News: Takashi Aoyama Talks WiiWare and Wii Channels Page 1

Takashi Aoyama Talks WiiWare and Wii Channels

23.02.2008

Nintendo's Takashi Aoyama spoke on Wii Channel development and the upcoming WiiWare during his GDC presentation yesterday.

A short summary of what was said:

Wii games are soon to feature downloadable content and Nintendo will soon charge for certain games' online services.

Nintendo had spent time creating a well-budgeted, easy-to-use online system which evolved into Nintendo Wi-Fi connection and WiiConnect.

Initially GameCube's online services experimented in peer-to-peer to lower costs. In 2005, when development begun on the Wii, Aoyama was made team leader on the Wii's Menu development.

The menu needed to be "fun for the entire family" and have the potential for "something new every day". The team were also looking into leaving the Wii running throughout the day by lowering power consumption. The team began looking into just what they could send to users every day.

The "Console Feature Realization Project" involved people coming up with new ideas, beginning on board experienced communicators with Nintendo partners. They began by using text-input methods on the Wii remote, on-screen keyboard and the "Animal Crossing system".

When adding features like the current weather, news and a web browser, the team had to go up against these functions being already available on the PC. To overcome this, start-up time needed to be reduced to create a stress-free-experience. The team is currently trying to streamline the experience, which should come into affect with system updates.

The team had to look at paternal controls, with Iwata demanding the system shut down after a certain amount of time. The feature to auto-shut down and save was canned due to it taking up too much development time, with Aoyama protesting against it. Instead the daily "Play History" function present at the moment was implemented to show how long players have used their Wii.

By adding features like news and weather, Nintendo had hoped parents would remind their children to check the Wii each morning, instead of turning off their Wii or stop playing.

To avoid confusing players, Nintendo needed a good visual layout. The design was a television shop window that would typically house lots of TVs showing different channels at one time

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JoshSL 23.02.2008#1

By adding features like news and weather, Nintendo had hoped parents would remind their children to check the Wii each morning, instead of turning off their Wii or stop playing.

Wii games are soon to feature downloadable content and Nintendo will soon charge for certain games� online services.

.... SAKURAAAIIIIIII!!!

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jb 23.02.2008#2

Lol, that cracked me up too. Good to see such care over the dev process, really cool Smilie

Cubed3 Admin/Founder & Designer

Lynk 23.02.2008#3

Man, these designers need a good dose of real life

Add me on anything. I'm always looking for new friends/opponents/town visitors/chances to appear more popular than I actually am.

Phoenom 23.02.2008#4

Where's the bit that says the Everyone's Nintendo Channel will appear in Europe and NA in a matter of months? Could've sworn that was on there.

*Goes to look.*

Simes 23.02.2008#5

Regard of it being there or not they did say.

jb 24.02.2008#6

Phoenixus said:
Where's the bit that says the Everyone's Nintendo Channel will appear in Europe and NA in a matter of months? Could've sworn that was on there.
*Goes to look.*

WiiWare offers a significant boost for Nintendo�s market, given hundreds of Wii owners are already connected to the Internet. The service will be available in several months in the US and Europe..

... Smilie

Cubed3 Admin/Founder & Designer

erv 25.02.2008#7

Paying for online gaming?

argh...

I really hope it doesn't get to "pay to play" but more to "pay to get maps" at the most. I would hate a monthly fee for a basic ability to play a game against my friends...

Dr_R 25.02.2008#8

Thinking more about this 'pay to play' business, I think it'll probably mean 'pay for the online aspect of games that require nintendo to continually work on additional content or host aspects of the game'.

In other words, pay for downloadable content or MMOGs.

btw, I think we can leave Brawl out of the 'pay to play' bracket, as the online stages are all user creations.

"This man has advanced communist views ... He dresses in a bohemian fashion both at his office and in his leisure hours."

BlueRocks 25.02.2008#9

WiiWare games are compressed and then uncompressed when players start them up � to avoid the continuing topic of storage on the Wii. Manuals will be stored online.

This intrigues me. I can't honestly say how much room I have/don't have available. I won't ever know until I have a problem. But with only three Virtual Console games I don't think I will have any difficulties for the foreseeable future.

My greatest concern for this would be the startup time to uncompress the games. Will it be an annoyance?

Also, where will it uncompress to? Is there a cache in the Wii? I would assume so, but how great a size? Is that what determines the maximum size of WiiWare games?

Did I miss a story that has all my answers?