If you're a fan of the Wii's Virtual Console and WiiWare digital download services, you've undoubtedly encountered one of the console's biggest setbacks: its meager amount of storage space. The company's had many glib answers for angry fans demanding a solution to the Wii's lack of a hard drive, but we've only heard rumors and Nintendo's whole "just move your games to an SD card" line since the grumbling began. And who can forget the infamous and disingenuous fridge analogy that was spouted by a Nintendo PR rep in the Fall of '07 and repeated millions of times throughout the Internet to this day? Yes, we clean out our fridge when food goes bad, but downloaded ROMs are in no danger of rotting--okay, maybe the Alex Kidd games.
However, with Nintendo President Satoru Iwata's 2009 GDC keynote speech comes exciting news that addresses the concerns of hardcore Nintendo nerds. Thanks to the liveblogging efforts of Joystiq, we now have confirmation of a new SD Card Channel for the Wii, which will let owners of Nintendo's popular console run games straight from their SD cards. This is a huge and admittedly obvious correction to Nintendo''s storage solution of the past, which allowed a Wii owner to copy but not play games from an SD card. If you've ever had to delete channels to make room for new ones, you know what an annoying and time-consuming process (for the indecisive, anyway) it can be. While it's true that this simple solution should have happened a long time ago, it's nice to see Nintendo finally address an issue that only a minority of its fans are experiencing.
Apparently, this channel is now available with the newest system update, so turn on your Wii and give it a try.
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