The Wii U will launch in two flavors: one with 8 GB internal flash storage and one with 32 GB. For those who need more, they can attach any USB hard drive to store their game downloads and data. Now Nintendo has confirmed that the Wii U will support hard drives of up to 3 TB in capacity.
The news was revealed by Nintendo’s Reggie Fils-Aime in a message to fans. And if you find external hard drives to large and bulky for your Wii U, you can use SD and SDHC memory cards with up to 32 GB of storage. The Wii U has a built-in SD card slot behind the front cover, right next to two USB 2.0 ports.
Nintendo seems to have the right approach when it comes to storage. Including a large hard drive or a lot of flash memory would increase the price of the consoles. Instead, Nintendo offers consumers to add any hard drive or memory card to their Wii U and easily expand storage.
Since memory is so cheap these days (you can get a 16 GB flash drive for under $10 bucks), it’s hard to see any Wii U owner running out of storage any time soon. Still, not everyone is convinced Nintendo’s approach will work. Analyst Michael Pachter expressed some concern over a lack of hard drive in the Wii U.
