WiiWare info floods the Intertubes
Thursday, February 21st, 2008 at 10:09am by Jack
IGN has an interview up today that goes over basically everything there is to know about WiiWare.
All in all it’s pretty positive, interesting stuff, although Nintendo’s decision to forgo a demo service in lieu of promoting games via the Everybody’s Nintendo Channel could be hit-or-miss, in my opinion.
For you attention defect types Kotaku broke the interview down into more manageable chunks:
100 Games: [Nintendo of America’s Tom] Prata said there should be around 100 games “available” when the service launches on May 12. They won’t all be available at once, with Nintendo choosing to adopt a Virtual Console-style delivery method and deliver only a few titles at a time.
Bedroom Coders Need Not Apply: When the service was first touted, it sounded like it Nintendo were going to be accommodating small teams with big ideas. Not necessarily true. What they actually meant was small teams from big companies; you still need to be a licensed developer to get a game on the service, and becoming a licensed developer in Nintendo’s eyes is neither easy nor cheap.
Feature Sets: Developers will have access to the Wii’s full suite of functionality, but will be forced to use none of it. In other words, if a game wants to use Wii Connect 24, save to an SD card and feature online multiplayer, great! If it just wants to be downloaded and played with a GameCube controller, great.
No Demos: You won’t get to try before you buy. WiiWare won’t be allowing users to download and play demos of a game before purchasing, as Nintendo felt that forcing them to come up with a potentially costly demo ran against the whole point of the service. Instead, it sounds like they just want you to check the Everybody’s Nintendo Channel (which must be launching before May 12), watch a trailer or two and make your purchasing decision based off that.
An interesting little interview. It’s not Xbox Live, but then again no one from Nintendo said that was the point. Comparing it to the current standard in online console gaming is purposefully ignorant or genuinely ignorant. Either way, you get the idea.
February 21st, 2008 at 10:35 am
I am excited about this service, and I like the games I’ve seen so far. However, I am very low on my memory, and I am not interested treating my Wii like a fridge. If they don’t allow me to play games directly from the SD card, I will probably get very little use out of the VC and WW in the future. It’s such a simple fix. Get on it, Nintendo.
Lack of demos is disappointing, but not surprising. XBLA it ain’t, but I really think that the Wii is probably BETTER suited toward smaller casual games than your Zelda and Metroid games. I wouldn’t be shocked if in 2-3 years, WiiWare has a stronger library than Wii disc games.
February 21st, 2008 at 11:04 am
The service is sounding good. I like the concepts behind several of the titles we’ve already seen. Really, this generation is filled with so much gaming goodness that I can’t keep up. I really like retro gaming, love my Wii, and still want to buy an XBOX 360 for some of its games. Unfortunately, I haven’t the time or the money for all of these things.
Basically, what I’m trying to say is, life is totally great for everyone but me. [sniff]
February 21st, 2008 at 11:09 am
“Comparing it to the current standard in online console gaming is purposefully ignorant or genuinely ignorant.”
I don’t understand that one… why wouldn’t you compare an online gaming market with the current standard? Or anything, really, with the current standard?
Anyway, one thing I still think WiiWare has against it is Wii’s lack of signigicant storage space. I got a 360 Elite in August, and I’ve already used up 70 of the 120 Gigabytes it came with! Sure, WiiWare titles will not occupy as much space as even a 360 game demo, but, really, how many downloads will 256 Kilobytes allow me to have, assuming I still have the whole lot by the time the service launches?
(Yeah, I know: I can erase old games to make room for new ones and download them again later if I want to play them again, but given the time that takes, how many people will even bother?)
Oh, and opening the SD slot for downloads will only help very little: Wii can only accept SD cards with not more than 2 Gigabytes of space!
February 21st, 2008 at 11:15 am
Given the tiny size of most VC games, and the supposed 40 MB imposted limit on WiiWare games, a 2 GB SD card will do me just fine, more than quadrupling the current space on the Wii. As I’ve said before, it’s not an ideal solution, but it is an effective and EASY TO IMPLEMENT solution.
February 21st, 2008 at 1:06 pm
One interview I read said that they will not be REQUIRING demos, but it didn’t say they will not ALLOW them.
February 21st, 2008 at 1:21 pm
Nintendo has been slow to adopt demos in general. Every other “official” gaming mag besides Nintendo Power has a demo disc. Nada for Nintendo.
February 21st, 2008 at 1:37 pm
Yea, I wish demo’s were required, I hate taking stabs in dark at what game I’m going to buy. Reviews are only helpful to a certain extent, videos can be made to show the game in its’ best light, but a demo is perfect. You’re not reading anyone else’s opinion or being forced to passively watch an experience, instead you actually get to play the game. You can’t even rent these wiiware games so they all should definitely have demo’s. I don’t care what Live or PSN is doing, this is just a basic need when buying digital content and should be for every game you buy at a retail store. We don’t have arcades to go try this stuff out for cheap anymore, but for movies you have theatre’s and television in addition to reviews and trailers. This is bs.
February 21st, 2008 at 3:26 pm
I’m fine with no demo’s, and I’m not lazy either to swap out games I am not playing at the time. Come on WIIWARE!
February 21st, 2008 at 3:52 pm
The issue with the no demo’s as it relates to DLC is this:
If I buy the game and don’t like it, I can’t trade it back in. If I buy a Disc game and don’t like it, at least I can take it to my local store and get store credit or something.
I wish there was a trade-back service so if you have buyers remorse on a VC or Wii-ware title they could give you a percentage back on the Wii-Points you spent. It’s not like you aren’t going to use the Wii-Points again in the future anyways….am I right? Or am I right?
February 23rd, 2008 at 1:50 am
Rushli0n: The difference is, WiiWare games are digital content. There’s no profitability in ‘trading in’ a WiiWare game, while video game stores can profit from used packaged game (and if that wasn’t the case, the game stores wouldn’t do it).
As for demos, well… while I agree that reading a review or watching a video of a game is different compared to actually playing it, it doesn’t make a big enough difference to actually warrant a demo, at least in my humble opinion. In fact, I can only think of one or two games in the last few years that I regretted purchasing after feeling that it warranted a purchase based upon a review and/or gameplay footage. Then again, as I said, that’s simply my opinion, and everyone is different.