Curmudgeon Gamer
05 March 2009
A hacker discusses the Wii's limitations
Is it not beyond strange that Wii homebrew is able to do so much more on the Wii than even the official software?
Homebrew hackers have found ways to play DVD movies, fully access SD cards over 2GB in size, use USB storage in the form of both flash memory and physical hard drives, access Samba shares over the wireless network and connect to Bluetooth devices for storage and using cell phones as a remote control. In their hands the Wii has become both a powerful media player and an emulation haven; add Virtual Console to the homebrew emulators and, excepting PCs, it is by far the system capable of playing the most games, able to play those of the NES, SNES, Sega Genesis, TG16, NeoGeo, Gameboy, Gameboy Color, Gameboy Advance, NeoGeo Pocket, Atari Lynx, Atari 800/XL/5200, Commodore 64, Apple II, Commodore Amiga, Atari ST, Atari 2600, Sinclair and ColecoVision.
Since Nintendo makes money selling Virtual Console games I could perhaps understand why they haven't made available any good general-purpose emulatiors. And it's not like the other manufacturers are keen to develop such software. But those hardware limitations are maddening. While Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 consoles have only become more feature-rich over time, the Wii's feature set is nearly the same as it was on launch day. When they announce some great new feature to get everyone to update their firmware, it turns out to be something like (gasp!) using a USB keyboard in the message center. In the most recent update they (bigger gasp!) even let people use it in the Mii Channel, where it's useful for entering names and nothing else.
For a long while I've seen this as the result of Nintendo having a uniquely tech-unfriendly culture. People joke about how Nintendo is like a toy company more than a software company. While I do like their games and think, in terms of game design, they're the #1 company in the world, I have to admit that this is largely true. Their system software design is woefully nearsighted. The departure of Yamaguchi has done nothing to make the company more technology-savvy.
Nintendo would never themselves admit that their system is limited, especially when the Wii is exploding sales records, so the best person to ask about why this is so would be one of the hackers who has found out how to work around so many of Nintendo's stupid limitations, marcan of Team Twiizer, one of the people behind the super-awesome Homebrew Channel.
Here are his thoughts on the subject. In summary, all Wii software features have to be implemented by the games themselves. Other than the TCP/IP stack, the Wii's IOS system software very little in the way of features at all to Wii software! Presumably they have some libraries that they distribute to developers that implement the basic stuff like returning to the menu and the Home screen.
Those features that it does provide are tied to the version of IOS it was developed for. This is possible because all Wii system updates, with one exception, add an entire new copy of the IOS software to the Wii's built-in flash memory! So a game that was written for IOS 9, the earliest version that can run games, will always use IOS 9, completely ignoring any later system features Nintendo could add. This makes a kind of sense if one imagines Nintendo as being super-cautious about breaking older games, but come on, Sony doesn't seem to have any problems with it, and even Microsoft, which is infamous for just this kind of bug in Windows, has had no problems making new 360 features work with launch games.
While it could be argued that the mindset behind this approach has been the source of the Wii's appeal to most of its audience (most of whom are probably just as non-tech-savvy), that doesn't mean that the system's workings need be dominated by this thinking. C'mon Nintendo, the world doesn't run on NES hardware any more.
Homebrew hackers have found ways to play DVD movies, fully access SD cards over 2GB in size, use USB storage in the form of both flash memory and physical hard drives, access Samba shares over the wireless network and connect to Bluetooth devices for storage and using cell phones as a remote control. In their hands the Wii has become both a powerful media player and an emulation haven; add Virtual Console to the homebrew emulators and, excepting PCs, it is by far the system capable of playing the most games, able to play those of the NES, SNES, Sega Genesis, TG16, NeoGeo, Gameboy, Gameboy Color, Gameboy Advance, NeoGeo Pocket, Atari Lynx, Atari 800/XL/5200, Commodore 64, Apple II, Commodore Amiga, Atari ST, Atari 2600, Sinclair and ColecoVision.
Since Nintendo makes money selling Virtual Console games I could perhaps understand why they haven't made available any good general-purpose emulatiors. And it's not like the other manufacturers are keen to develop such software. But those hardware limitations are maddening. While Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 consoles have only become more feature-rich over time, the Wii's feature set is nearly the same as it was on launch day. When they announce some great new feature to get everyone to update their firmware, it turns out to be something like (gasp!) using a USB keyboard in the message center. In the most recent update they (bigger gasp!) even let people use it in the Mii Channel, where it's useful for entering names and nothing else.
For a long while I've seen this as the result of Nintendo having a uniquely tech-unfriendly culture. People joke about how Nintendo is like a toy company more than a software company. While I do like their games and think, in terms of game design, they're the #1 company in the world, I have to admit that this is largely true. Their system software design is woefully nearsighted. The departure of Yamaguchi has done nothing to make the company more technology-savvy.
Nintendo would never themselves admit that their system is limited, especially when the Wii is exploding sales records, so the best person to ask about why this is so would be one of the hackers who has found out how to work around so many of Nintendo's stupid limitations, marcan of Team Twiizer, one of the people behind the super-awesome Homebrew Channel.
Here are his thoughts on the subject. In summary, all Wii software features have to be implemented by the games themselves. Other than the TCP/IP stack, the Wii's IOS system software very little in the way of features at all to Wii software! Presumably they have some libraries that they distribute to developers that implement the basic stuff like returning to the menu and the Home screen.
Those features that it does provide are tied to the version of IOS it was developed for. This is possible because all Wii system updates, with one exception, add an entire new copy of the IOS software to the Wii's built-in flash memory! So a game that was written for IOS 9, the earliest version that can run games, will always use IOS 9, completely ignoring any later system features Nintendo could add. This makes a kind of sense if one imagines Nintendo as being super-cautious about breaking older games, but come on, Sony doesn't seem to have any problems with it, and even Microsoft, which is infamous for just this kind of bug in Windows, has had no problems making new 360 features work with launch games.
While it could be argued that the mindset behind this approach has been the source of the Wii's appeal to most of its audience (most of whom are probably just as non-tech-savvy), that doesn't mean that the system's workings need be dominated by this thinking. C'mon Nintendo, the world doesn't run on NES hardware any more.
--JohnH at 04:27
Comment
[ 4 ]
13 January 2008
Hacking the PS3 (or: Sony is clever, for once)
A thread came up on NeoGAF about when it might be possible to play copied PlayStation 3 games, via modchip or hacked firmware or what have you. This reply pointed to this talk on YouTube, which is terribly interesting. Watch the introduction, which takes about five minutes.
I remember when it was announced that GNU/Linux would be permitted on the PlayStation 3 out-of-the-box and how this was a move to prevent piracy. These folks, who at least give the impression of being in touch with the hardware hacking scene, believe that making the PlayStation 3 open to other operating systems has kept it safe from the pirates. In a nutshell, the "smart" hackers open a system up and the "dumb" pirates then exploit the opening. By inviting the former group to play within some boundaries (certain PS3 hardware is still off limits from within PS3 Linux distributions) the latter group doesn't have a chance.
Now, that doesn't mean that the PS3 will never be hacked. All systems are hacked, eventually, I believe. But 14 months after the launch Sony is still secure. Every other system they've launched has been hacked to pieces, and they've lost out on at least some software licensing fees as a result. (I won't try to figure out how much, given how people argue that pirates would never have bought the games in the first place, that Sony might benefit from having more people playing software on its platforms, etc. etc. Perhaps we can all agree that it's at least greater than thr-- four dollars.)
Of course, the irony is that Sony finally had the right idea on the platform whose software fewer people actually want to play, much less pirate.
I remember when it was announced that GNU/Linux would be permitted on the PlayStation 3 out-of-the-box and how this was a move to prevent piracy. These folks, who at least give the impression of being in touch with the hardware hacking scene, believe that making the PlayStation 3 open to other operating systems has kept it safe from the pirates. In a nutshell, the "smart" hackers open a system up and the "dumb" pirates then exploit the opening. By inviting the former group to play within some boundaries (certain PS3 hardware is still off limits from within PS3 Linux distributions) the latter group doesn't have a chance.
Now, that doesn't mean that the PS3 will never be hacked. All systems are hacked, eventually, I believe. But 14 months after the launch Sony is still secure. Every other system they've launched has been hacked to pieces, and they've lost out on at least some software licensing fees as a result. (I won't try to figure out how much, given how people argue that pirates would never have bought the games in the first place, that Sony might benefit from having more people playing software on its platforms, etc. etc. Perhaps we can all agree that it's at least greater than thr-- four dollars.)
Of course, the irony is that Sony finally had the right idea on the platform whose software fewer people actually want to play, much less pirate.
--jvm at 18:00
Comment
[ 4 ]
10 January 2007
Finally game on your laptop
Ever since I started using VNC, I wondered why nobody made an external video card for laptops. Heck, even the original iMac had a video card made for it, and there are quite a few more laptops sans anything approaching a good video card out there with owners that like to play games. The Grover Cleveland tax isn't unique to Mac gaming; that's about the markup you'll pay to play on something like an Alienware laptop (and their failed user-replaceable video card setup).
So Engadget reports that ASUS has stolen my idea, nevermind that anyone with a laptop and a copy of Doom 3 has probably thought the same thing. It looks neat. For some reason I always envisioned doing it through a fast ethernet port, but this more intelligently usesPCMCIA ExpressCard port [thanks Zachary]. I'm not a fan of the kitchen sink approach, as it adds surround sound, etc. Just get me a video card for WinXP + WoW on my MacBook as inexpensively as possible, please.
Still, a pretty neat device. I hope it does well.
Update: The details on this are pretty varied (for which I'll blame the PCMCIA mistake, but don't believe me [placing the blame] until I relocate the source), though some places report that it's coming out as early as Feb. CNet tells us both the Feb release date and, more importantly, what card it is, though not the amount of memory: "in this case Asus' own Nvidia GeForce EN7900GS."
Updatex2: Even better, Tech Digest says it's essentially adding a standard external PCI-E slot to your laptop.
Perhaps the best feature though, is that it is just equipped with a standard PCI-Express slot so you'll be able to swap and upgrade your grahics cards whenever you feel the need.
Updatex3: Asus' own press release.
So Engadget reports that ASUS has stolen my idea, nevermind that anyone with a laptop and a copy of Doom 3 has probably thought the same thing. It looks neat. For some reason I always envisioned doing it through a fast ethernet port, but this more intelligently uses
Still, a pretty neat device. I hope it does well.
Update: The details on this are pretty varied (for which I'll blame the PCMCIA mistake, but don't believe me [placing the blame] until I relocate the source), though some places report that it's coming out as early as Feb. CNet tells us both the Feb release date and, more importantly, what card it is, though not the amount of memory: "in this case Asus' own Nvidia GeForce EN7900GS."
Updatex2: Even better, Tech Digest says it's essentially adding a standard external PCI-E slot to your laptop.
Perhaps the best feature though, is that it is just equipped with a standard PCI-Express slot so you'll be able to swap and upgrade your grahics cards whenever you feel the need.
Updatex3: Asus' own press release.
--ruffin at 11:48
Comment
[ 5 ]
Feedburner
