WiiLi.org

[tofarley]

Hello all,

I stumbled across the Wiili project this morning purely by accident. I am excited to find a community already in place with the vision to carry the Nintendo Wii to the next obvious level.

I had an idea for additional material to add to the Nintendo Petition, but since I am extremely new I did not feel at liberty to make the change without first seeking the support of the community.

In the petition, I think it should be mentioned that Nintendo's most fierce competitor, Sony, has announced official linux support through their Open Platform project. http://www.playstation.com/ps3-openplatform/index.html

We should make it obvious that it is in Nintendo's best interest to embrace (or at the very least, NOT inhibit) continued development on this project.

Nintendo is a corporation, and at the end of the day they need to be concerned with their bottom-line. We should appeal to their sense of fiscal responsibility by indicating how the corporation benefits by allowing this to happen, and possibly discuss the cost saving aspects of enabling this project to be handled by a group of competent outsiders with everyone's best interests at heart.

We should also keep in mind that Nintendo of America has been notoriously unreceptive to this type of thinking in the past. It may be best to make our plea directly to Nintendo of Japan.

Just my thoughts. Please, let me know what you think!
-Tim

[DarkStar]

[tofarley]

I agree. Perhaps my statement of Sony as a fierce competitor was an overstatement. It's fairly easy to deduce from the launch parties that Nintendo and Sony have targeted vastly different demographics.

However, I still feel that if Sony is willing to (finally) support linux and home-brew game development, that Nintendo will also see the potential market. I, for one, will base my console purchase almost solely on this pivotal point.

The moment Nintendo makes a reassuring statement regarding linux on the Wii, or some enterprising young hacker uncovers an exploit, I will place my order for a Wii. Otherwise, I will purchase a PS3 next year when the price drops in time for the 2007 holiday season.

Thanks for your input!
-Tim

[ahamster]

We should try to get Nintendo to not make firmware that disables usage of third party hacks. This has always been the negative side to Nintendo. The PS series has always been flourishing because of their ability to be hacked.
Nintendo wants to make their own market away from Sony or Microsoft. So I can somewhat see why they are not following trends.

[tofarley]

Well, there is finally some pressure on Nintendo to allow a project similar to WiiLi to exist, now that Sony has begun their Open Platform Initiative to support Linux on the PS3, then I also found this today:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/directx/xna/gamestudio/

Microsoft has released a software development kit for the XBox 360 - that is targeted at home-brew developers. The SDK is available as a purchase through XBox Live and costs only $99/yr. Most of us believe in free and open software, nevertheless, it's still impressive that rather than continue to fight against homebrew developers, MS finally decided to embrace them. I say Kudos.

Honestly, Nintendo's best course of action would be to offer their own linux and/or home-brew package. In-Lieu of that, we just cross our fingers and hope they don't fight us tooth and nail on this one.

V/R
Tim

[Philipio]

Petitions like this almost never work, but it would be a nice idea. Hopefully Nintendo comes to their senses and allows something like this.

[Sumo X]

I would never send Nintendo a petition, especially if it included the name Wiili in it.

Nintendo is fiercely protective and they would shut down this project immediately if they knew about it.