Slashdot Mirror
The State of WiiWare, Xbox Alternatives
CVG is running a piece discussing the current state of WiiWare, and where they expect it to go in the future. They point to the success of Mega Man 9 on WiiWare and other platforms, but worry that the perception will arise that certain games are "too good" to be featured on WiiWare. GameSetWatch has a related interview with independent developer Ninjabee discussing their recent games and comparing WiiWare with Xbox Live Arcade. Meanwhile, Microsoft has announced that the new Xbox Experience coming in November will included their Community Games initiative, which will allow amateur game developers to create and share games using the XNA development tools.
I've used the WiiWare and Virtual Console stores, but I think Nintendo really needs to work out the DRM issue. If I want to change to a different colored Wii in a couple years, will there be any way to bring my current games with me? What if my current machine just dies for some reason? What about when the Wii 2 comes out? Will there be any way of bringing my current collection of WiiWare with me to future consoles? Yeah, you can link your Wii with a My Nintendo account, but so far as I can tell, so far that has no effect whatsoever on your ability to retrieve your games in the future...
The real problem IS NOT the perception that a game is "too good" for WiiWare. Hell, give me ALL titles available as WiiWare. It works for my PSP and PS3.
The real problem is that there is no fucking space to store the games. Four pages of 16 channels and your only hope of filling them all is to buy nothing but NES games.
Let us play off flash like the PSP. Or give us an external hard drive.
I'd be more than happy to shell out $50 for Resident Evil 5 as WiiWare. I just have no place to store it.
I'm more curious as to how the /. community feels about Microsoft's community games. I, personally, think it's a brilliant idea and hopefully it'll bring back the days of the "bedroom-made game". I'm a little worried that many quality (and more to the point, original) games will get overshadowed by the fad-of-the-month sort of thing, but the system seems to be working well enough for music and youtube, so I think we'll be all right. Plus it's still a lot better than what you currently have - publish and distribute it yourself, on your own site, at your own costs, etc.
I look forward to seeing some really awesome stuff over the coming months (And hopefully years).
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
I think you're a little bit misinformed there, or slightly biased (but then aren't we all?).
Yes, Microsoft doesn't have half as many first-party developers as Sony or Nintendo, but I wouldn't say they've had "nothing" to show for the past year, there's still way more 360 exclusives than PS3 exclusives (But Nintendo has the runaway total of those because so many developers are happy to port crap games to the Wii to make a quick buck).
What "mostly irrelevant PC ports" are you referring to, exactly? The myth of the Xbox 360 being little more than a PC is exactly that - a myth (the original Xbox definitely was, though), but it's no surprise that both platforms tend to go hand-in-hand when Microsoft supplies pretty much all the development tools for both. But I digress, I'm not sure what ports you're referring to, unless you count a few Arcade games.
As for being content starved and desperate, I really can't say anything to that because it's just so utterly, utterly wrong. The PS3 is way more content starved than the 360, the 360 has hundreds, possibly thousands of titles on it right now, way more than the PS3 and I've yet to see any kind of NPD data or similar that indicates that the 360 isn't the most profitable system of them all (For developers, that is). The RROD $1billion certainly ate into Microsoft's profits quite a bit, but the amount of money they're raking in through console, software and peripheral sales is staggering. What's more, aside from the Wii (Can you count it as a "current-gen" console? That's a debate for another time), it's selling stupendously well right now and absolutely out-pacing Sony in all markets - Even Japan.
Yeah sure, Microsoft has a lot of ground to make up still, but they're currently in an extremely strong position (Stronger than Sony and that's saying something) and nothing seems desperate at all. One thing Microsoft is good at, though, is making money and I think with this XNA lark, they've noticed quite a large amount of potential market for indie games and this is an excellent way for them to get a piece of that pie.
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
That's beating around the issue that the maximum SD card that the Wii accepts is 2GB. It doesn't support SDHC, which greatly limits its storage which, IMO, is a huge fault of the Wii. For a full life cycle, 2GB will not be enough for many users. There are already people who are hitting that ceiling, especially those that do not have regular Internet access, and thus can't afford the luxury of just deleting games to redownload later.
I've hit 2GB, however I have a lot of homebrew apps.
Did you have a Super Smash Bros save on the original Wii? I've heard that several games, SSBB among them, have copy protected save files that only work on the original console (similar to the Mii files you're having trouble with.) Though i'm not sure what it is they're supposed to protected _from_ =P
This Space Intentionally Left Blank