Wii U Basic Only Has 3GB of Space for Game Downloadeds

[bobafert]

Has something changed with the Wii U where you actually install the games on the machine? I know the virtual console games are installed on memory, but the Wii U games like Nintendoland should just play from the disk. Don't see the big deal here. virtual console games don't take up that much space and the additional option to plug in a HDD should take care of those too lazy to get up and switch a disk.

 

[blazorthon]

I just thought about it and really, why are you people complaining? You get to buy your own hard drive instead of use a vastly overpriced hard drive that comes with the console.

 

[cirdecus]

[citation][nom]jn77[/nom]My PS3 has a 1TB 10,000 RPM drive in it...... this tech is about 10 years old.[/citation]

wow I didn't know I could buy a PS3 with a 1TB option for it? Are you saying the PS3 has USB ports that let you add 10k drives?

 

[cirdecus]

[citation][nom]blazorthon[/nom]EDIT:Actually re-reading your post, that may be an excellent question. I know that 10KRPM drives aren't anything new, but how many of them are 1TB models from more than a year or two ago. Especially considering that I don't think that we had much of any 1TB hard drives a whole seven years ago (10KRPM or not), so I'm questioning the legitimacy of that member who claims to have put a 1TB 10KRPM hard drive in a PS3 seven years ago. Heck, even if they were around, it'd have been an incredibly expensive hard drive, at least about as expensive as the console was seven years ago. I can't see much good reason to put such a hard drive in a console at the time.[/citation]

The person who mentioned 1TB 10k drive in a PS3 and 10 year old tech is an idiot. Server drives were SCSI and a COMPLETELY different tech than the kind of drives you can throw into a USB SATA enclosure and plug into your PS3..

Not to mention, I'm pretty certain the PS3 can't break 7,200rpm speeds, certainly not through a USB 2.0 port, so putting a 10k drive in it sounds pretty stupid, unless you're talking about hacking it and removing the internal drive, which you still have to consider BUS speed on the board as a limitation if anyone knows what kind of onboard controller the PS3 uses.

Basically, the idea of plugging in your own USB external drive for your console is fantastic and getting rid of the overpriced rip-off model of using hard drive space to tier the consoles is awesome. Expect Microsoft and Sony to follow suit with their next systems and all of you are to benefit. Now you can go drop 100 bucks on 2TB's of storage and be happy rather than upgrading your 4GB Xbox to the 250GB Xbox for the same price

 

[rosen380]

According to this, the first commercially available 1TB drive was about 5.5 years ago [and it was 7200 RPM]

http://www.howtogeek.com/trivia/who-produced-the-worlds-first-commercial-1tb-hard-drive/

I can't find any reference to a 1TB SATA 10k drive from before April of this year. Easy to clear up-- jn77 ,what is the model number of your 10 year old 1TB 10k drive?

 

[spentshells]

Downloadeds?

 

[cirdecus]

[citation][nom]jn77[/nom]Who puts >30gb of space on the console unit these days..... the smallest PS3 was 40gb and that has been discontinued for how long? Xbox has always had more space than 40gb (deluxe edition). LCD's are not cheap, realtively speaking, so they put allot of money in a controller, but not the processor.I guess the whole Wii line is about the controller with a sup par processing unit.[/citation]

Well while you're throwing money at Microsoft and Sony for overpriced storage space in their "deluxe" editions, we'll be spending 90 bucks on 10 times the storage by buying an external 2TB drive

This may not seem like a big deal, but Nintendo is destroying the Sony\Microsoft "tier" pricing model by doing this.

I'm also not sure what all of this has to do with the "processing unit".. you mean the processor? I think you're really confused about what you're trying to say. I think that you don't like the Wii U but you're not sure why, so you're just spitting out gibberish lol.

 

[cirdecus]

[citation][nom]rosen380[/nom]According to this, the first commercially available 1TB drive was about 5.5 years ago [and it was 7200 RPM]http://www.howtogeek.com/trivia/wh [...] ard-drive/I can't find any reference to a 1TB SATA 10k drive from before April of this year. Easy to clear up-- jn77 ,what is the model number of your 10 year old 1TB 10k drive?[/citation]

That sounds about right. I think he was trying to brag about getting a 1TB drive into his PS3 somehow and he's angry that the Wii U will allow you to add on easy USB storage for free. Obviously, anyone who went to great lengths hacking their systems or paying a premium for 250GB of storage vs 4GB of storage is going to be thankful that Nintendo is breaking ground here.

 

[H8ff0000]

the Wii U allows for SD cards and USB hard drives of up to 2 TB to be used

Actually it's been said that it will accept 3TB HDDs as well.

 

[Guest]

I'm planning on using an 1tb external portable drive. My main concern is that USB2 copies at around 7mb/s on my pc while my USB3 copies around 70-90mb/s. The WiiU only has USB2 so is it going to take me an hour to install a game to a drive? Even if I take an SSD the max theoretical of USB2 is around 40mb/s.

 

[shadowfamicom]

The drive is Solid State. Did no one read the specs?
Reported by many sites out there...
"...There’s 2GB of RAM, with 1GB of that being reserved for games. The basic model has an 8GB solid-state drive as primary storage, while the premium model ups that to 32GB. The Wii U’s optical drive will support a new proprietary disc format that can store up to 25GB — similar to Blu-ray discs."

 

[kinggraves]

[citation][nom]shadowfamicom[/nom]The drive is Solid State. Did no one read the specs?Reported by many sites out there..."...There’s 2GB of RAM, with 1GB of that being reserved for games. The basic model has an 8GB solid-state drive as primary storage, while the premium model ups that to 32GB. The Wii U’s optical drive will support a new proprietary disc format that can store up to 25GB — similar to Blu-ray discs."[/citation]

Beat me to it.

I'm really shaking my head at the "experts" of Tom's here. It's incredibly obvious just by looking at the sizes (8 and 32) that this is FLASH memory, which is FAR faster than the cheapskate mag drives in your XBoxs and PS3s. This is like complaining about how your cell phone doesn't come with a 2TB drive. Get a clue. The internal memory is meant for things like game saves and VC wares, which could also be put over to an SD card and likely the USB drive too.

Haters gonna hate. I'll be here when MS and Sony copy this like everything else on the Wii U.

 

[dark_lord69]

Is anyone actually planning on buying this Wii U?

 

[notuptome2004]

[citation][nom]dark_lord69[/nom]Is anyone actually planning on buying this Wii U?[/citation]



i would if i had the money but as it stands Pre-order sales went through the roof when they started in September

 

[therabiddeer]

Have fun with the super long load times of games installed on a USB2.0 HDD because Nintendo is cheap.

 

[rosen380]

... or play them off of discs?

 

[C00lIT]

Classic Wii has only 512MB confused in "Blocks" and fared pretty well.
(Unless of course you are like me and you install WiiBrew and want to install a crapload of channels...)
But still manages to do a fair job.

Time will tell if the storage of the new Wii will be FAIR or if it will Blow.

 

[therabiddeer]

[citation][nom]rosen380[/nom]... or play them off of discs?[/citation]
Then still have fun with your long load times. The better the graphics on a game trying to load purely off of a disc = longer load times. This reason is why PS3 and X360 games have install options. Also, what is the point of a 32GB HDD if you can only realistically use it for saves and a select few installs?

 

[notuptome2004]

[citation][nom]therabiddeer[/nom]Then still have fun with your long load times. The better the graphics on a game trying to load purely off of a disc = longer load times. This reason is why PS3 and X360 games have install options. Also, what is the point of a 32GB HDD if you can only realistically use it for saves and a select few installs?[/citation]




Why that may be true for 7 year old hardware the PS3 and 360 the Wii U uses much newer hardware and the transfer rate for the desc drive is much higher as it is a propitiatory format so i dont think that will be much of an issue

 

[kryzzay]

[citation][nom]notuptome2004[/nom]i would if i had the money but as it stands Pre-order sales went through the roof when they started in September[/citation]

I've preordered. Can't wait to get stuck into the new Mario and Rayman Legends which will come out early next year. Mario and Rayman are the best!

 

[kryzzay]

BTW, How do you stuff up the title of an article? Downloadeds? Seriously......

 

[alidan]

[citation][nom]CaedenV[/nom]HDDs are way faster than flash storage. HDDs can read/write at speeds much faster than USB2 can allow (~25MB/s), meanwhile most flash media only reads at ~5-12MB/s, though the high speed class 10+ cards are coming down in price finally.[/citation]
take into account seek time.

[citation][nom]kinggraves[/nom]Beat me to it.I'm really shaking my head at the "experts" of Tom's here. It's incredibly obvious just by looking at the sizes (8 and 32) that this is FLASH memory, which is FAR faster than the cheapskate mag drives in your XBoxs and PS3s. This is like complaining about how your cell phone doesn't come with a 2TB drive. Get a clue. The internal memory is meant for things like game saves and VC wares, which could also be put over to an SD card and likely the USB drive too.Haters gonna hate. I'll be here when MS and Sony copy this like everything else on the Wii U.[/citation]

however those mag drives are ultimately faster than the internal on the wiiu because the wiiu is bottlenecked by usb2 for game loading.

 

[kinggraves]

[citation][nom]alidan[/nom]however those mag drives are ultimately faster than the internal on the wiiu because the wiiu is bottlenecked by usb2 for game loading.[/citation]

The mag drives would not be faster than the internal of the Wii U, I think what you meant was that the mag drives would be faster than the external on a Wii U.

To really debate this though, we'd have to ignore the fact more recent slim editions of the other consoles remove the HD as well and only deal with older and outdated models. We'd also have to know what the actual transfer rates on both systems are without making assumptions, these are not PC motherboards. 360 and PS3 both use SATA 1 drives, which is still a lot faster than USB2 but not as majorly as with SATA2/3. Not all devices that had an SATA input achieved full SATA speeds internally at that time, depending on the internal bus used. To be fair, Nintendo might not have the speediest of SSDs in their system either since flash speeds are so incredibly varied.

The simple answer is "don't buy the 8GB version if you plan on downloading games to the console". The 32GB has enough space for a few games to be stored, and those games will load lightning fast with flash drive access times. Think of the difference an SSD makes on a PC's boot and load times. Switching out the games you're currently playing between disc/external and internal may be a hassle, but PC gamers do choose to take that hassle themselves to speed their load times with an SSD drive. It's not like Nintendo has a history of having dozens of great games out at once anyway, there's usually only one at a time worth the effort. Nintendo skimped where they could to get the price down and still get that tablet included, USB3 would have been far preferable for this solution but it's still more expensive than USB2.

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]kinggraves[/nom]The mag drives would not be faster than the internal of the Wii U, I think what you meant was that the mag drives would be faster than the external on a Wii U.To really debate this though, we'd have to ignore the fact more recent slim editions of the other consoles remove the HD as well and only deal with older and outdated models. We'd also have to know what the actual transfer rates on both systems are without making assumptions, these are not PC motherboards. 360 and PS3 both use SATA 1 drives, which is still a lot faster than USB2 but not as majorly as with SATA2/3. Not all devices that had an SATA input achieved full SATA speeds internally at that time, depending on the internal bus used. To be fair, Nintendo might not have the speediest of SSDs in their system either since flash speeds are so incredibly varied.The simple answer is "don't buy the 8GB version if you plan on downloading games to the console". The 32GB has enough space for a few games to be stored, and those games will load lightning fast with flash drive access times. Think of the difference an SSD makes on a PC's boot and load times. Switching out the games you're currently playing between disc/external and internal may be a hassle, but PC gamers do choose to take that hassle themselves to speed their load times with an SSD drive. It's not like Nintendo has a history of having dozens of great games out at once anyway, there's usually only one at a time worth the effort. Nintendo skimped where they could to get the price down and still get that tablet included, USB3 would have been far preferable for this solution but it's still more expensive than USB2.[/citation]

The version of SATA used by the hard drive really isn't a big factor on its performance. Even most SATA3 hard drives don't have their platters bottle-necked by SATA 150MB/s in most workloads. The cache can be bottle-necked, but the main speedup of a hard drive's cache isn't really bandwidth AFAIK anyway.