Chris Kohler recently interviewed Nintendo of America’s VP of marketing and corporate affairs, Perrin Kaplan, about a variety of issues following the company’s press conference. During the interview, the topic was brought up about diminishing space on the Wii’s internal flash memory, especially now with the addition of NeoGeo games and the forthcoming WiiWare selections. He’s part of the conversation.
Wired News: Another issue that’s coming down the pipe as more and more content appears on Virtual Console and with Wii Ware coming out is the issue of space on the Wii. You can’t run stuff off of the SD card. It all has to be on the onboard memory. Are you looking at solutions to expand this?
Perrin Kaplan: I think that Nintendo loves to have a really clean approach to what they’re doing, and the idea is to not have too much of a packrat syndrome, where you’ve got so much stuff stacked up that… you want to just have products that you’re actually going to continue to use. Virtual Console’s a really good idea. And it’s on the server, so one Chris Kohler purchases it, it’s always his. You can download it again. So it’s a matter of what do I want to play today. I think we also did the tradeoff: for the price, the size, the flexibility of the system, for us to do all kinds of things. Instead of having a huge box.
WN: At the same time, my memory is full. I went to download the Neo Geo games, and it’s like, “you need x blocks of memory.” So it’s like playing a puzzle game, and I have to look at all my memory and think, what do I not want anymore, okay, I’ll move it over here… And it’s a laborious process. There’s just no plans to change this right now?
PK: We’re always talking. But if your refrigerator’s full, you’ve got to pull something out and put something else back in. That’s just the normal issue of space. I mean, really, are you using every single thing on there?
You can head over for the rest of the interview, where Kaplan dodges questions about the Super Smash Bros. Brawl delay, holiday demand, WiiWare, and her nearing departure from Nintendo of America. Apparently, Nintendo has already hired Marc Franklin, former PR head at Konami, though his new position at Nintendo isn’t explained.
