Topic: Why does everyone think just because the nintendo shop file size limit is 40MB.........

that larger games can't be made for the service......There ARE WAY larger games already out......The Neo Geo games are over 300MB but are easily able to be compressed down to the 40MB limit........& FAST Racing League is OVER 900MB according to interviews with the developement team......so why do so many people accept the whole 40MB excuse from what I've seen it's possible to compress games that are as large as 1GB down to the size limit.....which is like 3X the data stored on a PS1 disk.....so you'd think we'd get more quality games then we've been getting

With compression comes lower quality. I don't want to see a 1GB game compressed all the way down to 40MB or less.

It can be done & keep its quality so long as you program it with compression in mind

If only it was that easy...

program it with compression in mind? why not just make the game with crappy quality in the first place?

_{unless I'm not getting something D:}

well it can be done & though its far from ideal for anyone it's still better than not releasing the games.....& IMO 60 fps graphics for 2 player splitscreen is NOT poor quality which is what is stated in the FAST Racing League Interviews <3

I'd provide the link.....but my wii can't do that so here's one of the websites
www.thebitblock.com

Personally, I'm surprised no one else has used the solution used by Space Invaders Get Even: Put as much as you reasonably can into an approximately 40 MB "starter game" offered at a cheap price, and then they sell the rest of the game as DLC.

If you really looked it up it is not that simple, very large games CAN NOT be made. Fast Racing Leauge is a racing game and A shinen game, and as with all shinen games, low poly models with good visual effects to make it not ugly. There are few environments and models because well it is a racing game. "60 fps graphics for 2 player splitscreen" Any Decent developer could do this if the engine is right and its not something that can be "compressed" anyway. Also as soon as it reaches 3 players it drops to 30 FPS, and only surfaces that are visible are drawn instead of the whole track[or really background/map] And again, simple gameplay mechanics because its just racing. Some thing can not be compressed too much, like textures, and games like Sonic 4 and Tals of Monkey Island are pretty ugly and glitchy for Wiiware. Don't think that IDK, Advent Rising, could ever come out on Wiiware, without being in 15 episodes for the first (and unfortunately only) episode.

You're confusing Megabytes (MB) with Megabits (Mb). It takes 8 bits to make a byte.
A Neo Geo catridge size is 330 Megabits, not 330 Megabytes. This number is the catridge size, not the actual size of the game. Most Neo Geo games are around 100Mb.
As for Fast League Racing, the source code is 900 Megabits, not 900 Megabytes. Source code is not representative of the actual size of the game since it has yet to be compiled to be able to run on the hardware.

Nope. Neo Geo games (and most games from that era) were measured in megabits, which is a smaller unit. Nowadays, we use megabytes. There are 8 megabits in 1 megabyte. Therefore, 300 megabits = 37.5 megabytes, which is just under the 40 megabyte limit on WiiWare.

oh 0_0
well my bad.....XD

However I'm pretty sure the FAST Racing League interview stated 900Megabytes not Megabits......unless it was a typo?
sorry about the neo geo comment being incorrect O_o

Why spend hours upon hours of difficult work compressing a game enough to fit on a service where sales are usually tepid?

To silence numerous whiny fanboys

Because it is. There has been some quite good games made within that file limit but it can be hard for developers to make and especially port games within that file limit. The developers of fast racing league shinen are used to compressing and getting the most out of limited resources but many developers aren't and would rather just focus on making the game and not dealing with limits.

This is why many games can't get ported to wiiware. There is only so much you can compress graphics and audio before it becomes a mess. Many games made for hd consoles download services won't work well on wiiware even if they seem to be simple games.

I'd agree that the space invaders get even way was probably the best way of bypassing the file limits. A lot of wii dlc is just unlock codes or real small files but that game used the dlc to contain big files with the rest of the game. People didn't like that all together it made the game cost $20 though.

the funny thing is if they put that work into it those games that are to large to normally fit they would get much bigger profits.....considering most games on the service are mediocre & the fact about 1/3 of the games on the service are puzzle games is likely why sales are normally terrible
& I do realise there are great games on the service....it's just there aren't enough to keep most people entertained for long eg. someone loves RPGs & Platformers but not other genres that would be about 15-20 good games on the service to that particular person But lets say a person is a puzzle fan that would make about 40-50 good games for that person.....it just depends on a persons taste however there are very few games in certain genres because of the file size limit that normally sell better than most games on the service & if they actually put some effort to compress the data even if the game was only 300MB it would still be the size of most PS1 games & would have allowed most of the most anticipated wiiware games that were canned to have actually been released

I know what you guys are saying it's just that unless more developers find ways to get around that size limit.....the service wont improve

It won't. Not when you can easily make much better profit without putting a ton of work into compression. It is also fairly late into the consoles lifespan.

BTW Super Meat Boy could have been on Wiiware.

40MB is not a problem for what the service is, and for what designers and developers can do with it. It is obviously not in line of what people expect, but the Wiiware service provided me with amazing experiences, and just because a few games had trouble fitting in and were cancelled, it doesn't change that.

Square Enix had this to say:

"It actually wasn't that difficult. I think we designed the game to fit in the memory space. It wasn't so much that we had a game and had to squeeze it down. If anything, I think the size restriction helped us. I don't think we would've had this game design idea if we didn't have the memory restriction to begin with."
Once we had the restriction, we had... all our artists are veterans, so if you tell them the size, they'll hit it right on. And once we started making it, in the beginning, a lot of people didn't think we could fit this game in the given size, but we were actually quite a bit under. It uses a little bit of compression, and a little bit of techniques. You can fit a lot of game in a small size."

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/18607/Square_Enix_Talks_Wi...
Reading the bit trip interview, it seems the size was the reason that the first game actually came out nicer - because they had to work within the limit and it turned out better than they anticipated.

A unique service that gave birth to NyxQuest, Dive, Swords and Soldiers, Rage of the Gladiator, World of Goo, Lostwinds, and so on - really, I can't complain.