Topic: Should The Wii Have Online Friend Notification

Do you guys think that Nintendo should have a major update so that the home menu could show if your wii friends are online, what game they are playing, and you could send them messages. basically like the ps3 or xbox. also the button could be on the left side or something like that

Sure

Of course! It would be a fantastic addition.

nope

As long as it doesn't happen during a game. There is nothing more annoying than being hard and heavy into a game and then all of a sudden "Such and such is now online" comes up and ends up getting you killed by blocking your view.

Wouldnt' friend notification require a dual processor? I was under the impression that a PS3 can do it because it can do multiple things at once.

Well if it could maybe you can toggle the option on and off?

That's a good question. The PS3 and 360 can do it, but I didn't think that was why.

I'm almost certain that the PS3's multitasking capabilities are due to its dual processor - the ability to download in background, update trophies to facebook in live time without quitting the game, and friend notifications were all due to the PS3 being able to dedicate one processor to the game, and the other to other features.

I could be wrong though, I'm not very techie, and for all I know the Xbox 360 manages to do those things while being single processor (or is it dual as well?)

Either way, the Wii doesn't have the grunt to multitask. Unfortunate, because friend notifications are useful if you use the console for socialising, but hopefully something we'll see added to Wii 2.

According to a certain techie nerd friend of mine I bothered with the question the Xbox 360 and PS3 both have multi-core processors which (like you mentioned) is what allows for all of those background activities. Doesn't look too good for the Wii to get those features, then

Does it really need it at this point?

Dunno about the Xbox, but if anyone is getting killed on a PS3 game because of a notification that happens in a tiny out-of-the-way corner of the top of the screen, then it's either a terrible game, or you're trying to get yourself killed to "proove" how "annoying" that feature is.

To be fair, most of the time I'm on my 360 anymore I'm playing Geometry Wars so when anything is blocked out on screen you're as good as dead.

It would be nice, but it's impossible on the current Wii because the operating system completely shuts down while you're playing a game.
A dual processor isn't required for multitasking, PCs have always been able to multitask. You just need to allocate memory and processor time for each task, but since the Wii is pretty light on hardware, Nintendo chose to shut down the operating system during games so the game has full access to the hardware. The little menu when you press the home button is included on every game disc for this reason.

Yep, what Olorin says: the Wii has no OS like PS360 or even the PC on your desk. Instead it has a static framework called an IOS (don't recall what that means, but in the Wii's case is isn't "Input Output System") which is frozen in time for compatibilty purposes. The advantage is that system updates are very unlikely to break older games because Nintendo simply releases a new IOS and keeps the old one; the disadvantage is that older games don't get updated feature sets like support for SDHC cards (this is why older versions of Rock Band cannot write to anything bigger than a 2GB SD card) or Wii Speak and fixing hacks enabled by older versions is very difficult because they have to patch multiple versions of IOS and ensure this doesn't break hundreds of games in the process.

Certainly Nintendo could enhance the Mii channel or message function to let you know that your friends' Wiis were online recently, but I doubt you'd have any way of knowing if they were currently available to receive messages (remember messages sent between Wiis aren't necessarily delivered immediately like a text). The best you could do is to get Wii Speak, get your friends to get Wii Speak and then get in the habit of launching the Wii Speak channel when you want to hook up with people. I suppose Nintendo could also roll out some kind of chat program that uses text input, but again, I don't think we're going to get a solution that doesn't involve running some kind of application due to how the Wii works.

@WaltzElf You're right, the PS3 can multitask so well thanks to its 8 processors. But showing "friend now online" notifications is not taxing on any of the processors today, particularly when you consider the original poster was saying they should appear in the Wii menu alone. The menu definitely doesn't use the processor to its limit, and single-core CPUs can multitask perfectly fine. Windows 95-XP did it perfectly before multi-core CPUs became popular on the consumer market.

However I'm not sure if friend notifications would be possible during play, since it seems many Wii games push the processor near its limit. It could easily be done if the notifications were built in to the games themselves however, but then they would appear on a game-by-game basis rather than in a unified way like Xbox Live.

I'd prefer if it was only on the home menu and the utility channels like Everybody Votes, Internet Channel, etc., but not in games. I'd be all for it if they did that.

Geometry Wars FTW

anyway i have read all of your posts, and i would have to say i agree with holy mackerel. Also Sean Aaron cleared up alot. But yeah, what i think is that the wii should have a system menu update where there could be a little face next to the message board, sort of like where the SD card menu is except on the other side. When you click it, it would show a list of friends that are on the wii menu currently or something like that. you know, there is no real way to do it, because the OS shuts down when you launch any game or channel, so everyone would have to be on the menu. that would have no point.

but as Iz2010 said

DO WE EVEN NEED IT AT THIS POINT!?

I do find calling my friends on the phone when i want to play with them a bit annoying. the ps3 spoiled me

It would be nice if there was an "online hub room channel" where you could go online if you wanted to see if any friends are around and see what they are playing. If you wanted to you could message them. You could set to receive message alerts in game or not. The only thing that might really be taxing is the message alerts in game. You'd just need Wiiconnect 24 to update your profile when you selected a channel to make that your status so your actual presence in the online channel wouldn't be too difficult to implement, I'd imagine.

You guys should make a Nintendo Life channel and get everyone to come here to hook up.

Hmmm, I suppose that could work. I do have games delay boot-up due to what I presume is the Wii checking for messages prior to launching a game, so I suppose it could broadcast something to a Nintendo server indicating what the last channel launched was and what time. You could do that with a combination update of Wii Connect 24 and the Address book so you could track friend activity.

I think the Wii Speak route is a bit easier myself and I have successfully set up a game that way, though it is annoying that you havea limited number of friends that can be "Speak enabled" at any given time (presumably to prevent them spamming you with voice messages?).