or the last six days, my home theater rack has been alight with a blinding blue glow. No, it wasn't the AV gnomes playing with their arc welders again; there was a new Wii Menu version available for download. Usually, these updates are rather benign — Nintendo seems more dedicated to stopping pirates (and angering the homebrew community) than bringing drastically improved functionality to their hugely popular console. Wii Menu version 4.0, however, is something different.
About a year ago, Nintendo drastically expanded upon its online strategy with the release of WiiWare. While the promise of new and unique downloadable games was exciting, it also highlighted a critical shortcoming: the Wii only shipped with 512MB of flash memory. Such a tiny parcel of storage was more than capable of storing NES ROMs (which max out at less than 1MB each), but even downloading one game like My Life as a King or World of Goo would cause it to evaporate at an alarming rate. While the Wii's built in SD card slot helped somewhat, these removable flash cards could only be used to offload files from internal storage — games and other channels couldn't be played directly from the memory card. Until now, that is.
Wii Menu version 4.0 elegantly alleviates all of the system's storage woes as quickly (and easily) as it can be downloaded. Not only can any Wii Channel now be accessed and played directly from an SD card, the list of compatible cards has also been greatly expanded. While 2GB SD cards used to be the largest supported by the Wii, this newest system update allows the system to recognize any card up to 32GB. For well under $100, you can expand your system's storage by more than 50x — and now all that storage will actually be good for something.
The age of downloadable content has been both a blessing and a curse — for every groundbreaking independent release or well implemented content pack, there seem to be just as many offerings that fall into the "money-gouging fluff" category. Perhaps most importantly, internet access gives manufacturers opportunities to improve on their products years after their initial release: a Blu-Ray player can be reprogrammed to recognize a new encoding format; a router can learn new ways to manage traffic; and a video game console can be granted expanded features or a complete overhaul of its interface.
While Microsoft's Xbox 360 and its NXE probably top most gamers' lists of impactful console upgrades, Nintendo's revisions to the Wii should never be overlooked. Both Sony and Microsoft seem to approach their consoles as works in progress — everything from user interface to hardware specs are fair game for revision. Nintendo, on the other hand, has a more traditional outlook on the design process. After years of development, Miyamoto and company have brought to market the best product they could conceive. Being so cheap to build, why do much to change it? Let the competition improve upon investments that have to last for more than half a decade — if Nintendo has to make serious changes, they might as well wait until the Wii's successor. Until then, enjoy the Wii Menu (version 4).
