I ordered a Wii!

[Claymonkey]

It protects you from communists, republicans, and "carnies".

damn those carnies..... always taking my tokens and smelling funny.....

I won't even talk about what they did to my sister...

lets just say bad country music plays into the story somewhere

[Sasq]

WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT?



No seriously, it lets you run copied games, both Wii and GC. It also lets you run homebrewed apps, such as the ones to copy stuff from main system RAM to the otherwise utterly useless SD card slot.

or in my case, as mine is a J console, it *would* allow me to run imported USA games so i can play in English

[schmosef]

Is the Wii region locked? I was under the impression that it was not.

[Sasq]

The wii is sadly region locked.
to my knowledge the DS is not.

[schmosef]

does a mod chip allow you to play backed up Wii or GC games?

edit: never mind, i've done some googling and figured it all out.

I hope this console doesn't end up like the Dreamcast.

[Sasq]

does a mod chip allow you to play backed up Wii or GC games?

as well as imported Wii and GC games, yes.

all of the consoles are region locked, always have been, its not so much a desire of the makers I believe, but of their distribution channels

[TransformX]

does a mod chip allow you to play backed up Wii or GC games?

edit: never mind, i've done some googling and figured it all out.

I hope this console doesn't end up like the Dreamcast.

I'm still a proud Dreamcast owner, but that's off topic

[Gurm]

as well as imported Wii and GC games, yes.

all of the consoles are region locked, always have been, its not so much a desire of the makers I believe, but of their distribution channels

You've hit the nail on the head. The typical distribution channels for all media are holdovers from the "movie" market. The movie market likes to fiddle with release dates - largely because they release movies made in the USA there first, then in Europe, then worldwide. So they stagger the DVD release dates as well. They are members of the consortium that dreamt up MPC and region-coding for DVD's.

It's ALL utterly ridiculous, and ONLY important if you want to distribute in those channels. Adult DVD's, for example, have NEVER had region coding. The adult industry doesn't care, simply because they will never distribute their titles along with the latest Disney films, so they needn't play by the rules of the consortium.

Video games, however, piggyback along already-established distribution channels, and therefore have to cater to the whims of those consortiums. This has resulted in some real SNAFUs with DVD titles, and game titles.

There's a reason that many companies choose to distribute both in-store through a distribution channel AND online through their own medium. It allows them more control over distribution.

Distribution channels also use a pain-in-the-ass system, which they claim is "time-tested", to determine sales and therefore shelf-life. This causes sleeper hits such as Puzzle Quest (a recent example) to be pulled from the shelf after only a week or two, causing a huge demand for the title which then cannot be met as it takes time to "turn the shipments around".

*ahem*

Sorry, I'm digressing.

Schmosef, you seem sad - there's nothing to be sad about with the Wii. I've hardly fired up my PS2 in months now, and even then it was only for Rogue Galaxy. The Wii is... Wii-tastic!

[az]

How do you know so much about adult DVDs? I've never owned or rented an adult DVD or VHS. I thought that's why god invented P2P.

[schmosef]

Schmosef, you seem sad - there's nothing to be sad about with the Wii. I've hardly fired up my PS2 in months now, and even then it was only for Rogue Galaxy. The Wii is... Wii-tastic!

The Dreamcast died because, despite strong console sales, games were selling poorly due to mass piracy (and because, aside from a few stellar examples, the majority of the games sucked).

[Jessterw]

Look at it this way - the Wii is managing some excellent market penetration that largely includes people who are oblivious (or have no desire) to console modding. Piracy is an inescapable part of participation in the market, but I don't think the Wii is going to struggle against it as much as the Dreamcast did.

As far as games go, I'm actually a bit worried that beyond Nintendo and a select few developers, a lot of them are going to continue being piss-poor ports of games from other platforms. Even if the games are made for the Wii, the control-schemes will be tacked on and overly frustrating. It's already obvious this will be the case for at least awhile. The question is whether Wii owners will be able to wait-out the time it takes for developers to truly learn to utilize the Wii and it's controllers effectively.

At this point even Nintendo hasn't perfected the usage of the Wiimotes. We've been playing Mario Party 8 quite a bit lately and sometimes trying to use them is frustrating (but oddly amusing).

[Gurm]

The Dreamcast died because, despite strong console sales, games were selling poorly due to mass piracy (and because, aside from a few stellar examples, the majority of the games sucked).

Every console I have ever owned has been modded. Well every one since the PSX. I never did order up a GameDoctor for my SNES. *chuckle*

Modding != rampant piracy. For every person that knows how to mod his or her console, there are 1000 that don't. And many of us do purchase games that we find worthwhile to play. Problem is nowadays there's a "no return" policy everywhere. I refuse to spend $50 for a game only to find that I get 5 minutes out of it before shelving it.

[Gurm]

Another couple points:

1. The Dreamcast had NO hardware copy protection. I think that was the problem there. The thing was a hotbet of rampant 3rd-party "development". Mine was modded, but only so I could play imports since there was no goddamned content for it!

2. I concur with Jesster - I am really hoping that the Wii lasts out the "sucky port with sucky add-on controls" phase. Even Zelda: Twilight Princess was really a hasty add-on. Some games have REALLY GOOD controls, Medal of Honor: Vanguard is really interesting and they've gotten the gun controls "right" as well as letting you use your wiimote/nunchuck to do really interesting and intuitive things like parachute and drive.