A couple weeks back, I got my hands on a Nintendo Wii (from Sears.com no less). I've played it to death and now I'm getting pretty bored with it... and yeah, I beat Legend of Zelda. So now what?
I've been looking around at the whole premise of designing games in Flash specifically for the Wii. This seems to be a hot topic since there are already some posts on the subject, as well as people talking about it at upcoming Flash conventions. By "people," I'm apparently only talking about one person when it comes to conferences... never the less... I think it's awesome that a Nintendo product is finally natively supporting independent game developers (even if it's unintentional), and people are jumping on this.
Kinda.
So when we say "Nintendo Wii Supports Flash 7" we're really talking about Opera supporting Flash 7. The beta trial version of Opera is available on the Nintendo shopping channel. It looks like this. What's interesting about Opera running Flash 7 is that I'd think the Flash Player would be able to run on the Nintendo Wii's core OS without help from Opera, but apparently it cant... At least not the current Flash Player 9. Because of this, Opera probably had to license Flash Player from Adobe. Flash Player 7 was more than likely the only version, at the time, that they Adobe would license-out. Of course this is all speculation.
The big problem with Flash on the Wii is that the version of Flash 7 that is running in Opera is apparently pretty stripped down and doesn't work with the Wii-Remote's directional pad. People like Aral Balkan and Mario Klingemann have been messing around with a few work-arounds.
At this point, is a work-around worth it? Will being able to use the directional pad or other buttons be worth the time if you have to create a hack (most have latency issues as well)? With sites like WiiCade and WiiPlayable, people are already trying to create portals for Wii/Flash games. Therefore, there must be a need for better Flash support.
All in all, I'm unimpressed with Flash on the Nintendo Wii, though I believe it is a good place to start for independent developers. Designing a Flash game to run in Opera with a couple hacks to try to get some more button support seems like a horrible solution to something that could potentially extend the life of the Nintendo Wii. An ideal solution, in my opinion, is for Nintendo to create a "shared-gaming" channel where people can play independent Flash games full screen with full controller support. Of course this would mean that you'd have to go through Nintendo with any and all uploads/changes/configurations of your Wii Flash game, but I think it'd be a small price to pay for exposure while offering free/independent gaming to Wii customers.
2 Responses to “Flash + Wii?”
By Aral Balkan on Feb 28, 2007 | Reply
Hi Marc,
Great post! I share your concerns.
Personally, I hope that Adobe starts talking right away with Opera and/or Nintendo so that they can get Flash Player 9 support implemented. Not having it on there is a very big missed opportunity at broadening the horizons of the Flash Platform onto devices (an area in which, despite Adobe’s various attempts, it is not ubiquitous in.)
By marc on Mar 1, 2007 | Reply
Aral,
I agree. I’m surprised Nintendo hasn’t contacted Adobe directly. Especially considering that the 360 has the XNA GameStudio Express that supports Flash.
When I wrote this, my main frustration was the fact that the past two Nintendo systems have been duds. Nintendo has been too cautious as to not allow independent developers access to their system. This seems to be due to copyright and piracy concerns. In the meantime, overall support and interest in their systems suffer.
If Nintendo could get on board with Adobe (or vise versa), with full controller functionality, I think the independent gaming community could hold peoples interest in the Wii while the corporate gaming companies are between anticipated releases.
Have you checked out the Flash API on Wiicade? I haven’t had a chance to look at it in detail, but was wondering if they were using techniques either you or Mario have tampered with.