While the meager storage space on the Wii is only mildly annoying for even the most hardcore Nintendo fanboy, the company continues to surprise us by renouncing hard drive peripherals for their console. The debate reminds me of the N64 cartridge vs. CD debacle that stunted that generation’s ability to make sweet love to bleeding edge SquareEnix products, among other key content. As a Wii-loving owner I hate seeing the system’s obvious weak points celebrated as features by their own people and felt the need to speak up about it.

PR manager Eric Walter said the company would prefer that gamers micromanage our game libraries and delete, download, and repeat as needed.  He further noted that it "was like putting music on your iPod".  Had I been present I would have beat him senseless with Ron’s 100-pound Zune: there is no way in hell the experience is the same, nor is the absence of a hard drive a low-fi way of circumventing piracy (ahem ahem). More importantly, if we’re willing to throw money at the Wii so that it doesn’t have to be that way, why not make it happen? I’d buy that over a Fit Board!

I’ll preface my rant in acknowledging that some sort of solid-state device alternative may be in the works, unless they’re completely insane. Even if they go that route, I doubt the capacity be bigger and cheaper than HDD technology. Furthermore, I’m annoyed at the company’s dietary approach to how they perceive guys like me consume their games.  In a sense — I’m not unlike Fat Bastard: I want every Nintendo product I own in my belly at once, and that was one the promise of the Wii with their VC product and promised upcoming online features.  Instead, I’m looking this news like I own an anemic console that I’ll have to perpetually juggle my soon-to-be-epic collection on.

Instead, this just seems counterintuitive to my self-indulgent American Consumewhoreism, and I’d like to make an appeal as to why this can’t possibly be a good thing for Wii owners nor anything like the iPod experience.  Hit the jump for my rant and please weigh in with your perspective.

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This entry was posted on Friday, November 2nd, 2007 at 8:08 am and is filed under Wii News.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.