Nintendo Considers Holographic Storage

It might sound more Star Trek: The Next Generation than video games, but Nintendo is apparently looking into the growing field of holographic storage to solve the Wii storage issue.

Holographic storage is a new way of storing data in which that data is contained in a 3-D space, as opposed to on the surface of a disk, as is the case in the PS3 or Xbox 360's HDDs. The technique is pretty cutting edge, but once it becomes mainstream it could be capable of mutli-terabyte storage. That's a lot of copies of WiiWare beer pong.

Where Nintendo comes into this story is that its name has appeared alongside holographic storage company InPhase Technologies on a joint patent filing. The filing is for a scanner to read holographic discs.

It's an interesting fix to a growing problem for Wii owners, but we have to ask if Nintendo is using an atom bomb to address this issue, if what they really need is a hammer.