NoA president Reggie Fils-Aime was recently quizzed on the Wii U storage solutions and hard-drive options.
One of the key issues raised by fans and press on the Wii U so far is just how limiting the base storage would be once full games, demos, virtual console titles and apps are downloaded onto the system.
There will be two options available at launch: A basic white edition with 8GB and a deluxe version with 32GB.
The Wii U does support two options to expand the default space - by popping in an SD/SDHC memory card or attaching an external hard-drive to one of the USB 2.0 slots. The reason the Wii U doesn't come with higher configurations out of the box is to "let the consumer buy as much as they want, as cheaply as they want", as Nintendo doesn't want to force additional costs onto the core hardware.
What must be noted too is that the internal memory is Flash based, with access speeds and reliability potentially improved over a traditional disk based approach.
Speaking to Engadget, Fils-Aime confirmed that there doesn't appear to be a limit as to how big the bolt on hard-drives could be.
You can plug in a full-on three terabyte hard drive if you want. I'll love you as a digital consumer. The reason we did it that way is that the cost of that type of storage memory is plummeting. What we didn't want to do is tie a profit model to something that's gonna rapidly decline over time.