Virtual Console Wii Games

abelard

eurogamer wrote:

On the latter point, next spring Virtual Console will start to play host to "Compact Software", Wii games delivered online at lower prices than their boxed counterparts - something Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has hinted at in the past.

What do y'all think? I think it'll be a really good idea as long as;
a) we actually get it here (and since it was on eurogamer i assume we will
b) we don't somehow get ripped off in Ireland (yes that sounds like sh1t but NOTHING would surprise me any more)
c) they release on the same date as the boxed versions

Star Lord

Don't think they mean full size games, think they mean more simplistic games, think x-box live arcade...

abelard

Hrmm yeah good point I guess I just read it as being complete Wii games

BlitzKrieg

if it was complete Wii games, the question would be...Where? I thought the Wii didnt ship with anything beyond a 600 meg flash card or something?

limey_tank

BlitzKrieg wrote:

if it was complete Wii games, the question would be...Where? I thought the Wii didnt ship with anything beyond a 600 meg flash card or something?

Now correct me if I'm wrong, but the Wii has 512MB of flashRAM on board.

That's plenty of room for many games. Paper Mario for the N64 is 40MB, and Zelda-Ocarina of time is 32MB. You could happily hold about 10 N64 games in there. I know the N64 is not a Wii, but it just shows you what can be done. Also, large downloads would make complex games undesirable.

It'd be great if you could plug in a USB hard drive and it'd work...

BlitzKrieg

I wasnt talking about N64 games or what not, the topic was that *Wii* games are going to be released over the virtual console and I want to know what they intend to do with the limited (512 mb as you pointed out) space they have.

Will the Wii games to heavily cut to both fit the size and keep interest in purchasing the retail version. (in a essence demos)

Or do they have a way of fitting entire games (like Twilight Princess) onto such sizes, and how.

and if they can fit Wii games on such a size memory, whats the point with the DVDs? why such a large format for games that clearly dont need it.

Goodshape

Yea, I very much doubt they'll be releasing 'proper' full Wii games for download. What I got from the word "compact" is that these will be smaller games.

That said, there is a standard SD card slot on the Wii so there's room for expansion.

And, afaik, they haven't said what the two USB ports can or will be used for (aside from a wired-network adapter), but I'm seriously hoping they'll let you plug a hard drive in there at some point. The Wii firmware is upgradeable, so even if not at launch I hope that's a feature they introduce.

abelard

Goodshape wrote:

Yea, I very much doubt they'll be releasing 'proper' full Wii games for download. What I got from the word "compact" is that these will be smaller games.

That said, there is a standard SD card slot on the Wii so there's room for expansion.

And, afaik, they haven't said what the two USB ports can or will be used for (aside from a wired-network adapter), but I'm seriously hoping they'll let you plug a hard drive in there at some point. The Wii firmware is upgradeable, so even if not at launch I hope that's a feature they introduce.

I originally read "compact" as just meaning that there's no actual physical disk involved. But I didn't consider the storge limitations of the Wii so in retrospect I'd imagine it'll be demos or the like, though we can always hope

Pablo-El-Vagabu

I'd imagine the games will be 50Megs or less.

There was talk from nintendo of allowing USB hard drives to be used with the usb slots. They did say it wouldnt happpen at release.

So if you might be able to use unbranded drives or we might have to wait for a nintendo brand HD witha fireware update or something.

Since they use linux under tyhe hood I'm hoping for unbranded.

Also I wonder how hackable this will be. With the SD slot I can see exploits appearing. It is a niffty little box, once the price drops happen it might make a nice little linux workstation.

Lots to get excited about...

Pablo

Retr0gamer

I'd say Nintendo will use the already successful system they used with the iQue console in China. If you run out of space you can delete a game but can download it again later for free.

sprinkles

Seems fair enough.

It looks like the wii could be the homebrewers heaven

thebman

Pablo-El-Vagabu wrote:

I'd imagine the games will be 50Megs or less.

There was talk from nintendo of allowing USB hard drives to be used with the usb slots. They did say it wouldnt happpen at release.

So if you might be able to use unbranded drives or we might have to wait for a nintendo brand HD witha fireware update or something.

Since they use linux under tyhe hood I'm hoping for unbranded.

Also I wonder how hackable this will be. With the SD slot I can see exploits appearing. It is a niffty little box, once the price drops happen it might make a nice little linux workstation.

Lots to get excited about...

Pablo

The Wii doesn't use Linux AFAIK that is just the PS3.

Goodshape

brim4brim wrote:

The Wii doesn't use Linux AFAIK that is just the PS3.

There have been rumours recently that it uses some form of the Linux kernel, although I don't think anything is known for sure.

I'll see if I can find a link.

//edit
the link I found had an update attached saying that this rumour was originally started by a blogger as a joke. So it probably doesn't run Linux after all.