Why Doesn't Wii Have Downloadable Demos?

You know they do make SD cards......by the way Wii brand SD cards are far overpriced. Can you use regular SD cards with the Wii.ramseyT

[QUOTE="ramseyT"]You know they do make SD cards......by the way Wii brand SD cards are far overpriced. Can you use regular SD cards with the Wii.soulfood4

What does the DS do for demos?

You know they do make SD cards......by the way Wii brand SD cards are far overpriced. Can you use regular SD cards with the Wii.ramseyT

Yup, you can.

Now the trouble though is that, at least with the current firmware, you can't run anything off of SD cards. Also, the popularity of such a feature would be dependant on how many people already have (or are willing to purchase) SD cards of reasonable capacity.

[QUOTE="soulfood4"][QUOTE="ramseyT"]You know they do make SD cards......by the way Wii brand SD cards are far overpriced. Can you use regular SD cards with the Wii.Wiifanboy_4life

What does the DS do for demos?

The DS stores demos in its 4MB of RAM. This method is practical for that system, since portable games tend to be very small by their nature. It would be more difficult to implement on the Wii.

N doesn't want to have them, these are old games.

I was at gamestop today and they were selling 2 gig SD cards for 99 bucks....ramseyT

Okay, well that is insane. You can easily get a 2GB card for under 30USD.

[QUOTE="ramseyT"]You know they do make SD cards......by the way Wii brand SD cards are far overpriced. Can you use regular SD cards with the Wii.ThePlothole

Yup, you can.

Now the trouble though is that, at least with the current firmware, you can't run anything off of SD cards. Also, the popularity of such a feature would be dependant on how many people already have (or are willing to purchase) SD cards of reasonable capacity.

How do you get demos on the ds.GLhardcore24

I never understood why they can't have the demos online like online computer games, except they could use a closed online network only accessable by the Wii so hackers can't get in and screw with them. I mean, they manged to do it with the shop channel, voting channel, and weather and news channels, why not just make a channel for demos that takes you online like those channels do? I think it could work.nintendo-boy

[QUOTE="ThePlothole"]

[QUOTE="ramseyT"]You know they do make SD cards......by the way Wii brand SD cards are far overpriced. Can you use regular SD cards with the Wii.TacticalElefant

Yup, you can.

Now the trouble though is that, at least with the current firmware, you can't run anything off of SD cards. Also, the popularity of such a feature would be dependant on how many people already have (or are willing to purchase) SD cards of reasonable capacity.

The transfer rate really depends on the brand and model of card. However generally SD cards are fast enough to stream video, audio, and other misc data.

Data transfer rate would probably be too slow for streaming data off of.TacticalElefant

Flash memory is faster than a HDD. Trust me, demos would run off of an sd card.

[QUOTE="TacticalElefant"]
Data transfer rate would probably be too slow for streaming data off of.catfishmoon23

Flash memory is faster than a HDD. Trust me, demos would run off of an sd card.

[QUOTE="catfishmoon23"][QUOTE="TacticalElefant"]
Data transfer rate would probably be too slow for streaming data off of.TacticalElefant

Flash memory is faster than a HDD. Trust me, demos would run off of an sd card.

Hefty amount? I saw a 2 gig one for 20 bucks.

[QUOTE="nintendo-boy"]I never understood why they can't have the demos online like online computer games, except they could use a closed online network only accessable by the Wii so hackers can't get in and screw with them. I mean, they manged to do it with the shop channel, voting channel, and weather and news channels, why not just make a channel for demos that takes you online like those channels do? I think it could work.toolazyk

Wouldn't work, no way. Shop channel, voting channel etc already have the programs installed on the Wii system, all the Wii does is retrieve data from the internet. The programs dont actually run from their server.

Internet transfer rates are way too slow to run demos remotely, you would have like 1 frame every 10secs lol

They don't want to demos for the following reason.

1. A badly designed or badly programmed, buggy demo for instance the first Painkiller demos often give an incredibly bad view of the game killing sales.

2. The demo is much better or reflects the game so well that word spreads with the resulting game sales are incredibly diminished.

3. More time is spent on the demo by the designers then the actual game. See number 1.

4. Demos can cause tech issues for the console. Bad tech issues.

5. Demos cost a lot of resources and to put them on the network costs money.

The thing you people don't understand is that demos are in fact advertising and hence are part of the advertising budget. Nintendo has far more effective advertising then a demo channel. A demo channel would kill wii vc sales. 5 bucks is an impulse purchase and most people find that well if the game stank it was only five bucks. A demo could cut those impulse purchases down.

There are a lot of xbox 360 users who only play the game demos and never buy the actual game they spent hundreds of hours playing a demo on.