WiiWare and Retro Gaming

[CantGetAWii]

Nintendo’s WiiWare service will be with us soon and with it comes the tantalizing promise of liberation for small-scale developers. It should grant diminutive studios the opportunity to create fun and affordable experiences without having to worry about such complicated factors as distribution and inventory management, which is obviously great.

But will the service also be used to for retro gaming, as has been the case with Microsoft’s Xbox Live Arcade and Sony’s Playstation Network?

While the Virtual Console provides perfect emulation of hundreds of classic retro titles, it seems unlikely at this stage that Nintendo will support more recent consoles (like the Saturn or Dreamcast) via the service. The reason for this is that the Wii isn’t powerful enough to emulate anything more powerful than the N64.

This means we may never see titles like Rez and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (both recently released on XBLA to critical and commercial acclaim) on the VC service. Surely the solution is to release these games as WiiWare products?

The aforementioned XBLA ports were coded from the ground up for the service (so basically no emulation of the original hardware was taking place). This could easily be done with WiiWare releases, too. The Wii itself may be lacking in power when compared to the 360 and PS3, but it’s capable of replicating titles from the previous generation of machines - with a little effort on the part of the developer, of course.

As XBLA has proven, gamers are willing to pay a little more for more ‘modern’ retro games like Rez and SotN; especially when, in the case of the former, they are improved and embellished (Rez possess a new HD-display mode).

With the Wii’s gigantic installed base dwarfing that of the 360 and PS3, established companies like Capcom, Konami and Namco will surely be eyeing the new WiiWare market with interest. It could be the key to helping them make a healthy profit on titles from the 32-bit era that are currently unattainable via emulation on the Virtual Console service.

Source

 

[iOwnage]

This may be possible, but I doubt it. We'll just have to see.

 

[wezeles]

They obviously can make it work for 32 bit games if they have N64 "64-bit" running without a glitch, The bigger problem is is this going to be profitable, sure you could charge more but would it be worth the investment of buying up licenses for games that really arnt that old? I know they dont get a tone of money off me for VC because the fact i have most the old systems still why buy them twice?

Now i doubt it will be able to emulate games that are 128 and higher like Dreamcast,GC,PS2,Xbox but everything prior to that shouldn't be a problem,the only issue is space not power.

Anyone who has messed with homebrew and making roms and emulators to work on other systems knows you can go just about as high as the previous gens limits, you can't match it most of the time because of what it takes to run the emulator in the first place... I had some N64 games running on a Dreamcast just fine.

VC has been doing well but i doubt you will make a tone of cash trying to cut in with "newer retro" lol oxymoronic statement in the first place... They should stick with trying to be creative and take advantage of the Wii-mote.
If demand is high enough for a specific retro game that Nintendo can get rights for I'm sure they will do what they can.

Its not like your gonna be playing your favorite Xbox/PS games on the Wii anytime soon.. Ms and Nintendo can't stop fighting over 007 Goldeneye, they arn't going to share anything they dont have to. And you cant just make a copy of a favorite game to try to get past exclusive titles or license agreements... They can probably get the rest of the SEGA system on there Maybe 3D0 that would be awsome considering they are the corny Shooter arcade "with live video" games from the 80's and 90's and would work great with the Wiimote!
But beyond that what are they missing in VC in the previous gens taht they are "able" to get maybe atari? but you can buy a 100 in 1 of atari games for 20 bucks at any department store.

 

[WiitnessID]

LOL hell if they redid these games and made use of the Wii mote than they could just release them on disk! There are a few saturn games I wanted to play!

 

[wezeles]

exactly! what does a DVD cost when you buy in bulk? 10 cents at best?
If you re-releasing a title it would be almost be more profitable to do a cheep game in a cheep package for these semi-retro re-makes. That way everyone see's them not just the online Wii owners. Kids with a spare 5-10 bucks would buy these up like candy, aparently even Developers dont have a clue how to make good shovel ware.. ha ha