New WiiWare info: of file sizes and limitations

james24uk

WiiChat Member
Nov 13, 2007
6
2
WiiWare infor see below or follow thw link:

http://wii.qj.net/New-WiiWare-info-of-file-sizes-and-limitations/pg/49/aid/107650


We've got some interesting news today, courtesy of an IGN's "Wii-k in Review" podcast. They've given out some prime bits of information about Nintendo's WiiWare initiative, focusing on the limitations developers will have to contend with if they want to get their products on the service, such as file sizes, budgets, and the number of releases a developer can make each month.

According to the podcast, developers will have to contend with a rather small file size for their games: 40 MB. This is 10 MB less than the original specifications for Xbox Live Arcade games, which is 50 MB.

Developers are also contending with relatively small budgets. According to the podcast, budgets for Wiiware titles fall between US$ 50,000 and US$150,000, with most budgets falling in the US$ 100,000 average. In contrast, high profile game titles have development costs ranging in the millions of dollars.

Lastly, developers are also constrained on the actual number of games they can offer up for WiiWare. Devs are allowed to release only one game a month for WiiWare, presumably to keep the quality of individual games high.

On the bright side, developing companies do get to keep most of the profits, with a 65:35 ratio in favor of the developers. One thing we can say about the initiative is that it certainly gives independent developers the chance to show off their talent and continue making games. We certainly hope the first batch of indie games for WiiWare goes well, as it could usher in a new age of gaming for the Wii.
 
Bah. Nintendo need to up the bar. Wii Hard-Drive is the solution. I’m not going to go into a rant here but if developers want to make big and successful games the Wii should be able to allow it
 
Defintally going to create a problem, My thoughts, A 4 GB sd card is almost 8 times larger then the Wiis flash memory. If you could use a SD card and Run things off of it. Thats would be great. Like you can copy a game over now, but if you delete it on the Wiis memory, you can't play it even though its on a SD card thats in the Wii. So thats my thought. Nintendo should make a firm ware update to run apps of a Sd card and release a 4 gb card and promote its use.
 
^You can swap things between the two, depending on what and when you want to play. Its a hassle, but I don't mind.

I'm interested to see the first releases for WiiWare because I'm not too sure I fully understand it. Are most of the games going to be garbage?
 
well they should make huge 512MB games that have to be put on an SD memory card! Then we can actually use the memory card for something besides trading games between the systems memory and the SD memory card and the Photo channel


I hope they let you use a SD memory card! I dont want to fork out money for a hard drive but i rather use my 2GB SD memory card!

Well with a file size of 40MB how is the Pokemon Ranch Channel and the Final Fantasy Game suppose to get under this 40MB
 
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Some of the games maybe decent.
Who knows, I will still be dipping into the Wiiware titles, no matter how bad they could be.

Thanks for the info.
 
well i bet they will conpress the files if they are going to be 40 MB!
 
Its not a must but it would be nice. If you have a 2GB SD card then you can fit quite a few Wiiware games on there.
 
james24uk said:
WiiWare infor see below or follow thw link:

http://wii.qj.net/New-WiiWare-info-of-file-sizes-and-limitations/pg/49/aid/107650


We've got some interesting news today, courtesy of an IGN's "Wii-k in Review" podcast. They've given out some prime bits of information about Nintendo's WiiWare initiative, focusing on the limitations developers will have to contend with if they want to get their products on the service, such as file sizes, budgets, and the number of releases a developer can make each month.

According to the podcast, developers will have to contend with a rather small file size for their games: 40 MB. This is 10 MB less than the original specifications for Xbox Live Arcade games, which is 50 MB.

Developers are also contending with relatively small budgets. According to the podcast, budgets for Wiiware titles fall between US$ 50,000 and US$150,000, with most budgets falling in the US$ 100,000 average. In contrast, high profile game titles have development costs ranging in the millions of dollars.

Lastly, developers are also constrained on the actual number of games they can offer up for WiiWare. Devs are allowed to release only one game a month for WiiWare, presumably to keep the quality of individual games high.

On the bright side, developing companies do get to keep most of the profits, with a 65:35 ratio in favor of the developers. One thing we can say about the initiative is that it certainly gives independent developers the chance to show off their talent and continue making games. We certainly hope the first batch of indie games for WiiWare goes well, as it could usher in a new age of gaming for the Wii.
hmmmmmm 40MB? Darn it I've already downloaded all the other channels and some VC games. I hope nintendo makes an external hard drive or something that will add more storage and channel spaces or I'm screwed. I guess I'll have to rely on sd cards.
 

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