Topic: Problems with WiiWare, and how to solve them

*reads some of the Sonic 4, Episode 1 talk

Hmm. Those are opinions, not facts, and opinions certainly don't make a game bad. Also, it is appropriate to say Sonic 4 is one of the best efforts; it got way more dev time, money, and care than most WiiWare games because it's not a WiiWare exclusive.

I've already said my piece about WiiWare's problems. Sorry to keep the off-topic bits going.

_{that was unnecessary. -- TBD}

That's not appropriate at all, because dev time, money, and "care"--which you'll be explaining how to objectively measure since any opinion you might have about such is patently irrelevant--don't add up to make "the best" anything.

It's nice that you like and want to defend Sonic 4, I just think it could be done rather better. Preferably somewhere relevant to the subject.

Love or hate Sonic 4, its good to see an effort like this make it to the download services. It would have been risky for Sega release a 2D sonic at the retail level, but Wiiware is a good fit. The Wiiware audience is currently a niche market when compared to the retail market, but it has really opened the doors to small development studios, and thats great. Development cost are way down, there is no advertising, and your on a more even playing field. When your limited to 40MB, your not going to develop a huge cinematic game with really detailed graphics. Sonic 4 just barely fit, and it was fairly short.

Care, as in they took time to listen to fans and let that effect the game they made. They didn't objectively listen to players, or maybe you can explain how that's possible. And it does add up when we're talking about "the best effort". Effort is not indicative of fun. I sit and hold my tongue about the immature jabs and assumptions you made.

Again, terribly sorry that I've continued this off-topic discussion, everyone.

But Sonic 4 was multiplatform and the other versions were the same length and had larger file size didn't they? Or am I missing the point?

The other versions were HD, which will automatically make it at least twice the file size, and I am sure there were some compression techniques used to make it fit into the 40MB limit. The point is that with a limit like 40MB there is only so much a developer can do, no matter what resources he has, he can only do so much with 40MB. It keeps the big guys out for the most part. Even though most Wiiware games are really appeal to a niche market, its refreshing to see some new ideas in the gaming market. Its getting harder and harder for new IP's to make it at the retail level, and developers are risking it less and less.

Even though most problems with the service are already addressed in this thread, I'll like to add that the limited transferability of your downloaded games could also be a problem for it. (though this problem extends to the Shop channel in general & maybe even other download services.) One solution that can help is making it so that downloaded games on an SD card can be played on other Wiis.

Does anyone else hate having 100 good for nothing Wii points left over on the Wii Shop Channel? I do. I spend more time than I should trying to think of games I'd like to play that would also bring my balance down to zero. If they would let me put in $5 at a time instead of limiting me to $10, $20, and higher, I wouldn't have this problem.

Sorry to veer off topic slightly, but that's not strictly true is it? I thought one of the Wii's firmware updates incororated a workaround for that problem ages ago, so that you can play VC and WiiWare games stored on your SD card without having to copy them back onto the Wii itself first. I do it all the time. :/

Good shout. For me, this is one of the major problems with both WiiWare and DSiWare....having to buy Nintendo Points in blocks of 1000 at a time. Surely they should be able to offer us half price 500pts packages seeing as, you know, many of the games are actually only 500pts to buy. It must put a lot of people off if they're being forced to pay for 1000pts for a 500pt download and then having 500pts left over that they might not want to use for ages.

@ToxieDogg: Nope, you still can't play Wii games directly from SD. idk what you're doing, or if you're just mistaken, but i've got the most recent System Menu update and games still have to copy to internal memory in order for me to play them.

That's true. Wii does that automatically, unless there's not enough free space on the internal memory, but it still has to copy the game channel. That's why the "activating channel" wait exists.

It is an issue, but you don't have to worry about getting your balance to 0 until the Wii's life cycle is almost over. When there's something new that you want, just buy more points and use your leftover points in combination with the new ones.

Having 100 Wii points is not the most annoying. Guitar hero importing left me with a balance with 50 useless points. At least you can add up the 100 point to eventually do something with it over time but there is absolutely nothing that you can do with 50 points ever.

Yeah, that's what I meant....as .long as you have enough blocks free on your Wii system to hold a 'temporary' file of the game you want to play, you don't have to actually copy the game back onto the Wii system from your SD card. When you select another game from your SD card to play, it overwrites the temp file with one for the new game, made up of the same amount of blocks as the game takes up on the SD card.

I think we're talking about the exact same thing but just from slightly different perspectives. Either way, it's a much, much quicker way of launching games stored on the SD card than having to copy them back onto the Wii's channel system each time you want to play anything.

@ToxieDogg: We are apparently trying to talk about the same thing, but you're calling it something it's not. It's important to be aware of the difference and use the correct terms because Nintendo now does have a system -- the 3DS -- that will allow you to play games directly from SD (e.g. without copying anything to internal memory). we'd all love to run our WiiWare/VC games directly from SD, but that's not an available option for Wii owners (yet?).

if it's a hardware deal then it will probably never happen for the Wii. We'll have to wait for the 3DS's release before we can find out how it manages to play games directly from the SD card. It could be some extra dedicated internal memory that is fast and large enough to copy and run the game without slowdown.