Topic: Wii Successor and Glassess Free 3D: How Will It Work?

[Kytim89]

Would it be better for the wii 2 to emulate the gamecube on a virtual console, or to keep backwards compatibility similar to what the wii already has right now?

[DAaaMan64]

Would it be better for the wii 2 to emulate the gamecube on a virtual console, or to keep backwards compatibility similar to what the wii already has right now?

Always backward compatibility. But I think the Wii 2 will use mostly new hardware this time, so it would not be feasible anymore unless they want to include hardware they don't need. But I can almost be Nintendo isn't worried about the GameCube anymore anyway.

Emulation isn't an easy option.

[NWR_insanolord]

They won't be worried about GameCube compatibility, but I'd be very surprised if they didn't want Wii backward compatibility, and, since the two systems are so similar, if they're going to include that, it would be pretty easy to include GameCube as well.

[TJ Spyke]

Would it be better for the wii 2 to emulate the gamecube on a virtual console, or to keep backwards compatibility similar to what the wii already has right now?

Always backward compatibility. But I think the Wii 2 will use mostly new hardware this time, so it would not be feasible anymore unless they want to include hardware they don't need. But I can almost be Nintendo isn't worried about the GameCube anymore anyway.

Emulation isn't an easy option.

PS2 BC on PS3 was done with a single chip, same with GBC BC on GBA and GBA on DS, it wouldn't be that difficult to make the Wii 2 BC with Wii, it would be pretty stupid not to make it be able to play Wii games.

As for emulating GameCube games, I could see them doing both emulation and BC. The Xbox 360 lets you download Xbox games in addition to playing the physical discs, i addition to Xbox 360 games being downloadable.

[Guitar Smasher]

While I would appreciate GC BC, that would entail including GC controller ports, memory card ports, the chip, and the special disc drive.  I would understand if Nintendo deemed the benefit not being worth the cost, especially considering GC games and accessories are no longer sold at retail.

Actually this is making me think whether it would be possible to release a "Wii slim", where all these GC components have been removed.

[TJ Spyke]

A special disc drive is not needed to play the GC discs. Memory cards could be used for Wii games too if Nintendo wanted to, and the GameCube controller was well used for Wii games (including Virtual Console games) and I think Nintendo realizes this since several of their Wii games supported it. I don't think they cost too much, but we don't know for sure.

The Wii is about as small as it can be. At most they might be able to make the height like 0.2 inches less, the only GC parts that add any size to the system are the controller/memory card ports and those are not that big.

[Guitar Smasher]

Does the Wii not have a special disc drive which allows it to accept both GC-sized and DVD-sized discs?  I remember the engineers bragging about it when it was first released.

[NWR_insanolord]

Does the Wii not have a special disc drive which allows it to accept both GC-sized and DVD-sized discs?  I remember the engineers bragging about it when it was first released.

Yes, it does, but I don't know if it's any more expensive than a standard drive, which is the one reason Nintendo would have to remove compatibility.

[Kytim89]

The wii is going to be to the wii 2 what the Gamecube was to the wii(are you confused?). Basically the wii 2 will play wii games, but will emulate Gamecube.
 
What I looked to happen is that Nintendo might go ahead and pot Gamecube on the wii 2 virtual console as a cost cutting measure. I also think that Nintendo will do away with the controller and memory ports of the Gamecube to make the machine smaller.
 
This brings up an interesting question. How will we be able to play the games? There are two answers to this question: first, they might create something like a Gamecube classic controller that plugs into the port of the wiimote 2. Or, second, they could require that everyone use the wavebird controller and the wii 2 will have a built wavebird eye that you set to a certain channel in the wii 2 accessories menu.
 
The one thing that needs drastic improvment is the virtual console service. I mean the interface is poorly designed and too slow for its purpose. If Nintendo renovates this service for their next console, there needs to be something like a shopping cart for purchasing games. There must also be a list of games that you have downloaded and you can just return to that list to download certain games instead of having to resort to sorting through all the pages to get a particular game downloaded.
 
I have a strong feeling that Dreamcast is coming to the virtual console service when the wii 2 is released. Still not sure about Saturn, but that would be a very nice addition. Select 32X and SEGA CD games would be a plus as well.
 
 

[NWR_insanolord]

Assuming the Wii 2 will be compatible with Wii games, emulating the GameCube would be more expensive than including full hardware compatibility. The Wii hardware is literally a more powerful version of the GameCube hardware, meaning it would take very little work to get the hardware for Wii compatibility to also work for GameCube games. Emulating the GameCube would be a lot more work; they'd have to make the emulator and do extensive testing and tweaking, and even then it wouldn't be fully compatible with all games.

[Kytim89]

Assuming the Wii 2 will be compatible with Wii games, emulating the GameCube would be more expensive than including full hardware compatibility. The Wii hardware is literally a more powerful version of the GameCube hardware, meaning it would take very little work to get the hardware for Wii compatibility to also work for GameCube games. Emulating the GameCube would be a lot more work; they'd have to make the emulator and do extensive testing and tweaking, and even then it wouldn't be fully compatible with all games.

How powerful is the wii 2 going to be? I am speculating that it will be atleast as powerful as the 360, but maybe not as powerful as the PS3. If the wii 2 does com out soon, I now that it will make both of those systems appear dated by comparisson.
 
The system will probably retail for atleast $300, but there is a catch. If they release it soon it can comepete evenly with the PS360 because those consoles are in the $300 range. Unless you included the total cost of bot the move and kinect with the price of those consoles, their price goes back into the $300-500 range once again.
 
3DS: $199.99
Wii 2: $299.99

[DAaaMan64]

PS2 Backward compatibility was dropped because of cost after like what, a year?

Also, if Nintendo wants that small form factor, I don't think its likely they'll want to throw all that GC stuff back in there. Lastly, I think the Wii 2 hardware again will be very different from Wii. So say what you want, but I have doubts about even Wii backward compatibility.

[TJ Spyke]

Sony HAD to cut price, they were losing hundreds of dollars on every single PS3 sold. Cutting out the PS2 chip saved less than $5, but every dollar help Sony move to making a profit. I don't think Nintendo would be stupid enough to not make the Wii 2 backwards compatible, it would save them almost no money and it would just piss off the 75 million+ Wii owners and discourage casual gamers from getting the Wii 2. I have zero doubt that the Wii 2 will play Wii games, the only real question is whether or not it will play GameCube games.

[DAaaMan64]

Sony HAD to cut price, they were losing hundreds of dollars on every single PS3 sold. Cutting out the PS2 chip saved less than $5, but every dollar help Sony move to making a profit. I don't think Nintendo would be stupid enough to not make the Wii 2 backwards compatible, it would save them almost no money and it would just piss off the 75 million+ Wii owners and discourage casual gamers from getting the Wii 2. I have zero doubt that the Wii 2 will play Wii games, the only real question is whether or not it will play GameCube games.

What? You would have no insight to the cost or the change in size of including Wii backwards compatibility.

The friggin' PS3 is massive, you would never know in its case. I realize it was only a single, likely inexpensive chip (research shows $30), but the Wii will likely be a different story.

[Morari]

Does the Wii not have a special disc drive which allows it to accept both GC-sized and DVD-sized discs?  I remember the engineers bragging about it when it was first released.

It's just a few extra springs inside. I've had my Wii apart enough times to recognize the frivolous armatures that catch the disc.

[TJ Spyke]

Sony HAD to cut price, they were losing hundreds of dollars on every single PS3 sold. Cutting out the PS2 chip saved less than $5, but every dollar help Sony move to making a profit. I don't think Nintendo would be stupid enough to not make the Wii 2 backwards compatible, it would save them almost no money and it would just piss off the 75 million+ Wii owners and discourage casual gamers from getting the Wii 2. I have zero doubt that the Wii 2 will play Wii games, the only real question is whether or not it will play GameCube games.

What? You would have no insight to the cost or the change in size of including Wii backwards compatibility.

The friggin' PS3 is massive, you would never know in its case. I realize it was only a single, likely inexpensive chip (research shows $30), but the Wii will likely be a different story.

Less than $30, about $27 from what I checked out. It is even less for other systems that have offered BC. Why do you think Wii BC would be different? There is nothing to indicate it would be cost prohibitive. In fact, I would bet anything that it would cost almost nothing for Nintendo and I think it would be the biggest gaming shock of the year if the Wii 2 isn't BC with Wii.

[DAaaMan64]

Sony HAD to cut price, they were losing hundreds of dollars on every single PS3 sold. Cutting out the PS2 chip saved less than $5, but every dollar help Sony move to making a profit. I don't think Nintendo would be stupid enough to not make the Wii 2 backwards compatible, it would save them almost no money and it would just piss off the 75 million+ Wii owners and discourage casual gamers from getting the Wii 2. I have zero doubt that the Wii 2 will play Wii games, the only real question is whether or not it will play GameCube games.

What? You would have no insight to the cost or the change in size of including Wii backwards compatibility.

The friggin' PS3 is massive, you would never know in its case. I realize it was only a single, likely inexpensive chip (research shows $30), but the Wii will likely be a different story.

Less than $30, about $27 from what I checked out. It is even less for other systems that have offered BC. Why do you think Wii BC would be different? There is nothing to indicate it would be cost prohibitive. In fact, I would bet anything that it would cost almost nothing for Nintendo and I think it would be the biggest gaming shock of the year if the Wii 2 isn't BC with Wii.

Because we're going to have all new GPU architecture this time around (No TEV unit, shaders this time). I would also guess we won't be using a PowerPC processor and hopefully something multi core, but thats the only one I would still call a guess. So your backwards compatibility would have to take in account those two things, as well as size. And of course all the ports for gamecube crap.  GameCube support just sounds beyond unlikely.

Also, I got the $30 from 3 words after you got the $27 from the same page. Give me a break.

[King of Twitch]

How powerful is the wii 2 going to be? I am speculating that it will be atleast as powerful as the 360, but maybe not as powerful as the PS3. If the wii 2 does com out soon, I now that it will make both of those systems appear dated by comparisson.

Let me bring you up to speed:






















































































































































We know nothing.

You are now up to speed.

[Kytim89]

I was under the impression that Sony was going to create their own version of the virtual console that included PS one, Dreamcast and eventually Playstation 2. They seem to be dragging their feet in bringing back PS2 BC. Although I imagine the PS2 is just as hard to emulate as the Gamecube. Microsoft just recently said something about how the original xbox will not be emulated on the 360.
 
In the long run it is cheaper to just emulate a console than make electrical components that actually play the games.

[TJ Spyke]

Microsoft just recently said something about how the original xbox will not be emulated on the 360.

I think you are not remembering it correctly. Hundreds of Xbox games are emulated on the Xbox 360 (full list: http://www.xbox.com/en-US/games/backwardcompatibilitygameslist.htm). Due to Microsoft switching graphic chip providers, the Xbox 360 does is not backwards compatible through hardware and requires you to use software emulation to play the games. Microsoft stopped adding more games in November 2007 though, which means some games can not be played on a Xbox 360 (like one of my favorite last gen games TimeSplitters 2). I think you are recalling a exec saying they would not be doing any more emulation.

The PS2 is not that hard to emulate from what i've heard, Sony just doesn't want to do it for various reasons (like when Jack Tretton said they took the Emotion Engine chip out of the PS3 because they wanted to get people to buy PS3 software rather than PS2 software).

[NWR_insanolord]

They'd also much rather sell you the PS3 God of War I and II compilation disc, or the upcoming Sly Cooper collection, than let you buy cheaper, used copies of the original PS2 games.

[Kytim89]

Microsoft just recently said something about how the original xbox will not be emulated on the 360.

I think you are not remembering it correctly. Hundreds of Xbox games are emulated on the Xbox 360 (full list: http://www.xbox.com/en-US/games/backwardcompatibilitygameslist.htm). Due to Microsoft switching graphic chip providers, the Xbox 360 does is not backwards compatible through hardware and requires you to use software emulation to play the games. Microsoft stopped adding more games in November 2007 though, which means some games can not be played on a Xbox 360 (like one of my favorite last gen games TimeSplitters 2). I think you are recalling a exec saying they would not be doing any more emulation.

The PS2 is not that hard to emulate from what i've heard, Sony just doesn't want to do it for various reasons (like when Jack Tretton said they took the Emotion Engine chip out of the PS3 because they wanted to get people to buy PS3 software rather than PS2 software).

The reason why I brought this up is because of the importance of having a virtual console service. This question is something that I think the wii 2 will have to answer. Why is it important? My only answer is that it allows you, the consumer, to bypass some kind of gray market.
 
For example, there is a buisness that sells games near my home and I went there looking for an expansion pack. The thing ended up costing $15. There is another example, a guy wanted $30 for a used copy of Majora's Mask. I could get that game on virtual console for $10 and in most cases I do not have to worry about the expansion pack.
 
Any other reasons?

[ThePerm]

for backwards compatability to gamecube, i would leave only one port for the gcn memory cards, allow them to be copied onto sd cards if need be, and only be compatible with wavebirds, no need for receiver though. Virtual receiver.

[Kytim89]

for backwards compatability to gamecube, i would leave only one port for the gcn memory cards, allow them to be copied onto sd cards if need be, and only be compatible with wavebirds, no need for receiver though. Virtual receiver.

If the wii 2 does have a gamecube enabled virtual console, the games will saved in the same way current titles are saved. This would eliminate the need of memory cards.
 
As for the idea of using the wavebird, I kind of have that same idea. Nintendo could just have four built-in recievers that are manually set inside the wii. For example, my wavebird controller is set to channel one, I go into the wii 2 accessories portion and set reciever port one for channel one. You do the same for the other three controllers. How much would this virtual reciever cost?

[ThePerm]

the need to preserve memory card data would still be there, but the idea would be to move it. Sort of a legacy idea. You can keep your old files, but by the time the system after the next system is out they should just drop the port all together, then again by then they should also drop optical media altogether.