1st August 2006, 6:45 PM
Well yeah, really big HDD would be enough to store a lot.
That's a question though. One, will Nintendo support using a USB hard disk? Two, if they do, how is the system set up? The 360 is nice. All data storage is handled by the OS as opposed to the game itself. Every single time you save a game, the OS tosses a side menu over the game screen asking you what media you want to use. This has the benefit of making it so the game designers no longer have to put media selection options and support stuff into their games, and it has the further benefit of being "future proof" (to quote Sony's term) in that any future storage medium MS uses, they only need update the main 360 OS itself to support it and all the games will thus "support it". The downside is just the glaring "seperation" of the experience when that 360 side bar pops into view (and the slight load time associated with popping it up, but that can be eliminated with better coding). I suppose that little seperation of the experience issue can be eliminated by adding a small amount of customization into the OS so that games supporting it can replace the look of the side bar with their own custom appearence if they want to (ala SGB borders). Another solution for the issue would be the addition of an option in the 360 OS to "use the default" so that the choice menu didn't come up unless I changed the option back to normal behavior. Anyway, my point is that it would be nice if the Wii itself handled selecting what storage device to save to as opposed to having the game do that, which means that even if the system doesn't currently support a hard disk via the USB cable, it has the potential to do so in the future. I myself have a USB enclosure kit I've had to use every now and then that I could hook up to a decent sized laptop hard disk (or I could get an ATA or maybe SATA enclosure kit for really massive storage space) which would work fine, and looks nice to boot.
That's a question though. One, will Nintendo support using a USB hard disk? Two, if they do, how is the system set up? The 360 is nice. All data storage is handled by the OS as opposed to the game itself. Every single time you save a game, the OS tosses a side menu over the game screen asking you what media you want to use. This has the benefit of making it so the game designers no longer have to put media selection options and support stuff into their games, and it has the further benefit of being "future proof" (to quote Sony's term) in that any future storage medium MS uses, they only need update the main 360 OS itself to support it and all the games will thus "support it". The downside is just the glaring "seperation" of the experience when that 360 side bar pops into view (and the slight load time associated with popping it up, but that can be eliminated with better coding). I suppose that little seperation of the experience issue can be eliminated by adding a small amount of customization into the OS so that games supporting it can replace the look of the side bar with their own custom appearence if they want to (ala SGB borders). Another solution for the issue would be the addition of an option in the 360 OS to "use the default" so that the choice menu didn't come up unless I changed the option back to normal behavior. Anyway, my point is that it would be nice if the Wii itself handled selecting what storage device to save to as opposed to having the game do that, which means that even if the system doesn't currently support a hard disk via the USB cable, it has the potential to do so in the future. I myself have a USB enclosure kit I've had to use every now and then that I could hook up to a decent sized laptop hard disk (or I could get an ATA or maybe SATA enclosure kit for really massive storage space) which would work fine, and looks nice to boot.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)