When Nintendo revealed the Wii U yesterday, a lot of people were wondering why the company chose such a paltry amount of hard drive space for the Wii U's two variants (8GB for the Basic and 32GB for the Premium).
Even using the premium as an example, 32 gigabytes of disk space is not much. Download a movie or two and I can see that space filling up…fast.
So why did Nintendo do this? Allow Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime to do the honors.
The reason we did it that way is that the cost of that type of storage memory is plummeting. What we didn't want to do is tie a profit model to something that's gonna rapidly decline over time. We'll let the consumer buy as much as they want, as cheaply as they want.
Additionally, Fils-Aime states that the Wii U has an expandable memory. You can just buy any harddisk and use that. "You can plug in a full-on three terabyte hard drive if you want. I'll love you as a digital consumer," adds Reggie.
So, that means the Xbox 360 is the only one left using a proprietary harddrive, no? Hopefully, Microsoft ditches it once the Xbox 720 rolls around — though, I'm not holding my breath, as they do sell a lot of these things as pricey as they are.
Do you think the Wii U's hard disk sizes will be a problem down the road or does Fils-Aime's thinking make a lot of sense? Sound off and let us know.
Thanks, Engadget
