Could we soon be seeing a system from Nintendo that has us stream our games from a hard drive?

While Nintendo has faced heavy criticism for opting not to make Wii compatible with hard drives, the company has seemingly shown a fresh interest in pursuing such a route.

Siliconera reports that Nintendo recently filed a patent for a system that saves Wii games to a hard-drive, and the allows the player to boot them up via an internal directory.

The way the console streams games from the hard drive is illustrated in the official flowchart.

The filing of such a patent may not be of huge significance to us as consumers. Wiis that stream games from a hard drive already exist in booth-form in such places as the New York Nintendo Store. There's no indication this is a system that will make its way to our living rooms any time soon, but it could be food for thought.

What do you think of streaming Wii games from a hard drive? Let us know below...