Topic: The OFFICIAL Big N rumor thread *bring your own salt*

[BranDonk Kong]

The $10 increase is also due to Sony and Microsoft wanting more money from 3rd party sales. The whole "it costs more to make a game in HD" idea is bullshit that Sony and Microsoft (and developers) use to justify their greed.

[Chozo Ghost]

Well, whatever the reason is I hope Nintendo won't succumb to it in the next generation, because $50 games is expensive enough, imho. Plus Nintendo never drops the price of their games anymore, so whatever launch titles the Wii2 gets from Nintendo are likely to have the exact same MSRP near the end of its lifecycle. So its better to have a $49.99 MSRP that never drops than a $59.99 MSRP that never drops, right?

The Wii2 is definitely going to have HD, so that argument that "it costs more to make games in HD" might be something Nintendo would use to justify jacking up their prices to match the competitors. I just hope they don't though...

[NWR_insanolord]

$60 now is still less money than $50 ten years ago after you adjust for inflation.

[Shorty McNostril]

None of you would survive very well in Australia.  $120 for a new release PS3/360 game.  (if you look in the wrong place).  And given that the Aus dollar is very close to the American dollar.....

[Mop it up]

I've always thought it was interesting how the prices for Nintendo home systems have always stayed the same, or sometimes even went lower, yet the price of their handhelds keep rising. Most of their games have been $50 since the NES days, though there have been some cases where they were $60 (like the first couple of years of the Nintendo 64, for example). The systems themselves were $200 at launch until Wii. Meanwhile, the price of handhelds have gone up by at least $20 with each new one ($50 for Basic Set GB, $70 for GBC, $90 for GBA, $150 for DS, +$200-300 for 3DS), the games went up $5 from $30 to $35 from the GBA to DS, and are looking like they will be $40 or higher for 3DS. Why do the cost of handhelds keep rising but not home systems?

If Nintendo wants to keep their policy of never lowering the price, then they had better not exceed $50 with their next home system. If they want to raise to $60 then they should offer a Player's Choice lineup similar to the Greatest/Platinum Hits on Sony and Microsoft's system.

Even if they continue using their modified DVD format...

Standard DVDs. Only thing different is the filesystem.

And the "burst cutting area" mark. Both of those are enough of a difference to avoid paying licencing fees to the DVD forum, so that's enough to count as a modification.

[Chozo Ghost]

I read on Wikipedia that Wii Optical Media also differs from DVD in that it uses an "angular laser", whatever that means. Of course, its Wikipedia so that might have just been some crap someone wrote in that isn't true.

[Kytim89]

Check this out.
 
http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.48262

[BranDonk Kong]

You can look at the replies to the Wikipedia article (which doesn't include any sources) and see that it's bullshit. It's based on hearsay, and all DVDs use an "angular laser" or whatever he's trying to get at.
That BCA stuff doesn't mean anything either - the Wii does not play video DVDs, nor does the GameCube, that's how they get away without licensing, they even said this when the GameCube and Wii were announced, it was done to lower costs.

[UltimatePartyBear]

I don't know what page you're referring to, but that "angular laser" business may be a confused way of referring to constant angular velocity, or CAV.  Basically, angular velocity refers to the disc spin speed, whereas linear velocity refers to the speed at which data tracks pass under the read head.  Keeping the spin speed constant makes seeking faster, and puts less wear on the moving parts.  We know Nintendo values low load times and durable hardware, so it's at least suspected that Nintendo's optical discs are read at CAV.  I don't know if it's confirmed.

[Mop it up]

the Wii does not play video DVDs, nor does the GameCube, that's how they get away without licensing, they even said this when the GameCube and Wii were announced, it was done to lower costs.

I think they said that's why the Wii doesn't play DVD movies, but not that it's how they avoided licencing costs for their own media. The DVD format isn't limited to video:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dvd

It would seem that DVD Video is its own format with a separate licencing fee:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD-Video

Here's an article which seems to show a difference between DVD and GameCube discs:

http://debugmo.de/2008/11/anatomy-of-an-optical-medium-authentication/

[ThePerm]

from my memory gamecube was definitely CAV just to confirm this

[BranDonk Kong]

None of that has anything to do with the physical format of the disc. They are DVDs, which is why you can have a DVD-ROM with modified firmware that can read GameCube and Wii discs.

[Mop it up]

So if the DVD-ROM drive must be modified to read Wii discs, doesn't that mean the Wii discs are therefore modified DVDs since they can't be read normally?

[TheBlackCat]

The discs are normal, what is different is the data stored on the discs.

[Mop it up]

I see. I guess there aren't any concrete answers out there.

[BranDonk Kong]

Yes there are, I've given you a bunch of them, and so have several other people. Nintendo didn't just invent a new type of disc that was the exact same size as a DVD, held the same amount of data as a DVD. All they did was use a different file system and a different way of physically writing the discs. If these discs were not actual DVDs (DVD means Digital Video Disc/Digital Versatile Disc, FYI), then why would the GameCube and Wii be able to actually read DVD-ROM, DVD Video, and DVD+R/-R discs? The Wii actually *did* have DVD Video playback built into it, it was just tucked away and not used, hackers found out how to enable it natively so you can watch DVD movies on your Wii. The article you linked to on debugmo.de basically says the opposite of what you thought it said. Notice it's called "Anatomy of an Optical Medium Authentication," not "Anatomy of an Optical Medium.' It's about copy protection.

[Mop it up]

I'm not saying they're nothing like DVD, but if they use a different file system, a different way of writing, and different copy protection (which I know is what the article says), how is it not a modified DVD? It may be barely different, but it looks like these small modifications were enough to avoid licencing fees.

I know the Wii can read DVD movies, I used to have that program before the 4.3 update. Though apparently Wii systems manufactured after a certain date in 2008 no longer have that ability.

[BranDonk Kong]

But the disc itself, before anything has been written (pressed) to it - it's a DVD. This is my point. Xbox 360 uses FatX for a file system, and under normal circumstances you can't read the contents of an Xbox 360 disc on your PC, but no one says that it uses "modified DVDs."

[Mop it up]

Edit: Nevermind. After checking into this some more, I think I understand it. "DVD" is not a format, and there is no licencing fee to simply use DVD discs. So Nintendo took the DVD and created their own way to format it. Is that about right?

Thanks for your assistance in explaining the matter.

[Stratos]

You say 'Tomato', I say 'Tomato'.

[Mop it up]

It's the same thing when you type it.

[BranDonk Kong]

Essentially, yes.

And I think that was Stratos' point.

[Mop it up]

If that is the case, what Chozo Ghost said, "modified DVD format," would indeed be correct.

[ThePerm]

non Fat file allocation table...?

[Chozo Ghost]

If that is the case, what Chozo Ghost said, "modified DVD format," would indeed be correct.

Yes, thank you. I said a modified DVD format and then someone responded saying something to the effect of: "no they didn't! its the same DVD format, they just modified it".

Umm, yeah... that was kinda what I said. Geez. Apparently they missed the part where I said "modified".

non Fat file allocation table...?

DVD's use the UDF filesystem.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Disk_Format

Version 1.02 to be precise.

Apparently Blu-ray also uses UDF, but it uses version 2.50 or 2.60 of it.

I also looked on Wikipedia to see if I could find out what sort of filesystem the "Wii Optical Media" uses, but I couldn't find any info on that at all. For all I know it might also use some variant of UDF. Someone else claimed in a previous post that it uses an alternate filesystem, but they never specified what it was so who knows? I doubt Nintendo created their own filesystem from scratch, so odds are they either used an existing one as is, or took one and modified it for their purposes.