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Nintendo Wii Games

What Developers Want From the Wii's Successor 229

Posted by Soulskill from the long-walks-on-the-beach dept.
donniebaseball23 writes "Wii 2 rumors are flying in advance of Nintendo's official reveal at E3 in June, but what would game developers like to see in a Wii successor? 'Without a doubt, my first request would be for an improved digital marketplace more along the lines of XBLA and PSN,' said one developer. 'We'd love more processing power, which is essential, and a better GPU as well,' said another." A related article asks whether a high-powered new console really fits with Nintendo's strategy: "Nintendo is undoubtedly building its new system around a chipset it can buy for cheap and develop for with ease, and it'll be the system's peripheral capabilities (literally peripheral, if rumors of its fancy controller pan out) that catch people's attention — that the company will bank on using as the hook for consumers."
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What Developers Want From the Wii's Successor More

What Developers Want From the Wii's Successor

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  • Anticipated Hardware Specs (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Apple Acolyte ( 517892 ) on Wednesday May 04, 2011 @02:41AM (#36021302)

    I hope I'm wrong, but I hear serious Nintendo fans vastly overestimating the hardware capabilities of the successor to the Wii. They're hoping for hardware that will rival next gen offerings from Sony and Microsoft despite the fact that Nintendo has shown it doesn't want to compete in that high-end console space anymore. I hope I'm wrong though. With all Nintendo's success in the last generation perhaps they can come out with a Wii successor that has beefy hardware.

    • They also seem to forget that Nintendo insists on making a profit on the hardware -- even at launch.

      Really, I'm surprised I haven't heard even one person so far bring that up.

      • There's nothing wrong with a lesser console: History shows the less-capable console is typically the winner (best seller):
        - Atari VCS/2600
        - Nintendo ES
        - Super Nintendo
        - PS1
        - PS2
        - Wii

        While the most advanced consoles land in second or third place:
        - Intellivision
        - Sega MS
        - Genesis/megadrive
        - N64
        - Xbox
        - X360

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Cinder6 ( 894572 )

          The Super Nintendo actually bucks the trend; it was superior to the Genesis both in graphics and especially sound. However, if you want to include the Neo Geo, then it wasn't the most powerful, but that's not fair. It was intended to just be a rental system, but it did well enough that SNK essentially said, "Screw it, let's sell the thing too; some people will buy it." It wasn't ever intended to outsell anyone.

    • Nintendo got away with it on the Gamecube, and then again on the WIi. They got away with it because Xbox was still very new, and the PC technology wasn't vastly outpacing console gaming. Now we are in another era, and it's time for the consoles to move the bar. If console hardware design isn't vastly superior to PC design, the console gaming will eventually become a thing of the past as Xbox will probably lead the way of combining the features of the PC into the features of a console.

      The solution would be a

      • Re:Nintendo doesn't have a choice, they must compe (Score:5, Insightful)

        by ProppaT ( 557551 ) on Wednesday May 04, 2011 @07:25AM (#36022754) Homepage

        They didn't get away with anything on the GameCube. It was a highly competent system that blew the PS2 out of the water and nearly matched the X-Box with processing power. It was a fantastic system that came out at a weird time and just never gained traction. Had Reggie been at the helm when the GameCube launched, we might have seen a different outcome.

        Why should console game hardware be vastly superior to PC design? Your TV only does 1080p at best, with the majority of HDTV's out there being 720p. Granted, newer consoles need to allow for higher resolution textures, but when we have videocards pushing 3 monitors at a time these days, we certainly don't need anything that powerful. Not only that, I don't want to have to pay for anything that expensive.

        The Wii 2 has to be able to do things your PC can't? The Wii already does that. I don't see your PC using anything like the Wiimote for input. That's the difference. Also, I'm thinking you're going to have a hard time playing a FPS in your lay-z-boy with a PC.

        And a modular design would be absurd for a console. You'd end up fragmenting the console user base with too many configurations. Then you'd end up with the inefficiency of PC games, where software vendors have to take a massive array of different configurations into account. The beauty of console games are that you can highly optimize them for a specific hardware set, thereby letting you get away with less powerful hardware. If you look at Nintendo's past, it's riddled with add-ons, ram upgrades, etc. that never caught on. That's because console games want to take the console out of the box and never have to touch it. Once you make the investment, that's it for the lifetime of the console.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Belial6 ( 794905 )
          Although the Wiimote technically can be used on the PC, you are pretty much right.

          1080p is the highest resolution it makes sense to support and a cheap video card will outperform the current generation of consoles. For the most part all the Wii 2 needs is a mid range video card (by PC standards), HDMI out at 1080p, more memory and a faster CPU. All of that is pretty much a given though.

          I would expect that a vision periphrial will be in the works similar to what Sony and MS have, but that doesn't eve

      • Finally they need to get the internet right. Built in WiFi would be helpful.

        You do know that the current Wii already has built in WiFi right?

      • Thank god you are not in charge of designing consoles!!

        Neither I, nor anyone at work, nor any of my friends, nor even any of my relatives want "photorealism" in a game console. We want games! As in fun, not realistic, not simulations, but escapes from reality.

        Why do you think the Wii was so successful? There's definitely no "photorealism" in the Wii games, there's no hard-core simulations on the Wii, there's no tera-pixel-pumping 3D awesomeness. No, there's just reality-escaping fun.

        Consoles are not PCs

    • Re: (Score:2, Offtopic)

      by Jartan ( 219704 )

      The PS3 and Xbox 360 are not even close to high end anymore. A budget Nintendo console will likely be more powerful than hardware that old.

      • Re:Anticipated Hardware Specs (Score:4, Insightful)

        by metalmaster ( 1005171 ) on Wednesday May 04, 2011 @06:10AM (#36022228)
        compared to?

        .....and no, PC is not the answer. I cannot walk into a big box and pick up a budgetbox($399 orso) that has outpaced the PS3. The offerings I find will have a mid-range dual core processor or maybe a cheap quad core thats worse off. It'll have integrated graphics that would struggle to render modern games, and I'd be lucky if it had HDMI/DVI. Simply put, thats shit. The hardware is still tops for the console market

        Whats more, the games designed for consoles work(for the most part) for consoles. Devs dont have to worry about supporting a shitload of hardware configurations; thers one.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by LWATCDR ( 28044 )

      It doesn't have to be high end to be good. The 360 and PS3 are now what five years old? The price of everything has gone down since they came out. A new WII will probably match the 360 for CPU power and have a better GPU than the PS3 and 360. The new WII will probably also have more ram the the 360 or PS3 which developers will love. High end isn't that high anymore. All Nintendo has to do is have a machine that does 1080p well. Take a look at some of the AMD/ATI cards and see just how cheap you can get a go

    • I hope I'm wrong, but I hear serious Nintendo fans vastly overestimating the hardware capabilities of the successor to the Wii. They're hoping for hardware that will rival next gen offerings from Sony and Microsoft despite the fact that Nintendo has shown it doesn't want to compete in that high-end console space anymore. I hope I'm wrong though. With all Nintendo's success in the last generation perhaps they can come out with a Wii successor that has beefy hardware.

      All they have to do is catch up to the PS3 and XBox 360. 1080p at 60 frames per second will be fine. If their competitors go up to 120 frames per second, is anybody going to care? The game systems have reached the limit of current HD television.

      They'd probably do better to make the controllers better, and that's an area in which the XBox and PS3 have only recently caught up to what Nintendo did when the Wii was released.

  • High Def (Score:3, Informative)

    by deek ( 22697 ) on Wednesday May 04, 2011 @02:45AM (#36021312) Homepage Journal

    As long as the new console is HD capable. It's a serious embarrassment to have a modern gaming console still outputting SD video quality. Surely the majority of Wii owners out there now have HD screens.

    • Re:High Def (Score:5, Insightful)

      by serviscope_minor ( 664417 ) on Wednesday May 04, 2011 @02:48AM (#36021328) Journal

      It's a serious embarrassment to have a modern gaming console still outputting SD video quality.

      If by "embarrassment", you mean "top selling console that never had to be sold at a loss" and "massive profit", then yes they should be embarrassed. I would like to be embarrassed like that too.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by cbope ( 130292 )

        I would add that upscaled Wii 480p SD using a high quality upscaler looks fine on a 1080p HDTV. I have a highend Sony ES receiver with a Faroudja video processor which does very high quality upscaling to 1080p. I have 2 SD sources, a Wii and a PS2 (occasionally used for DVD's), and I'm really happy with the image quality. From my sofa which is about 15 feet from my 40" HDTV, upscaled DVD approaches blu-ray visual quality, though it cannot match the dynamic range and color depth of blu-ray. And yes, I have a

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Nursie ( 632944 )

        "If by "embarrassment", you mean "top selling console that never had to be sold at a loss" and "massive profit", then yes they should be embarrassed. I would like to be embarrassed like that too."

        Top install base.

        I believe that the ps3 (god knows why!) is the current top seller in the console world.

        I wouldn't like to speculate on whether that's due, at least in part, to lack of HD performance. But I would like a Wii that could output proper resolutions with a bit of AA, which is why I'm considering a Dolphi

        • I believe that the ps3 (god knows why!) is the current top seller in the console world.

          Compare the sales figures for the ps3 with the iPhone.

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by Nursie ( 632944 )

            Different market.

            Compare iPhone sales to DS/3DS. If you insist it's a console it's most definitely a portable.

    • And we look forward to seeing the dodecahedron faced zero detail Miis dancing around the screen in full HD. Because that little bit of extra resolution has really impacted the sales of the console which has nearly outsold all of its competitors combined.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Nursie ( 632944 )

        "console which has nearly outsold all of its competitors combined."

        Define nearly?

        Is 14million units difference out of a total of 100 million combined Xbox and PS3 sales "Nearly"?

        It's not the level of detail that bothers me, it's the pixelly edges.

    • While a lot of people have HDTVs there remains a massive installed base of SDTVs. When the Wii came out HDTVs had even less market penetration than they do today. From Nintendo's perspective it made little sense to spend more money on a HD capable chipset when a majority of the market wouldn't benefit from the extra power. Both the PS3 and Xbox have suffered from incorporating bleeding edge technology. The Xbox had a phenomenal failure rate for years and the PS3 was ridiculously expensive and still sold at

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Nursie ( 632944 )

        "Nintendo has chosen to make a profit on their console rather than try to get it to push 1080p video when most customers will never see it."

        For the Wii?

        Sure, but the world has now moved on. You can push HD video from an ARM device these days. Hell, you can do that off the shelf with Tegra 2, off the shelf. There's no need to go into the realms of loss on hardware or experimental hardware combinations in order to push 1080p and semi-decent 3D gfx performance these days. Let alone if you think 720p is "good e

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by ProppaT ( 557551 )

          Take into consideration, the PS3 and Xbox 360 don't do true 1080p. They upconvert 720p graphics to 1080p. The next generation of consoles will be the jump to true 1080p (which will be lost on over half of HDTV owners, as 720p sets are still today big sellers). If Nintendo made the jump to 1080p, that would be unheard of. I'm expecting the jump to be 720p w/ 1080p upscalling and extra GPU power to render 3D graphics for the controller displays.

    • True, even the Dreamcast from the 1999 had HD.

  • Dear, Nintendo (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 04, 2011 @02:56AM (#36021362)
    We look forward to your upcoming Wii successor as well as it's innovative new online services. Sincerely, PSN Hackers

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dstyle5 ( 702493 )
      With the Wii you don't store any of your info online, purchases are tied to your console hardware and not a person. It would be nice to be able to play your purchases on any Wii, but I doubt Nintendo will go down that road, especially given the recent PSN gong show.

  • Small digital market place not a bad thing... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by AaronMK ( 1375465 ) on Wednesday May 04, 2011 @03:35AM (#36021548)

    One of the things I have liked about the Wii is getting the games, and feeling like I have purchased a complete game. No "online passes", no resale penalties, not constantly feeling like I have to purchase additional DLC for the game to be complete. The simplicity of the Wii is what got me back into gaming, and the aforementioned aspects of the "Digital Market Place" being so integrated into the gaming experience, or at least how publishers exploit it, is what's driving me away.

    To me, a true HD Wii with a modern GPU, decent raw processing power, and higher capacity media for games would be perfect.

    • No "online passes", no resale penalties, not constantly feeling like I have to purchase additional DLC for the game to be complete.

      And no talking to other players unless you have met them offline and exchanged friend codes.

  • A controller pan? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Hognoxious ( 631665 ) on Wednesday May 04, 2011 @04:00AM (#36021652) Homepage Journal

    A controller pan? Is there going to be Kitchen Hero game?

  • It's pretty worrisome that Nintendo is the first company to announce a next-gen console. Sega can tell you that being the first in the pool doesn't work so well. The other console manufacturers get a good look at your hand and can make something even better. And considering that Nintendo's competitors haven't even announced their own consoles, it looks like they'll have plenty of time to create consoles that are technically superior to whatever the Big N is coming up with.

    But what Nintendo really needs t

    • No, its not.

      They are basically announcing a current generation console.
      I doubt it will contain hardware significantly better than the Xbox360 or the PS3.

    • It's pretty worrisome that Nintendo is the first company to announce a next-gen console. Sega can tell you that being the first in the pool doesn't work so well.

      Sega was murdered by Sony. Sony published fraudulent specifications which they ABSOLUTELY KNEW were fraudulent as proven by subsequent statements. In fact their claim for the number of triangles the PS2 would render was actually inflated by double, and the number they gave was for unshaded, untextured tris to begin with. Sega could not afford to take Sony to task for this because of their relative size and influence.

      But what Nintendo really needs to do is to make sure that they have a better line to third party developers. They can't afford miss out on another A+ cross-platform title like GTA or a proper version of Call of Duty just because their hardware isn't up to muster.

      Do you really think they would license GTA?

      • It wasn't "marketing" or "hype" that killed the Dreamcast. Sega was murdered by Sega (with help from the DC fanboys that insisted the DC library be too heavy with fanboy games that no one else wanted to play) The PS2 has it all over spec-wise on the DC. I'll say it again:

        the PS2 could outperform the Dreamcast any day of the week and twice on Sundays. It's CPU is faster, 294MHz vs 200MHz, it's internal busses are faster, it's main RAM is faster, and it has more of it 32MB vs 16MB in the DC. Go on, read this:

        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_2#Technical_specifications [wikipedia.org] [wikipedia.org]

        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreamcast#Hardware [wikipedia.org] [wikipedia.org]

        The PS2 has over 4x the Gigaflop performance of the Dreamcast

        The PS2 is also capable of doing 1080i and 720p, the DC simply can't do that. The DC cannot play Saturn games, can it, but the PS2 can play PSone games.

        And lets not forget that DVD's hold more data than DC GD-ROMS can. 4.7GB single layer vs 1.2GB. Dual-layer PS2 games double that.

        The PS2 supports standard USB keyboards and mice with some games, the DC does not. Neither can the DC support a hard drive, which makes running a full Linux distro on a DC problematic.

        The PS2 is also a DVD player, all for the same price as the DC...so tell me again how the PS2 is inferior?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mog007 ( 677810 )

      Nintendo is allowed to have a flop or two at this point. The rebounding they made with the Wii has given them enough money to throw away at new consoles, they could probably release two bombs back to back and just be back to pre-Wii days. Sega tried to be first to the game with the Dreamcast because of the shitty position they were left in with the Saturn. If Sega had amassed success with the Saturn, they probably would have been safe to release the Dreamcast as early as they did.

    • being the first in the pool doesn't work so well. The other console manufacturers get a good look at your hand and can make something even better.

      Except that it won't bring them any interesting information. We can already say that nintendo will bring something that, although better than a Wii and slightly better than current HD consoles, won't bring any new crazy performance. Instead, they'll focus on finding new way to attract even more non-hardcore and casual gamers (think a console where 100% of the games are based on concepts similar to Kinect, Wiimote, Wii balance board, etc). They'll produce something that will attract even your grand-ma to gam

  • API (Score:2)

    by Stanz ( 548834 )
    An open, public Developer API and less health warning screens.

  • Improved digital marketplace (Score:3)

    by Xian97 ( 714198 ) on Wednesday May 04, 2011 @06:04AM (#36022188)
    An improved digital marketplace might be something the developers want, but as long as your purchases are tied to a single machine and lost when that machine has a hardware failure, I am not going to buy from there. That is the reason I haven't bought anything from their current marketplace.
  • Beyond the rumored specs, there's really only one thing devs really want: more RAM. Don't fucking skimp out on it -- shove loads of it in there. Even if they have to tier it into faster and slower RAM, do it (we'll learn to stream/ping pong/double buffer). Just don't give us shit like 512MB anymore (not in this day and age anyway). RAM is probably the cheapest, easiest, and fastest way to get thanks from devs, which translates to better games in every single way. Give us a serving of at least 1024 MB for ma

    • I'd be surprised if it has more than 512MB of RAM. Consoles have always skimped on RAM and I don't see why this new one will be different.

  • I'm a pretty hard-core gamer, but I found the Wii's hardware to be fine for the kind of games that Nintendo is famous for. It would be nice to have HD, etc, but hardly necessary.

    However, the interfaces for choosing widgets, settings, and buying things are HORRIBLE. Especially the store. On every platform they have right now. It's far too slow to browse, finding a specific thing is a nightmare, and you can't download in the background.

    And finding out what's new and cool each week? UGH.

    I don't hear many

    • The Wii is a toy, not a computer. It doesn't do background downloading because it doesn't have the cojones to do more than one thing at a time. Wii+1 will almost certainly do this and more. It will almost certainly still have a crappy interface but it will probably be faster :)

    • Agreed. The thing that disappoints me most about the Wii is the crappy store. It's as useless as the built-in browser.

      Add a progress bar for downloads, change the entire layout so that navigating from one page to the next isn't so time-consuming, use an interface that resembles any other standard interface (even a bad one would be better than the current one), show "new" items easier, include search, include demo games, etc.

      Nintendo could be making money hand-over-fist via the store if they could get it r
  • Games like "Wii Ski & Snowboard" are way better with the balance board than a Wii-mote, but the current Wii only allows one balance board to connect at a time. This makes such games effectively single-player, which isn't what people buy Wiis for. Unless the Wii 2 abandons the balance board concept altogether for a camera approach like the Kinect, I'd like to be able to use at least two BBs simultaneously.

    But I suppose I'm not a "real" gamer anyway; the only other game console I've owned besides my

  • Here is how it would work:
    1.The CPU in the Wii would contain special write-once fuses like on the XBOX 360 (IBM designed the CPU for both consoles and I am sure they could add the fuses to the next gen Wii CPU). During manufacturing, these fuses would be programmed with one of 3 high-strength RSA keys (RSA being picked because its harder to make SONY-style key generation mistakes with it) depending on which region the console was intended for. (that or the key could be designed directly into the silicon mas

  • If I can buy Wii 2 and play the games I already own they will have at least one sale.

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