In a surprise announcement earlier today at the Game Developers Conference, it was announced that Wii Menu Update 4.0 would be made available immediately.  If you haven’t downloaded the update yet and you are a Virtual Console/WiiWare buff, then you need to download it right now.

This Wii update enhances the Wii’s SD card capabilities; Not only providing support for cards up to 32 gigabytes in size, but by also allowing you to use any channels and VC/WW games that you have on your SD card. The full text of the update from Nintendo’s support website is provided after the jump.

Available March 25, 2009 – Download Wii Menu 4.0 and enhance your storage options. Enhanced Features Included in Wii System Menu 4.0:

  • Increased storage capacity with the use of SDHC Cards (up to 32 GB).
  • Download content from the Wii Shop Channel directly to an SD or SDHC card, including WiiWare titles, Virtual Console games and Wii Channels.
  • Launch games and channels directly from your SD or SDHC card using a new SD Card Menu.
  • Transfer data directly between the Wii and your SD or SDHC card using the new Move command.

This is definitely Nintendo’s “solution” to the Wii’s storage. (or lack thereof) Although the Wii at it’s maximum capacity (32.5GB when used with a 32GB card) doesn’t come close to that of the PS3 or the 360, the interchangeability of SD cards means that you can fill up as many cards as you want.

This solution isn’t perfect, though, as to truly play any titles that you have on your SD card you need to have the proper amount of free space available on the system for it to temporarily copy the game. The Wii keeps the last game you played off your card in a cache on the system. When you load up a different game off of a card, it overwrites the previous one. If by some chance you need the space for something else you can always delete the cached game under your Channels screen in Data Management.  Of course, loading a game from the SD card takes anywhere of up to around 15-20 seconds as it copies itself, which is a very small price to pay, and definitely much better than the time it took to either redownload a game or copy it over from your SD card manually.

One other small feature that was added was the ability to download a title from the Wii Shop directly to your SD card. When you download a game it will ask you where you want to save it.

Aside from this, Wii owners rejoice. Your storage woes have finally been solved.