Wii U

[TheMightyEthan]

I honestly think it should be considered false advertising to say it's 8GB when only 3 is useable.

[deanb]

It's modern not-Blu-Rays so speed shouldn't be an issue any more so installs of the full retail games isn't to be something expected. But if you're wanting to grab digital games, say a GC game they're going to be selling on the Virtual Console, that's 1.5GB a pop. Saves are around a few megs each, and there's potential updates, and any DLC the player may want to buy. Apart from Pre-N64 games this things is pretty much no go for digital purchases. If this version outsells the 32GB version then it could make third party studios pretty wary of publishing to Wii U except for GOTY editions, you know how much modern studios like their DLC.

 

edit: And there's what Ethan is saying too. I made similar notion when it turned out the MS Surface 16GB only has like 8GB usable. There's the whole "1000GB HDD" becomes 950GB when you actually format it to NTFS, but losing more than half the advertised space is bullshit. I guess in the UK at least we'll wait and see how ASA deal with it.

[Mister Jack]

Blech. I'd never need 32 GB on a Wii U but 8 isn't enough, especially after that awful formatting. I was really hoping there'd be a 16.

[CorgiShinobi]

Nothing out of the ordinary here. Look at your PS3 even where "250GB" really translates to about 237GB, though obviously that's more of a dent than a majority of your space.

 

Yet, if Xbox 360 4GB consoles are bought regularly and preferred amongst the "casual" market, the same can be said for the WiiU 8GB. That variant is going to serve the purpose of holding saves and possibly a Netflix channel. That's fine for the consumer that isn't going to be pouring money into digital content, those same people who are okay with the default songs/dances in their music games, and etc.

 

EDIT: WiiU Menu Music, for those wanting to get all kinds of zen.

 

Edited November 15, 2012 by Atomsk88

[deanb]

The change in size for hard drives when formatted has already been covered. That's not what is happening here, and even then going from 250GB to 237GB is only a change of 5% and still leaves you with plenty of room compared to the 60% eaten up from the advertised space on the Wii U. So certainly far out of the ordinary. On top of that the firmware for the device is also stored on ROM, and even if it was put on the HDD it amounts to about 140MB or so. Here the formatting change accounts for a few hundred meg, with a further 4.2GB gobbled up at initial boot which if it is an amount Nintendo were aware of then they should have put a chunk of system usable ROM in instead to store it, leaving the advertised 8GB to the user.

 

And we're not doubting that the basic model may be popular, we're taking issue that the number on the front of the box is a rather large leap from the number that's actually there in reality.

[TheMightyEthan]

I've realized what Nintendo needs to do to sell me a Wii U, simply release the following three games:

 

Super Smash Bros

3D Mario

Mario Kart

 

A Zelda or a full-fledged Pokemon game would do it alone, but because of Skyward Sword I'm sure there's not going to be a new Zelda for a while, and as I've said before I'm well aware that a home console Pokemon is never going to happen.

[CorgiShinobi]

The change in size for hard drives when formatted has already been covered. That's not what is happening here, and even then going from 250GB to 237GB is only a change of 5% and still leaves you with plenty of room compared to the 60% eaten up from the advertised space on the Wii U. So certainly far out of the ordinary. On top of that the firmware for the device is also stored on ROM, and even if it was put on the HDD it amounts to about 140MB or so. Here the formatting change accounts for a few hundred meg, with a further 4.2GB gobbled up at initial boot which if it is an amount Nintendo were aware of then they should have put a chunk of system usable ROM in instead to store it, leaving the advertised 8GB to the user.

 

And we're not doubting that the basic model may be popular, we're taking issue that the number on the front of the box is a rather large leap from the number that's actually there in reality.

Yeah, I realize, if not already said that too. Maybe wanted to join in, but you guys got it "covered."

 

Thing is, sure you're taking issue with it, but if we're being honest here, would you have gone for a 8GB WiiU from the start if you were getting a WiiU? Even 32GB won't be enough for anyone who's going to be doing a lot of gaming on the system. Maybe if you could fine a cheap external HDD with a few hundred gigs, then gamers would go for an 8GB model, but the two different units pretty much paint a picture of who would (not will) buy that model.

[deanb]

Well I own the 40GB version of the PS3 so you can kinda figure which I'd go for (though it's now a 320GB version, cos it's a device that supports replaceable hard drives...which at least would be a reasonable balance with the Wii U). And really it doesn't matter which version I would purchase (I'm in the "definitely not buying" column anyway), it's still insanely shitty that the version sold as 8GB has less than 40% of that as usable space and all it will do is hamper any future digital sales they try to push, or fuck up purchasers of third party titles with day one DLC. 3GB in this day and age just doesn't cut it and it certainly won't over the next 5+.

[CorgiShinobi]

You really can't do anything with the 4GB Xbox 360 either. I had a neighbor a year ago who won one from his work and there were so many demos we couldn't download because we were short a little bit. He at least got it for free, but as a gamer with roughly 3GB of free space, it meant he had to go out and get the overpriced 250GB Microsoft Xbox HDD.

 

Thing is, that small space does work for many others. I mentioned how there are Wii owners who have party and dance games for their Wii, but they have never gone to the Wii Shop to purchase more tracks or whatever those games throw at them. This is an assumption obviously, but I imagine the same can be said for the WiiU. Majority of those going after the "cheap" WiiU probably couldn't put into perspective how much a gigabyte of harddrive space will get them.

 

And if they want more? They get a dirt cheap external harddrive and plug it into a USB port. Unless you're actually into "all of this," it's not going to affect you. Heck, if it really does become a problem, I'm sure Nintendo could pull off what Sony has done with their PS3 constantly. PS3 20GB models didn't have that long of a run as I remember it seeing as PS3 80GB models were out the second year.

[TheMightyEthan]

Yeah, the "PS3 supports replacement HDDs" argument doesn't really work considering the Wii U supports external HDDs. Six one way half a dozen the other.

 

I will say though that there are two major differences between the 4GB 360 and the 8GB Wii U:

 

1) You don't lose more than 60% of the 360's space just by turning it on. I really cannot stress this point enough. Sure the end result may be comparable space, but one tells you that up front and the other lies through its teeth at you.

 

2) The 360 is at the end of its lifecycle, not the beginning. It doesn't have to worry about supporting the evolution of gaming over the next 6-10 years. The Wii U does.

[deanb]

You can plug your the HDD from your RROD console into an Arcade. And also buy the MS certified (and profited from) HDD. Hence my confusion at having the small space, and not having a "Nintendo Drive" or whatever as an option. Having to get an external hard drive in order to participate in the new features the console provides is bit silly (and a stop-gap solution) and really just kinda enforces that Nintendo really aren't thinking long and hard about their whole internet side of things on the Wii U.

 

And I don't doubt they'll be releasing bigger spaces over time (And I wouldn't be surprised on a Wii U XL or something that has a HDD bay in it for people who maybe want to join the 7th generation). I do doubt they'll be re-labelling the boxes to say "3GB Wii U" though. But they really should. (p.s as a side note MS are being sued over the fact the MS Surface 32GB loses half it's advertised space before you've even got to it, so keep eyes peeled)

 

 

edit: Yeah in case it's not completely coming through, as Ethan has said the 60% of advertised space is gone in a flash is the really big part of this. Starting out at 8GB and not having a HDD in this day n age is a secondary concern.

[CorgiShinobi]

WiiU isn't going to be doing much revolutionizing its first year if you ask me. It's going to be as much of the seventh generation as long as Microsoft and Sony support their current consoles.

 

And I'm not against that it legitimately sucks that you don't get at least 90% of your internal storage, but at the same time I don't see the majority of 8GB owners complaining since I wouldn't put it past those consumers to even realize how much space they use for save files and other data. If they're aware of that, then they must have already realized, before purchasing, they need to add extra space from one of the methods that is surely listed in the user's manual.

 

P.S.

After having a PS3 die on me, I can greatly appreciate the design of a Microsoft HDD serving as the core of your console rather than storage. Of course, the downside of your "console" is then it would have to be transferred to have more storage. As I remember it, that requires a cable and disc supplied from Microsoft themselves.

 

The upside to an external HDD is that it's an external HDD. Depending on how the WiiU actually interfaces with the drive, if the console were to fail, and this is a theory (but maybe there's evidence to the contrary), the data could still be accessible. With a PS3, while the drive can be pulled out, it's still tied to the motherboard of the console that has perished.

 

That why I got an enclosure for my 250GB SATA and, if a WiiU is ever possible in my future, that will be the storage for my console.

[deanb]

Well it's not over for another 3 days/2 weeks so of course there isn't any of the owners complaining because there are no owners yet. As I said, give it time, we'll see at least in the UK how ASA deal with it. And you kinda underrate how much people know about stuff these days. Flash drives, hard drives, SD cards, phone storage, etc are pretty ubiquitous these days. They know what 8GB is.

And also up to now they only reason we're getting word that the Wii U has 4.2GB gone at launch is because of gaming sites reporting on info given in a Japanese video. This is not something listed on any of the product listing pages, in adverts for the console, and the official page just says "(A section of the internal memory is reserved for system data.)". So I doubt folks will know they're going to have to boost the advertised capacity with external drives if they're actually wanting to use the 8GBs listed on the box.

 

I'm not sure if they've officially said anything(googling finds nothing except you can't store games on flash memory on the Wii U), but I'm to understand with the Wii SD cards don't work on other Wiis should yours fail. So I wouldn't hold my breath.

 

p.s You can back-up (most) of your PS3 to an external hard drive should your console fail.

[CorgiShinobi]

Not necessarily "most" of your content, because I have backed up my PS3, and thankfully I did it recently, but since I have PS+ (still), I don't have to worry about saves. It's all the downloaded content that will have to be put back onto the new console through your PSN account. So you'll essentially have your PS3 back, but it will take some time to bring the new one up to speed.

 

On Wii SD cards... yeah, but the whole Wii is a catastrophe since there's no account management and if you ever had a broken Wii, to recover any of the data, you would need to send it to Nintendo to transfer onto a new Wii. I doubt there's even going to be a method to have your VC content from the Wii to the WiiU, but I also stopped getting online content for my Wii years ago.

 

I do underestimate people's knowledge because, unless you're a gamer, any video game related media would be foreign knowledge. I would say most people know the average file size of a video/movie and a music file, but what about a modern game? "It fits on a disc, so..." How much each generation of games is in comparison. I know when I popped a SD card into my Wii, the amount of NES games I could fit on that 16GB card was insane. It's just that my perception of the the casual market is that they'll just assume the console can save their games, and it will because 3.~GB can hold a good amount of save files.

 

Now, something that was mentioned before is false advertising, or "lying." It's not false advertising if the actual component is 8GB. That number on the box is the capacity of the drive, not actual free space. When we began talking about this, I think we agreed that it was common knowledge that you don't actually get that number. An 8GB iPod is actually around 6.9 - 7.1GB, or a flash drive like mine that is "16GB" is actually 15.1GB. Or like my previous PS3, that 250GB HDD I installed only had 237GB available.

 

What makes this unique is how much the default data/settings takes up of that limited space. It would be like giving a modern laptop an insanely small sized HDD. I'm actually kinda surprised we didn't realize this before when it was announced that there would be an 8GB. In hindsight, Nintendo should have done a 32GB and 64GB model.

 

If there is a ruling on that Microsoft Surface case, it will have to be worded carefully. You would think that companies would have a disclaimer somewhere on the box of the product to clarify the actual free space of the device. Maybe some already do as perhaps there have been these same complaints in the past over the loss of a gigabyte. If there does have to be a disclaimer, it would probably have to apply to the percentage of space taken up on the drive to warrant a warning. After all, losing a gigabyte of free space on an 8GB iPod is more noticeable than a gigabyte on a 32GB iPod.

 

EDIT: To clarify, I do believe this is a legitimate concern, though I don't think it's necessarily going to blow up. Just lately there have been a slew of concerns over the WiiU. Recently IGN was warning people about the auto-shutdown feature, but it turns out IGN had left the console on without any input for 90 minutes (the default setting), so who exactly is going to be leaving there WiiU on by itself for an hour and a half?

Edited November 16, 2012 by Atomsk88

[TheMightyEthan]

For the record, I think only getting 7.1 GB out of an 8GB iPod should be considered false advertising too, but there you can actually make an argument that because that's how it's always listed people expect it so when they buy it they know they'll only be getting 90% of the advertised space or whatever.

 

The Wii U is a more egregious example of false advertising because even if you take common industry practices they're STILL not giving you nearly as much space as their advertising would lead you to believe.

 

Imagine the common practice was to sell a "dozen" eggs that really only contained 11. Everyone's familiar with this, so even though it's not technically accurate when I buy a dozen eggs I know I'm really only going to get 11. Now someone else starts selling a "dozen" eggs, but they only have 5 eggs in there. Just because I know that I'm not really going to get 12 eggs doesn't make only giving me 5 an okay thing to do, when the obvious expectation is that I will get 11.

[Faiblesse Des Sens]

They never advertise the space as usable space though. Yes, you are getting that much internal storage. Never said shit about you being able to use all of it.

[excel_excel]

I think it should have been advertised as 4GB. But saying that it destroys the consoles chances for a decent digital purchase system and third party DLC and all that, I don't see it. Even at 7GB you weren't going to be buying retail games for the thing, without a USB drive. I understand having only 3.2GB is crap, but there's never been a more user friendly way to fix that. Just pop in a cheap USB flash drive. You aren't bound down to expensive licensed for the console flash drives. Heck everyone I know has flash drives of various sizes somewhere in their houses.

[TheMightyEthan]

They never advertise the space as usable space though. Yes, you are getting that much internal storage. Never said shit about you being able to use all of it.

 

Just because it's not factually incorrect doesn't mean it's not misleading. If something says it has X amount of storage it's reasonable to expect that most of that will be available to the user.

[FredEffinChopin]

Yeah, from what I understand (if the word "understand" really applies to my relationship with this knowledge), the discrepancy of an advertised HDD size vs. the actual size is one of translation. While I can't explain it any better than that (because I don't get it), I've been experiencing it for years, and when I finally sat down and compared the differences some years back, I remember noticing something resembling a percentage. Whatever it is (I want to say btwn 5-10%), it's something that people who buy HDDs or products that contain them have known about for some time. It's not the same thing as advertising a HDD size but not mentioning that necessary software that is installed on it will take up half of the space. People understand that their 8GB Wii-U will only hold something like 7.3GB, but they don't expect half of that to be taken up out of the box. Not a huge deal imo since that wasn't going to do too much for anyone anyway, but it does seem a little lame.

[deanb]

@FredChoppin: The difference between a HDD's unformatted advertised space, and formatted OS-reported space is about 7%.

 

@Excel: Sure grabbing full versions of ME Trilogy, probably unlikely(even so on the 32GB version, don't forget when Sony were doing 40GB consoles they weren't selling full retail games). But grabbing DLC, including potentially any day one DLC that 3rd party may have planned, it's going to get hard when you've less than half the expected space.

 

@:Atomsk: I did say most not all. As for transferring SD card Wii stuff over to Wii U apparently that will be possible. DVD is a pretty standard size, it's blasted in big huge letters "4.7GB" across them so folks will have a pretty good idea of disc capacity.

As noted by Ethan and others there's an expectation that the amount on the box isn't going to be 100% that which is actually in the device, but it's within the aforementioned 7% or so.

btw on the auto-shut down thing: That while it's downloading too? I've been grabbing PSN+ stuff last few days and it'd get annoying fast if I couldn't leave it to do it's thing for a hours at a time.

[Faiblesse Des Sens]

I think it should have been advertised as 4GB. But saying that it destroys the consoles chances for a decent digital purchase system and third party DLC and all that, I don't see it. Even at 7GB you weren't going to be buying retail games for the thing, without a USB drive. I understand having only 3.2GB is crap, but there's never been a more user friendly way to fix that. Just pop in a cheap USB flash drive. You aren't bound down to expensive licensed for the console flash drives. Heck everyone I know has flash drives of various sizes somewhere in their houses.

 

I think the ultimate solution here is just to tell people how much is usable. Make it fine print or something. Think about this in terms of a computer or an Android phone: The size of the internal space itself is important because you can install various sized OS's/versions of the OS. I think that's where this sort of thing comes from outside of the confusion of bits vs. bytes (which I think is intentional.) So that brings me back to the fine print: Just tell people what is actually usable. There are two numbers involved here rather than just one or the other.

[deanb]

Oh I've just noticed something Excel said so I'll just point this out: You can't just extend the space with flash memory; you require an externally powered external hard drive (though "some" of the Y-splitter ones will work). Which is part of my: Why not just put a HDD bay inside of this thing?

 

@FDS: That's what we've been saying. As it currently stands though, and given thing hits shelves in a couple days, they're going to have to let the various news outlets report on that snippet of info for them cos they're not going to be able to re-box them in time.

[TheMightyEthan]

I think what they should have done is not made the size an actual part of the console bundle name, just called it the Base and Premium packages, and then on the bullet points they could have said:

• 8 GB of internal storage, 3.2 GB available to the user
  

or whatever. Then there wouldn't have been an issue.

 

I will point out though that on Walmart's site at least in the description it says "8 GB internal memory for storage", which I feel even more heavily implies that the 8 GB is what's actually available to the user. Most of that memory isn't for storage as most people would think of it, it's for the system files.

[excel_excel]

Oh I've just noticed something Excel said so I'll just point this out: You can't just extend the space with flash memory; you require an externally powered external hard drive (though "some" of the Y-splitter ones will work). Which is part of my: Why not just put a HDD bay inside of this thing?

 

@FDS: That's what we've been saying. As it currently stands though, and given thing hits shelves in a couple days, they're going to have to let the various news outlets report on that snippet of info for them cos they're not going to be able to re-box them in time.

 

Its only certain external powered hard drives that require the Y-splitter from what I've read. USB flash drives are still okay to use, but there's limitations on how well certain ones will work from what I've been reading.

[deanb]

If they're externally powered they don't use the Y-splitter. Y-splitter is used for a power boost off a secondary USB port, mainly for portable hard drives (which you kinda shouldn't be using/wasting on a Wii U anyway). Sure you can plug a flash drive in, it won't blow the flash drive or Wii U up. It just won't do anything interesting like store saves or games on it. Their reasoning being that flash memory only has so many read writes. Which is why they made that the main storage of the Wii U itself.....