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What Developers Want From the Wii's Successor
donniebaseball23 writes "Wii 2 rumors are flying in advance of Nintendo's official reveal at E3 in June, but what would game developers like to see in a Wii successor? 'Without a doubt, my first request would be for an improved digital marketplace more along the lines of XBLA and PSN,' said one developer. 'We'd love more processing power, which is essential, and a better GPU as well,' said another."
A related article asks whether a high-powered new console really fits with Nintendo's strategy: "Nintendo is undoubtedly building its new system around a chipset it can buy for cheap and develop for with ease, and it'll be the system's peripheral capabilities (literally peripheral, if rumors of its fancy controller pan out) that catch people's attention — that the company will bank on using as the hook for consumers."
I hope I'm wrong, but I hear serious Nintendo fans vastly overestimating the hardware capabilities of the successor to the Wii. They're hoping for hardware that will rival next gen offerings from Sony and Microsoft despite the fact that Nintendo has shown it doesn't want to compete in that high-end console space anymore. I hope I'm wrong though. With all Nintendo's success in the last generation perhaps they can come out with a Wii successor that has beefy hardware.
Part of the hardcore faithful who believed in Apple long before it was cool again to do so
As long as the new console is HD capable. It's a serious embarrassment to have a modern gaming console still outputting SD video quality. Surely the majority of Wii owners out there now have HD screens.
As a customer, I think I perfer the XBox Live model to the PSN model. You know, the model that doesn't release my personal information and credit card numbers to crackers through a known and unpatched vulnerability.
Have noticed the same for some time now, ever since the redesign, but hitting it a second time usually works.
And we are also tired of:
Are Linux users lemmings collectively jumping off of the cliff of reliable, well-engineered commercial software? -- Matt Welsh
We look forward to your upcoming Wii successor as well as it's innovative new online services. Sincerely, PSN Hackers
True, it's been bugging me for a while. Also I cannot see people's karma bonus (it's as if they don't apply, which sucks since I usually browse at 2) when I'm logged on and my recent commets are not showing when I click my username.
They are aware. They just don't give a damn.
No one can release an update this buggy and not do a thing for so long otherwise. I love comments of massive depth where clicking on the reply textbox will simply expand the above comment and defocus the reply text box. Yes great feature that one.
And tell me again why the "Working" symbol flashes up for 3 seconds when I ctrl-F4 the page away!
they're sending your details to Sony
I love comments of massive depth where clicking on the reply textbox will simply expand the above comment and defocus the reply text box.
that really bugs the hell out of me too, replying just sucks when you are more then one or two posts down from the root.
I brought this up before and someone suggested switching back to the old discussion system, which promptly broke it even worse.
People, what a bunch of bastards
Mod points seem to come much faster when you get modded up a lot. I got 2x15 in last few days.
I didn't have any since October, despite reading multiple times per day and having positive karma...
Then over the weekend, had them twice in three days! o.o
One of the things I have liked about the Wii is getting the games, and feeling like I have purchased a complete game. No "online passes", no resale penalties, not constantly feeling like I have to purchase additional DLC for the game to be complete. The simplicity of the Wii is what got me back into gaming, and the aforementioned aspects of the "Digital Market Place" being so integrated into the gaming experience, or at least how publishers exploit it, is what's driving me away.
To me, a true HD Wii with a modern GPU, decent raw processing power, and higher capacity media for games would be perfect.
I'm sick of these people, two can play this game. garbage crap garbage trash broken scam thief stolen
A controller pan? Is there going to be Kitchen Hero game?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
You see, that's what they call "random". Fancy concept, really.
What a depressingly stupid machine.
Nintendo got away with it on the Gamecube, and then again on the WIi. They got away with it because Xbox was still very new, and the PC technology wasn't vastly outpacing console gaming. Now we are in another era, and it's time for the consoles to move the bar. If console hardware design isn't vastly superior to PC design, the console gaming will eventually become a thing of the past as Xbox will probably lead the way of combining the features of the PC into the features of a console.
The solution would be a modular design with upgradability in the core components. Simply put, if Wii 2 isn't at least a generation ahead of the PS3 and Xbox360, it will not be able to compete. The expectations of gamers now are photorealistic PC quality 3d graphics. The majority of console owners own PCs too, it's just a different world now.
I would buy a Wii 2, but Wii 2 has to be able to do things my PC can't do. The PS3 proves that pricepoint does matter in the short term but PS3 is also successful in the long term so it's not just price. It's mainly about the games. Nintendo wont be able to get by with another fancy controller, they are going to have to change the technology.
I think one way would be to go back to cartridges. SSD now has enough space on it to surpass DVDs in all areas. Another would be to have extremely powerful GPU, and a lot of ram. Finally they need to get the internet right. Built in WiFi would be helpful.
It's pretty worrisome that Nintendo is the first company to announce a next-gen console. Sega can tell you that being the first in the pool doesn't work so well. The other console manufacturers get a good look at your hand and can make something even better. And considering that Nintendo's competitors haven't even announced their own consoles, it looks like they'll have plenty of time to create consoles that are technically superior to whatever the Big N is coming up with.
But what Nintendo really needs to do is to make sure that they have a better line to third party developers. They can't afford miss out on another A+ cross-platform title like GTA or a proper version of Call of Duty just because their hardware isn't up to muster.
Freedom is drinking a beer in the park when you're supposed to be at work.
Simply put, if Wii 2 isn't at least a generation ahead of the PS3 and Xbox360, it will not be able to compete. The expectations of gamers now are photorealistic PC quality 3d graphics. The majority of console owners own PCs too, it's just a different world now.
Absolute tosh. The *VAST* majority of game development, and an ever increasing amount of sales is now done on the iPhone. You might demand PC quality graphics for gaming, but there are millions and millions of other people who are more than happy with angry birds. Apple has won the console wars, and the landscape of game development has changed radically as a result. As a game developer, the only thing I ask is that the next round of consoles appreciate that it's the iPhone they are up against, and not each other. If they get it wrong this time around, I predict the death knell of games consoles within 5 years.
An open, public Developer API and less health warning screens.
The solution would be a modular design with upgradability in the core components.
Then consoles would be no different from PCs.
The majority of console owners own PCs too, it's just a different world now.
Only a percentage of console gamers have access to a gaming ready PC. If we broaden the definition to all console owners (meaning casual and mainstream (=non hardcore) gamers) then that number decreases significantly.
An improved digital marketplace might be something the developers want, but as long as your purchases are tied to a single machine and lost when that machine has a hardware failure, I am not going to buy from there. That is the reason I haven't bought anything from their current marketplace.
if you follow Nintendo's choice in hardware, you will see that even from the very beginning they have always used cheap-o hardware.
the NES's 6502 chip was out of date.
the Gameboy's z80 CPU was cut down to being a weakling.
The SNES was vastly underpowered.
the N64 is where they took a RISC (get it?) and went with a decent CPU but it failed due to carts costing too much.
the GBA had a cheap-o ARM chip that couldnt calculate it's way out of a one wall maze and the DS is the same way.
the GameCube was out-of-date when it was release and the Wii a mere update and still underpowered.
the reason for this nonsense is what Nintendo loves, money. if you can make a console for cheap and sell it for a bundle, you get a lot of money off sales.
Nintendo is the ultimate marketing machine. they took a crappy handheld (Gameboy) and made a TON of sales just by selling it in different colors.
my point is, the next console will likely be Gamecube 2.0 (Wii was Gamecube 1.5) but they will market the hell out of it as always and get a ton of cash in doing so.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
I love comments of massive depth where clicking on the reply textbox will simply expand the above comment and defocus the reply text box. Yes great feature that one.
Oh, is that what it's doing? It was driving me crazy earlier because I'd click reply and it seemed like the page would jump back to the top and then I'd have to spend a few minutes trying to find my place again in the conversation so I could start typing in the editor.
I also notice none of the comments I've written since May 1st appear on my own user page.
The *VAST* majority of game development, and an ever increasing amount of sales is now done on the iPhone. You might demand PC quality graphics for gaming, but there are millions and millions of other people who are more than happy with angry birds. Apple has won the console wars, and the landscape of game development has changed radically as a result.
One important part of the landscape, is get used to selling 4 million copies at 99 cents each, not 50K copies at $50 each.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Beyond the rumored specs, there's really only one thing devs really want: more RAM. Don't fucking skimp out on it -- shove loads of it in there. Even if they have to tier it into faster and slower RAM, do it (we'll learn to stream/ping pong/double buffer). Just don't give us shit like 512MB anymore (not in this day and age anyway). RAM is probably the cheapest, easiest, and fastest way to get thanks from devs, which translates to better games in every single way. Give us a serving of at least 1024 MB for main RAM, and 512 for GPU RAM (or at least 1.5GB if it's unified). If they can make it 2GB+ total, all the merrier.
The next on the list would be something bigger than the rumored 8GB flash, if they want to go anywhere near online distribution or content.
I've read, and it's been my experience, that you get more mod points if you're only a moderate poster, rather than someone who visits/posts frequently, or rarely visits at all.
which is totally what she said
I'm a pretty hard-core gamer, but I found the Wii's hardware to be fine for the kind of games that Nintendo is famous for. It would be nice to have HD, etc, but hardly necessary.
However, the interfaces for choosing widgets, settings, and buying things are HORRIBLE. Especially the store. On every platform they have right now. It's far too slow to browse, finding a specific thing is a nightmare, and you can't download in the background.
And finding out what's new and cool each week? UGH.
I don't hear many people complaining about this, either... It really surprises me.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Um. I have Angry Birds (ad supported only on Android for some reason, I'd pay 50p or whatever for it). I also have a PS3, an Xbox 360, and a Wii (which I got bored of and gave to my little sister years ago). Angry Birds isn't replacing my blu-rays and big budget games, it only supplements them.
They are not competing. There is a small amount of overlap (especially on tablets), but games on phones do not compete with the PS3 and Xbox any more than the DS and PSP compete with them.
Consoles have always been worse than PC hardware, and they still aren't dead.
which is totally what she said
>> I love comments of massive depth where clicking on the reply textbox will simply expand the above comment and defocus the reply text box. Yes great feature that one.
> Oh, is that what it's doing? It was driving me crazy earlier because I'd click reply and it seemed like the page would jump back to the top and then I'd have to spend a few minutes trying to find my place again in the conversation so I could start typing in the editor.
I'm glad it's not just me, then! That behavior was really annoying. I thought I was losing my mind or something.
The sliders also don't seem to work for selecting what level to read at. Moving the slider up to "5" might say "10 full comments", but instead I get 5 or 6 comments. Sad.
And the mobile device support ... this is 2011, man. Please send some love to the Android users, who read Slashdot from a smartphone about half the time.
or the console will become obsolete as PC makers create smaller and smaller PCs which resemble consoles.
Basically it's only a matter of time before PC makers develop the gaming PCs. It could be Microsoft's next Xbox, or it could be Wii 2, or it could be Apple, Dell, or Toshiba.
Not the expectations of "gamers", because "gamers" is a much much broader demographic than it was even 5 years ago. "Self-described hardcore gamers" maybe, but even there you'll find that there's not a universal demand for photorealistic graphics. There's plenty of game genres out there which simply do not require them. When it comes down to it, what gamers really are looking for are games that are *fun*, not eye candy. Pretty graphics are nice, but it's only really when poor graphics actually hampers gameplay and the fun factor that they would really factor into the decision making processes of most gamers.
It seems to be a misplaced click handler. I get the same thing in the reply page when I try to quote a parent. It also seems that the page has a minimum width now, so I need to scroll horizontally. Welcome to 1995 - this page best viewed in 1024x768 or better...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
They didn't get away with anything on the GameCube. It was a highly competent system that blew the PS2 out of the water and nearly matched the X-Box with processing power. It was a fantastic system that came out at a weird time and just never gained traction. Had Reggie been at the helm when the GameCube launched, we might have seen a different outcome.
Why should console game hardware be vastly superior to PC design? Your TV only does 1080p at best, with the majority of HDTV's out there being 720p. Granted, newer consoles need to allow for higher resolution textures, but when we have videocards pushing 3 monitors at a time these days, we certainly don't need anything that powerful. Not only that, I don't want to have to pay for anything that expensive.
The Wii 2 has to be able to do things your PC can't? The Wii already does that. I don't see your PC using anything like the Wiimote for input. That's the difference. Also, I'm thinking you're going to have a hard time playing a FPS in your lay-z-boy with a PC.
And a modular design would be absurd for a console. You'd end up fragmenting the console user base with too many configurations. Then you'd end up with the inefficiency of PC games, where software vendors have to take a massive array of different configurations into account. The beauty of console games are that you can highly optimize them for a specific hardware set, thereby letting you get away with less powerful hardware. If you look at Nintendo's past, it's riddled with add-ons, ram upgrades, etc. that never caught on. That's because console games want to take the console out of the box and never have to touch it. Once you make the investment, that's it for the lifetime of the console.
Wise men say, "Forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza."
Kinetic like camera built in? I was reading an argument that the kinect is awesome in the hacker community, but developers aren't going after it that strongly because it's only a portion of the possible market. If wii had one built in standard, then this would give them a competitive advantage. The kinect seems like it "1-upped" the wiimote anyhow...
Shame all of your links have rel="nofollow" added to them, so that search engines ignore them...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
You do know that the current Wii already has built in WiFi right?
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
Games like "Wii Ski & Snowboard" are way better with the balance board than a Wii-mote, but the current Wii only allows one balance board to connect at a time. This makes such games effectively single-player, which isn't what people buy Wiis for. Unless the Wii 2 abandons the balance board concept altogether for a camera approach like the Kinect, I'd like to be able to use at least two BBs simultaneously.
But I suppose I'm not a "real" gamer anyway; the only other game console I've owned besides my Wii (purchased 2.5 years ago and still getting a lot of use) is a Super NES.
How about how clicking a link in a comment will send you to a different comment somewhere in the same branch most of the time, and you have to actually right-click > copy link location > paste to address bar to get there?
sounds like a refresh to dynamic button issue.
Are Slashdot users lemmings collectively jumping off of the cliff of reliable, well-engineered discussion platforms?
You are failing to understand the economics of the situation. 4 developers working for 4 months to make an iPhone title, vs 50-150 developers working for 3 to 5 years for a console title. For a studio to start developing a new console title requires a bank balance of at least 3 to 5 million before you can even begin (and even that is no where near enough for the marketing budget). Where is that money going to come from?
If you are an investor with say, £6million in the bank. Are you going to invest that in developing a single console title (which might break even), or are you going to invest that in 100 iPhone titles all of which are more likely to turn bigger pound-for-pound profit?
Over the last 2 years or so there have been numerous established, high quality studios, that have had to close their doors simply because, they have been unable to raise the capital needed to develop ther next title. I'm aware of quite a few more that will be facing that prospect very soon. The whole industry is turning it's attention to the iPhone simply because it's risk adverse, easy to raise the capital, has a very good chance of making a profit, and is the only way for some studios to keep their doors open.
My personal fear is that the gaming community will tire of yet another forza, yet another GTA, yet another portal, and may start to see console games as over-priced and unoriginal. Dont forget that as the capabilities of consoles increases linearly, the development cost/complexity rises exponetially. If the sales figures for the next generation of consoles is just 80% of the current generation, and the development costs rise by 20%, I can't see how the console market will be able to sustain itself.
Actually.. Angry Birds on the Wii doesn't sound like too bad of an idea. :)
Wiimote already fragments, as does online play.
Why not upgrade graphics for hardcore gamers? If it fragments the market but results in higher sales and a loyal fanbase why care? Just make sure its done right. The harddrive being added didn't fragment consoles either. In the least they need to go back to cartridges, and they need to make the graphics upgradeable.
You should switch back. It's almost like it was 5 years ago.
I know others switch of JS too.
Where have the polls gone too? I used to enjoy them.
This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
Fuck, I hate that. Even trying to click on a link now requires you to fully expand the message thread. And a few weeks ago, even that was borked for a while (couldn't select a link at all).
Slashdot seems determined to constantly fuck with their code until it's either broken completely or annoying as hell. I think the Slashdot motto should be "If it ain't broke...just give us some time."
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Here is how it would work:
1.The CPU in the Wii would contain special write-once fuses like on the XBOX 360 (IBM designed the CPU for both consoles and I am sure they could add the fuses to the next gen Wii CPU). During manufacturing, these fuses would be programmed with one of 3 high-strength RSA keys (RSA being picked because its harder to make SONY-style key generation mistakes with it) depending on which region the console was intended for. (that or the key could be designed directly into the silicon mask for the chip). The CPU would also include (in addition to the regular PPC core) on-chip accelerator modules for fast decryption of RSA and AES.
The cartridges would contain one or more flash chips (wired up so they appear as one large piece of memory) plus a special custom security chip. The security chip would contain 3 special write-once memory spaces that are either programmed at cartridge assembly time or built into the mask of the chip. Each of the 3 spaces would contain the same AES key but encrypted with one of the 3 different RSA keys. If a given game release is for USA only, it would have the AES key encrypted with the USA RSA key but would not be programmed with AES keys encrypted with the JAP or EU keys. Different cartridges (including different region variants of the same game) would have different AES keys.
The data on the flash chips would be encrypted with this AES key.
How the security would work is as follows:
1.Cartridge is inserted and the console is powered up
2.The console tells the security chip which region it is
3.If the security chip has a key for that region, some form of cryptographic protocol is used to transfer the RSA encrypted key blob to the console (the kind where sniffing the bus wont give you the RSA blob no matter what you are able to sniff). Otherwise the console displays a region error.
4.The RSA module in the CPU decrypts the RSA packet (without key material ever appearing outside the CPU) and hands the decrypted AES key to the AES module (again the key never appears outside the CPU)
5.Data is read from the flash memory chips and decrypted on-the-fly by the AES module.
6.The game is loaded and executed.
The decryption modules (including all keys) are not accessible to the main CPU with the CPU simply asking for cartridge data and it being decrypted on-the-fly and handed to the CPU.
Even if you were able to dump the entire contents of a cartridge (e.g. if you got code running on the device and used that code to dump every piece of decrypted data) you would be unable to produce cartridges without the RSA private keys for the 3 regions and knowledge of the authentication between the console and security chip that allows the security chip to verify that its talking to a legitimate console. (and the console that its talking to a legitimate cartridge)
You would be unable to just read the encrypted data from the flash chips on the cart and duplicate that because you cant get the RSA encrypted blobs from the security chip without the special hard-to-reverse-engineer secret handshake.
The weakness in this system is the physical security of the chips (i.e. decapping the chips to read their contents) but there are well-understood methods to make doing that extremely difficult.
No "online passes", no resale penalties, not constantly feeling like I have to purchase additional DLC for the game to be complete.
And no talking to other players unless you have met them offline and exchanged friend codes.
Nintendo is copying Apple's business model. Look at how frequently new incremental models of Apple products are coming out. Look at the DS. Nintendo is going to do the same thing with their consoles. Instead of sinking brazillians of dollars into consoles with 5+ yr life spans, there'll be a new incremental step every few years.
The jump from Wii to Wii2 will be modeled on the jump from iPad to iPad2. Small, incremental changes. The fanbois will keep buying the latest rev. The engineering cost going into making a product designed to last 2 yrs is less.
Also, unlike Sony and Microsoft, Nintendo realizes mobile gaming is the future battleground. And Apple is their biggest competition.
I've got a much more annoying comment issue to bitch about. When you have a parent comment collapsed, but then a child comment expanded (ex: the parent is modded -1, and child is +5), clicking anywhere in the child comment will expand the parent comment, also causing the page to scroll to that parent comment. This is damn annoying.
Whats worse is when this happens over multiple levels. For example, you have a comment chain A-B-C-D-E, where each comment is a child of the comment before it (ie: comment E is nested 5 levels in). If comments A to D are all collapsed but E is expanded, you first click in E will expand D. The next time you click, it then expands C. Then B, and then on the 4th click, it expands A. Each time, your browser scrolls further and further from the comment you were trying to read.
Just STOP IT ALREADY! Damn this new software sucks.
As far as the new controller? Use the InvenSense IMU-6000, add a 3 axis magnetometer, a bluetooth toggle to save power, add serial & i2c for quaternions as well as AHRS out, and put an ARM9 & color camera on-board with a JTAG interface.
The world needs a low cost OpenCV capable 9DoF INS.
There may be a stupid number of (mostly bad) games for the iPhone, but that doesn't mean the majority of development time is spent on the platform. I also wonder if the iPhone might be a different market from traditional console games.
But if your prediction is right, then there's a silver lining for me: I would save a lot of money, since I would no longer be buying games.
If you can't convince them, convict them.
"The Wii 2 has to be able to do things your PC can't? The Wii already does that. I don't see your PC using anything like the Wiimote for input. That's the difference. Also, I'm thinking you're going to have a hard time playing a FPS in your lay-z-boy with a PC."
No and no. The Wii-mote can be used with a PC and I play FPS games in my recliner all the time. Set the mouse next to you and put the keyboard in your lap. Can play for hours and never get uncomfortable.
Nice try.
Yes, an Android-powered phone with the "Unknown sources" checkbox turned on is a general-purpose personal computer in a handheld form factor.
We appear to disagree on the definition of a word. Layne's Law implies that rational debate cannot continue until this is resolved. So what is the fundamental difference between a video game console and a personal computer? I can think of two differences, neither of which appears relevant to the processing or graphics rendering capability:
I am on my third set of 5 mod points yet, I have not been modded up, yet modded to neutral from positive.
A little background: The last console I had prior to the Wii was an NES. I don't get a lot of gaming hardware because then I'd use it, and I don't have the time to let myself sit in front of a TV all day. Our family of five (kids are 11, 8, and 8) got the Wii at Christmas '09, I believe.
I would make three requests:
- One, please produce some racing games. There has been one (F1 2009) worth mentioning (and the AI on that was lousy). Everything else is basically a Mario Kart knock-off.
- Two, we use the Homebrew channel about 30% of the time we use the Wii. Embrace it, Nintendo.
- Three, the SD video really is kind of dumb.
Now, I can tell from personal experience that the graphics processing ain't the greatest, and accomplishing One and Three above would require boosting that (at more cost). But it doesn't have to be on par with whatever Sony and Microsoft are doing. Just better than what it is.
Otherwise, it was a great purchase. I like the interfaces, especially using the wheel. Many of the games are well-done and I have a hard time keeping my kids away from it.
True hardcore gamers play in ASCII.
Supporter of the +1 Over Dramatic mod option. In memory of apk.
Thank god you are not in charge of designing consoles!!
Neither I, nor anyone at work, nor any of my friends, nor even any of my relatives want "photorealism" in a game console. We want games! As in fun, not realistic, not simulations, but escapes from reality.
Why do you think the Wii was so successful? There's definitely no "photorealism" in the Wii games, there's no hard-core simulations on the Wii, there's no tera-pixel-pumping 3D awesomeness. No, there's just reality-escaping fun.
Consoles are not PCs. Consoles should not be upgradeable. They are appliances with a known hardware configuration that does not change over the life of the console, which makes it easy to program for.
You want a PC to game on? Then connect your PC to your TV.
What I would love to see are sports games that aren't league simulations, that don't include real-world physics, that don't include photo-realistic players, that include super-powers.
Or racing games that aren't driving simulations, that don't include perfect real-world physics, that don't include real-world damage and handling, that let you race without taking your finger off the gas.
Or flying games that aren't flight simulators, that don't include perfect, real-world physics, that don't require a pilot's license to enjoy, where you just blow shit up.
Or a space flight game without real-world physics, like the TIE series.
Consoles are not super-computers, and that's the way it should be!!
Actually, the PC can use the wiimote for input. It's a normal bluetooth device.
It can, but games aren't designed to use it. Until you start seeing "WiiMote compatible" on games, it's a novelty and not part of the PC gaming experience.
Wise men say, "Forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza."
You can't expect the normal person to do this?
Mouse and keyboard games just don't work on a couch or chair. There's no comfortable position, unless you've got some ape arms and slouch, and even then it's no where close to ideal.
Wise men say, "Forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza."
Make it 3 times in 5 days...
:-)
If that's random, I'm going out to buy a lottery ticket!
I'd totally buy Angry Birds from the shop channel, the WiiMode hold A + B to grab control would work fine. I'd be a great living room game.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Easy workaround: Live dump and make the loader bypass all security measures. By live-dump I mean dump the memory contents before the control get handed to the CPU. The bootleg cartridge then contains unencrypted game code/data. Next, we need to bypass all these encryption/decryption mechanism by intercepting load signals to the decryption module and reroute the signals into the dummy loader.
To thwart this, the console must perform verification of some sort that the cartridge contains valid encrypted data.
Although the Wiimote technically can be used on the PC, you are pretty much right.
1080p is the highest resolution it makes sense to support and a cheap video card will outperform the current generation of consoles. For the most part all the Wii 2 needs is a mid range video card (by PC standards), HDMI out at 1080p, more memory and a faster CPU. All of that is pretty much a given though.
I would expect that a vision periphrial will be in the works similar to what Sony and MS have, but that doesn't even need a new system. I think they would be wise to push the use of the classic controller where it makes sense also. There are a lot of games that don't support it, but where a classic controller would be the right tool for the job.
being the first in the pool doesn't work so well. The other console manufacturers get a good look at your hand and can make something even better.
Except that it won't bring them any interesting information. We can already say that nintendo will bring something that, although better than a Wii and slightly better than current HD consoles, won't bring any new crazy performance. Instead, they'll focus on finding new way to attract even more non-hardcore and casual gamers (think a console where 100% of the games are based on concepts similar to Kinect, Wiimote, Wii balance board, etc). They'll produce something that will attract even your grand-ma to games. And they'll earn fuckloads of money, even if none of the /. readers will be interested in buying a Nintendo Café.
Meanwhile Sony and Microsoft will take the opposite way : they will overload their future system with processing power, while staying as closely as possible to classical controlling schemes (in order to attract the hardcore gamers feeling abandonned by nintendo) and while using some motion control (a Kinect 2) in order to still attract some of the causal-gaming types.
They can't afford miss out on another A+ cross-platform title like GTA or a proper version of Call of Duty just because their hardware isn't up to muster.
Yes they can. See above. They just aren't after the same market. If the console is powerful enough, maybe you'll see a Café port of the few most popular FPS. But they won't be making money from you. They aren't interested in selling GTA to you. Microsoft and Sony are in for your money. Nintendo is targeting your parents and grand parents by selling them the next iterations of Café Sports, Café Balance, Café Yoga, .... (and perhaps the occasional iteration of Zelda/Mario/Pokémon, so you'll feel compelled to buy one too).
The menace isn't what Sony or Microsoft will be turning out. Their main competition is from Apple, and from Android Tablets/Phone makers : these too are chasing the casual gamer market.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
If I can buy Wii 2 and play the games I already own they will have at least one sale.
Not to have to fucking use Code Warrior. Ever. Again. Ever.
I was getting 15 mod points 1-2 times per week for the last couple years, but since the redesign, I've only gotten them a total of once.and that was a day or so after posting... so it may be that you only get mod points if you post now, rather than giving them to the infrequently posting, frequent readers. Instead of digging through comments to find unfair negative mods, I find myself more skimming slashdot now since I never have points to use (I almost never mod down unless it's something obvious like GNAA).
Don't leave your mind so open that your brain falls out. Don't close it so much that you cut off the blood.
How many games support its use natively? I can hook up webcams to my PC too -- that doesn't mean any games use it. (Yes, I am aware that it can be made to emulate a mouse pointer; that alone still doesn't make it practical or useful)
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
If my HTC Desire (and the Wildfires used by the rest of the family) could be used as a Wiimote on the PC, I might buy a box of games.
I am still waiting for a multiplayer "International Mapouka Challenge" on any platform.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
I'm hoping for better graphics and a Fleshlight controller. Of course standing nude in the window with a Fleshlight strapped to my joystick while doing repeated hip thrusts probably wont go over well with the neighbors. But that's not my fault, not everyone is into gaming!
The iPhone gaming craze is a fad. How many silly games are there in the app store? 50k? more? And how many are actually worth playing? Maybe a couple of dozen? People say the Wii sucks because of all the shovelware, multiply that by 1000x and you've got the cell-phone game market. I predict the death knoll of cell-phone gaming within 5 years.
And you seem to have forgotten about indie games. Look at Xbox Live Arcade, the PSN store, Steam, etc. Plenty of small games companies are doing fine, and making high quality games. It's not all about big budgets. It has always been getting easier and easier for amateurs to make high quality 3D graphics on PC, and while consoles aren't quite the same as they often require coding graphics libraries from scratch, it will be very possible for small games studios to keep making decent games.
You also seem to be entirely ignoring Android.. I wouldn't let myself get too locked into iOS if I were you.
Look at big movies compared to kids TV shows if you want simple analogy of PC/console gaming to iPhone gaming. They both have massively different budgets and target markets, and they both can coexist.
which is totally what she said
The Atari 2600 console does not have firmware, and doesn not verify digital signatures.
And its console generation was the last one not to. Public reaction to Custer's Revenge is thought responsible for the introduction of cryptographic lockouts to the Atari 7800 and NES platforms.
Many models of personal computers came with standard-definition TV outputs as a standard feature. E.g. Atari 800, C64, Amiga, TI-994/A etc..
Came, past tense. SDTV out as a standard feature died with EGA and VGA, as PCs were made to fit more and more text onto the screen.
the Atari 2600 was sold as the "Atari Video Computer System"
The VCS terminology was used long before the introduction of NES and VGA clearly defined the console/PC dichotomy.
If the modern PC running Windows Home Premium can be thought of as a game console under your definition, then why aren't more PCs in living rooms?
* Comparable to PS3/XB360 in power (My son and wife may like Kirby, but I want R6 Vegas 3 or whatever)
* Easy way to back up all save games without having to go to each one, delete the original on the SD card, then transfer the new one. Its asinine. My son is good at accidentally messing up save games, so I'm constantly moving stuff around.
* Backwards compatible with Wii 1 games - ALL of them- I didn't buy XB360 due to lackluster backwards compatibliity or PS3 due to removal of it. Preferably GC backwards compatibility too, but I could let that go.
* Keep the wii store, but no in game advertising,sales, or required logins. A continued minimization of multiplayer is good for me too.
That's more or less it.
Do what PGP does- encrypt the cartridge with a session key using AES, then encrypt the session key with the three (or more) RSA keys. Then your cartridge reading is faster and stronger encryption.
The encryption modules would be on-die in the CPU as separate logic modules that are not exposed to the main CPU except via a "read data from cartridge" command that the main CPU performs where it asks the encryption modules to read and decrypt some data from the cartridge. The CPU would have special pins comming from these modules to connect directly to the cartridge edge connector with the encrypted data and key material never passing through main RAM or through the main CPU.
It would be impossible to bypass the encryption without somehow decapping the CPU and rerouting the cartridge pins to bypass the encryption module (bearing in mind that the only way to read data from the cartridge is to call a file I/O command in the library which then translates into a low-level call directly to the encryption module)
Also, unless the secret handshake between the security chip in the cart and the encryption/security logic on the main CPU is correct, nothing will be read/executed. (so the "secret handshake" bit would be like the old lockout chips on the original Nintendo except with a much stronger hard-to-extract-from-the-chip shared secret and a much stronger cryptographic system involved)
I concede the point that it's marketing. Consoles are marketed as capable of playing multiplayer games on one device, and PCs are not marketed as capable of same. So for which platform should an indie developer release a multiplayer game? Nintendo doesn't want home-based businesses or first titles.
Also, to add to this, console gaming, and PC gaming have always been a fairly niche market, a market that simply won't be displaced by iOS and android Minigames, in fact it's a market that would rather have a 3DS, or NGP than spend their time on Angry birds. The only thing that can, and likely will happen, is casual gamers leaving the consoles for small 99 cent minigames, but they were never exactly the target audience of most major titles. A casual player doesn't feel like putting the time down for Zelda, or Final fantasy, they don't want to get obliterated by the people who regularly play [insert FPS title here] online, they just want something simple to waste their time. That's what iOS, and Android can offer, what they can't offer is everything that a console or PC can to non-casual gamers. Any investor will realize that while major games might take a bit more effort, it is also a much more stable source of income, with a dedicated consumer-base. The minigames are hit and miss, plus a casual gamer isn't likely to see the need to buy a massive number of games for their phone, if you factor this in with their low price, it's easy to realize that these minigames which take very few resources to make, and probably WON'T sell like the next big FPS, and likely won't find itself on the wall of fame as Angry Birds has, the market for casual gaming on phones simply isn't as profitable, or at the very least, as reliable.
Feel free to mod me down, just know that unlike some Anonymous Cowards I'm not afraid to express my views as myself.
As a Wii user, I only resent one thing. After my kids destroyed the disc with our (please note that) favorite game, distributor denied me the right to replace the disk. Considering the high price of the games, that is a major driver of piracy, and a reason why we have less than 10 games for Wii. Distribution over the internet is simply a no-no for me.
On the other shelf, we have over 30 PC games. No, we did not want to buy PS or Xbox, Wii works just fine for us.
Yes, there is a lot of US, Japan, and EU homes that have good power source and high speed internet, but that is less than quarter of the entire human population. Consider a large population of China, India, Russia, Brazil, Africa, and some parts of Europe and other that lack either a good power grid or a fast internet access. Wii2 will have to be low on power, and have a physical media for distribution (modified SD cards come to mind).
Everybody in this industry should have in mind the problems with digital distribution, especially after what recently happened to Sony. Just remember that most upset were people that paid the games, but could not play it for days.
Perhaps they will invest in pirated version of the game next time. Wouldn't you?
Given that you had none since october, that makes it three times in eight months. I'll admit that seems quite a bit lower than what I get, although it's been a month or so by now, too.
I'm sure the allotment of modpoints isn't entirely random, probably takes a few user statistics into account. I also noticed I seem to be less likely to get new ones soon if I haven't spent all the ones I had.
Winning something in the lottery three times in eight months isn't all that unusual, I'd think. Making a profit over those eight months while playing every week is a lot more unlikely, and winning the jackpot three times in eight months, well... :-)
What a depressingly stupid machine.
Prepared to be disappointed....again. Consumers, prepared to be disappointed....again. Parents, prepare to waste money....again. The only people excited about a Wiiii are infants.
Indeed, that is true. But I haven't been playing the lottery.
And it's 4 times in 6 days now... I think they're just fucking with me now! =p
It was a fantastic system that came out at a weird time after Nintendo lost a bunch of 3rd party developers with the N64. That the Gamecube came out after the PS2 and was aiming for a similar crowd didn't help, given that Sony had built up a massive amount of momentum. That's more the issue that Nintendo had, from my looking back on the GCN's failure.