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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...
You mean like Pain, Calling All Cars, Flow, Warhawk, Echochrome, Everyday Shooter, the Pixeljunk games, Super Stardust HD, etc. etc. etc.?
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 had my Wii repaired because of a problem with it overheating and displaying black boxes from time to time. (The repair was free, btw, and I recommend it if you are having the same problem.)
Essentially they copied all my data over to another Wii and sent that Wii back. So from a DRM-standpoint, it's like getting a new Wii. From what I recall, my WiiWare and VC games stayed on there just fine.
The only downside I noticed was I can no longer edit the Miis that were on there before because they don't allow you to edit them on someone else's system.
DAMN YOU NINTENDO, GET RID OF YOUR OVERLY RESTRICTIVE Mii DRM!!!!!
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
not like there are any really really good games for wii.
Begs the question "what do you mean by really really good games when there's..." But I'm not going to ask it. So there, foiled your plot! :-P
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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.
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This is the way to go. I mean, we know that Sony has release a couple API/dev tools/etc to University students. But, that really doesn't go far enough. Especially, when we consider that many of the people who get into the games industry aren't looking to go that way until it's "too late" to learn all the tools. When it comes to others using Sony's tools, there is a thousands of $'s fee and even then, you have to apply (including company and project information?!?!?) and could get rejected. Similarly for the Wiiware.
Making the tools available for free (for non-commercial use) will allow people to get a grip on what they'll be using in the industry (or something similar) should they decide to go that way. And at a very low entry cost as well.
I've always found it staggering at companies that don't distribute these tools. I mean, modding tools being released for games is assumed today (and if they don't its looked down upon). And those engines are where some real money is made. I really wish that the people making the consoles would loosen there death grip on the licensing just a little bit to allow the amateur game developer to give it a go. After all, what amateur game could really compete with a AAA title?
So, here's my suggestion to Sony and Nintendo. Release a "lite" version of your tools for download (Window/Mac). Then modify your console so that it can run this compiled code at least over a local network (or a downloadable title that does the same). That way, the normal console could become a "debug station" and a way to play it.
I'll bet you anything, that this would put the spotlight on some developers that wouldn't have otherwise had a chance. And them being successful, means that they'll either be giving you money for licensing to make more games, or joining a company and making them stronger for doing the same.
See, it'll benefit your bottom line.
F1TFA
It's been almost a year since Doritos Dash of Destruction was announced for Xbox Live Arcade through the Doritos Unlock Xbox Competition, where a competition winner got to have his game created for XBLA. Where is it currently?
Answer: is there ANYONE who cares?
What is this gamesetwatch anyway? A covert marketer for doritos? A look at the "yaris" game will tell you, games that are really just commercials are less fun than watching a non-interactive TV commercial. Granted, I'm not "out on the street" where the youngsters talk about the next game they want (gives me chills just thinking about the level of dialogue that must go on on that street) or in a videogame store, but I feel it's safe to say that the people who are looking forward to this game being released are all executives working at Doritos.
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
It's worth mentioning at this point that Sony is losing exclusives at what must be an alarming rate to their execs.
Final Fantasy XIII has already jumped ship, and the only exclusive they have this holiday season is the delayed LittleBigPlanet. And "October" isn't quite "holiday season" but hey, if they keep on delaying it, they might actually hit Christmas.
How bad is it?
Konami is talking about porting Metal Gear Solid 4 to the Xbox 360. Nothing final yet, but apparently even with it being the game to get for the PS3, they weren't able to recover development costs.
A savegame is one of the paths to breaking the data / code barrier and running untrusted code. This has two implications: piracy and viruses. We've already seen how easy it was to run untrusted code via a simple savegame. Transfer the save from the Wii to the SD card, load up the save in a hex editor and start looking for meaning. Name strings, for example. If you rewrite the save to use an overly long name, maybe it notices and nothing happens. But maybe they forgot to check the horse's name. All you need is one weak path, and now you can run homebrew emulators that compete with Virtual Console games (you can also run Linux, but there's little point without wifi). You might also be able to
There's another problem however, that affects more than Nintendo's bottom line. Malicious virii. If there was a problem with game names, it could potentially wreck a chain of players. I imagine a game like Brawl does peer to peer multiplayer to reduce latency and bottlenecks, so you can't filter out bad packets. And you can't shut down online play without fiasco. So encrypting the save at least obscures where data that might be transferred over the net is stored.
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
Earthbound on Virtual Console. This game has consistently won on polls of what game people want for VC (oddly, the prequal Earth Bound Zero often polls 3rd or 4th, even though it never saw a US release). I WANT MY GAME /rant.
The Gospel according to lolcat
Your statement that the 360 is outselling the PS3 is wrong. For almost the 2008 calendar year, the PS3 has outsold or tied the 360. That said, cumulative sales of the 360 are way ahead of the PS3.
Another interesting aspect of all of this is that current middleware products don't port as well to the PS3 (in general) as to the 360/PC. A friend of mine at Id claims that their upcoming middleware will close that gap - I'd love to see simultaneous releases on all 3 platforms.
There are a couple of easy solutions to the problem you're talking about that don't involve preventing people from sharing saved games. Most obvious is to just insist that there aren't those sorts of bugs in savegame code. That's a bit impractical, though. You could, however, provide a common save game API that eliminates common errors.
Microsoft uses a combination of code signing, a hypervisor, and hardware security features like the NX bit to make running unauthorized code extremely difficult. That's probably the way to go these days.
Yeah for most of 2008 the PS3 outsold the 360, but for most of 2007 it was the other way around and right now, right as the holiday season kicks off, the 360 is outselling once again - even in Japan.
If it's outselling Sony in Japan, you KNOW something is horribly wrong...or horribly right, depending on your perspective and since Sony isn't likely to have a price cut any time soon, it looks like this is how things are going to be until 2009 at the earliest.
Plus, as you already pointed out, the 360 has the larger install base (by a good margin) and even at the rate Sony was outselling the 360, it would have still taken them several years to overtake the 360.
I think Sony needs to triple the amount of PS3's being sold in order to "beat" the 360 at this rate.
But still, I'm glad of all this, this has been the most competitive generation yet and we've all benefited from it.
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
But if they just release the discs with the two sentences from the Koran, and just patch the songs out, they'll have to worry about being hot coffeed/manhunted..
That's probably why they want to restamp all the discs. Sad really.
Here, here. The PixelJunk games are honestly quite sublime. Whoever can play Eden and not get totally sucked in, I cry for your wilted inner child.
PixelJunk's next game is supposed to be a dungeon crawler, a genre of game I have traditionally cared nothing for, but since it's PixelJunk I'm actually quite intrigued.