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Wii + Warp Pipe = Del.icio.us Tabbed Browsing
An anonymous reader writes "The folks at Warp Pipe have developed a simple yet useful tabbed browsing interface for the Wii with del.icio.us bookmark integration which makes browsing on the Wii more efficient until the fully realized Opera build hits later next year. The web application does not require registration, this video overviews the interface and feature set in this early release."
The browser is not for us, silly. The browser is for the Miis so that they'll have something to do when they're not playing Wii Tennis. You do need to be wary of spyware and viruses though, my Mii likes to go to some pretty raunchy websites, and he'll install anything they ask him to.
But the difference here is that it is by no means a major selling point, or something very much hyped by Nintendo. The fact is, all the concentration in both marketting, and I'm guessing, to a certain degree, in design, was in game oriented development. The problem is that Sony is trying to sell there system as "Not just a video game console", which is sort of a slap in the face of the gaming community. Also, one also has to wonder whether the high concentration in additional features could have taken away from other areas.
At least, publicly, Nintendo's approach has been: here's a great videogame console, and we put a lot of thought into making it fun and intuitive... and oh, btw, we're throwing in a web browser with it. Whereas Sony has been yelling and screaming, using the additional, non-game related features as an excuse whenever people heckle them about the price, as in:
It's all in the presentation, and Sony leaves you with an uneasy feeling that game-related content (including pricing it like a game console) was sacrificed a bit to make room for this other stuff. THAT'S what concerns us.
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
Exactly! I'm all for adding additional features if it doesn't slow down the games or increase the price. If the weather feature ran in the background and popped up in the middle of games to give me updates I'd be screaming bloody murder...whether it happened on a nintendo product or a sony product. If they had to raise the price another $100 to add in news feed functionality I'd be just as annoyed.
Adding a browser to the wii doesn't seem to have much of a cost as far as I can see. It probably cut into Nintendo's profit much more than it added to the final price of the wii. They'd sell it for $249 with or without a browser. The deal they made with Opera just bought them goodwill not a real justification for a higher price.
But the PS3 probably could have cost a lot less without the blu ray. Personally, I'm fine with them including it. Let them be the high end system that I'll buy cheap years down the road...but I can understand why others might be annoyed or complain about it.
The PSP is another matter. It seems that the addition of movie capabilities actually hurt the GAMES and not just the price. I don't own one but I've heard that the UMDs seriously create a load time problem for games. It's hard for me to see how any serious gamer would think that the additional functionality is worth it.
You have to quit the game to get to the browser.
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Its software. Generally on a console you want the game to have full access to all the memory on the machine. Having things like an OS, built in UI, etc. will take away from that sort of thing. On the 360 there is a chunk of ram you don't have access to that the OS holds on to for its deal, and on the PS3 you allocate the space yourself for the various system UI widgets. On the Wii if they made the browser launchable with a system call and you had enough memory you could technically free up space and launch the game. Remember, none of these systems have any sort of memory paging, so if that browser goes over the limit then you're toast, and there's definately no where to put your game's memory once the browser kicks in.