The 8GB basic version of Nintendo’s upcoming Wii U console requires at least 5GB to be used up in basic setup for account information, save allocation and other miscellaneous files. This means despite the fact that with the Wii U you’ll be able to download full games from the store, it’s only the premium console owners that will be able to do this more than once.
But even with the more expensive retail option, you’ll still fill that drive up pretty damn quickly. Nintendo knows this and has revealed – via Kotaku – that almost everyone is going to want to buy an external drive for their new machine. The Wii U supports up to two Terrabytes and there doesn’t appear to be some limitation on manufacturer like there is with Xbox hard drives.
Somehow this explains everything...
Now that we know this though, wouldn’t it make more sense for everyone to just buy the basic version, since we’re going to need an external hard drive anyway? Getting the premium seems like just a stop gap for when you’ve filled it up.
A lot of people are annoyed by this news and somewhat confused. With the low price of memory at the moment, couldn’t Nintendo have bundled in a few extra Gigabytes?