Hi,

Has anybody heard or seen details about how Nintendo intend to allow us to move games we have purchased from the Wii to the Wii U yet?

they haven't said but given that they allowed dsiware to transfer to the 3ds it's pretty likely they'll have a similar service on the wii u. i want to see if super metroid is going to be output in 1080p...

Romulux - and what would you exactly get by rendering Super Metroid in HD? The game is made for SNES, it won't get any prettier than it already is on the VC rendered through component cable. And Nintendo already said that Wii/WiiWare games (so presumably VC ones too) will not be upscaled on the WiiU.

i know resolution doesn't matter as much for 2D games but they'll still display better on an HDTV, plus it'd just be funny to see old 16 bit games output in that resolution. i think i remember sonic 2 being output in 1080 on my brother's ps3....

and i still don't trust reggie's answer, what he said was along the lines of "we can't upscale because that would require altering the games". that's not upscaling, that's uprendering he was talking about, sounds like he confused the terms. as far as i know the 360 and ps3 both upscale old games, every cheap dvd and blu ray player does it, i'd be surprised if the most powerful home console yet couldn't upscale the signal before outputting it.

Upscalling is overrated by a very, very big margin. I've done numerous experimets with image upscalling, both on consoles and my PC, with various source material, and the result never differed from outputting the resolution directly on the screen. Currently I have my Wii hooked up via component cable to a mainstream LCD TV with 1920x1080 panel, and I never really see any problems with the native resolutions being stretched by the TV to fill the screen. On the PC, when using DOSBox to play old stuff, I always use the normal3X sampler, which essentially just is a simple, nearest-neighbour filter and makes sure that image output by a game is never antialiased.

Besides and again - what do you get by upscalling image? You just up it's resolution using some form of interpolation algorythm. You won't restore missing color data from nothing - source has only so many pixels, and no matter which algorythm you apply, it will NEVER add detail to the final image. It's not CSI where you can enlarge and sharpen infinitely. The games will be equally pixelated, only with some blurring applied all over them. Sorry - no thanks.

As for upscaling DVD's - again, I see no difference betwean a DVD output by a quite old DVD player hooked via component (480p) and the same DVD played on PS3 (HDMI, 1080p) which supposedly uses some advanced, magical algorythms to upscale image. It's just a matter of fact that 90% of people used their players and consoles connected to a TV via composite cable, which gives inherently crappy image quality. When devices with HDMI started gaining popularity, everyone started using that to transfer audio and video and all of a sudden the "upscaling" myth emerged. It's not upscaling, it's placebo and a matter of better connection.

Bottom line - upgrade from Composite to Component, and even on Wii you'll see image quality improvement, even in VC games. And probably when WiiU will play Wii games, we'll also notice slight improvement, just because of better connection (although it won't be very pronounced - Component cables give very good image despite being analogue).

you must have a good tv then because i've compared it too and my picture blurs noticeably when 480p is upscaled. having an HD signal doesn't improve an SD picture that much but the point is that it's still better since the console can do a better job than your tv. it can also cut lag since your tv can be fed its native resolution without scaling anything. this is all kind of off topic though... we won't know until nintendo tells us.

I hope the transfer method is handled a lot better than the 3ds's method. In the case of the 3ds, you still had to have the dsi to transfer from. That would mean everyone would have to retain their Wii to transfer the downloads to the Wii U and give up the Wii's trade in value during the Wii U's launch.

I'd say they'd probably be using the DSi or 3DS to transfer that data.

Just a guess.

Nah, I'll just keep my Wii.

Ditto.

Yeah, we will have to see first. There IS a way for upscalling to actually help with quality, but it requires a lot processing power to analyze every single rendered frame and, in a way, re-render it to native screen resolution. This would sharpen things up, but I doubt if Nintendo would give us something like that - no other company ever did...

And my TV is a pretty much the simplest model I could find in the store when I've bought that over a year ago.

And I'm also keeping my Wii even after WiiU shows up - I prefer to play games on the original hardware (unless it's Gameboy without backlit screen) and besides - WiiU will not run Gamecube games, and I have quite a pile of them, so the Wii will be needed anyway.

Is this about save files or discs?

I hope save files.

@komicturtle92 Titles and save files will most likely have to be transfered via WiFi. Since certain games and save files can't be moved onto an SD card. (<:
(Not everyone owns a 3DS or a DSi)

It's about games bought on WiiWare and Virtual Console (not discs) and I think it should be possible, just as it is already with transfering stuff from DSi to 3DS. It's a one-way trip, however, and once it's done, the old system looses all licenses associated with bought games and can't play them anymore. So it's not possible to "spawn" multiple copies of the game.

Save files likely won't be transferable, just like WiiAboutU says. Then again - it's the same on all modern home consoles, sadly...

Kinda lucky the Wii U has a screen on it's controller.....else it'd be kinda awkward trying to connect the two systems (pretty sure most people won't have two tvs available for it! :L)

I plan on keeping my Wii unless they do something for GCN support, or remake the Wind Waker...or have Paper Mario 3DS be way better than TTYD. (which is unlikely, lol) They'll probably just delay the service and all that anyway. xD

This is something I have wondered about for years now. Will my on-line purchases be transferable to a new machine?
on-line purchases at the price Nintendo sells on-line games for should allow this. I do hope that Nintendo ramps up the online store. To have real information and review capability not the lame review questions they currently have "is this game casual or hardcore" when its neither it just plan bad!

Let it be through Club Nintendo. A firmware update could fix this. Maybe.