Nintendo Wii News | Game Informer Developer Survey

Nothing surprising there.

A bit surprising because it is difficult to develop for Wii? Why? Because of the controller or the internal hardware? I would assume it's the controller that makes the ...the... sheap meaty. (Can you say it that way?)

The question only asks how hard it would be to port an existing title to the Wii, no mention of actually how hard the Wii is to develop for.

Nintendo should really allow ports to make the whole thing complete. I'm sure a GC pad/regular pad would do wonders.

I totally agree with the 2nd question that porting games unto the Wii Console would be a difficult affair due to the complexity and turbo powered nature of the PS

Microsoft XBOX 360 - 37%
WHAT!? O,o I would have thought Wii would be the highest... I can't see why the 360 would be so much higher than the PS3...

OLU1701

It is not difficult to port a 360 game to the Wii. Remeber graphics are scalable and all a developer has to do is lower the resolution from 720p to 480p. Also Doom 3, FarCry, and Halflife 2 required a 2Ghz processor for the PC and a GPU with 128 MB of Ram. All of these games have been ported to the Xbox, which does not have those system requirements.

Ports can be done for the Wii using the Wii controller. The Wii controller functions just like the Keyboard and mouse setup of the PC. The only problem that could occur is that developers want the Wii controller to fuction exactly like the dual analog setup.

The interview is typical Norh American stuff. Here we value graphics more than innovation and Gameplay. However this will change after the launch of the Wii.

( Edited on 19.07.2006 19:18 by patjuan32 )

The Wii controller has actually made it a little harder to develop for, but it's not discouraging, it's a much appreciated challenge. I read in an article about Madden that while the simple idea of making a throwing motion to pass is an easy concept, the complex math and varying ways in which people can perform that motion make it more difficult to implement. It's not impossible, but there is a learning curve for the developer.

well to be honest i doubt those developers are any good, how can you be most excited about the most boring console

Maybe becuase they won't have to work from 9am to 9pm working out how to program something with which they have no comparable experience?
Or because it has an exhisting installed base that doesn't mainly consist of 3rd-party-shunning fanboys who'll only buy things published by Nintendo?

Like JB said, if developers want to make ports, they CAN just use the Gamecube controller .


That's irrelevent. All developer support is important in deciding how successful a console is!

Are you excited for the Wii?

Yes - 77%

No - 23%


thats good!!!

One of the really nice things about Wii is that the internal components and architecture is an extension of GC's (albeit more powerful). So devs should be pretty familiar with the programing necessary. Final Wii dev kits should be going out within this next month at the latest. That should make things easier.

I believe the true learning curve has to do with programming the innovative new controller as well as brainstorming on how to use it to it' fullest potential. It's been said time and again, DS had a somewhat awkward start with most 3rd party devs before they got the hang of what works best and how to implement the touch/dual screen efficiently into the gameplay aspect. Now DS is booming. Wii looks to have a very similar trend. Thing is, 3rd party devs have a better idea of how to utilise Wii because of their experience with both DS & GC.

Don't forget about the "Classic" style controller, guys.

Der SegaHund wrote:

[The Xbox 360] has an exhisting installed base that doesn't mainly consist of 3rd-party-shunning fanboys who'll only buy things published by Nintendo?

What you are saying is that 3rd party developers are afraid to compete with Nintendo. more importantly, If 3rd party developers produced quality games then the 3rd party shunning fanboys would turn into 3rd party buying fanboys.

A lot of 3rd party developers do make quality games, and get shunned on nintendo consoles. It's not really worth the trouble porting. It's not so much the controller but the hardware, Wii is MUCH weaker than xbox360 or ps3.

It's what happened with the Gamecube.

true, but this time around, developers don't really have a choice.

Spend about a whopping amount of dollars developing games on PS3's expensive price and high development costs or go simply to the wii with it's lower dev costs.

Not really there fault considering a lot of the 3rd party games were either shite, shops didn't buy the games pushing only Xbox and PS2 versions or waiting 4 months after the PS and Xbox version were out then releasing the GC version, gee i wonder why the GC version didn't sell so well.

Z wrote:
It's not really worth the trouble porting. It's not so much the controller but the hardware, Wii is MUCH weaker than xbox360 or ps3.

I repeat, It is not difficult to port a 360 game to the Wii. Remeber graphics are scalable and all a developer has to do is lower the resolution from 720p to 480p. Also Doom 3, FarCry, and Halflife 2 required a 2Ghz processor for the PC and a GPU with 128 MB of Ram. All of these games have been ported to the Xbox, which does not have those system requirements.

supadude5000 wrote:

The Wii controller has actually made it a little harder to develop for, but it's not discouraging, it's a much appreciated challenge. I read in an article about Madden that while the simple idea of making a throwing motion to pass is an easy concept, the complex math and varying ways in which people can perform that motion make it more difficult to implement.

I disagree with that artice because this has to do with Physics. More importantly Mechanics, vectors for projectile motion and other formula which would make having to calculate the varying ways in which people perform throwing motions unnecessary. Also this can be handled with the Havok physics engine of the Wii. However this may not make programming for the controller easier. Especially since physics engines and the Wii controller are a new phenomena.

The reason it's difficult is becuase the developer will be under pressure from the publisher to force motion sensing controls on a game not designed to use them. There is only one Wii game known so far that uses the GC pad. it's understandable that publishers will be worried about sales of games that do not use motion sensing.


If the developer chooses to splash out on Havok yes. Havok isn't built in, it's available as with every other platform.

The Wii controller does make it harder, denying that is rediculous. It might be attractive to visionary game directors, but to people lower down in games developement, it's just an added hurdle to their already nightmarish job.

( Edited on 20.07.2006 16:47 by Der SegaHund )

Hmmm, I agree with *whoever said it* about it being a very atypical North American next gen viewpoint. They are still really pushing for the 360, mainly just because it is out, and the PS3 and Wii aren't. Just give them 4 months. Thats all

It what's happened with every SEGA console ten fold

What are you talking about? That is not a fair example. First of all a PC ALWAYS uses more resources for a game to function. This partly because of the OS and partly because of the fact that there are thousands of different combinations of specs for each PC. A developer can not therefore optimise the performance fully. That is where consoles have their advantage. And secondly the xbox has a very similar architechture to that of a PC. Gamecube and consequently Wii have a much more different architechture.
Now we got that out of the way have we forgotten that the xbox has more than one core? And each core is significantly more powerful than the the Wii's single core? Have we forgotten that it has a much stronger GPU and a lot more RAM? A lot more than merely reducing the resolution will allow it to run decently or even at all on the Wii. A game running on xbox360 can not be ported to Wii without major modifications if not at all. Is it really worth the developers time and money? OI guess they could make things easier and develop it first on Wii, but that would sacrfice the the graphics, AI etc for the other versions were it will sell.