As PlayStation Portable morphs into the all-digital PSP Go system, many consumers might be wondering just how much space they will need to set aside for each future downloadable title. Sony representative Al de Leon spoke to Joystiq recently at an event in NYC about the storage issue, saying most titles will average around "600-800MB in size." This means, de Leon further added, that the PSP Go's 16GB capacity -- without any additional memory unit -- could hold up to an "average of 17-18 games." Considering the Go can handle an extra 16GB of M2 storage, the number of games could easily be doubled.

Although 700MB is the point we should be expecting most games to gravitate towards, there will still be other titles that will be far below this mark or even way above it. Smaller scale titles like Patapon 2 (which is less than 400MB) for example, could take as little as half the average footprint. Others, like the recently released PSOne classic Final Fantasy VII (takes up 1.3GB), could be nearly double this number.

Technical Version

General Electric researchers announced today that the company has made a breakthrough in the development of microholographic storage discs for mainstream use. Using G.E.'s current technology, a single holographic disc could ostensibly hold 500 gigabytes of data -- about 100 times the size of a standard DVD -- and still be readable. Better still, these discs should be commercially viable when they're introduced in 2011 or 2012, coming in at around 10 cents per gigabyte (a pittance compared to Blu-ray's initial price of $1 per gigabyte).

Layman's Version

You know those holographic Jurassic Park stickers you have on the spine of your middle school Trapper Keeper? They're putting those on CDs to make them bigger! That is to say, on the inside. They'll be the same size on the outside, and should still fit snugly within your Saved By The Bell CD case.

[Via Engadget]

Now that the Wii has begun its third year on store shelves, we've managed to download a lot of things. In fact, we've accrued quite the collection of Virtual Console and WiiWare titles already. Much to our surprise, we've yet to fill the entire capacity of a 2gb SD card, which is the maximum size supported by Nintendo's latest console. How about you all? Use a SD card with your console? How full is it?

The rumor comes from the latest Zune newsletter that posts a link to this survey. After click "Yes" to the first question, question number two asks "Have you ever connected your Zune to your Xbox to do any of the following?" Not newsworthy, except for the fact that one of the possible answers is "Use my Zune hard drive for extra Xbox storage". Interesting ...

Just don't get too excited, because survey answer could have dual meanings. It could be referring to a Zune being used as official Xbox 360 storage allowing game saves and Marketplace downloads, which would be BIG news. Or the survey answer could be referring to the Zune being a portable media device and used as music and picture storage for use on the 360. If that's the case, this isn't news.

[Thanks, John O.]

The next time you pay a visit to the Nintendo World Store, we advise taking a balaclava and a glass cutter. As the above video demonstrates, the outlet now boasts a bunch of hard drive-equipped Wiis, each of which has around 20 games stored on it, ready for instantaneous selection; generally really good games, as well.

Judging by the menu from which you choose titles, these are identical to the Starlight Foundation Fun Centers that have been getting installed in hospitals. Now, you can try one out for free, without even having to break one of your limbs or anything.

[Via Go Nintendo; thanks, Glare!]

During Nintendo's conference, Satoru Iwata announced the long-awaited fix for the Wii storage "crisis" -- but rather than the Wii Hard Drive peripheral or the pipe-dream "you can use any USB hard drive!" update that Wii fans dreamed of, Nintendo has chosen to refine the current SD card implementation. Basically, you can now save things from the Wii Shop Channel directly to the SD card. The act of transferring from the SD card to the Wii's internal storage and back will be simplified, as well.

Despite not being exactly what people wanted, will it serve our needs? Is saving to the SD card the right solution? Two bloggers have copied their thoughts on the subject over from their internal memory.

You heard it boys and girls: Nintendo's storage solution is coming in 2009. But, is it too little, too late? With the system only supporting 2gb cards, is this a viable solution to a growing problem? Sure, you can buy a bunch of 2gb cards, but who wants SD cards all over the place? What we're wondering is will this be enough to satisfy those of us who need more than 512mb of storage space?

Nintendo's Satoru Iwata and his company have come up with a solution to the biggest issue for Wii gamers: storage. Iwata announced during the Japan fall press conference that, in the spring of 2009, gamers can expect to have the ability to load and play software direct from your SD card in your SD slot, as well as download items directly to their SD slot. For those of you with more than 2gbs of downloaded goodies, we only have one suggestion: buy a bunch of 2gb SD cards.

Update: Just to clarify, you won't be able to play games direct from the SD card. You'll merely be able to download items directly to it. Sorry for the mixup.

[Thanks, Sonic_13!]

If your Wii's teensy amount of storage space currently resembles an overflowing suitcase, then Guitar Hero: World Tour isn't about to make life any easier.

According to Vicarious Visions' Karthik Bala, the game allows you to download songs to an SD card, but you'll still require "about 200" free blocks of memory to be used as a "content cache" for the song you're playing through. Once you've finished with that track, you can clear the cache and transport another of your downloaded songs to your 200 reserved blocks. Transferring songs, explains Bala, happens "pretty quickly."

It sounds like a workable solution, but 200 blocks? That's the equivalent of six Mega Man 2s or three Super Metroids, and is bigger than some N64 games; we're also curious about Karthik Bala's personal definition of "pretty quickly." Protip, Nintendo: if you were thinking of announcing a storage solution in the next decade, next week's Japanese Media Summit would be the ideal time.


[Via Go Nintendo]

In a recent Club Nintendo interview, Reggie Fils-Aime and Shigeru Miyamoto both touched on some important things on the mind of all Wii owners. The first thing that many are still asking about is the lack of a hard drive. Well, Miyamoto commented that the company is still working on it and exploring all of the possible technologies, to which Reggie added that the company hasn't specified a traditional hard drive or another kind of storage, but will create a solution that is "better than what we have now."

Miyamoto was also asked about MotionPlus and incorporating it into future Zelda games. Miyamoto said that Nintendo was working on a new Zelda game (and also Pikmin), but would not comment as to each title supporting Waggle 2.0. He also commented that we shouldn't expect any new peripherals any time soon, seeing as how there are so many available for the Wii now. We're glad for that, because our limited closet space has meant that storing them all has been a big hassle.

So, the biggest thing to come out of this piece for Club Nintendo is more of the hard drive talk, although we guess we can't call it that, since Nintendo may want something different than a traditional hard drive. What other kind of technologies could they mean? What could be a comparable storage solution to a hard drive and yet not be a hard drive?

And statements don't get much vaguer than that, do they? Lazard Capital Markets analyst Colin Sebastian has published an investor note concerning the next round of consoles, full of words such as "may" and "could." According to Sebastian, new hardware is most likely to appear from the industry's major players in 2012, though he thinks Nintendo's next home console may release sooner, and could be an upgraded Wii with increased processing power, greater storage for moaning geeks and otaku, and DVD playback capabilities.

Our problem with this? Sebastian seems to automatically assume that Nintendo will simply produce a box stuffed with superior technology. Anybody who has followed Nintendo over the last five years will know that that is probably the last thing the company is likely to do.

And by "Wii hard drive" we actually mean "portable air conditioner." This image emerged from the bowels of the internet earlier today, purporting to be a Nintendo-designed hard drive for the Wii. The pranksters responsible for this didn't count on the razor-sharp observational skills of one JC Fletcher, who located this familiar-looking air conditioner at Amazon Japan. Nintendo had earlier dismissed the image as "rumor and speculation" when CVG inquired, but this pretty much nails it.

Not that this forgery is good for nothing -- for example, it does give us an excuse to once again raise the issue of where the heck our storage solution is, Reggie, and also a chance to guide you into our Wii mockup gallery of lulz.

Yamazen portable air conditioner here
Nintendo's denial here

[Update: Spelling correction!]

Holographic storage is a technology that we totally don't understand well enough to explain. Apparently, it's a method of storing data in which data is stored throughout the whole volume of a medium, rather than just the surface, allowing for more storage space on a disc. Basically, storage media with multiple-terabyte capacity.

Nintendo's name has shown up as a joint applicant on a patent application by InPhase Technologies for a scanner to read such holographic discs. Is Nintendo planning to solve the hard-drive issue with massive overkill, or are they planning to introduce a new format for their next system's games -- with massive overkill? Maybe nothing will come of this. Or maybe nothing will come of this for a long time.

[Via NeoGAF]