Nintendo President Talks Wii/DS Hookup

GameDaily has a look at comments by Nintendo's President Iwata about connectivity between the DS and the Wii. He also touches on the Virtual Console, and Nintendo's place in the marketplace. From the article: "Let's say your Wii is connected to the Internet in a mode that allows activation on a 24-hour basis. This would allow Nintendo to send monthly promotional demos for the DS, during the night, to the Wii consoles in each household. Users would wake up each morning, find the LED lamp on their Wii flashing, and know that Nintendo has sent them something ..."

Comments

Nintendo to encourage indie devs?

[bunions]

The Nintendo president also talked a bit about developers creating original games for the Virtual Console on Wii, much like Xbox Live Arcade. "When creating a packaged game to be priced at 5,000 yen, developers tend to feel the need to create a rich game. Yet it is possible to create a reasonably entertaining game in 2 months with a team of three. Offering such games for 500 yen over a network could lead to a reasonable number of people purchasing it. By offering an environment that allows this, we hope to encourage more developers to pursue basic yet enjoyable gameplay," he said"

hell yeah. Hope it turns out the way he makes it sound.

Corporate Aikido

[jthill]

You'll want a simple bowl of rice and soup every now and then.

Who knows how long ago theysaw the opportunity? But they've got a big chunk of the market all to themselves, and everything Nintendo says earns them fans. MS and Sony are hurtling off down the high-inertia major-loss-leader path while Nintendo picks up their rice bowl and has a nice lunch.

Already taken care of.

[jthill]

There's a physical button right there on the box that tells it not to download things while you're not using it.

Re:Not all that jazzed about this...

[7Prime]

Well, for me, WiFi is much more practical, since I do have a wireless hub (802.11g), on a DSL line, where the only internet in the house is 2 rooms away from the tele. I dunno how people these days make a "wired house", but isn't that a pain in the ass to do, with wires running everywhere? It took me a couple of hours just to figure out how to run an eithernet cable from the office (where the DSL line is) to my bedroom, and that includes a messy, external eithernet cable that runs up around door frames and along the edge of the floor. I think the convenience of WiFi greatly outweighs it's inconveniences. Unfortunately, the other problem is, I can't imagine that the adoption rate of WiFi hubs is very high. I'm a techy, and I only got one because back in college, I had multipul computers in my dorm room, and I needed a multi-port switch to be able to run them online. How many households, upon spending the few hundred dollars to innitially get broadband access, go out and spend another $70 on a wireless router, then $30-$60 on a wireless card or wireless dongle? Probably many laptop users have a wireless router, with wireless built-in, but I'm guessing the amount of households with laptops is still only around 20% at the highest. So maybe 15% of households have wireless. Wii is aimed at EVERYONE (on all other accounts, they've done a damn good job doing this), and WiFi seems like the most convienent way to go, but how many people will be able to take advantage of it?