Nintendo planning to offer WiiWare demos

There are WiiWare games without the word family?? But seriously, never bought anything off that service unless it had a "video game" title like Contra, or Mario, or Mega Man. The service churns out about 2 good games a year...

Absolutely agree on PSN as well. It really is kind of lame that I can't try out most PSN games before I decide to buy them.

While more could never hurt, I think there's a lot of demos on PSN. In fact most of my "games" are demos, and the ones I do own I tried in demo form for the most part first. I just wish they wouldn't wait a couple weeks before releasing them.

you can always demo emulators and all that good stuff, and then argue that it's for 'demo purposes'

you just want to beat the game on an emulator to see if its worth buying on VC

World of Goo, NyxQuest, Megaman 9, Contra Rebirth, Bit. Trip, Bomberman Blast, The Art Style games and more
you proved the impression I've had from you from reading a few of your comments; you will go on anything and badmouth it
you are a sad person
just don't get a Wii if you don't see anything positive on anything

Thankfully for me I'm not getting a Wii for Wiiware. None of those games impress me at all, and I couldn't stand world of goo on PC (but indie games are not for me anyway).

I'll have plenty to play when I get a Wii (like 17 games right away) but none of them will be from Wiiware.

I don't like world of goo either but still I appreciate it as a good game
It has great graphics and sound but it's not my type of game

I think the service has actually done pretty well for itself in terms of getting games that are unique and worthwhile. A helluva lot of shovelware too, of course, but the service has attracted some gems that you just can't get anywhere else, as well as normal (but still cool) downloadable fare like Bomberman.

My only qualm with WiiWare is that Nintendo themselves really don't support it enough. Excitebike World Rally is a step in the right direction, though.

@Mr Khan
I don't know if i see it from the right direction but I think Nintendo doesn't make a lot of games for WiiWare because they want to keep WiiWare for the smaller developers
If they release awesome Nintendo games every other month, the younger and smaller developers are not gonna have a chance to compete against Nintendo's games

Tales of Monkey Island is great if you like adventure games (and if you didn't already get it on PC; the PC version's better, but I don't have a gaming PC so whatever).

yes, I realise I just use the phrase 'if you like' about tmac, who's famous for not liking anything, but.

There are some great puzzle games - I'd recommend Groovin' Blocks because the music is great, and Lit because the concept is cool, as well as Cubello because it's plain awesome. Maybe you don't like puzzle games either... I used not to be a puzzle-game person but when you can get them for $5-$10, I'm there.

Basically WiiWare is not really a service that reliably delivers top quality compelling games that could've sold for full price - more of a service that *occasionally* delivers something that's a pretty cool way to waste a few hours at a reasonable price. It's partly interesting because of the 'oh hey something cool' surprise you (occasionally) get that makes Mondays better.

As for the bit about advertising in the bottom of the post - so true. Sure, advertising costs money - so here's a solution for Nintendo. Put a different selection of these demos (three or four), plus promos for Nintendo Channel and WiiWare in general (that tell you how to use it), into every Nintendo disc-based game. These games sell millions and sticking in a little 'Bonus' option into the main menu wouldn't be too hard, now would it?

Shorter tmac: If I'm not interested in something, it sucks.

"My only qualm with WiiWare is that Nintendo themselves really don't support it enough."

Sad but true. I was expecting WiiWare to end up getting all the neat little games like the DS does...or more like the SNES 2.
But I have largely been over all let down from week-to-week.

If Nintendo was smart (says I!), they'd make DKC4, a new 2D Kid Icarus, a new 2D Zelda (or Link's Awakening remake!), Adventures in Snowland and finally release SNES Star Fox 2.
Also! A new Mystery of Murasame Castle!

Alas...I have been sorely disappointed with the lack of modern retro-style gaming goodness.

It's hard to type emails and send memos under a cascade of paper money though. It takes time to purchase Warehouses to store all that money from Wii and DS you know.

You could always, uh, read reviews? You got aggregate sites like Metacritic, and then user reviews from sites like GameFAQs. Unless NOONE has played a game, there's no way you can go into download-only game without knowing SOMETHING about it.

Oh you're absolutely right, I could read a review but that doesn't guarantee me that I'll like a game like actually playing the game for myself. Call me spoiled but after being a 360 user for so long i do expect to be able to try a game before I even decide to put in money.

Lighten up. Nintendo, MS, and Sony all offer a wide variety of great games and lots of crap to choose from.

Really, I'm just reading the list of the games I have (I have my Wii turned on... I was watching the Weekly Show at the Nintendo Channel), and I was surprised by how much money I have spent on the WiiWare service, and non of my games are bad. Not a single one (well, maybe Gyrostarr).

Well, different tastes, right? Some of them aren't that hot, but there's lots of good ones on there, that's for sure.

Also, how do you manage all of that content? Is your Wii full or what?

Well... the Wii storage problem was fixed a long time ago... firmware version 4.0 introduced the SD Card Channel (you can use SDHC cards up to 32GB of storage... I have an 8GB card and I still have plenty of space).

http://www.joystiq.com/2009/03/25/walkthrough-using-wii-system-menu-4-0s-sd-card-channel/

Dude, chill out. I can't speak for everyone here, but most of us (including myself) own or have owned a Wii. In fact, it's kinda hard to find gamers who haven't.

But hey, you'll blindly defend everything they do as normal and refuse to see how lousy of a service it really is compared to others. I'm sorry, but you really can't compare WiiWare to Live, or even PSN for that matter. I'm not saying there aren't good games there.. there are a few that I bought and liked.. but I'd hardly call WiiWare a "selling feature" for the Wii.

All in all, chill out, buy some other systems, and enjoy games for them too. You might find out you're relentlessly defending the company who's not really putting out the best goods be it online or offline.

PS:

Don't try to counter my statement with a List ware either. I can make a pretty good list of great titles for the Virtual Boy and N Gage, but it doesn't mean I'd recommend buying them.

Orion... when did I say that PSN or Live Arcade didn't have good games?

I have a PS3 (heck, I even play online with tmac) and I had a 360 (in fact, I own tons of 360 games and I still buy games for the system, but I won't buy other system until the console is more reliable).

Bad game: Alien Crush Returns. Sorry, it's crap. Probably the worst WiiWare game I tried (note - there are very many worse WiiWare games, but I didn't buy those).

I think the best computer pinball game I ever played was Epic Pinball. And only the shareware table of that one was any good! Damn. (Yeah, yeah, different opinions, some people like Alien Crush even though it's self-evidently shite, etc.)

I forgot about You, Me and the Cube. Hmmm. Maybe I should pick that up.

"Don't try to counter my statement with a List ware either. I can make a pretty good list of great titles for the Virtual Boy and N Gage, but it doesn't mean I'd recommend buying them."

There's a problem with that statement:
1. You have to buy those in order to play the games... only a few rare people still own a VB or NG, so recommending those few games to the ones who don't have either of those wouldn't be the same as recommending WiiWare games to those who already own a Wii.

2. Virtual Boy, no matter how good the games were (I enjoyed some) could never replace the backbreaking positions you had to get into to play them (hunching forward or downwards for hours) + the damage that thing did to your eyes once you went back into normal lighting. So that's still not a fair comparison.

3. People look down on WiiWare too much, including Wii owners. There are pretty decent games in there other than the list given. However, those games weren't exactly top quality, but they added something to the system that no other systems offered.

We're not saying WiiWare's the best, but we're saying that it's not such a crapfest as everyone makes it out to be. They say it fails in comparison to XBLA or PSN, but really I've seen as much crapfest coming from those two as well. At least some developers are trying in WiiWare, and you gotta' give them that credit instead of just bashing on it just because "Nintendo let you down (whine whine)".

Seeing Fernando put up a list of WiiWare games brought back good memories of Joystiq circa '06. Ah, those were the good days.

The "problem" with demos (from the developer's standpoint) is that they can also cut into sales (of subpar products). For every game that someone buys because he or she enjoyed a demo immensely, there are probably five games that the person won't pick up specifically because he or she either thought the demo sucked, or got his or her fill of the game based on the demo alone.

In that sense, the consumer wins doubly because he or she can avoid steaming piles of garbage, while forcing developers to step up their games by generating sales based on developing quality products instead of tricking the consumer with pretty box art.

As for myself, I like demos because I no longer have time to play games for more than a couple of minutes at a time anyway, so they allow me to experience new games without having to shell out any money for a product that I will, in all likelihood, not have an opportunity to use anyway. (I'm still only partially through Twilight Princess, Metroid Prime 3 and Super Mario Galaxy after so many years of Wii ownership. So sad.)

Only because you signed up for their newsletters.

It's your connection.

i still kind of care about vc. i occasionally check to see of there's anything good in the new releases because i already bought all the games currently on there that i want

It's not your connection - Wii menus are very slow.

Agree - if demos take as long to load as the full games (or even any proportion of that), don't think I'll bother. The DS demos are cool, but I imagine they're rather smaller.

Could be my connection too, it's not very fast.

If you have a hard time downloading Wii Shop Channel games, then it's your connection. I just downloaded Zombies ate my Neighbors a few days ago and Mario & Luigi didn't even get to swim through the screen before the download completed.(and that's on a crappy few year old router)

Watch they only do this in Japan, and see that they don't get many people using the demos and say, "Ah fark it, bad idea."

With Nintendo it never makes sense.

And that's why I love them.

why halfway through the life-circle?
I'm pretty confident the Wii's successor is gonna have a service for downloadable games that will also feature the WiiWare libary