Worldwide Wii Day (Sep 14/15): the official thread *Released Nov 19 for $250 (US)*

[nAo]

Do you think that devs overall prefer to work under those conditions, where grfx are not important? Sounds like you would actually get some sleep if you were developing for Wii...

Developers are not all the same, my focus is graphics/new hw, that's why I probably would not enjoy that much to work on Wii..so no extra sleep for me Nonetheless that doesn't mean that I would not play Wii games

 

[expletive]

I have some hopes Nintendo will come to their senses and release a DVD player as a downloadable software upgrade, perhaps at a (preferably low) cost. Like I said, it could only make sense, I almost can't believe they didn't include one as standard. The excuse "everybody has one already" is LAME. Everybody doesn't, and even if they do, many maybe don't want an extra box lying there collecting dust. Two birds with one stone and all, you know, Nintendo?

Well said especially since Nintendo wants this device to be IN the place where the family gathers to watch DVD's, rather than relegated to the playroom or the basement. It sure would have made some sense for the casual consumer to justify it by being able to replace an old/broken DVD player with their new, family friendly, Wii! I thought that was THE market they were shooting for...

 

[darkblu]

Let put it this way: If I would develop a Wii title I would not stop sleeping at night to think how to achieve a better graphics. Yes, I would work to have a nice looking game but graphics would be one of my last worries. People will not but it for the fantastic graphics, it has to be ok, not amazing. That's why only few devs will actually push it for real. It already happened with the Gamecube and this tendency is going to be even stronger now.

i think it largely depends on what genre your game is in - for some genres, yes, i agree you may not deem necessary to go the full lenght. for others, though, you may just as well lose your sleep over the graphics, as you may have to produce something comparable (bar resolutions and extremities) to the gigawatt competition out there only under way, way less favorable circumnstances.

 

[Teasy]

Let put it this way: If I would develop a Wii title I would not stop sleeping at night to think how to achieve a better graphics. Yes, I would work to have a nice looking game but graphics would be one of my last worries. People will not but it for the fantastic graphics, it has to be ok, not amazing. That's why only few devs will actually push it for real. It already happened with the Gamecube and this tendency is going to be even stronger now.

I disagree, at the end of the day the kind of developers that make great looking games want to make the best looking game on any platform they're working on, its always been the case (even on systems like GBA) and it always will be. How "maxed out" Wii's hardware gets during its life cycle really just comes down to the usual, how successful the console is. If its not succesful it will get less developers working on it, smaller development teams and shorter development times (just like GC did), which means there will be less chance of seeing the best the system can offer. If its a success like PS2 then it will get the opposite and you can bet there will be plenty of developers trying to out do each other. Not only by developing games that are intuitive with the Wii controller but also by attempting to squeeze every last bit of power out of the system.

 

[nAo]

Then I think we can all come back here in a few years to decide who is wrong and who is right

 

[Shifty Geezer]

There's plenty of room to improve on on Wii, as dev kits get more accurate to Wii hardware.

How much room for improvement? There's bound to be some, but we're not looking at the differences seen in PS2 between launch and 5th gen titles, nor the differences we can expect from XB360 and PS3. These machines need the devs to learn new features, like new programming models to SIMDise algorithms, MEMEXPORT and the hardware tesselator, a new processor ISA needing independent FP and integer pathways. Wheras Wii just needs devs to continue using known features. Unless there's a lot more to the hardware than everything suggests.

 

[Teasy]

Then I think we can all come back here in a few years to decide who is wrong and who is right

Good idea.

 

[scooby_dooby]

give it up scooby, SDs are among the cheapest flash media these days, the only cheaper one being CF. comparing that to any proprietary mem card and trying to discard the advanages of the cheap, open standard is, well, a waste of forum space and reader's time.

You give it up, all I'm doing is pointing out the common sense fact that SD cards are still going to gost $20-30 instore.

I don't need to listen to you explain the Toronto subway system, really, it doesn't change the fact that most consumers will buy both their console AND the memory card from a major retail outlet.

Shifty - The smalled SD cards regularly available are 256mb, the 64mb comment was a reference to MS's card and how ridiculously small it is.

 

[iNoV]

Well said especially since Nintendo wants this device to be IN the place where the family gathers to watch DVD's, rather than relegated to the playroom or the basement. It sure would have made some sense for the casual consumer to justify it by being able to replace an old/broken DVD player with their new, family friendly, Wii! I thought that was THE market they were shooting for...

nintendo said from the beggining that they didnt intend to have DVD playback out of the box. Once again i am dissappointed in another ign article. Their story gives the impression that DVD playback is not there at all yet they have, on many occassions, told those who asked about DVD - and i think its even there in their FAQ - that it would be achieved through an extra attachment. on top of that their story doesnt address the attachment question and regurgitates information already known from the begging as though it were fresh news.

Will there still be an attachment to enable DVD playback??

 

[Johnny Awesome]

Wii's controller wouldn't be clunky with any of the games you just mentioned AFAICS.. If you want a good example of a genre of game that would likely be extremely hard to pull off well on Wii's controller then look no further then Football (International not North American). IMO this is one of the few kinds of game genre's were I may need another system to get my fix.

Look at the video at IGN of Fran playing Red Steel. It's painful. The innacuracies in the pointing are just too severe for proper play of an FPS. There really aren't enough buttons for most games IMO. It's possible that they'll resolve these difficulties, but a seasoned gamer should not have so much trouble playing standard games.

 

[scooby_dooby]

There's 512MBs of integrated, non-removable flash memory in the Wii console.
Your regular consumer would be well advised to just take advantage of that.

My bad, I misread Shifty's comment and thought it didn't have 512mb of flash memory. Well in that case there is no need for an SD card at all, and it is indeed $100 cheaper than the 360 at least.

 

[darkblu]

Then I think we can all come back here in a few years to decide who is wrong and who is right

it'd be my pleasure if i could, but what will we be checking then exactly? - that wii devs would not have maxxed the wii hw? ; ) or somehting else? : )

 

[Teasy]

Look at the video at IGN of Fran playing Red Steel. It's painful. The innacuracies in the pointing are just too severe for proper play of an FPS. There really aren't enough buttons for most games IMO. It's possible that they'll resolve these difficulties, but a seasoned gamer should not have so much trouble playing standard games.

Perfect Timing Johnny, as I was just about the post this anyway:

]

Retro Studios becomes the first developer to prove the potential of the Wii-mote with first-person titles.

September 14, 2006 - Readers have almost certainly heard the news: Metroid Prime 3: Corruption has been delayed into next year. Not exactly the development we were all waiting to hear. However, we do have some spectacular news to report, too, which is that Retro Studios has become the first developer to prove the potential of the Wii-mote with first-person titles. Corruption was sometimes-clumsily controlled at E3 2006, but thanks to a new control method designed specifically for pros, that's no longer the case.

As we played a new single-level demo of the Prime 3 at Nintendo's Wii event in New York City, the game's designers came upon and told us that we absolutely needed to try the new "expert" control mode. They explained that they hoped it would satisfy our cravings for first-person maneuverability similar to a mouse and keyboard configuration in FPSs on the PC platform.

We started up a new level where heroine Samus Aran explores a vast space station and immediately switched to expert mode. We're happy to report that it simulates the accuracy of PC first-person shooters almost perfectly, and we found ourselves soaring through levels, zipping around corners, pulling quick turns and zapping down enemies with pinpoint precision without seconds. Simply put, Retro has nailed it - and it makes the wait to 2007 for the game that much more difficult. We're not kidding when we write that Prime 3 feels like a brand new game with this control.

Like developers and Nintendo have been saying for a while now the controller itself is extremely precise. Its just a question of the developer getting the control schemes right, which seems to be coming along nicely (how much do you want to bet that all future Wii FPS's will use Retro's new control scheme?).

Here's the link to the article:

http://uk.wii.ign.com/articles/732/732737p1.html

 

[mkillio]

How severe would the security implications be of accessing your Wii from another friends Wii over the internet, so that you could access your game files? I bring this up since Wii is apparently always on and has wifi. I would love to be able to do that with a user name and password.

I don't mind the price of the system so much as the price of the controller and nunchuk, $60? I know that the technology is new and expensive for them to make but we're talking about almost $200 to play a four player game, that's almost as much as the system.

I plan on buying Wii on it's release date but I don't think I'll be able to afford the second controller after spending $350 for the system and two games.

 

[expletive]

nintendo said from the beggining that they didnt intend to have DVD playback out of the box. Once again i am dissappointed in another ign article. Their story gives the impression that DVD playback is not there at all yet they have, on many occassions, told those who asked about DVD - and i think its even there in their FAQ - that it would be achieved through an extra attachment. on top of that their story doesnt address the attachment question and regurgitates information already known from the begging as though it were fresh news.

Will there still be an attachment to enable DVD playback??

I think its stupid not to include it regardless if it was promised or not.

 

[hey69]

so what do you guys think of the games?

for me they look like nintendo gamecube titles.. i'm really dissapointed by them

 

[mkillio]

I think that they look similar to GC games but on the whole I can tell the slight difference between them. What I'm most disappointed about is the aliasing I was/still am hoping that anti-aliasing was going to be hardwired into the system. I don't mind the SD but if your going to have SD you can have jaggies.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

My bad, I misread Shifty's comment and thought it didn't have 512mb of flash memory. Well in that case there is no need for an SD card at all, and it is indeed $100 cheaper than the 360 at least.

Just to be clear, I was comparing the cheapest 'buy the console, get it home and play a game' solution. That won't factor in extra features like WiFi, multiple controllers, and whatever other comparisons people want to make. There's a different price for the the 4-player solution, for example.

Of course, all this is pretty academical. I'm quite sure that no-one will go into a store to get a console and will pick Wii because of price alone. If they just want to play games, there's cheaper options - PS2 or GC. If you want to play games waving a wand, Wii's the only option no matter what it costs, and it'll be that which does or does not sell the platform. Even if XB360 were $50 cheaper than Wii I doubt it'd win over any of those bursting for a Wii.

 

[darkblu]

You give it up, all I'm doing is pointing out the common sense fact that SD cards are still going to gost $20-30 instore.

here's a typical torontian walk-in computer store for you. pay attention to the $5-$15 SD offers.

I don't need to listen to you explain the Toronto subway system, really, it doesn't change the fact that most consumers will buy both their console AND the memory card from a major retail outlet.

maybe, if the system did not have any bult-in memory. given that the sysem has such, though, chances are consumers will not be desperately pressed to grab the first SD card a fat chain-store is trying to sell 'em. no?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

maybe, if the system did not have any bult-in memory. given that the sysem has such, though, chances are consumers will not be desperately pressed to grab the first SD card a fat chain-store is trying to sell 'em. no?

Chances are the game store will tell them it's 'needed' or 'preferrable' and sell them an overpriced version that's 'specially suited for Wii where other SD makes might be unreliable'