Wii 4.0 Firmware Update: SD Card Menu
April 9, 2009 - 9:59 am - Posted by Sean
This might be old news to a few modern classic gamers, but I just found this out moments ago when I fired up my Nintendo Wii.
Nintendo recently released a Wii firmware update that now solves the storage issue of the Wii by adding a new SD Card Menu that allows you to do the following:
- Store more—Add more Wii storage using SD Cards or the high capacity SDHC Card format (up to 32GB)
- Improved SD Card support—launch WiiWare titles, Virtual Console games, or channels directly from an SD/SDHC Card
- Let your Wii console move games and channels to an SD/SDHC Card with Auto Manage when system memory fills up
- Download titles from the Wii Shop Channel to Wii system memory or directly to an SD/SDHC Card
This is so awesome! I currently have a 2GB SD card for my Wii because until this firmware update, Wii’s only supported a max of 2GB.
I really like that you can now launch channels saved on SD Cards by temporarily utilizing the Wii System Memory.
If your system memory is full, you still have to delete stuff, but there’s now a streamlined, automated process to do that from this new SD Card Menu. It will even choose stuff for you, if you want.
As mentioned by Nintendo, the new Wii system update also adds support for SDHC cards up to 32 GB — that’s a ton of Virtual Console games folks.
Even though we now have support for huge SD cards, I won’t be running out and purchasing a 32GB SD card anytime soon since they are still around $100.00 USD, but this is still great news for Wii owners.
I thought many of these features were already available, but from the uproar I’m hearing about this update I suppose they’re groundbreaking.
I guess the real question is what this will mean for the homebrew and hacking segment of Wii users. From what I hear, this latest update isn’t totally supported by the homebrew channel right now, but of course that can’t be far away.
@Luke: You could always copy your Virtual Console games to a SD card with a max size of 2GB if you needed to free up space to download more games to the actual Wii console, however you could not run the games directly from your SD card until now.
You can now also download directly do a SD card from the Wii Shop Channel and with the added support for up to 32 GB SD cards, space limitations of the Wii are no more.
As for Homebrew Channel, if you already had it installed, it still works with this firmware update. I know for sure because I have the Homebrew Channel installed but from other reports, you can’t install it new with the 4.0 release, but I’m sure someone will figure out a work around soon enough.