11 ms·

Why the Wii will never get any better

58 points by dfox 18y ago

windsurfer 18y ago
He says that the software is the problem, but isn't it the hardware (wiimotes) that really differentiate the Wii from the other platforms? I am currently working on a project that uses the wiimotes to get 3D motion tracking for a demo game as well as artists interested in animation. The fact that the wiimotes come with 1024x768 hardware interpolated 100 FPS wireless cameras is something that can be continually improved upon. Does anyone remember Johnny Lee?
- nihilocrat 18y ago
  I think your comment really points out the fact that Wii critics often miss the point entirely. I agree with the article, but don't see how that is going to affect its success. Yeah, when you put it all together you have the software stack of a last-generation console, but so what? Most Wii gamers (those nebulous "casuals") are never going to use online multiplayer, download firmware upgrades, etc.; the person who I bought mine used from had no clue that it could get online. These people are not going to pass up a Wii because of these missing features; they are going to snatch it up from stores because it's got that bathroom scale you do yoga on, or that Super Mario Karts game where you turn the wiimote and it's like a steering wheel, or that tennis game we can play with our friends who, you know, we see in person. This all adds up to Nintendo having next-to-zero incentive to make the leaps and bounds their competitors are making in the firmware arena. The "everything on the DVD" approach is probably also a side-effect of the underpowered design they were aiming for at launch. Perhap he's not trying to argue that the Wii sucks and will fail, and instead just making a purely technical argument. I'm grateful for the analysis because I don't pay much attention to consoles.
- Silentio 18y ago
  Exactly. Nintendo changed what the player has in her hands. They did it with the N64 (analogue control) and they have done it more radically with the Wii. I think it is Peter Molyneux who has said if you want to innovate in gaming change what the player has in her hands. Software is important, but ultimately secondary. I think this will probably be the case in any big changes we see in personal computing as well. The mouse and keyboard work really well for some things, but as new input systems like multitouch and who-knows-what-else come along real changes will begin to pop up in software; not the other way around. Of course you might argue multitouch is a software innovation...
deleted 18y ago
[deleted]
nicolas_t 18y ago
After having worked in Japan for 4 years, I have no faith in the software skills of japanese software engineers... The universities are good at teaching engineering but do not really teach computer science properly (from what I have seen) and anyway passing without really ever learning the material is trivial. One of my friend who works for a big european software company in japan told me that even though they would like to hire japanese programmers, none of those applied passed their hiring tests. Of course, there are a few very good software engineers in Japan but they are either self taught or studied abroad....
- jrockway 18y ago
  I don't think that the average Japanese programmer is any worse than the average American or European programmer. They are all really bad. For important stuff like this, you need to find the above-average programmers. I know plenty of Japanese programmers that are above-average, so lack of supply is not the problem. The problem with the Wii could come down to a number of things. Perhaps the best programmers don't want to work inside a huge Japanese company. (That is not the best place for creativity, and I doubt Nintendo is especially innovative in this respect.) Perhaps this lack of extensibility was a design feature -- less stuff running at one time means less bugs (and less testing), and less demand on the hardware. Both of those things make the system cheaper, which is what its target market wants. (Remember that Nintendo makes money on each Wii sold, where that was not necessarily the case for the Xbox 360.)
  - nicolas_t 18y ago
    A big part of the software development (like sdks and so on) of nintendo is farmed out to Intelligent Systems that is a not so big company in Kyoto (a bit over an 100 person) and the working environment is quite nice according to a friend I had there so I don't think that it's a problem of not being an attractive place to work. Instead of it being a design feature, I think it's more a problem of not having anyone with the required knowledge to make good decision at the top. That said, nintendo as at least a few times listened and promoted people who were at the bottom of the corporate ladder like Yokoi Gunpei so Nintendo might be more flexible than typical japanese companies (like panasonic or sharp...) As for the level of japanese programmers: I have worked in european companies and in japanese companies and there is no comparison between the japanese programmers there and the european programmers I met in the european companies. The Japanese programmers were much worse... In a company I worked in (a big company that is also well known outside of japan) my coworkers who were developing software didn't know what object oriented programming was. Their java code was basically C code made in java with static methods everywhere... Now I've only worked in two companies in japan and worked with altogether about 40 programmers and so maybe it's just me being unlucky but the level really was appalling.
xiaoma 18y ago
"Remember, when Nintendo fails to deliver new Wii features, it won’t be because they aren’t trying. It’ll be because they’ve killed their chances from the start." So what? They've outsold the X-box 3 to 1 and the PS3 7 to 1, and unlike either of them, they're making a significant profit rather than subsidizing the hardware. The Wii has already won its generation hands down and has generated enough profit to fund a more powerful successor.
- swombat 18y ago
  Exactly my feeling while reading this. Who cares? Not Nintendo. They didn't set out to build a platform that would please console geeks. They did the opposite. They set out to build a console that everyone else would love and buy, and which would make a solid profit for Nintendo. And they succeeded, big time. Turns out nobody but console geeks cares about the architecture. And at a couple of hundred quid a pop, I'm sure most Wii owners will be more than willing to upgrade to a new version when the hardware is upgraded. They're not upgrading a small computer, they're upgrading a console. PS3/XBox, on the other hand, have take the road of literally building a whole, powerful computer in a box. The market has shown that this is a less successful way to build consoles - whatever console geeks may have to say about it.
  - sh1mmer 18y ago
    Grumpy home-brewers care.
  - noamsml 18y ago
    > They didn't set out to build a platform that would please console geeks. They could still have built it on a better technical basis. That's like saying MS is excused from having had a crappy security model for WinXP (and only slightly less crappy for WinVista) because they set to "build an operating system for everyone." In the end, if you build something on a better technical basis, everyone profits.
- kenver 18y ago
  I dont think its completely fair to compare the wii and the other consoles. They both have different customer bases who value different things, although there is some overlap. I've got a wii and an xbox and havnt bought a new game for my wii since I purchased it. Wii sports, and wii play, which come with the hardware have been enough to fill my gimicky urges. So while it outsells on hardware, I'd hypothesise that it doesn't do so well on games sales, if I'm representative. The content, and services (xbox live) on the other consoles far outweighs anything the wii has offered me. I know the wii has sold a lot of hardware and has been a success reaching the masses, but I think for a substantial number of people, it doesn't offer anything with real depth. Thats not to say I don't enjoy it, but if all that was available to me was a Wii, I would feel disapointed with this generation of hardware. Most of all I'd miss playing in HD (wii looks terrible on my tele), and xbox live. Theres also been a number of fantastic games that simply wouldn't have been possible on the wii.
swolchok 18y ago
"If they ever want to have a “hypervisor” run above games, they’ll need to get a new CPU with full-blown virtualization capability (or an emulator), because games assume they have direct access to the CPU and most of the hardware." Near-tautology -- the author described the two methods of virtualization he's aware of.
- cgranade 18y ago
  No... there's also paravirtualization. If a hypervisor is a part of the expected system environment from day one, then you can virtualize on the cheap, as Xen does for domU guests on hosts without virtualization-on-chip.
sachinag 18y ago
I did a search for "Motion Plus" and it's not there. Not every improvement to a platform has to be done in firmware or system software. This writer does not understand how Nintendo thinks. Nintendo has certain "must haves" when they design platforms. For handhelds, it's battery life. For consoles, it's ease of development. For both, the hardware has to be breakeven. That's why, even though it could, the Wii does not play DVD discs. (The licensing costs to the DVD Forum would be too high.) Because of these restrictions, Nintendo has forced themselves into add-ons to upgrade platforms. Rumble came to consoles with the Rumble Pak. 3D came with the FX Chip in StarFox. For the Wii, it's Motion Plus. Yes, Nintendo's approach to designing its hardware restricts the company for radically altering the box. But Nintendo has always understood that games come first - the N64 controller was designed around Super Mario 64. It's a radically different development paradigm than Sony or Microsoft engage in (and one which this author prefers).
sh1mmer 18y ago
This comparison misses something key, the Wii's innovation wasn't aimed in this direction. The Wii completely broke the mold in a number of other, apparently (by its sales), more significant ways. I can fully appreciate not building an architecture which would allow this kind of updates because they were focusing in a different direction. When the Wii was released internet console gaming wasn't what it is now. If they weren't designing for that as a priority I can see how they got where they are. As other people have said the Wii's success is something they can build on for the next version. I imagine that Nintendo will produce something that extends the best bits of the Wii but also integrate an internet experience that has proven to be successful on the Xbox 360.
sketerpot 18y ago
I think Nintendo made the right decision here. This way they will never have to worry about an upgrade to the operating system or common libraries breaking some obscure game that they didn't properly test against. This is less flexible, but the increase in reliability makes up for it.
nav 18y ago
Wii's beauty lies in it's level of interactivity and over all simplicity. (My mom picked up rockband in 15 mins).in my opinion the Wii will get better from an interactive standpoint ... ala more interesting game, hardware and interfacing with third party devices. I agree with the post and don't see a 8bit-16bit-64bit-128bit... transgression with respect to performance as we have seen in the past with Nintendo. Over all love the product, company (a beautiful margin based business) and of course this discussion/thread.
seshagiric 18y ago
The greatest selling point or silver bullet in WII is the new user interface. Once people have experienced that, you will only experience a marginal increment in your enjoyment, no matter what developments they do.

58 points by dfox 18y ago

He says that the software is the problem, but isn't it the hardware (wiimotes) that really differentiate the Wii from the other platforms? I am currently working on a project that uses the wiimotes to get 3D motion tracking for a demo game as well as artists interested in animation. The fact that the wiimotes come with 1024x768 hardware interpolated 100 FPS wireless cameras is something that can be continually improved upon. Does anyone remember Johnny Lee?

nihilocrat 18y ago
I think your comment really points out the fact that Wii critics often miss the point entirely. I agree with the article, but don't see how that is going to affect its success. Yeah, when you put it all together you have the software stack of a last-generation console, but so what? Most Wii gamers (those nebulous "casuals") are never going to use online multiplayer, download firmware upgrades, etc.; the person who I bought mine used from had no clue that it could get online. These people are not going to pass up a Wii because of these missing features; they are going to snatch it up from stores because it's got that bathroom scale you do yoga on, or that Super Mario Karts game where you turn the wiimote and it's like a steering wheel, or that tennis game we can play with our friends who, you know, we see in person. This all adds up to Nintendo having next-to-zero incentive to make the leaps and bounds their competitors are making in the firmware arena. The "everything on the DVD" approach is probably also a side-effect of the underpowered design they were aiming for at launch. Perhap he's not trying to argue that the Wii sucks and will fail, and instead just making a purely technical argument. I'm grateful for the analysis because I don't pay much attention to consoles.
Silentio 18y ago
Exactly. Nintendo changed what the player has in her hands. They did it with the N64 (analogue control) and they have done it more radically with the Wii. I think it is Peter Molyneux who has said if you want to innovate in gaming change what the player has in her hands. Software is important, but ultimately secondary. I think this will probably be the case in any big changes we see in personal computing as well. The mouse and keyboard work really well for some things, but as new input systems like multitouch and who-knows-what-else come along real changes will begin to pop up in software; not the other way around. Of course you might argue multitouch is a software innovation...

deleted 18y ago

[deleted]

nicolas_t 18y ago

After having worked in Japan for 4 years, I have no faith in the software skills of japanese software engineers... The universities are good at teaching engineering but do not really teach computer science properly (from what I have seen) and anyway passing without really ever learning the material is trivial. One of my friend who works for a big european software company in japan told me that even though they would like to hire japanese programmers, none of those applied passed their hiring tests. Of course, there are a few very good software engineers in Japan but they are either self taught or studied abroad....

jrockway 18y ago
I don't think that the average Japanese programmer is any worse than the average American or European programmer. They are all really bad. For important stuff like this, you need to find the above-average programmers. I know plenty of Japanese programmers that are above-average, so lack of supply is not the problem. The problem with the Wii could come down to a number of things. Perhaps the best programmers don't want to work inside a huge Japanese company. (That is not the best place for creativity, and I doubt Nintendo is especially innovative in this respect.) Perhaps this lack of extensibility was a design feature -- less stuff running at one time means less bugs (and less testing), and less demand on the hardware. Both of those things make the system cheaper, which is what its target market wants. (Remember that Nintendo makes money on each Wii sold, where that was not necessarily the case for the Xbox 360.)
- nicolas_t 18y ago
  A big part of the software development (like sdks and so on) of nintendo is farmed out to Intelligent Systems that is a not so big company in Kyoto (a bit over an 100 person) and the working environment is quite nice according to a friend I had there so I don't think that it's a problem of not being an attractive place to work. Instead of it being a design feature, I think it's more a problem of not having anyone with the required knowledge to make good decision at the top. That said, nintendo as at least a few times listened and promoted people who were at the bottom of the corporate ladder like Yokoi Gunpei so Nintendo might be more flexible than typical japanese companies (like panasonic or sharp...) As for the level of japanese programmers: I have worked in european companies and in japanese companies and there is no comparison between the japanese programmers there and the european programmers I met in the european companies. The Japanese programmers were much worse... In a company I worked in (a big company that is also well known outside of japan) my coworkers who were developing software didn't know what object oriented programming was. Their java code was basically C code made in java with static methods everywhere... Now I've only worked in two companies in japan and worked with altogether about 40 programmers and so maybe it's just me being unlucky but the level really was appalling.

xiaoma 18y ago

"Remember, when Nintendo fails to deliver new Wii features, it won’t be because they aren’t trying. It’ll be because they’ve killed their chances from the start." So what? They've outsold the X-box 3 to 1 and the PS3 7 to 1, and unlike either of them, they're making a significant profit rather than subsidizing the hardware. The Wii has already won its generation hands down and has generated enough profit to fund a more powerful successor.

swombat 18y ago
Exactly my feeling while reading this. Who cares? Not Nintendo. They didn't set out to build a platform that would please console geeks. They did the opposite. They set out to build a console that everyone else would love and buy, and which would make a solid profit for Nintendo. And they succeeded, big time. Turns out nobody but console geeks cares about the architecture. And at a couple of hundred quid a pop, I'm sure most Wii owners will be more than willing to upgrade to a new version when the hardware is upgraded. They're not upgrading a small computer, they're upgrading a console. PS3/XBox, on the other hand, have take the road of literally building a whole, powerful computer in a box. The market has shown that this is a less successful way to build consoles - whatever console geeks may have to say about it.
- sh1mmer 18y ago
  Grumpy home-brewers care.
- noamsml 18y ago
  > They didn't set out to build a platform that would please console geeks. They could still have built it on a better technical basis. That's like saying MS is excused from having had a crappy security model for WinXP (and only slightly less crappy for WinVista) because they set to "build an operating system for everyone." In the end, if you build something on a better technical basis, everyone profits.
kenver 18y ago
I dont think its completely fair to compare the wii and the other consoles. They both have different customer bases who value different things, although there is some overlap. I've got a wii and an xbox and havnt bought a new game for my wii since I purchased it. Wii sports, and wii play, which come with the hardware have been enough to fill my gimicky urges. So while it outsells on hardware, I'd hypothesise that it doesn't do so well on games sales, if I'm representative. The content, and services (xbox live) on the other consoles far outweighs anything the wii has offered me. I know the wii has sold a lot of hardware and has been a success reaching the masses, but I think for a substantial number of people, it doesn't offer anything with real depth. Thats not to say I don't enjoy it, but if all that was available to me was a Wii, I would feel disapointed with this generation of hardware. Most of all I'd miss playing in HD (wii looks terrible on my tele), and xbox live. Theres also been a number of fantastic games that simply wouldn't have been possible on the wii.

swolchok 18y ago

"If they ever want to have a “hypervisor” run above games, they’ll need to get a new CPU with full-blown virtualization capability (or an emulator), because games assume they have direct access to the CPU and most of the hardware." Near-tautology -- the author described the two methods of virtualization he's aware of.

cgranade 18y ago
No... there's also paravirtualization. If a hypervisor is a part of the expected system environment from day one, then you can virtualize on the cheap, as Xen does for domU guests on hosts without virtualization-on-chip.

sachinag 18y ago

I did a search for "Motion Plus" and it's not there. Not every improvement to a platform has to be done in firmware or system software. This writer does not understand how Nintendo thinks. Nintendo has certain "must haves" when they design platforms. For handhelds, it's battery life. For consoles, it's ease of development. For both, the hardware has to be breakeven. That's why, even though it could, the Wii does not play DVD discs. (The licensing costs to the DVD Forum would be too high.) Because of these restrictions, Nintendo has forced themselves into add-ons to upgrade platforms. Rumble came to consoles with the Rumble Pak. 3D came with the FX Chip in StarFox. For the Wii, it's Motion Plus. Yes, Nintendo's approach to designing its hardware restricts the company for radically altering the box. But Nintendo has always understood that games come first - the N64 controller was designed around Super Mario 64. It's a radically different development paradigm than Sony or Microsoft engage in (and one which this author prefers).

sh1mmer 18y ago

This comparison misses something key, the Wii's innovation wasn't aimed in this direction. The Wii completely broke the mold in a number of other, apparently (by its sales), more significant ways. I can fully appreciate not building an architecture which would allow this kind of updates because they were focusing in a different direction. When the Wii was released internet console gaming wasn't what it is now. If they weren't designing for that as a priority I can see how they got where they are. As other people have said the Wii's success is something they can build on for the next version. I imagine that Nintendo will produce something that extends the best bits of the Wii but also integrate an internet experience that has proven to be successful on the Xbox 360.

sketerpot 18y ago

I think Nintendo made the right decision here. This way they will never have to worry about an upgrade to the operating system or common libraries breaking some obscure game that they didn't properly test against. This is less flexible, but the increase in reliability makes up for it.

nav 18y ago

Wii's beauty lies in it's level of interactivity and over all simplicity. (My mom picked up rockband in 15 mins).in my opinion the Wii will get better from an interactive standpoint ... ala more interesting game, hardware and interfacing with third party devices. I agree with the post and don't see a 8bit-16bit-64bit-128bit... transgression with respect to performance as we have seen in the past with Nintendo. Over all love the product, company (a beautiful margin based business) and of course this discussion/thread.

seshagiric 18y ago

The greatest selling point or silver bullet in WII is the new user interface. Once people have experienced that, you will only experience a marginal increment in your enjoyment, no matter what developments they do.