Remember those high-capacity SD cards Nintendo chatted about briefly at GDC this year? They're here, and so is SD streaming. Kiss your mass storage issues goodbye. Guitar Hero 5 will kick of high-capacity cards and SD streaming, and Nintendo is backing the technology for anyone to use thereafter.

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The Guitar Hero Music Store is going through some big changes this year, and for Wii owners it's something truly special. The list of changes and tweaks is gigantic, so rather than beating around the bush I'll just get right into it. First off, the new "News" section of Guitar Hero's main menu (literally just a fret press away when on the title screen) gives quick updates as to any new content in the GH Store. Since the Wii version of Guitar Hero 5 is always connected – more like a 360 game than a typical Wii offering as far as online infrastructure – the news page is always updated with the latest goings-on around GH5. Simply click it and you can see the latest updates. Nice.

When hitting up the store itself you'll see some huge changes. Gone is the limitation of "single track only" downloads. Full albums, track packs, and single songs can be purchased all at once on the store and will be priced accordingly with what you'd find on the other consoles. The track and album interface is pretty unique though. Say you are looking at a Smashing Pumpkins set for example. You could theoretically buy the full album or track pack (whatever Activision had available) with a single click, or you could click into the folder and see all the available tracks within that package. One touch will let you preview the song, so you can go one by one and decide what tracks you truly dig. If you like them all, go back to the full package and buy them in bulk. If you only dig a few, simply buy the single songs from within that folder and you're good to go. I've seen it in action, and it's both slick and intuitive. Along with each song and pack you also get the album art, and part-specific intensity readings so you can tell just how tough the song will be once you get it on your system.

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As a nice addition to it all you can set a whole slew of songs to download as long as you hang out in the store while it runs. If you want to DL a list of 20 songs, simply select the purchases you want to make, set them all to download in a row, and let it run automatically. If you pause in the middle, turn off your system, or decide you want to quick waiting and go play a few songs for a while the available tracks will simply sit in your active downloads section and let you come back to finish them off later. This can also be used for songs you may have purchased and deleted.

Here's where things get really good for Wii owners. As I mentioned High-Capacity SD is now supported, with 32 gig cards already on the market and pretty cheap considering the amount of space you're getting. A quick search on google got me a 32 gig SD card for around $60, and if you need to go cheaper than that you can find 16's for half the price. The reason you'll want a new SD card is pretty simple; SD streaming will kick off with GH5. All the tricks used for both Guitar Hero and Rock Band in the past – leaving internal memory open– is gone. Instead, straight-up booting off the SD card is available, and that means easier downloads, larger expansions, and quicker loads when bringing in song data from the SD card into GH5.

Oh, and for those curious about what 32 gigs will truly get you, Activision has estimated that over 800+ songs can fit in that space, including stronger audio quality, all the note data, album art, any mo-cap triggers or song-specific displays, and the like. 800 songs is a whole lot of game…