Want to Wii

What are the kind of steps needed to get a Unity app running on the Wii, assuming one has the SDK and Unity Wii kit? Is there a large amount modification required?

thx
Shaun

EDIT: are there any demo's of Wii/Unity titles - I haven't seen anything explicitly showing off Unity on a Wii - did I miss something?

 

UT did advertise "one click and it's on Wii", referring to the build and test proccess, so I assume they made it quite seamless.

I doubt there will be any Wii titles released yet, as I am sure the Unity Wii license is very high, and we'd hear about games like that.

Speculation isn't all that useful, but my fingers needed the exercise. ;-)

-Jeremy

 

"One click and its on the Wii"... hmm, sounds like "Make games with no programming" - they will just run like S***. I'm sure there must be some platform specific optimization...

Good point re pricing - would be nice to get some info on that. UT, is it a fixed price, or floats depending on the customer?

Speculation is fine - entire economies are based on it

 

They (David I think) were referring to the fact that they intergrate into the Wii dev kit that well, that it's only one click, and 10 seconds or so inside Unity and the game is running on the Wii.

I bet they do all the platform-specific optomizations under the hood, and all we would need to adapt is our controller coding, and maybe not use some unsupported graphics features (if any).

Yeah, I haven't contacted UT about the Wii price myself, so I have no clue. I just remember someone who did saying it was very high (understandable).

I also assume you know that you have to be approved by Nintendo as a dev to get a dev kit, but I figured I'd mention it.

-Jeremy

 

I'm sure it's just like "One click and it's on Windows." You know, exactly like it is now, with an extra Wii check-box.

--Eric

 

@ Jeremy
Yeah - I guess they won't tell you much until you have the SDK from Nintendo .
It doesn't seem that hard to get - The Xbox one was a bitch a few years ago.

@Eric
I think they are working on an Export to PS3 button too

Totally OT: Nintendo started out by selling traditional Japanese hanafuda card games in 1889 - and briefly tried a Taxi and Love Motel business! (love motels are pay by the hour hotels and are everywhere in Korea and Japan, because kids live at home until they are 30 and need somewhere private to...umm...) Thanks Wikipedia!

 

I heard (rumours) that a Wii sdk is around $2000 (which seems cheap to me)

 

The Wii SDK from Nintendo is apparently US$2000-US$10,000 depending on the size of your dev team. That was from the Nintendo site. Would be nice to know how much UT want for the "Make a Wii" button

 

I'll send a mail and ask.

We might be interested in this if its payable.

 

I would think the easy part is to pay for the devkit and Unity license. Unless things have changed, you need to have your project and team approved by Ninty before you're even given the option to buy. That's the tough part.

 

Yeah,

Just talked to David and plans are dropped.
Not that the price is too high or so, but I guess you really need a next gen idea to make it on Wii world.

Its nice to have the intention to create something on Wii, but you need permission from Nintendo to be able to do it and I have allready very bad experience on that part from back in the good old Gameboy 1.0 time.

 

So Unity has dropped their Wii plans, or Nintendo is no longer making their SDK available?

 

I'd interpret it as EducaSoft dropped his/their plans for Wii support as Ninty is rather picky. I dearly hope so anyway, as UT dropping the Wii plans would be very bad news...

 

Don't worry - we're not droppping the Wii, and Nintende has not dropped their licensing plans either...

 

Good to know - thx.

 

WOOOOOPS, That could indeed be misinterpreter.

EducaSoft dropped plane, not unity.
Sorry for possible confusion.

 

While making you app run on Wii, apart from obvious modifications or yet better described as target requirements -- appropriate polygon count, texture size, graphics features used, Wii remote aware input handling -- there is indeed only one difference: you have to select 'Wii' in the 'Build Player' dialog.

 

also people don't forget about WiiWare, early 2008. This may change the whole way we as Unity developers look at the Wii platform.

From my discussion with UT the current Wii support is more aimed at triple-a title and is therefore is priced as such and it takes a LOT of effort to get Nintendo to accept your concept for them to indorse it and then allow you to publish it. But WiiWare is aimed at small independent developers and all that the N does is make sure the games don't crash the Wii and they control the pricing structiure for said games.

Anyway do a search on WiiWare.

Cheers.

 

I've got a friend in the industry, and he said that Nintendo won't really have an Indie license structure (WiiWare), despite what they have said publicly. My friend seemed very POed about the Nintendo's licensing situation and the Wii as a dev platform as a whole.

I hope he was wrong! :roll:

 

i didn't say they would change their licensing structure... once you become a wii developer you can possibly self publish games via wiiware at a cheaper price point... and not have to have your games vetoed by N or anyone else. So once you pay over you 2k-10k for a dev kit and if UT reconsider their current pricing structure for Wii publishing in the light of WiiWare, then a small Unity based dev house might be able to break into the console market without a 100k++ budget from the word go.

Cheers.