Wii-U thoughts so far

[Exhuminator]

Perhaps the Wii U GamePad doesn't work as a Wii Classic Controller (or Wii CC Pro) simply because Nintendo has a stockpile of Wii Classic Controller (or Wii CC Pro) units they want to sell off for that purpose first?

[Jmustang1968]

I doubt there is any real motive behind it. It is more that the wii mode is just an emulation of the Wii, and the Wii isnt compatible with the gamepad.

[AppleQueso]

I doubt there is any real motive behind it. It is more that the wii mode is just an emulation of the Wii, and the Wii isnt compatible with the gamepad.

Wii U's processor is basically identical in architecture to the Wii's (and Gamecube's), and the backwards compatibility basically works by downclocking the hardware and Wii U specific functions just get turned off. This is how the Wii worked for Gamecube games as well, and people have even managed to get Gamecube isos to boot in the Wii U's Wii mode (though they aren't playable because, you know, no controller ports).

Nintendo managed to get the gamepad screen to work with Wii games, I'd imagine they could do a workaround to get the controller itself recognized as a Wii classic controller if they wanted.

I don't necessarily mean to suggest that they deliberately held back functionality, more that the VC issue is a bit of a disincentive for them to bother trying to get the pad working for those games. I mean it is extra time and money, and if it could result in potential lost VC sales, etc, it's hard to see why they'd bother.

[Jmustang1968]

Not saying it couldnt be done. Just that they didnt put forth the extra effort or work beyond just creating a wii emulation environment inside the Wii U.

[Flake]

I don't know where the logic for "the Wii U game pad shouldn't work with emulated Wii games because how would the touchscreen be recognized?" Like the controller portion and screen portion are somehow tied together, which they aren't...

But that's actually the entire problem!

A wiimote pairs with the Wii system over bluetooth connection. So when you emulate a Wii on a WiiU, the software (having no clue that it is not running on physical Wii hardware) has no problem finding the tethered controllers and interpreting their input.

A wiiU gamepad pairs with the WiiU system using bluetooth for gameplay and the visuals are compressed and sent over wifi.

Assuming you don't see the problem yet, I'll explain: The emulated Wii does not know what a WiiU gamepad is. The bluetooth signal from it is treated like the bluetooth signal from all the tens of thousands of devices that the Wii purposely does not pair with. A WiiU gamepad =/= a Wiimote.

So in order to have the Wii recognize that bluetooth connection and interpret the WiiU pad as a game controller, the emulated Wii would need to be updated with the drivers for the WiiU pad and a completely different profile would be required for EVERY SINGLE GAME on the Wii. And now you'd need to put some type of flag in when you boot any game to have it go and check that profile, upload it into ram, and somehow not mess up any checksums that were put together never accounting for a controller that did not even exist when the game was made. How you'd do this on any third party software where you did not have access to the decompiled code is beyond me. Now you also need to make adjustments for games that would not work correctly with the WiiU gamepad - that right there would require that the drivers take into account the requirements of every single game ever released on the Wii, and that's a job that would probably need to be done by hand.

Perspective: In 2014, we can't even get games designed for Windows XP to operate perfectly on Windows 7 without someone (usually a modder because companies rarely see the value in sinking money on this, hint, hint) having to go and craft some kind of update for the game. But somehow Nintendo is shitty because they haven't created this reverse-compatibility which would introduce countless game breaking glitches that could never be anticipated without a whole team of people tweaking code for every game ever released on the Wii, both retail and digital?

Yes, it could be done. No, it would not be worth it financially to do that. If it ever happens I'll be amazed because there is no way this is a priority. No one is NOT buying a WiiU for that. Nintendo has offered generation over generation software emulation reverse-compatibility the likes of which Sony and Microsoft never achieved (and mostly abandoned) but people are still complaining because they didn't go back and re-code old games to work with a controller they were never designed to be compatible with? C'mon people.

[Jmustang1968]

^^ Yeah pretty much that lol

[dsheinem]

I don't know where the logic for "the Wii U game pad shouldn't work with emulated Wii games because how would the touchscreen be recognized?" Like the controller portion and screen portion are somehow tied together, which they aren't...

But that's actually the entire problem!

A wiimote pairs with the Wii system over bluetooth connection. So when you emulate a Wii on a WiiU, the software (having no clue that it is not running on physical Wii hardware) has no problem finding the tethered controllers and interpreting their input.

A wiiU gamepad pairs with the WiiU system using bluetooth for gameplay and the visuals are compressed and sent over wifi.

Assuming you don't see the problem yet, I'll explain: The emulated Wii does not know what a WiiU gamepad is. The bluetooth signal from it is treated like the bluetooth signal from all the tens of thousands of devices that the Wii purposely does not pair with. A WiiU gamepad =/= a Wiimote.

So in order to have the Wii recognize that bluetooth connection and interpret the WiiU pad as a game controller, the emulated Wii would need to be updated with the drivers for the WiiU pad and a completely different profile would be required for EVERY SINGLE GAME on the Wii. And now you'd need to put some type of flag in when you boot any game to have it go and check that profile, upload it into ram, and somehow not mess up any checksums that were put together never accounting for a controller that did not even exist when the game was made. How you'd do this on any third party software where you did not have access to the decompiled code is beyond me. Now you also need to make adjustments for games that would not work correctly with the WiiU gamepad - that right there would require that the drivers take into account the requirements of every single game ever released on the Wii, and that's a job that would probably need to be done by hand.

Perspective: In 2014, we can't even get games designed for Windows XP to operate perfectly on Windows 7 without someone (usually a modder because companies rarely see the value in sinking money on this, hint, hint) having to go and craft some kind of update for the game. But somehow Nintendo is shitty because they haven't created this reverse-compatibility which would introduce countless game breaking glitches that could never be anticipated without a whole team of people tweaking code for every game ever released on the Wii, both retail and digital?

Yes, it could be done. No, it would not be worth it financially to do that. If it ever happens I'll be amazed because there is no way this is a priority. No one is NOT buying a WiiU for that. Nintendo has offered generation over generation software emulation reverse-compatibility the likes of which Sony and Microsoft never achieved (and mostly abandoned) but people are still complaining because they didn't go back and re-code old games to work with a controller they were never designed to be compatible with? C'mon people.

I don't follow. If Sony and MS can make oXbox and PS1/2 games work with the 360 and PS2/3 pads, why exactly can't the Wii U do the same? Why can't the WiiU pad get an update to just send out the Wiimote BT signal to the WiiU?

[Flake]

I don't follow. If Sony and MS can make oXbox and PS1/2 games work with the 360 and PS2/3 pads, why exactly can't the Wii U do the same? Why can't the WiiU pad get an update to just send out the Wiimote BT signal to the WiiU?

Okay, let's look at Microsoft's epic failure at reverse compatibility first. The 360 emulates a pseudo oXbox environment and in front of that is a script that maps input from the Xbox 360 controller one-for-one to buttons that mostly correspond to what was on the original controller. If I recall correctly, there were issues with the weird black and white buttons that didn't make the jump to the 360 and the triggers were funky because the amount of give was measured differently between the two controllers - now, let's look at how well the Xbox 360 did at emulating the oXbox. Take a look at this list. Wow. Lots and lots of problems and you had to download updates frequently to fix them. Some games got fixed, others didn't. Each required Microsoft to have a team of developers go in and tweak for the next profile update. They gave up. So let's not use Microsoft as an example of something gone right in this discussion.

As for Sony, you surely noticed when Sony stopped putting emotion chip hardware into their PS3's, right? The original PS3 hypervisor would run PS2 software through the emotion chip while the CPU ran a program to interpret the input from the Dual Shock 3 and map it one-to-one to the Dual Shock 2 profile built into every game. That physical hardware takes a HUGE strain off the machine. Running a VM to interpret only controller input leaves way more resources for the hypervisor. So when Sony discontinued the original PS3, what happened? PS2 game support began to be available on a per-game basis. Sony would upload a "PS2 Classic" to the store and people would play, no problem. Except those classics are all tweaked to run on a custom emulator, similar to how all of Nintendo's virtual console games come packaged with a one-off emulator that the hypervisor runs the game from. So first Sony enjoyed hardware emulation with a controller that maps perfectly one-for-one to the input of the previous generations controller. Then, when they lose that, they begin releasing games that have been optimized specifically for play on newer hardware - and they only do that with big sellers that they (or their third party partners) know will make bank.

As for PSX emulation, again it's one for one mapped to the dualshock 3/PSP/whatever and the system is old enough now that there's not really any appreciable drain on the system resources. Also, those games are optimized before they are released.

So what is Nintendo doing? They are re-releasing software onto the WiiU Virtual Console that has been optimized for use with new hardware...just like Sony. But because there would be no way to get one-for-one mapping for such a huge portion of the Wii's software, they are not bothering to tweak their emulator. Why fragment their resources like that?

[dsheinem]

I'd still take the "works fairly well" approach of the 360/Software BC PS3 if Nintendo would bother. I have a lot of waggle-free Wii games I'd like to be able to play on the gamepad, and even if half of them worked that'd be nice.

I stand by the assertion that not including that as a feature is "fucking stupid" and, like Sony's switch to PS2 Classics on PSN, is likely tied to getting folks to rebuy. It may be good business, but I still wish they'd have figured out a way to support making the gamepad send out a wiimote BT signal. I can't imagine that's very hard or resource intensive.

[Jmustang1968]

It isnt to get some to re-buy, it is that the effort and work involved isnt worth the trouble. You can still play them, just not with a newer unique controller that the system didnt support.