Wii Might Be Getting a Hard Drive…Or Not

It’s certainly not anything new that people have been complaining about the lack of storage space on the Wii. There has been a bit of frustration towards Nintendo at their flippant suggestions of simply deleted old VC games to make more room.

While Nintendo promised they would look into possible solutions, it seems that many have misinterpreted this as (somehow) as a promise to include a hard drive in the future. Talking to the Mexian and Latin American Club Nintendo magazine, Reggie Fils-Aime said:

We have never said that it will be a hard drive nor have we mentioned how we will fix this issue, but we are going to deliver a better way to store the games.

So if they are working on a storage solution that’s not a hard drive, what exactly are they working on? Based on earlier rumors of Nintendo patenting some method of holographic storage, there are a few possibilities.

Is the company going to institute this technology this generation? It’s possible that it could be used by the company as source of remote storage, accessible through the internet. It’s also possible that they are developing this new technology for their next generation of system. Holographic storage is quite expensive now (readers estimated at around $1800) but in another three or four years it might be a different story. Is Nintendo trying to get a head start on the next general of technology with this patent? Only time will tell.

Further reading for those so inclined:
Holographic Memory (wikipedia)
Holographic Versatile Disc (wikipedia)
Miniature flexure based scanners for angle multiplexing – The patent Nintendo made which sparked the rumors on holographic storage.

Via: Nintendo Everything