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Why I'm Excited For What WiiWare Could Soon Become

Posted by Derrick Sanskrit

Even though it was a firmware update that pretty much everybody called well over a year ago, it was still pretty exciting to see that SD Card channel go live on the Wii yesterday. Almost everyone who has downloaded more than one game from the Wii Shop Channel has felt the aggravation of having to "clean out the fridge" at some point, and with the twenty minutes of rearranging necessary for me to download the long-awaited Bit.Trip Beat last week, I was pretty much pissed at my favorite little white box. Getting home from work yesterday to see its inviting blue glow, I just wanted to hug the Wii and tell it that everything was going to be alright now.

First, I could happily move my Virtual Console and WiiWare games to the SD card without worrying about forgetting them forever. Then I could reinstall the Nintendo Channel and the Wii Fit channel I had to delete to make room for World of Goo. Ooh, and then I could finally install that Mario Kart Wii channel I'd been putting off. And then I can finish that game of Paper Mario I had to remove from the Wii when I downloaded Tetris Party!

Having access to these games without taking up precious system memory was not only liberating but a revelation. I'd been putting off or flat-out ignoring all but the most-desired WiiWare and Virtual Console games specifically to avoid having to delete old games, but now everything's changed! It's time to revisit the Wii Shop. Time to finally play LostWinds, Space Invaders Get Even and (yes, I'm terrible) Mega Man 9! I can actually look forward to upcoming WiiWare without having to worry, which is great because there are tons of great games coming out soon like Cave Story, Eduardo the Samurai Toaster, Cube Gardens of Zen, Super Meat Boy and Night Game. Oh, and Hudson's upcoming "first person soaker" Water Warfare. That may just be the first deathmatch shooter game I genuinely want to play.

Then, of course, I start dreaming about the potential...

Couldn't we get DEMOS now? I've downloaded plenty of demos on PSN. Some convinced me to buy the full game, some did not. Apple's app store has tons of Lite versions of games that serve as free demos (in fact I just downloaded one for Sway) and those have only proven to raise interest and ultimately sales of the finished products. Demos work in this day and age of downloadable distribution. I was perfectly willing to accept before that demos were impractical on the Wii because of memory limitations, but with hard drive space opened like this it should be no problem. The most Nintendo would need to do is add a page to the Wii Shop channel for demos specifically. I imagine the extra work for the developers to make a demo to stand beside the finished game would be negligible in most instances as long as Nintendo doesn't restrict file sizes any more than they would for the finished product. Think about it: not sure about Bit.Trip Beat? Try the first level. Think High Voltage Hot Rod Show might be for you? Here's one course to race around for free. Of course, these would not be mandatory and entirely up to the developer, but it seems like a fantastic idea to me, and one that would make users significantly more likely to try and maybe even buy otherwise unheard of games.

WiiWare should be the feather in the Wii's already fancy cap. As stated before, retail Wii games can not be updated once they're released, unlike PS3 and Xbox 360 games, but WiiWare can (I distinctly remember there being a Dr. Mario Online RX update at one point). The SD card solution released this week has made me exponentially more excited by the prospect of WiiWare and I already have plans to fork over more of my hard-earned money to the Wii Shop as a result. Take this momentum, Nintendo, and run with it. Make WiiWare great.

Related articles:
Everything You Need To Know About The Wii Storage Solution
Style Over Substance: Why I'm In Love With WiiWare's "Art Style"
WiiWare: Nintendo, Babe, It Just Ain't Working Out
Whatcha Playing: Lost Winds

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Posted Mar 26 2009, 10:00 AM

Filed under: nintendo, derrick sanskrit, wii, wiiware, virtual console, demo

Comments

Ian said:

Yeah, Wiiware stuff can be updated...I once downloaded an update to Starfox 64 that improved over sensitive controls.

March 28, 2009 1:22 PM

about the blogger

John Constantine, our superhero, was raised by birds and then attended Penn State University. He is currently working on a novel about a fictional city that exists only in his mind. John has an astonishingly extensive knowledge of Scientology. Ultimately he would like to learn how to effectively use his brain. He continues to keep Wu-Tang's secret to himself.

Derrick Sanskrit is a self-professed geek in a variety of fields including typography, graphic design, comic books, music and cartoons. As a professional hipster graphic designer, his recent clients have included Nerve, Pitchfork and MoCCA, among others.

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