

    Basically, I think the bottom line is that the list (or at least the Wii Sports selection) is valid for the target audience of Time magazine readers. I'd wager to say a much higher percentage of Time magazine readers would enjoy that game, whereas they probably wouldn't enjoy the others you mentioned because they would not "get" them - too complicated, too much time investment, etc.

    You and I both know that even the game itself is not that great in and of itself, that its real value is to showcase the new controller style and be as accessible to as many people as possible, and that there are plenty of "better" games for people who want to put the time into them.
  • Dan
    That's good logic but the problem is the general public does not buy video game consoles or games for their kid's systems, gamers do. Yes those old bags that played Wii sports at Christmas agree that Wii sports is the best game of '06 because they didn't play anything else and gamers even the casual gamers can't agree that Wii Sports is better then Zelda or GoW.

    You're probably right though, I'd say the people or person that made the list plays little games and personally love[s] Wii sports --who doesn't?-- and then threw in GoW and Resistance to appease the real gamers. Both the later games do not appease the general audience and if you were right with that assessment I'd say both of those games should be replaced with Pinata and Nintendogs.

    Either way I agree that putting Wii sports at the top of the list grabs the readers to care to read about the other 9 whether the rest were intentionally for their audience or not.
  • JaredB
    Time's list is probably much more geared towards a general audience than gamer mags would be, and the choice of games should probably reflect that, so I think it's fine. To be honest, I didn't even look at the rest of the list, but I think that the criteria for their list would be totally different than the criteria for a "gamer's" top ten list.

    Even given my limited gaming knowledge, I'd say that WiiSports probably is the best game of 2006 for that larger, general population audience that Time is addressing. I don't know of any other game that would draw in / appeal to more people (in terms of pure numbers), especially not Zelda, GoW, or any of the others you mentioned.
  • Dan
    Funny how Time is getting involved with no experience in gaming what-so-ever.

    I just looked through it and it's like they took the most talked about games of '06 and through them into a bag and picked them out. One example #4 Zelda is rated by many credible game reviewers as the best game of all time and it's behind New Super Mario, WTF?. The only reasonable position is #2 GoW. And WhyTF is table tennis and Prey on there, they're good games but it's like they through TT in there on a whim like they do to all their top tens to just create a buzz.
  • JaredB
    Wii Sports took the top position in Time Magazine's top ten video games of 2006.
  • JaredB
    Yeah, those WiiSports add ons are pretty ridiculous. I saw those at Fry's a while back when I was still hunting for extra Wiimotes. I cannot see why anyone would be interested in those.
  • Dan
    Unless you plan to mail your wiimote around the us.
  • Dan
    Transferring to the wiimote is nice but its a hack because I'm talking about getting a Mii off a computer from a download through miiplaza or email.
  • Look at these hilarious add ons to your WiiMote for Wii Sports: http://www.gizmodo.com/gadgets/gadgets/nintendo...
  • The transferring of Miis to the WiiMotes seems superior to taking them around on an SD card.
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