New Wii craze is opening up

[wraggster]

Interesting take on the Wii Scene from the BBC

Bill Thompson looks at ways hackers are opening up the Wii for uses never intended by Nintendo
The Nintendo Wii is an astonishing computer, the console for people who don't play games, nestling next to the TV like a family pet and encouraging those who would normally sneer at a PlayStation to wave their arms around in order to play virtual tennis.

The Wii remote has a lot to do with its success, of course.

This motion detecting wireless handheld controller gives players a far more direct sense of engagement with the game than the buttons, pads and triggers of traditional consoles, and accounts for much of the Wii's success as a family gaming platform.

Like other games systems the Wii is as far from an open platform as you can imagine.

Games cost a lot of money to develop, and Nintendo has worked hard to make it difficult to get inside the Wii for fear that easy access would allow games to be copied and distributed.

As a result you can only play licensed games, run licensed programs and do the things that Nintendo thinks you ought to, even though you've paid good money for the hardware.

As you might expect, this has not deterred bands of gifted programmers and engineers around the world from working hard to find and exploit the holes in the Wii's setup that could allow access to its inner workings.

Remote uses


Wii remote that can do the vacuuming?

The Wii remote is just a clever Bluetooth device at heart, so it has proved to be an easy target.

It can already be used to control a Roomba robot vacuum cleaner, and the delightfully named 'DarwiinRemote' team lets your Wiimote act as remote control for Macintosh computers - the name is a pun on Darwin, one of the main components of Mac OS X.

Other members of the homebrew community, whose name comes from those who prefer to make beer at home instead of settle for industrially-manufactured stuff, have had a lot of success with the Wii itself, just as other groups have managed to open up the Xbox and PlayStation.

According to the technology site Slashdot there is now an MP3 player, a way to convert and play GameCube game files and even a port of GNU/Linux that runs on the Wii.

The developers involved, true hackers who want to know how things work and exploit the capabilities of the hardware to the full, are not aiming to pirate Super Mario Galaxy or Jenga.

They are driven by a desire to overcome the limits put in place by the manufacturer so that they can, for example, run games from older Nintendo consoles on the new platform or even write their own.

Why have a GameCube and a Wii in the living room when the Wii can do it all?

And why have a powerful games system that won't let you write and run your own games?

Getting it all to work can be complicated, of course.

There are hardware modifications that involve soldering 'mod chips' onto the main circuit board, or a neat trick that uses a coding error in specific pressings of 'The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess'.

And there is always a danger that Nintendo, caring more about potential games copying than the desires of their customers, will block these holes and prosecute the providers of mod chips as Sony and Microsoft have done in the past.

But this is unlikely to deter them.

Cat and mouse


The pressure is on for the developers and manufacturers of hardware to open it up for others to use creatively

Bill Thompson
The desire to open up the case and remove what are seen as arbitrary and capricious limitations on the way our computers operate is not limited to games consoles, of course.

It is estimated that around one third of all the iPhones sold by Apple have been unlocked so that they can run on any phone network, and the pressure to allow application developers to program the device has forced Apple to release a software developers kit.

All around the pressure is on for the developers and manufacturers of hardware to open it up for others to use creatively, instead of simply providing a set of authorised functions and expecting customers to be happy with what they are offered.

Doing this carries risks, of course, and not just the unlicensed copying of games that worries the console makers. Security flaws could be uncovered, causing problems for online services or even the back-end servers that support online games communities.

But those risks exist anyway, as we can see in the success that the hackers have had in opening up every single platform out there. Surely it would be better to admit that there will always be a way in?

Much as I admire the skills, effort and sheer brilliance that has gone into finding ways to hack the Wii, the iPhone and the Xbox I can't help thinking that there are better ways for us all to spend our time than a game of cat and mouse between the talented hackers who work for Apple, Microsoft and Nintendo and the talented hackers who buy their products.

Just think what brilliant software we'd have for the Wii by now if Nintendo had said: "here's a games console. And here are the hardware schematics - go play!"

[Graxer0419]

Its good to see such a high status company taking a positive attitude towards homebrew. I hope Nintendo sees this sort of thing and decides to support homebrew more! I certainly dont see them supporting emulators though, what with copyright laws and the Virtual Console.

[____anders____]

i really hope that they will support homebrew in some way, so we can make our own games and apps for free, make games that WE like, i've seen so many games for wii that i've never even heard of.

and the wiiware games.. come on, who honestly want to buy an eating contest game anyway??

the only game that i think would fit better on wiiware than on disc and that i would buy without doubting a second is "line rider", i don't wanna buy a game that i haven't tried and then find out that it really sucks.

the only thing that i've bought from shop channel is 1000 points, i bought the internet channel, because you could play flash games and watch youtube.

after i bought internet channel i had 500 points left, and i thougt: hmm what NES game should i buy? i chose between zelda, smb1 and smb3, so i bought super mario bros 3, even though i have the originals and i have them on my ds, it's actually better on the ds because you can rewind with nesDS, i bought it because i don't want to sit there with and look at 500 points, waiting for another cool game to be released..

the truth is, that i bought the wii over the 360, because i thought the wii was a lot cooler with it's motion sensing, and cooler games than the 360, even though i had never played any of them.

i also have an xbox 1 chipped with 160GB HDD, and i have 61 "commersial backups on it", but to be honest i only played the great homebrew games that's released on the xbox, come on they can't make any good games anymore, even the free homebrew games are a lot more fun than the commersial ones, like Super Mario War, it's fu**ing genious man! it totally own lets say...

..Halo 2 IMHO (man i'm gonna be flamed for this!)

so, another reason i bought the wii over the 360 was the FPS games, it's 100 million times easier to aim in metroid prime 3 than it is in, for example halo2 IMO, and i like nintendo more than microsoft.

and the online play, maybe XBLive has more players and less lag (i don't know, i've never played on XBL), but atleast N is offering free online play..

man i'm glad i bought the wii because SSBB looks AWESOME, i bet microsoft or sony couldn't make that kind of game in a million years, i mean nintendo has a lot of "heroes" like link, super mario, and 100+ more, how many "heroes" does microsoft or sony have that is infamous and that you can talk to anyone about (maybe master chief though), even my great grandmother knows who super mario is ..

ok, i won't write about my opinions anymore, as i said, man i'm gonna be totally flamed for comparing metroid and halo..

EDIT: i think it's just better if we somehow can get Nintendo on our side, and maybe they release some kind of devkit so we won't have to search for exploits just to run an MP3 player or a game that's free and legal, but i think i'm gonna borrow Zelda TP and buy an sd gecko (i already bought a gamecube controller ) just for the mp3 player and the great homebrew to be released on wii (i hope).

[JKKDARK]

I'm sure the homebrew scene on Wii will be very big in the next years, it's doing very well actually

[ICE]

Out of curiosity does anyone remember how quickly Sony tried to stamp out homebrew for the first time on psp? It just seems like Ninty is sorta taking their time on it.

[Dbgtgoten]

like i said before i can't help but think they are planning something with that last vague update i thought it might change something in the config to auto update or something to blow down homebrew or something cause its very easy i am not sure anyways.

[eatnooM]

Out of curiosity does anyone remember how quickly Sony tried to stamp out homebrew for the first time on psp? It just seems like Ninty is sorta taking their time on it.

Wasn't their first effort firmware 1.5, which, if I recall correctly, was released before the US PSP release?

[wiggy fuzz]

Just think what brilliant software we'd have for the Wii by now if Nintendo had said: "here's a games console. And here are the hardware schematics - go play!"

quoted for truth - put it this way. i've never seen a downloadale ds firmware update, even though i think the handheld is perfectly capable of it.

bad example, but hey?

[limming]

If only a company would make a console solely built for developers to make games and programs on it and share them through wireless internet...that would be genius....

[ICE]

Wasn't their first effort firmware 1.5, which, if I recall correctly, was released before the US PSP release?

Hmm Im not sure. All I know is Sony's attempts were far faster than Nintendo's have been.