How big is too big for a homebrew game on the wii?

I started out aiming for the 2 mb limit but now I've seem to have out grown it and I am looking at roughly 8-10mb unzipped. Assets including 3d models, png textures and mp3 music files take up most of it.

I don't think size is an issue for most people. I reckon most people have at minimum a 512MB SD card, so one homebrew taking up 10MB still allows around 50 different homebrew apps on one SD card. I doubt many people will care.

I agree. In my opinion 30 or 40 Mb is not so much.

seems like 16mb it is. according this; [www.gamasutra.com]

I dont think it will worry people so much. The cost of a 4Gb SD card is less than 10$ in same shops and 10 Mb more or less in near to nothing.

Christ, I had no idea WiiWare was that unforgiving to the developer from reading that article Owen linked.
So a wiiware games need to hit a unit quota which depends on the games size within a time limit or no money!

A 6Mb game is given a smaller quota scale in units than a 40Mb game, so more 40Mb games must be sold before any money is handed over.
Developers reach their unit quota sooner with 6Mb – but would rather use the 40MB size

That’s just crazy 6Mb and 40Mb should both have the same unit quota - but that's wiiware for you!

@wilco2009 I'm not worried, in fact I am close to 10mb already which is mostly mp3s and pngs. But I'm considering low bandwidth people.

@titmouse I don't really see the logic in it but i can only assume that it has something to do with server space, quotas, user expectancy, 512mb, quality control and similar "evil corporation" tactics that exist only to keep the money in their own hands.

Just money - but that not a problem for us homebrew folk.

Still is nice to reduce download size wherever possible, obviously using things like oggs & jpgs when possible are going to help, but by the nature of homwbrew you get what you get.

I tent to find the smaller wiibrew downloads are better quality as more often than not care is taken for the whole product including size, but this is just a rule of thumb and should not be taken to heart.

Those thresholds aren't very high at all. It's obvious why they're in place - to dissuade companies from pumping out shovelware games (unfortunately they don't seem to work). But really, if a wiiware title (priced between $5-$15) can't manage to sell over 6000 units when the wii userbase is huge (tens of millions), it's a dismal failure that never should have been launched.

Question is - what is the total download per month via wii ware?
How big is that pie? (I imagine it’s still holding on through luck more than judgment)

Someone with an approved secure office, staff, and money in the bank wanted to become a wii ware developer would Nintendo let them look at the stats to see if it was worth their while - possibly not.

I don't think its about reducing shovelware I think they wanted to just limit the amount of payments they had to make out to small companies. Wiiware is definately a hidden feature of the wii console. It is a old rule there had in place to reduce the chance of a user running out of space on the wii by limiting the average size of the game. I'm sure they did the math and the statistics but never had a backup plan in case there 40mb plan failed. They should have had a wiiware channel, probably several different channels for different genres. The article link explains most of it but the fact that there are no big nintendo produced games on wiiware is proof enough that it was a after though put in to please people who complained about online only publishing.

Uh, no nintendo produced games? What do you call the VC collections? They're not going to produce any decent "small" standalone titles, they use up that sort of stuff for mini-games in things like mario party or wii sports.
They wouldn't care about space. They've already solved that problem by allowing games to be stored/played from SD cards.
Think about this: that guy in the gamasutra article was saying their games struggled to even reach 6000 downloads, and they lost money on them because nintendo weren't paying out - so how much did those games cost to make in the first place? If they cost more than $6k, then they wouldn't have made a profit even if they were receiving $1 for every copy sold - that's their own fault for having a shitty game. If the game cost less than $6k, they were obviously only trying to make a cheap buck ($6k is a decent monthly wage for one full-time programmer, or meagre monthly wage for two full-time programmers). In either case, they can't blame Nintendo for their losses. The wii is not an iphone - its main purpose is for games, rather than it being an auxiliary function. Produce quality or GTFO.

@tueidj even if you take 1 day to make a game - even a shitty game you still deserve income and if you read the article carefully those guys are not just making one game, they often have multiple games in production at the same time while they are waiting for money to pay the bills. Because there are NO mario, zelda or metroid WIIWARE games therefore no "regular nintendo customer" is drawn to the wiiware shop in order to discover new games third party games. VC collections don't count, mini games on retail disks don't count. The bit-trip games have 3 demos in the Wiiware shop for about 2 months now! can you explain why that is? why aren't there more demos? You probably have to sell 12,000 copies before you can get a demo.

The PSN and Xbox arcade are full of shitty games but they still get to sell because its just a better stopping expirence. Saying that it is because their game is shitty that they don't deserve to get the money they have earned is ignorant. I've had my wii since year 1 and the only game I've bought is Bit-Trip runner because most of the game on wiiware are just don't have any depth IMHO and the majority of the so called quality games are multiplatform titles you can get on other systems - so where does that leave the small company? I would not say that its because all the games are shitty. Small companies have to work hard before they can make big games and buy big cars.

I have no idea how Shin'en does it because their games [www.youtube.com] have some of the highest production values I've seen in a none nintendo game. They must either be getting some serious help from nintendo or be sitting on a ton a cash to hold them over until thier cheques come in the mail. I think they are writing their games in assembly, lol.

I'm not saying they don't deserve any money their shitty game earns, I'm saying their shitty game doesn't earn any money and they're wrongly blaming nintendo for that.

You have to remember that Nintendo have costs too. They can't afford to host a game if it's not going to sell well and be profitable.

Quote
SifJar
You have to remember that Nintendo have costs too. They can't afford to host a game if it's not going to sell well and be profitable.

Its nintendos fault for making a shitty service that nobody cares about. Oh of the 3 online stores the wiiware store is the the worst by far, people complain about it all the time.

@sifjar you are telling me that a billion dollar company like nintendo cannot afford to keep 500 games at 40mb max per game on a server for 5 years? Seriously? Nintendo makes the rules, they know why they set them that way.

Oh and this is typical of what happens; [devbertil.blogspot.com] I need to get a new phone but I hate java :( haaattteeeee!

That's why all the sensible people write android apps in C using the NDK.

Owen why do you hate Java?

As for Javascript, now that I can understand you hating - it's pure undiluted evil.

(thanks for the link - keep em coming)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/01/2011 08:07PM by Titmouse.

It more a case of being annoyed by it.

I'm fresh out of links to wii devs, nobody is blogging in the summer, follow me on [newogame.posterous.com] or [twitter.com] in the fall.

Here are 2 other games by a popular wiiware developer [www.youtube.com] and [www.youtube.com] I would not say there are shitty games - I would not buy them but they have a market - they deserve thier money as quickly as possible so they can make more games. I do not know why they insist on having MOTION ONLY CONTROLS!. I think it must be a rule or something. I can bet money on it!