photo courtesy of Amazon

This week Nintendo launched its new ‘Menu System 2.0′ update for the Wii gaming console. The big news here is the support for high capacity SDHC cards up to 32GB. Previously the system would only support standard SD cards. But the biggest news is how you can use that storage – while previously you could dump things in storage but not use it for games from the Virtual Console, you cannow put everything there and use it as an extension of the internal system memory, by launching channels and games directly from the SD card. That said, if the internal memory fills up you still need to delete things regardless of remaining SD card storage, but this move is a large step in the right direction – and hopefully one that will be echoed with the soon-to-be-released DSi handheld console.

The Wii has never been about being at the leading edge of technology – rather the goal has been usability and bringing gamers and non-gamers together around the concept of ‘fun’. The system has sold over 50 million units, making it far and away the leader of this console generation.

Here is an image showing the SD Card Menu, courtesy of Joystiq.

This information was announced at GDC ’09 and covered by places such as Joystiq, Neowin and of course at Nintendo!

If you own a Wii, you can download the system update now.

For more information, including how to install the update, check out Nintendo’s Support site