The gaming community has been filled with buzz at the possibility of a hard drive over the past few months. Wii owners are beginning to grow tired of clearing out their virtual fridge and have been begging for a storage solution. The lack of a hard drive has definitely caused a huge amount of problems. Here are our top 5 complaints that the lack of a Wii hard drive has created.

5) Nintendo is losing money

At the end of the day, the addition of a Wii hard drive would help Nintendo rake in more money. Numerous Nintendo representatives – including Satoru Iwata himself – have noted that the current storage solution affects an isolated number of Wii owners. Regardless of the validity of this belief, all types of Wii owners will catch up with the hard drive issue in due time (yes Nintendo, casual gamers included!) If Nintendo continues to develop channels for the Wii, and as long as Virtual Console/WiiWare titles are released, there is a lingering guarantee that people will download them. Unfortunately for Nintendo, there is a common consensus amongst the gaming community that once casual gamers reach their storage limit, they will become confused/frustrated with having to remove content from the Wii menu. In the end, the Wii would lose some of its accessibility, which is something Nintendo has wanted to avoid on the Wii front at all costs.

4) Lack of real downloadable content

While it’s great to be able to receive new levels in Super Smash Bros. Brawl and being able to participate in Mario Kart Wii tournaments, we can’t help but wish that these gifts can be revisited. In Super Smash Bros. Brawl, levels are recycled each day. This was even object of an entire review at www.wii-fever.com and it means that you may encounter a fan-made creation you absolutely love, only to see it disappear forever in a twenty-four hour period. The situation is similar with Mario Kart. New tournaments will be available every few weeks, but once the deadline passes, forget about being able to replay them. Basically, we want content which can be kept and revisited at a future date. Having to part with unique content is very unfortunate and is something we know can be addressed in future titles with a hard drive solution.

3) Companies aren’t supporting downloadable content

Wouldn’t it be nice to wake up in the morning, power up your Wii, and know that some original content is available for the game you’re playing? For most, the answer would be yes. Sadly, however, very few companies are supporting downloadable content. Up to this point, only Nintendo has been a true supporter of add-on functionality. However, it’s tough to put the blame on companies for the lack of support because there is no acceptable area to store original content. Fortunately, Vicarious Visions has announced downloadable content for Guitar Hero: World Tour; although, this announcement does bring up the question as to where the new content will be stored – We’re praying that this is a sign of a hard drive announcement in the future.

2) Deleting channels

From the moment the Wii released, Nintendo has provided its fans an opportunity to download five unique channels. Nintendo generally promotes them when they first become available, encouraging players to download them for free. However, these channels come at a virtual price. The Internet channel alone requires 270 blocks of your Wii flash memory. And that means that even the increasingly popular channel from www.myfitdiary.com wouldn't fit at all. Besides, granted you have downloaded all of the channels and purchased a few WiiWare or Virtual Console titles, you will be forced to delete some channels to conserve space. This means that channels which are actually worthwhile to keep such as the Nintendo Channel, Internet Channel, Mario Kart Wii Channel, and Wii Fit channel, may end up being deleted.

1) Having to deal with re-downloading/transferring games

The classic mantra from Nintendo regarding concerns about a storage solution has been blunt. As has been said countless times, users can simply transfer content to their SD card or re-download content from the Wii Shop Channel. Sadly, Nintendo has yet to recognize the huge amount of frustration both of these methods cause. Copying data to a SD card is an extremely aggravating process. A file which consists of 250 blocks takes more than a few minutes to transfer. Moreover, some save files (such as the Super Smash Bros. Brawl data) cannot be copied. Obviously, this is a serious problem which needs to be addressed, particularly when you consider that re-downloading games isn’t any more convenient than transferring data to a SD card.

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The organization managing all Top Level Domains, ICANN, has today announced the approval of a new proposal, which will allow basically anyone to get their own Top Level Domain. I may be conservative, longing for the good old days of the Internet, but I don't like this.

The Internet as it is right now is already a chaos. The list of Top Level Domains is growing fast. But it doesn't make things more clear. Take for instance the .jobs Top Level Domain. What exactly does this add to the available list? Most companies still list their vacancies on their website, and they'll probably keep doing this. Why? Well, potential candidates will get a good impression of the company, and (potential) clients will see that the company is quite busy because it is looking for new people, so it must be doing something good, right? Having job openings on your website is always good marketing. So why the hell add a new Top Level Domain for it?

With this new proposal accepted, as it is implemented (Q1 2009 most probably), organizations worldwide will be able to apply for their own Top Level Domain. In the buzz about this announcement on the web, I see examples such as .ebay. Now, please explain to me, aside from Ebay wanting to protect their trademark, why the hell would anyone want a .ebay address. What would be the purpose? There is only one Ebay, and it's easily reachable by going to Ebay.com (or any of the local versions). 

I have this crazy theory about this whole proposal. It's a theory so wild that none of you would've ever thought of it. This theory consists of a single word.

MONEY

I don't know why, because I've always believed ICANN to be a non-profit organization put in place to ensure the safety and availability of the whole domain system, but it seems that ICANN is quite anxious to get new money in. I mean, it doesn't sound really useful, but well, what can you do? If you are a multi-million international company, you need to protect your trademark, so you will have to shell out the cash to register your own TLD. So it will be easy money for ICANN. Very easy money.

The only good thing that I've seen in the proposal is the fact that they also want to implement top level domains with other characters than the current limited set of 37 characters, so countries with different character sets, such as China, Japan, the Arab world and Russia, will finally be able to get their "native" domains.

Since the proposal has already been accepted, I'm afraid there will be little that can be done to stop this. I surely wonder how this will play out, but I'm not looking forward to this whole new dimension in the chaos of domains.

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