Eternity’s Child now $5 WiiWare title
Monday, February 4th, 2008 at 10:54am by Jack
The enigma wrapped in a riddle smothered in Mind Trap-esque brain teasers that is “the WiiWare” is something that’s held at least my attention for the past few months, and I imagine many Infendo readers and staff members are equally invested in what, exactly, the service will bring to gaming.
Another hint bubbled to the surface today from Cartoonist Luc Bernard, whose quirky ex-Xbox Live Arcade title is WiiWare bound at a pretty sweet price point:
Cartoonist Luc Bernard tells WiiDS.co.uk that his platformer Eternity’s Child is now a WiiWare title coming Q2 2008 for $5. The quirky (we mean that positively) title has an equally quirky history, starting out as an Xbox Live Arcade title before switching to the Wii because of the 150 MB size restriction. Curiously, an IGN podcast reportedly pinned a 40 MB size limit for the service, a figure which Nintendo has disputed
WiiWare is a pretty open book. News like this is great, but I’m imagining (and hoping) that it’s just the tip of a very large iceberg. An iceberg named potential that also includes remade NES and SNES titles with online, new content, or Bionic Commando graphical updates like we’re seeing with, well, Bionic Commando. 2-D platforming goodnes GET.
February 4th, 2008 at 11:50 am
This is great news. Particularly for the price point. The idea that a fresh original game on Wii-ware will be $5 is pretty exciting. I was worried that $15 would be more standard.
February 4th, 2008 at 12:18 pm
Sure it’s cool news. But the Wii storage issue is beginning to piss me off.
February 4th, 2008 at 12:23 pm
Wait… This game left XBox Live Arcade because it was going to be bigger than 150MB? So it’s going to take up my entire Wii internal memory? Stop jerking us around, Nintendo, and announce your hard drive already. It’s obviously coming.
February 4th, 2008 at 12:26 pm
If this game is over 150 MB and the Wii only has 512 MB, plus a good portion of that isn’t available for game downloads… then this game might take up half of the space the wii has for VC games… It is good to see cool original games on the VC. Yay. The frustration about storage space does take soem of the wind out of this games sail. Give us more memory Nintendo or make games playable directly from an 8 gig SD card. Figure something out Nintendo…
February 4th, 2008 at 12:27 pm
Well, I’m definitely picking up this title now with this price point. Not sure why you wouldn’t want to get this game when it’s priced that cheap. Great art style, too.
And yeah, we really need that HDD, Nintendo. Get on that!
February 4th, 2008 at 12:32 pm
Everyone stay calm. Keep a couple of things in mind. If this game was 150MB on the 360, its probably 50MB on the Wii due to lower resolution everything. That being said, we still naturally want a better storage solution than swapping shit back and forth onto the internal flash. Which brings us to point number 2. The issue stated as the reason for the change from 360 to Wii was the file cap on the 360. That would imply that there is not a file cap on Wii ware, or that whatever the cap is, the game comes in comfortably below it. That right there is enough info to support a better storage solution. If there is no file cap, or if a larger game like this is not hitting it, then its pretty high. Both of which equate to something in the works. My guess is its SD card support, perhaps USB drives as well. This is good news.
February 4th, 2008 at 1:26 pm
I’m inclined to agree with used cisco on this one. Why?
A) Cisco routers are pretty amazing. B)This all but confirms that either a flash drive firmware update will be accompanying WiiWare at launch or at the very least there will be another USB port update a la the keyboard support we saw last year.
My chips are in the flash memory update. SD memory cards (with the appropriate update that allows for direct access to the SD cards) are cheap and getting cheaper, and I don’t particularly welcome a clunky proprietary Nintendo HD next to my console. It would totally ruin the room’s Feng Shui.
How’s this for a wild C, though: Nintendo provides gamers access to their purchased WiiWare games via “the cloud,” thereby eliminating the need for storage devices of any kind on the part of the consumer.
February 4th, 2008 at 1:33 pm
Better SD card support makes more sense than a usb HDD from what Nintendo has been trying to do with the Wii.
They have repeatedly said they wanted their console to be small and unobtrusive so it can easily be found in a living room. An addition of an HDD goes against that philosophy.
That said, ANYTHING to fix my storage woes is quite welcome, even if Nintendo puts their foot in their mouth.
February 4th, 2008 at 2:20 pm
Anon, I agree that at this point I’ll have to be content with any storage solution. But I’d much rather have a HDD than have to have SD cards. What Microsoft is doing right now with Live really makes the most sense. Tie downloads and game saves/achievements to profiles, which can be moved from system to system via Live. If I want to bring a game over that my friend doesn’t have then I can just recover my gamertag to his console and we can play the saved game from it.
The way Nintendo has it tied to the system means that I either have ‘haul’ my Wii over to play. That, or I need to buy an SD card, transfer the saves over to it, plug it in at my friend’s house, and then transfer the saves over to his console. As far as I know you can’t just play the saves right from the card, which is just stupid. It’s actually a step-back from memory cards.
February 4th, 2008 at 4:18 pm
Paying 5 bucks for these types of games just gets me all warm and fuzzy inside. But hopefully wiiware will be used for DLC as well. i also think that Aquaria would make the perfect title for this format
February 4th, 2008 at 5:57 pm
@Jack,
Yeah, that NEXUS 7000 is pretty robust. Some of the features are overblown though. I doubt I’ll be seeing any in my warehouse for at least 3-5 years. I wonder how fast you could download every title on the VC over that bad boy.
February 5th, 2008 at 3:55 pm
Good god, not this whole HDD bull crap again; it is NOT NEEDED. Stop being lazy and delete that clutter in your Wii Menu of unorganized VC games.
February 6th, 2008 at 11:02 am
More space is “not needed” like online play is “not needed”. Even Nintendo listens to the market now and then, or the Wii wouldn’t exist at all.
February 6th, 2008 at 8:53 pm
Would it be possible to make a Wii Firmware update that makes the Wii external hard drive-compatible? Then we could just get a terabyte of space wired up to our Wiis and never have to think of space issues again!
February 7th, 2008 at 7:59 pm
@Atlantis1982
Would you throw away your DVDs if you ran out of shelf space?