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- inactive, on 11/15/2007, -2/+121How about making use of this functionality beyond the Photo Channel and Excite Truck? WTF Nintendo? You've got all of these components - Miis, Internet connectivity, messaging, channels, media capabilities, etc., and yet you refuse to combine all of these into a coherent system. As it stands right now, the Wii is less than the sum of its parts. It could be an incredible experience, especially for the causual gamer, but no, everything is its own independent module. There aren't many games that really make much use of the Miis at all. I can't listen to MP3s while reading the news or checking the weather. The message board service, combined with the Miis, could build an impressive online community, but alas, we have to rely on friend codes and such. I mean, imagine a chat channel, with the Miis as avatars, or a collective message board for all Wii users to collaborate on.
I love the Wii, but in some ways it irritates me, because it's as if Nintendo was like "Hey, look at this huge box of Legos we've got, we could really build some neat things with all these," but in the end, we just kinda sit there awkwardly waiting for Nintendo to actually build something, rather than just showing us the various blocks. - PATSCRU, on 11/15/2007, -8/+57why the ***** would they do this. cmon nintendo.
- Senn, on 11/15/2007, -1/+42People need to get it into their heads that AAC was not invented by Apple and is not an "iPod format".
- Snuff99, on 11/15/2007, -11/+47Never used it anyway.
- macdaddydwj, on 11/14/2007, -2/+29Practically everything plays MP3s... digital cameras, gps devices, can openers... and yet they're dropping it... that's ridiculous... just add aac, not swap it out
- aldenhg, on 11/15/2007, -4/+30AAC is just MPEG-4 audio. It sounds a whole lot better than mp3 and gets better compression. How, exactly, is that inferior?
- Daniel591992, on 11/15/2007, -12/+37Well, in other news, the PS3 is adding divx support soon.
Really, this makes no sense at all. What was the point of doing that? - Tobark, on 11/15/2007, -8/+31What the?? Drop MP3? Thats like a food court without McDonalds.
- sUGArDawg, on 11/14/2007, -2/+14This is a brilliant move...no one uses MP3s
/sarcasm - Matrix_Prime, on 11/14/2007, -1/+13so does this render the feature of the games that use the custom soundtracks (Excite Truck comes to mind) useless?
- WiseWeasel, on 11/15/2007, -2/+14No. They would still get sued by various competing MP3 licensing companies for not licensing from them. MP3 playback licensing is also quite expensive per-unit compared with AAC.
- LeeSoong, on 11/15/2007, -7/+19But, But - " Wii would like to play (MP3s) !"
MP3 people have been successfully suing corporations for licensing fees, fines, and penalties.
MP3 is not an open standard. - MouseCircus, on 11/15/2007, -4/+15I'm surprised Cyber Akuma hasn't spammed his incredibly long comment in this article, too.
- Cyber_Akuma, on 11/14/2007, -0/+10Removing support for the most widely used audio format right now is not a great precursor to creating a media channel...
- geminitojanus, on 11/15/2007, -1/+11"MP3 playback licensing is also quite expensive per-unit compared with AAC."
Err, no. MP3 has a fixed upfront software implementation cost that Nintendo and anyone else implementing MP3 has paid years and years ago, around $60k, no per-unit cost this way. AAC OTOH is not available for bulk licensing* due to eight hundred companies wanting to be dicks about it, and so per unit it's going to cost them. Hardware chips have a per-unit cost, but if you're building chips you'd just make up for the cost by tacking it on to the price of the chip. [*: there is however, a cap on the licensing set at around $25k/year, though, but 3 years down the road and you're paying more than you would for MP3].
The advantage is that for the same given bit-size, AAC sounds better. The further advantage is, by forcing AAC on users, it will help its uptake. The enormous ***** disadvantage is they're dropping support for a ubiquitous format which is about as brain damaged as it comes (it'd be like photo managers dropping JPEG because "JPEG2000 is better").
This is just a plain and simple stupid move to flog AAC; even though it's technically better, people don't have that much access to plainly encoded AAC files to pull this kind of move, it's still too early (sadly). Brain Damage all around. - BritishGolgo13, on 11/14/2007, -1/+9Well said. I totally agree with your point on the Wii being less than the sum of its parts. The Wii has incredible potential that Nintendo refuses to tap into. It would be nice if each game supported Miis for gamesave avatars or something along the likes of that in the sense that it would be just a subtle thing that would make you go "my Mii just ran behind that zombie in Resident Evil...cool!" OK, that's an extreme case, but combining all the elements to make a congruent interface within each game would be a nice addition.
I don't think I made any sense at all. - kete00, on 11/14/2007, -3/+11Dugg for teaching me that there are one or two people out there who have used the photo channel more than the first five minutes out of the box.
- xXGeechXx, on 11/14/2007, -1/+9My Wii can play Mp3's?
- geminitojanus, on 11/15/2007, -1/+9MPEG1 Layer III Audio has been an ISO standard since 1991. That isn't to say it's not patent encumbered, just that it's standardized and very well understood.
AAC is also an open standard (either MPEG 2 Part 7, as I refer to it [as it was first standardized, and thusly more correct than the latter], or MPEG 4 Part 3, as Apple and others push), also standardized by ISO, also heavily patent encumbered (more so than MP3 actually). - TheRealDj, on 11/15/2007, -5/+12Wait, Nintendo is making 100 dollars in profit on each system sold and they can't afford licensing costs? Didn't their financials come out showing they're making gangbusters?
- stubadub, on 11/15/2007, -0/+7It is less common for people to have audio in AAC than MP3. Even though you are absolutely correct, I would still consider AAC support inferior to MP3 support.
- robotsongs, on 11/15/2007, -2/+9Dumbest Post Ever.
AAC has nothing to do with Apple. And it sounds a hell of a lot better than a mp3 at the same bitrate. - STKD, on 11/14/2007, -0/+6Short answer: No.
They use their own tech to decode mp3 while playing. (Dugg up for Endless Ocean mention - superb cheap game destined to be underappreciated.) - NikoKun, on 11/14/2007, -4/+10Wow... bad move Nintendo... -_-
- gilbes, on 11/14/2007, -7/+13Get real, who uses their Wii to listen to music. A very small percent if any.
- MonsterChaOS, on 11/15/2007, -0/+5I think he is saying iPod format because most people that have AAC files are either enthusiasts, or got them from iTunes. Most of the later will be crippled by DRM and not work on the Wii.
- Cyber_Akuma, on 11/14/2007, -0/+4I could say the same thing about DVDs actually, just about any device with video output and an optical drive nowadays can play them...
If Nintendo is not interested is adding multimedia features to the Wii why bother to replace MP3 with another format at all? - aaronm67, on 11/15/2007, -0/+4MP3 is ubiquitous. Millions of people have their entire collections stored in MP3 format, with no easy way to convert to AAC, and converting MP3 -> AAC is a ***** option.
MP3 has some definite advantages. - cecinestpasvrai, on 11/14/2007, -4/+8well no, it's an mp3 player in a photo library program. So it's more like...well that.
- BlackholeStorm, on 11/14/2007, -2/+6Hopefully this is just some sort of precurser to a media channel, unfortunatley, I doubt it.
- Albaster, on 11/14/2007, -0/+4Does anyone know if this move will affect games with the built-in capability to playback MP3s, like "Endless Ocean"?
- Cyber_Akuma, on 11/14/2007, -1/+5If the Wii had a decent media channel...
- AeroSquid, on 11/14/2007, -0/+3diehard? MP3's out number AAC files 100 to 1.
- o0joshua0o, on 11/14/2007, -0/+3Sometimes, all companies make a bad move. This is one of them.
- Zoids, on 11/14/2007, -0/+3It has 512mb, just like the 360. It's just allocated differently.
- Cyber_Akuma, on 11/14/2007, -1/+4More like a food court having a McDonalds but then dropping it for In-n-Out.
- inactive, on 11/14/2007, -0/+2It really bugs me how these companies think they can dictate what files we can or cannot view/play on our own consoles.
Same applies to ***** at Microsoft for not ever opening up the codec support so we can play Divx.
Then they wonder why we mod our consoles. - scooterbaga, on 11/14/2007, -0/+2Holy *****, I didn't think of that! What does this mean for Excite Truck?
I'd very much like to NOT have to reencode my iTunes Wii playlist and have a bunch of dupes in the correct format... - Albaster, on 11/14/2007, -0/+2Not by me... nor by many people here in Spain. I had to go to four different shops until I could fetch me a copy because it was sold out in the first three shops I visited. Dunno in other countries, but here the mouth-to-mouth is running heavily about the game on forums and videogame shops. =)
And last but no least, thank you very much for the answer. :) Such a relief to learn that... I have stuffed an SD card on my personal collection of Folk and New Age music, and it took me hours to rip them all into MP3... Call me lazy, but I'd hate it right now if I had to rip them all again into AAC format. xD - edcrosay, on 11/14/2007, -1/+3Because it costs money to license the mp3 codec. I really couldn't care less. I've never used the photo channel and probably never will.
- WiseWeasel, on 11/15/2007, -1/+3That's incorrect. AAC is also available for bulk licensing, and often comes out cheaper than MP3. Also, while a consortium of companies are collecting license fees for AAC, they are all working together behind a single industry standard group. MP3 patents, on the other hand, are contested between several different groups, and some of those groups are going after vendors directly via major lawsuits for not licensing from them. ( http://www.news.com/2100-1030_3-6161480.html , http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061214-8426 ... ). There's more info on the licensing intricacies of AAC vs. MP3 here:
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/lofiversion/in ... - skellener, on 11/14/2007, -0/+2Yeah, because Nintendo doesn't have any money for the licensing costs. Can you say GREED?
- skellener, on 11/14/2007, -0/+2Pretty stupid on Nintendo's part. This will mean the majority of digital music out there won't work with the Wii. Now that Amazon sells open MP3's they won't work with the Wii. Of course almost nothing from the iTunes Store will work with since it's protected AAC. Only the few iTunes Plus songs they have will work. They're new slogan will be "Wii would like to play - ONLY unprotected AAC". Nintendo might as well just remove the entire music playing feature at this point. Why not simply add AAC without removing MP3?
- Mearn, on 11/14/2007, -0/+2So now Nintendo is good for forcing standards on people?
- STKD, on 11/14/2007, -0/+2Them or those pesky terrorists again. Always trying to destroy our freedom, 9/11 blah blah blah
/GWB mode - Dax420, on 11/14/2007, -0/+1Then put some MP3's on a SD card and it will play those instead of the crappy stock soundtrack. Excite truck is the only Wii game so far to support this functionality.
- Schmapdi, on 11/14/2007, -0/+1I can't say I've ever used photo channel or played Mp3's on my Wii. But it's still kinda dumb to move from the defacto standard of a file type to something much less common.
- pox05, on 11/14/2007, -0/+1Excite Trucks music sucks SOOOO much!
- Elranzer, on 11/15/2007, -0/+1A lot of people think AAC stands for "Apple Audio Codec" and that's probably more than who know what it really means.
- pansapiens, on 11/14/2007, -0/+1This is the one major thing I HATE about the Wii (and new consoles generally) ... I don't have full control over the software running on the hardware that I own. It's a great example of how the customer get's screwed by technologies like DRM and "Trusted Computing" (or whatever it's called these days to escape the bad PR).
I love my Wii, but I simultaneously feel like a retard for buying one and continually getting screwed by Nintendo with things like this impending update. I really don't like supporting companies who do this kind of thing, and I'll think very hard before buying the next Nintendo console
(I bought a Wii on the basis that it was supposed to be 'region free' for first-party games, a decision I still don't regret, but it annoys me that this 'feature' turned out to be a widely reported lie by a Nintendo employee prior to the release date).
The sooner this console is hacked wide open for homebrew software the better. -
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