Wii hombrew games and software will soon be a reality, as
demonstrated here. That means that Johnny Lee's
head-tracking demonstration will spawn some real Wii games without requiring response to his appeal to official developers (not that I would mind some HD PC software games). WHY AREN'T WE TALKING ABOUT THIS?!
Though he is doing the demonstration with an illegal/gray-area* hacked copy of Lego Star Wars Complete Saga which requires a legal modification**, it is very likely that we will see signed sofware for the channels and SD cards that will not require any form of drive modification... at the very most, you may need to borrow another drive to use once to install a signed license for a Wii Homebrew Channel. It is being demonstrated in the early stages, and we should see 100% legal discs as soon as they figure out how to format it for intro, icon, execution, etc (no "gray area").
Though I am 100% sure that this is "for realz yo," I can only wonder when they will release it.
*he's in Germany and I don't know their laws.
**it can be done with a parallel/serial port cable built with components from Radio Shack and no additional hardware, so it can't be made illegal. Even Datel sells one.
Posts
And a pony.
I would really like to see a game console with less restrictive hardware. For example: a Wii with moddable parts or something alterable with a significantly higher price tag. But I'm weird like that and I'm certain Nintendo would never go for that.
As much as it pains me to say it, I don't think homebrew belongs on the Wii without proper support from official sources.
Hombrew lightgun games?
A lightsaber sim?
Other mindblowing ideas?
Also, I'm glad no one is hitting the "Oh no, piracy killed the Dreamcast button!" because people have been easily running pirated games on the Wii for almost a year now and it obviously isn't having much of an effect on sales at all.
They do have that console. It's called a PC.
God I sound like a douchebag there but seriously, a computer is that moddable console. What sets other consoles apart is that you don't have that sort of freedom with them from a hardware standpoint, and don't have everybody and their dog writing code for it, you don't have the stability/compatability issues that you see on any PC. Hell, just look at all the talk of systems that have the "option" of a hard drive, and whether or not any games should require it or not, the advantages of doing so, etc.
It brings to mind all the confused people you see when you work retail. "I bought this game for my computer and it doesn't work! What? What's a video card? You mean I need to buy other stuff for this game to work? Why doesn't it say that on the box? Oh, it does. Well that's still confusing as hell. It should just be able to run everything." Consoles can run everything, and therefor should remain mostly unmoddable in any widespread manner, otherwise you alienate the (I hate to use this term) "casual gamer."
Edit: I don't actually mean they shouldn't at all be moddable, more that modability shouldn't be standardized or expected.
I don't see wiimotes for computers and support for anything yet on PC's. It is new territory and I have to thank Nintendo for going through with this. I know Wii mods are just starting and in the next few years it should yield some golden and delicious fruit.
If Nintendo wants to come out and say "We are officially supporting Wiimotes for Windows/OSX" I would be ecstatic. Maybe thats what I really want to see.
Some dude was able to get HL2 running with a Wiimote on his PC... I think theres a video of it on youtube, at work so I can't link you.. if you didn't already know this... :P
Not only that. I've seen videos of a HL2 mod made to be played with Wii remote and nunchuk and it had stuff like moving the nunchuk to throw grenades.
EDIT: Here's a video of the mod I'm talking about. Unfortunately I have no idea what state the mod is currently in or where you an get more information about it.
EDIT AGAIN: I have found a website for the mod. It seems to be dead, but there's downloads available of a "beta" of the mod.
Let's not forget Johnny Lee's stuff is also PC based, along with WiiLi (Wii Linux), and also that OpenPIE thing which replaces GlovePIE.
Now would be the perfect time for someone to make a witty criticism of halo, something along the lines of "not that there was much reason to want to play halo in the first place" should surfice.
Moer liek gaylo m i rite???
If the Wii had a viable homebrew scene, I'd be much more likely to buy one. I want to see more killer stuff being done with the Wii Remote other than a few awesome games swimming in a sea of shovelware and ports with tacked on waggle. The idea of motion sensing control has such potential other than "jerk left to look left", it's a shame that there are so few companies taking advantage of it.
Nintendo might benefit from offering homebrew coders a decent development option. With the PS3 you can (technically) develop games for it using Linux, and the 360 has XNA, it would be nice to Nintendo to follow suit.
Odds are it will never happen, though. The first thing homebrew coders do after Hello World is get started on an NES emulator, with more complex systems following. Since one of the Wii's main selling points is VC, I figure Nintendo will do everything in their power to shut homebrewers down.
Steam / Bus Blog / Goozex Referral
I hope you have a sleep number bed. ;-)
He's not releasing the keys (no need when he has already divulged the method). Rather, he plans to make a loader like SDload for Gamecube that will kick-start homebrew without needing to sign everything. He's still working on making a legit disc that can boot without a hacked game, but that will come in due time.
"The immediate next goal is getting something like SDLoad working so that I can stop killing plastic trees -- after that, it'd be neat to have, say, a Linux Channel. "
One can only wonder if he intends the loader to be a channel or not, but being mentioned in the same breath as a Linux channel certainly bodes well.
It's hard to get excited over "hello world" apps and the first clumsy homebrew apps. It's easy to get excited over possibilities. Let's all consider the possibilities.
The DS has been compromised for a very long time but it's still worthwhile to play online there. You occasionally get a cheater but by sheer numbers of people who don't cheat, it's still enjoyable.
Yeah but not too many people take their DS online, as compared to the ones that will take their Xboxes/Wiis online. Also consider that Smash Bros will have Halo 2-esque numbers of people on it.
When the cheating got bad around 6 months after the game came out, it was about a 1/5 chance that you would get a cheater (standby, bridging, or modding, mostly modding). In fact, it was almost expected that once you got cheated once in a night, it usually only happened once and we just wanted to get modded ASAP to get it out of the way for that day. It was that bad.
Bungie only banished it for good back in about June of 2007. We had to sit through two fucking years of cheating (2005, when the first DLC came out, to 2007). Needless to say, the first time I see rampant cheating on a new console I am not going to wait this time. I'll just write off the online components of games.
The games you will have to look out for are the ones with visible public ranks. Since Brawl does not have any, that might quell the cheaters, but you never know.
Exactly the reason I was glad it didn't have any when announced. Too many fuckers cheat. Metroid Prime Hunters is really fucking bad in this regard, not just hackers, but people using exploits as well (seams in the walls).
And homebrew, as awlays is great in theory. In reality, it's piracy. Fuck the PSP "homebrew" scene. And now it's coming for the wii, the virtual console games will take a hit.
Actually, the current iteration requires a piracy-enabling drive mod. This means that its only contribution is homebrew. This may change if you can copy a signed "Loader Channel" that doesn't require a drive mod, but there is no guarantee that this is possible. You see, all current channels only backup encrypted data to SD with the license remaining on the original Wii, so there is no way to copy a license back with a channel on another Wii. The only way a signed homebrew channel will work on an unmodded Wii is if that license file is not required for signed homebrew that doesn't expressly require it. We have no indication that channels which don't need licenses are possible.
I disagree; I suspect the people who buy VC games in the first place aren't the type of people who download ROMs. I can't imagine just having one more way to play ROMs is going to affect VC sales much.
*currently, that's why it's using the pre-made structure from Lego Star Wars
Now there's an idea! "Datel Wii DVD player: Includes FREE Games 'n' Music player [AKA homebrew launcher]!"
Just like the revised code-based DS Action Replay vs. the original save-copying kind, their old movie and music kit for the Wii shold be re-tooled with this new development.
You'd have to swap discs to play the DVD, so swapping to launch homebrew shouldn't be a bigger hassle, especially homebrew that installs a community-made "DVD and Homebrew Playback" channel and doesn't need to swap anymore.