Surprise Nintendo Direct reveals Wii U Virtual Console, details USB storage options and more
Just like that, out of the blue there’s another Nintendo Direct broadcast from Japan and this one covers some of the more technical elements of the Wii U system including parental controls, storage options and the first mention of a Wii U virtual console.
The quarter hour Nintendo Direct can be watched on Nintendo’s website (or below), since it’s in Japanese though we’ve gone through it for you and translated as much of it as we can.
There’s some tasty morsels of information to be had.
Parental Controls
Wii U has extensive parental controls, we hope we’ll be reminded of them every time there is a system update as well. You’ll be able to restrict content based on the age of the user, game rating (the video shows the Japanese CERO ratings), internet browser, eShop spending, Miiverse, registration of friends, videos and getting access to the systems settings.
You can set parental controls per user.
Internal Memory
Basic Wii U Set comes with 7.2GGB usable memory (out of 8GB)
Premium Wii U Set comes with 29GB usable memory (out of 32GB)
Usable Space on each Wii U.
USB Drives
You can connect a external USB drive to your Wii U to extend the amount of storage space available to you. You’ll only be able to connect one USB drive at a time and you’ll either have to have a powered USB drive or have one that uses two USB cables (one for data, one for power). Even then Nintendo still recommends you have a drive that plugs into the power as they cannot guarantee it will work otherwise.
You can fit a lot of pink beads in your Wii U with a USB drive.
Likewise games can not be stored or played from USB Flash Drives. Nintendo says this is because they cannot guarantee that all drives will be compatible. USB drives often come with different rated flash memory and some cheap drives are really slow and probably unable to be used for games.
The Wii U can only read up to a maximum of 2TB for external drives and the drive must be formatted to be read only on the Wii U. Once it’s plugged into the Wii U, computers will not be able to read it.
2TB size limit on Wii U External Drives
One drive is supported at launch but later on Nintendo will allow support for two drives for allowing the copying of data from one drive to another. You can of course copy data from the internal memory and the external drive as well.
Once the drive is formatted for the Wii U, it can’t be used on a PC.
Backwards Compatibility
We knew this was coming, but it’s still sad to see it confirmed. Wii games, Virtual Console games and WiiWare games cannot be played on the GamePad screen. They can only be played on the TV.
WiiWare, Virtual Console and Wii Games cannot be played on the Wii U GamePad.
Iwata did make an apology for it though saying that “We understand that there are people who were looking forward to playing Wii games, Virtual Console games, and so forth on the GamePad, but unfortunately we cannot accommodate those users’ expectations.”
An upcoming Wii U Virtual Console service will work on the GamePad however.
The good news is that there is plans for a Wii U Virtual Console. Iwata says to look forward to that some time in future.
Nintendo Network Premium
Iwata then went over the Nintendo Network Premium service for people who buy the Premium Set/Bundle. To join in on the fun you’ll have to make a Nintendo Network ID and then login to track your purchases. After you log in you can see your points.
You will earn points whether you pay via points or buy download cards (not available in Australia). You’ll earn 10% back on purchases. In Japan you’ll each purchase points in 500 Yen increments. No word yet as to what the amount will in Australia.
The Nintendo Network Premium Site looks pretty snazzy.
You can spend your earned points on Wii U and 3DS eShop titles, the Wii Shopping Channel and the DSi Shop as well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6q8sNhm4uM
Thanks to the folks on Twitter and cvxfreak from NeoGAF for providing most of the translations.
Thanks Vooks!! 🙂
Thanks!
One thing I don’t get, if you can’t launch games from USB storage, what else is USB storage actually going to be useful for?
Take note that they say USB Flash Drives, not Hard Drives. Hard Drives will be able to launch and store games on it. Considering the likes of Tekken Tag 2 is 17gigs per download – you would never fit more than 2 games on your internal memory.
Flash drives on the other hand are generally cheap and terrible storage devices and should never be used – even when you pay a premium price for a good one you could get an SSD or 2TB HDD for a similar price.
@Ninja Catfish
Likely so you don’t have to redownload stuff constantly, I’ll find this useful, as I only have a set amount of giggage I can use per month.
It’s a bit sad that this basically means anyone with the 8GB model can’t download retail games.
Take note to what I said to catfish, only applies to Flash Drives – Not Hard Drives. 😉
Very excited about this news!! Bummer about the VC games not working on the gamepad though – that would have been pretty easy to implement I would have thought?
Also happy about USB storage! 2TB drives are only around $100 so makes for easy expandable storage. Now if only online prices would end up being cheaper than retail, I wouldn’t buy a disc again.
From what I’m reading it’s USB flash drives can’t be used so you’ll have to use a proper USB HDD rather than just a thumb drive
In relation to OzHuski and the virtual console. It sounds easy but unfortunately it’s not, the Wii U when running any Wii software reverts back to a Wii only mode, this means you lose all the new features of the Wii U.
They could of potentially used a virtualisation model to achieve both things but then stuff gets very messy to deal with. This is more a problem of how software is built on the original Wii rather than a weakness in the Wii U. Original Wii software never have to share resources with anything else and they aren’t about to start doing so.
As long as I wont have to pay to update my current VC games. I get the feeling they’ll try it though.