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

Do I get a say in the matter?

[PIPBoy3000]

I wouldn't mind choosing a demo to download, but I wouldn't want it pushed to me automatically. Bandwidth isn't free, you know.

Re:Do I get a say in the matter?

[gaminRey]

you actually pay per byte to download? You need a better ISP. The impression I got was that it downloaded during idle time (ie. while you are sleeping)

Re:Do I get a say in the matter?

[kinzillah]

Except it practically is, in that you probably weren't going to use all of it, and you're not paying anything extra for the additional transfer.

Re:Do I get a say in the matter?

[KDR_11k]

The demos are held in the DS's RAM, which is 4MB. The DS demos I have on my computer average around 1.5 MB.

Enough already!

[Durinthal]

Fine, I'll have to get a DS.

Wii/DS Hookup aint right

[lightyear4]

....isn't that incest?

Re:Wii/DS Hookup aint right

[lightyear4]

Actually, it would be impossible to accurately determine whether such a situation would best be considered inbreeding or incest. To do so, one would be required to know both the geneology and religion of the DS and wii. In some cultures, both are considered entirely permissible, but to examine such cases would require an anthropological discussion regarding exogamy and endogamy. Given that we're talking about two electronic devices of uncertain lineage and beliefs, perhaps we would best consider it jest and move on with our day.

Or, in the traditional FUD mode,

[Anonymous Coward]

"Users would wake up each morning, find the LED lamp on their Wii flashing, and know that Nintendo has banned them and fried their mod chips ... "

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.

Hey!

[aftk2]

"Let's say your Wii is connected to the Internet in a mode that allows activation on a 24-hour basis"

Hey, I like suicidegirls.com as much as the next person, but isn't it a bit excessive for one's wii to be "activated" by the internet for more than 24 hours?!

Oh wait. You were talking about something else entirely. Sorry.

Re:Bandwidth: It's infinite and free at night, rig

[scarpa]

What the kind of ISP do you people have that you're worried about half a dozen computers downloading a few megs of data each night?

The Whole Interview

[grammar fascist]

The entire interview is here:

http://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/english/NEWS_EN/20060 525/117498/?P=1

GameDaily summarized (or copied) what they found most interesting. I find this moreso:

Q: Why does your controller have a speaker?

Iwata: This feature was absent from the prototype a year ago - we introduced it fairly recently. We discussed what type of feedback the games should provide the user with. Households sporting 5.1 channel speakers will certainly be able to enjoy realistic sound, yet not all homes have such audio equipment. Adding a speaker to the controller will enable us, for example, to have it emit sound effects when hitting the ball in ping-pong, tennis or golf games.

Not only that, but 5.1 can't produce a sound exactly where you are no matter where you are in the room.

Yet another instance of Nintendo anticipating their customer's needs rather than (or in addition to) listening to their gripes. What customer would have said "speaker in the controller!" rather than "more 5.1 support?"

Re:Bandwidth: It's infinite and free at night, rig

[Dance_Dance_Karnov]

How big do you people think DS demos are? And ms doesn't release updates everyday.

3 GB per month Caps in .nz and .au

[tepples]

you actually pay per byte to download? You need a better ISP.

Try a better country. The oligopoly situation in e.g. Australia and New Zealand, combined with the limited bandwidth on and off the continent, has allowed residential "broadband" providers to get away with billing per megabyte over the first 3000 in a month.

Not all that jazzed about this...

[AudioEfex]

This is the one thing I'm not all jazzed up about regarding the Wii. I'm a big supporter of what they are trying to do in general (see my /. history), but this 24/7 thing just makes me wince a bit.

There is just no need. Whatever little present in Animal Crossing, or whatever little "neato" thing they are going to download is going to only take a few seconds at most; could probably be done while the thing is booting up and we wouldn't even notice.

My Wii won't be connected 24/7, because I refuse to leave my Internet on that much. I flip the switch on the cable modem at night to cut it off, and turn it on in the AM. There is just no reason for it to run 24/7 if no one is using it, IMO, so I don't even take the chance.

My Wii won't even use wi-fi if I can avoid it. Ninty hasn't said anything for awhile about it, but at one point did say an optional accessory would allow you to add it to a wired network. I know wireless is all the rage among certain people, but why do wireless when I already have ethernet cable available in every room? Wired is better than wireless if you have access to it (and mine is wired just like most ppl's cable is, in sockets). Wireless just opens up a whole new can of security worries. If all fails, I do have the Nintendo USB wifi connector, but I hope I don't have to use it just to use my Wii.

AE

Re:Not all that jazzed about this...

[AudioEfex]

No need to talk down to me, LOL. I have a firewall, thanks very much. I knew some smart alec would question me...

I don't hope to achieve anything in particular, it's simply, why have it on if no one is going to be using it? I can bring it back up in a split second when I start my day.

What's the point of a firewall? To lock a doorway. But if you are worried about locking it up, why not just close it off absolutely if it's possible? Often times I leave my PC on all night to crunch video or other CPU-intensive things, and there simply is no reason for my machine to access the internet while it's doing so.

I don't do anything I wish to hide on the internet, to do so is simply retarded. However, I do have a cable modem which is notoriously insecure anyway, and why leave it on if a) it's not in use and shouldn't be, and b) only takes the flick of one finger for it to instantly return? Why rely on a firewall when I can just make absolute certain nothing errant will happen, when it has absolutely no adverse affect at all?

AE

Re:Not all that jazzed about this...

[headkase]

...I don't do anything I wish to hide on the internet, to do so is simply retarded. However, I do have a cable modem which is notoriously insecure anyway, and why leave it on if a) it's not in use and shouldn't be, and b) only takes the flick of one finger for it to instantly return? Why rely on a firewall when I can just make absolute certain nothing errant will happen, when it has absolutely no adverse affect at all? ...

You probably keep a bucket of water next to your PC just in case it suddenly becomes malevolently intelligent too...

Re:Not all that jazzed about this...

[cgenman]

There is just no need. Whatever little present in Animal Crossing, or whatever little "neato" thing they are going to download is going to only take a few seconds at most; could probably be done while the thing is booting up and we wouldn't even notice.

My Wii won't be connected 24/7, because I refuse to leave my Internet on that much. I flip the switch on the cable modem at night to cut it off, and turn it on in the AM.... I know wireless is all the rage among certain people, but why do wireless when I already have ethernet cable available in every room?

I'm not saying you're wrong. But I would guess you're in the minority. Most people leave their always-on internet connections... on. There is really no reason to turn them off. Your cable modem hasn't been a bastion of worms and security holes in a while, and the cable / DSL company knows the instant any of the firmware changes, and can change it back. Don't believe me? Try uncapping it, and see how long your hack goes unnoticed. Now try uncapping it or hacking it through the provider's network. Basically impossible.

Most people also don't have ethernet in every room, and the prevalance of ethernet seems on the wane. There is a reason every laptop ships with wireless as a standard feature. Now explain to someone that they need to run 50' of cat 5 from a compatible router (not switch or hub) inserted between their modem and PC, out to their living room, and you'll see why WiFi is catching on. Security settings will need to be finessed from a software side, but even then it shouldn't be too bad. And wireless security these days is great, with WPA. Even WEP wasn't bad, as a good WEP key takes about 20 hours of sniffing around high-traffic areas to crack. A home WEP network with moderate traffic takes weeks or months. And on a modern router cracking into the wireless portion gets you... internet surfing, posing little risk to the internal network if you have anything but the default administrator password. And even if you get that, you still need to get by that computer's firewalls and virus scanners.

A DS Demo size is capped at 4MB (the primary RAM), so you'll probably see 2MB demos in practice... Maybe a minute if the connection is dirty. But it would also probably not be the sort of thing you'd want to sit around for. It just makes sense to do it when the player isn't doing anything else. And maybe they want to upload a free play of Sonic 3 that evening. Yeah, you don't need it, but if you want to try it's already downloaded, saving you time, or it's automatically deleted, costing you nothing. As long as they're not abnoxious about it, this would be a nice little bonus. The only bad thing about Xbox Live Arcade is the actual tedious download of demos, and this seems to alleviate that.

And if you can figure out a way to make it download games while still booting the OS, by all means go right ahead. I'd love to see that code.

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?

Re:Bandwidth: It's infinite and free at night, rig

[radish]

Sounds like you might wanna upgrade from that 28.8k modem...

I can see it already...

[Trevin]

Wii spam.

At first it may just be Nintendo spam. But they may open it up to let 3rd party game publishers send spam of their own. And how long do you think it will be before someone figures ot how to upload data to the Wii from anywhere?

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.

Monthly

[Gabesword]

TFA says that these are monthly promotional demos. We aren't talking about daily spam here. It's similar to a gaming magazine except you don't have to pay for it. Game mag you pay $7, Wii monthly promotion you use some bandwidth. Game mag says upcoming high profile game is editors choice, Wii says try this demo and see what you think. I'm looking forward to this feature.