Sotorage Space - Wii-ware-Pay to play

[wezeles]

Edit= I know I spelled Storage wrong in the title.. ha ha

I know we all heard about pay to play, but I didn't notice anything on storage space and thats what I was intrested in here.

Stumbled across this looking for more info on pay to play "there isn't any by the way and there is no way to tell what the pay to play feature will entail ,except it seems to be a premium service not a replacement for free service based on all the interviews I have personally read" Its just getting interpreted as a new pay for online service. Persoanlly I think it will be for extra stuff like DLC and online chat service like they talk about here, maybe why its on a game to game basis and not going to be on every wifi game Nintendo offers from now on.
If it is a pay per online for each game I dont see how they could pull it off unless its on some huge hit titles. Paying for online service has never done as well as an overall online servie.

Anyway for this I will only include the Wii-ware/storage info and not the entire article. The link is provided at the end.

On to WiiWare. Aoyama said that the Virtual Console was, in effect, a dry run for the WiiWare program. The idea behind WiiWare is essentially that Nintendo President Satoru Iwata is irritated with the current model of commercial software, with set price ranges and set content expectations; online distribution is a less stifling system, both as regards scale and pricing schemes. Thus, WiiWare is an attempt to emphasize ideas over traditional commercial concerns.

Aoyama insists that, what with the huge install base of the Wii, the broad usage with any given family, and the high Internet connection rate, WiiWare is a splendid opportunity for profit. As a sort of a follow-up to the Virtual Console, WiiWare will continue to use the familiar Wii Points for purchase.

All WiiWare games will have manuals, available to view online before ordering. They will also have full access to the Wii's network features, from the message board to weather channel.

The first WiiWare game is a nifty little platformer by Frontier Developments, called LostWinds. It has a mechanism where the player draws wind on the screen, rather like Kirby Canvas Curse for the DS.

Further upcoming uses for Wii points will be add-on game content and special services, with the cost of maintenance offset by the modest user charges.

Incidentally, internal storage concerns will soon be addressed by a new compression scheme, whereby software will be compressed when not being used, then blown up just before execution. Aoyama expects this to eliminate any further space issues.

Link to entire article http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=17584

Also Good call DT

I agree, but I'm more inclined to think it will be an OS upgrade to allow an SD card to be used as "direct storage" (like the internal memory) vs. a hard drive.

There are two FF games due:

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: the Crystal Bearers
System: Wii
Genre: Action-RPG
Main character: young superhero
Price: $50 at retail

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: the Young King and the Promised Land
System: WiiWare download
Genre: "country-builder" (sim-style)
Main character: boy king
Price: 1500 Wii Points ($15)

Since the WiiWare is a "Sims" style game with likely a limited environment, I'm figuring they can pack it into solid state storage with some clever compression.

Ever seen Resident Evil on the N64? They even packed in the exact same FMV as the (disk based) PS version (albiet sampled way down).

It just seems like a HD peripheral is a costly (please don't quote MO prices, the target demo will buy at retail) and complex add-on for the Wii market - and to require this for $15 game downloads? Seems like a misstep in the business model.

But hey, I'm up for anything, I've got a couple of 250GB's externals just sort of hanging out with nothing valuable on them

~DT

I always thought we wouldn't need a harddrive aswell and at most they would access the SD slot, or use just a USB flash drive if extra memory is needed. We will have to see how this new compression works.

 

[Dorkfish]

Kewlio

 

[CantGetAWii]

Well thats an interesting way of going about it.
I didn't see it going down like that.

 

[Extra Life Mushroom]

I wonder what kind of compression software they're going to use? and also what's the file size of these "zipped" games going to be? considering they are tailored for the wii's interface and not a ROM from prior gaming generations like all the VC titles.

It seems to me that ninty has missed a few steps in the natural progression of gaming technology (online voice chat,gimmick-free online gaming (friend codes), and now hard drive storage) and it has chosen to either bypass these things entirely or work around them, using a cheaper more economic route to attain similar results.

I just fee like they're taking the easy way out in a lot of these situations. They COULD afford the technology and hardware for voice support but choose not to citing safety concerns. They could also market mass storage devices via flash drives (which by today's standards are getting cheaper and cheaper) which would be cheaper than a full fledged external hard drive. But there again they choose not to.
The least they could have done was given us a firmware update allowing the console to support other companies storage devices. That at least would yield and increase in the sales of wii ware or VC titles.

 

[wezeles]

I just fee like they're taking the easy way out in a lot of these situations. They COULD afford the technology and hardware for voice support but choose not to citing safety concerns. They could also market mass storage devices via flash drives (which by today's standards are getting cheaper and cheaper) which would be cheaper than a full fledged external hard drive. But there again they choose not to.
The least they could have done was given us a firmware update allowing the console to support other companies storage devices. That at least would yield and increase in the sales of wii ware or VC titles.

It's not that they can't afford the newer tech, it's that there new audience "casual gamers" are not going to spend the extra cash for what they see as "add ons" so they are in no rush to support technology that if they are lucky 10% of the owners will buy.

But they probably will support some kind of storage in the future because even with compressed space they are limited on how much they have 512mb of compressed space still isn't going to let you download every VC/wii-ware game or download every song for Rock-Band. I'm sure they have something in the works for the crazy downloader that wants nothing more than to stock pile the wii full of everything they can.

 

[Dav_4550]

yeah, give me some wii ware...
Star Soldier R, that is what I am pumped about, shmups FTW

I am very concerned about the storage as a VC guy, I have 15 or 16 games for it right now, including Lords of Thunder and that took over 200 blocks I believe...but it was totally worth it

 

[sagema]

I asked my friend about the 4gb extra space hidden on the Wii. According to him, since he's more technical than me, it's probably going to be used for Wiiware. The SNES has a port for a CD player (Look up how the PS1 was made). The N64 has an expansion pack, which was used. The GC has an attachment for a modem and GBA, which was also used.

 

[Douten]

There's 4gb hidden in the Wii? oO
If so then that could work : )
My hopes of MMORPG to Wii has already crumbled so 4gb sounds fair, or let us save it to SD someway without having to move it back and forth.

 

[Dav_4550]

I thought that the 4gb was already used by system services and for developers to use for loading content from discs to reduce loading times.
At least that's what I read in speculation on another thread and it seems reasonable. It doesn't seem like Nintendo would want to just have 4Gb sitting around doing nothing when they could be making people happy, but hey, sometimes they do some weird stuff that from a consumer standpoint might not always make sense.

 

[Pantalaimn]

Where in the tech specs for wii does it mention 4GB of space? PandaKun??

 

[Budo]

Ok, NOW it's hilarious... :lol:

They're doing almost everything to avoid the simplest, most logical, and cost effective (time is money) method for storage - an external hard-drive. Storing manuals online? Compression on the games? OK I guess, but we're still going to need space when the game is expanded, or will they compress/decompress on the fly? How slow is that going to be? Will we have to endure 5-minute "compression" times in order to play a simple Wiiware game?

I really don't get it.

 

[Zarogan]

Ok, NOW it's hilarious... :lol:

They're doing almost everything to avoid the simplest, most logical, and cost effective (time is money) method for storage - an external hard-drive. Storing manuals online? Compression on the games? OK I guess, but we're still going to need space when the game is expanded, or will they compress/decompress on the fly? How slow is that going to be? Will we have to endure 5-minute "compression" times in order to play a simple Wiiware game?

I really don't get it.

Yeah, I can't find the logic behind that... You can compress all you want, but eventually you'll have to decompress it, and when that happens we will need more space lol