Topic: Wii user profiles

[Shecky]

So I got to thinking how one makes switching between different user profiles easy and practical.

Easy enough making folks create the profile in the system's OS on boot.  They could even have a few guest profiles that would have preferences set to a few common expected setups (maybe you could even tweak the guest profiles, or create more "guest" profiles).

In any case, how does one best incorporate this into a game, especially hot seat games.

For example take Super Smash Brothers Melee, whose solution involved using the cursor to select your profile.  Now a similar concept could be used for Brawl.  However, could they use a quicker way to recognize players?  Some time of recognition software utilizing the camera (if there is one), thumbprint reader (cheep enough tech?), or some other means.  Obviously games should have a way to select it manually, but such recognition software would speed up the process quite a bit.

[Nick DiMola]

I'm guessing any profile management will be done on a totally manual level. It seems to me that any solution to do it automatically will unnecessarily add cost to the system. I think Nintendo wants to bring us the future at the lowest price point, and anything that may compromise that won't work for them. If the tech is cheap enough, I don't see why Nintendo wouldn't do it, that would really show up Sony and Microsoft(Not like they haven't done that already anyways).

I think creating profiles in the Systems OS is one possibility, another is through games which will act as a front end to the System's OS, setting up a basic profile on the OS and adding configuration for whichever particular game is being used. Mangement of those profiles will also need to be done through the OS. There was nothing more annoying than sharing the XBOX with my 2 brothers and constantly having to make sure noone's data got erased. A simple profile system would have solved that problem with ease.  

[Zach]

People have talked about having the controller hold profiles.  It would be a good idea to have the controller be able to hold at least one profile, say I wanna go play a game at a friends house, I simply load the profile of my choice onto my controller, and head on over.  Then when I get back, any changes to my profile (ie number of wins/losses) are loaded back onto my Wii.

That makes it easy to have the convenience of having a profile on the controller, but then you dont have to pay for everyone to have their own controller since the profiles are interchangable with the ones stored on the Wii.

[AnyoneEB]

I agree with manual profile selection, similar to SSBM. Maybe each Wiimote would hold its last used profile and have that be its default.

If profile management is only games, the games would have to make it clear which options were general and which were game-specific. For example, rumble on/off would probably be a general option.