Topic: Penny Arcade Adventures Can't Come to WiiWare

[Nick DiMola]

Release it on disc for $30.

Maybe when all of the episodes are released they will put together a compilation disc for all of the systems.

[LuigiHann]

I do want to know this.  Since this is episodic content why not just split it up a little and lower the price?

Episodes still have beginnings and endings. You can't just chop it up. Although it feels like they did that with LostWinds...

[EasyCure]

I do want to know this.  Since this is episodic content why not just split it up a little and lower the price?

Episodes still have beginnings and endings. You can't just chop it up. Although it feels like they did that with LostWinds...

Hence the already announced sequel??

[Ian Sane]

Let's hope the storage solution Iwata and the other guy were talking about is more than just talk

With Nintendo I always assume it's all talk until I see otherwise.  The storage issue has two problems that will prohibit possible solutions:

1. It's a Nintendo f*ck up and Nintendo is pretty damn stubborn about admiting mistakes.  Fixing the issue admits that their original design was stupid and short-sighted.  Uh oh.  Can't have that.

2. While a hard drive is a likely solution it can't be done because it's an idea someone else thought of first.  Microsoft came up with that idea and to use it would be admitting the competition has good ideas.  I can't think of any time Nintendo took a good idea from the competition without doing it in some wacky way to make it distinctly Nintendo.  That's why we have friend codes.  That's why Nintendo has never distributed a demo disc in a logical fashion.  If we get a hard drive it will have some sort of stupid Nintendo fashioned flaw that just pisses us off.  Hell part of this whole storage issue is that Nintendo couldn't even do SD cards in a normal fashion.  They had to do it differently.

Regardless of what Nintendo does any solution they come up with for this issue will not be the least bit satisfying.  That just isn't their style.

[Kairon]

Iwata's acknowledged awareness of the storage issue problem, so it's definitely on Nintendo's radar. The only question is if and when they deliver a solution.

I personally envision a sort of SD channel that would virtually access your SD card, decompress the data into memory, then recompress it back onto the SD card when you're done, thereby using the Wii's flash memory as memory, and the SD as permanent secondary storage? ... I dunno, I'm just shooting in the breeze here!

[NWR_insanolord]

Hell part of this whole storage issue is that Nintendo couldn't even do SD cards in a normal fashion.  They had to do it differently.

The way Nintendo handled the SD slot on the Wii is annoying and I hate it and I wish you could access things directly from it, but it's done for a simple and somewhat logical reason: piracy. It's not Nintendo trying the be wacky; while Nintendo does sometimes go a little overboard about it, piracy is a real issue for them.

1. It's a Nintendo f*ck up and Nintendo is pretty damn stubborn about admitting mistakes.  Fixing the issue admits that their original design was stupid and short-sighted.  Uh oh.  Can't have that.

As Kairon pointed out, Satoru Iwata, not just somebody who works there but the President of Nintendo, has already admitted that the storage situation is a problem, at least for some people, so I don't know how fixing it would make it any worse.

[Pale]

I don't buy the piracy argument at all for the SD suckiness.  If the Wii can handle people trying to copy VC games they didn't buy off the SD card, then the Wii can handle checking the legitimacy of a VC game right before someone tries to play it, or before it even puts it on the screen.

[Morari]

Anti-piracy measures always just end up as annoyances for paying customers.

[NWR_insanolord]

The encryption process, the reason it takes so long to copy something to the SD card, is the reason you can't play something directly off the SD card and the reason you can't copy someone else's game onto your Wii. Nintendo would have to change the way things work in this regard (a firmware update, and a major one, also probably requiring everyone to download new, updated copies of all their VC games and in the process make me lose my Balloon Fight high score) to change that. I'd love to see it happen, but it would be a major undertaking and I think it's much more likely that we'll see a hard drive or a bigger external flash drive.

Anti-piracy measures always just end up as annoyances for paying customers.

This is an annoyance, but unlike most anti-piracy measures this one seems to be effective, I haven't heard of anyone successfully pirating VC games.

[Kairon]

And piracy always ends up as an annoyance to a company's bottom line.

The encryption process, the reason it takes so long to copy something to the SD card, is the reason you can't play something directly off the SD card and the reason you can't copy someone else's game onto your Wii. Nintendo would have to change the way things work in this regard (a firmware update, and a major one, also probably requiring everyone to download new, updated copies of all their VC games and in the process make me lose my Balloon Fight high score) to change that. I'd love to see it happen, but it would be a major undertaking and I think it's much more likely that we'll see a hard drive or a bigger external flash drive.

Couldn't the Wii just set aside 400 blocks permanently for an SD channel that would be used as a temporary space to load VC or WiiWare games into? Then when you exit, the SD channel would free up that space again...?

This is an annoyance, but unlike most anti-piracy measures this one seems to be effective, I haven't heard of anyone successfully pirating VC games.

Really? I heard they'd already pretty much cracked it completely?

[NWR_insanolord]

Couldn't the Wii just set aside 400 blocks permanently for an SD channel that would be used as a temporary space to load VC or WiiWare games into? Then when you exit, the SD channel would free up that space again...?

Like I said, they'd have to set it up so that the games on the SD card aren't encrypted or can be used while encrypted to be able to use them directly from the SD card, which means a more sophisticated encryption system, which would most likely involve the big update I talked about.

What I'd like to see is a stopgap measure for until we get a hard drive. I'd like to be able to copy all my game saves to an SD card (it would have to include Brawl and all the other ones that don't currently let you do that or it wouldn't be worth it) and use them directly from there. Piracy wouldn't be an issue for that. The space that would free up on my Wii would be enough for me to be able to download LostWinds.