Rumour: Nintendo's next console lacks a hard drive

Kotaku reports, again based on anonymous sources who claim to already be working closely with the console, that Nintendo's next console will feature 8GB worth of onboard flash memory; close to 16 times the storage capacity of the Wii. However, it's not yet known whether the console, codenamed Project Café, will support SD-card expansion like Nintendo's existing consoles.

The rumour raises some interesting concerns about Nintendo's upcoming console, due for its official reveal at this year's E3 expo in Los Angeles in around a month's time. With the console touted as rivalling the graphical capacity of the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360, it seems that the lack of a hard drive may prevent full-game downloads and even inhibit the download of large downloadable content packs (DLC). Also revealed in the latest round of rumours is that the disc-storage format used by the next Nintendo console will hold 25GB of data, close to that of a single-layer Blu-ray disc.