Imagine I add the ability to move the banners on the Channel Layout. I can add the option, it will require a file which store the Titles order.
The current system let you sort games by Names/favorite level/number of player/etc.
I suppose that to prevent the automatic re-sort it should be a new option "User" in the sort list.
So, if it's a new sorting method, it will be available on all Layout (List/wall/carousel/channel).
How would you sort the games on the non-channel layout? I guess it shouldn't be limited to Channel layout as it's available everywhere.
So, let's Imagine I will also add the ability to move the titles on these layouts (grab/move, or move up/down one by one?).
Some layers will have more problem than others to move the pages while holding the game. But, ok, let's imagine that it's done and easy to move
What will happen of the empty slots?
You know, you don't need to put a Title in every adjacent locations, you can have a lot of empty slots between each titles on the channel layout.
These empty slot would need to be reflected on all layouts too, or else it's too un-user friendly to select the position to move these Titles on other layouts. We can ignore them completely, but it's not the solution (because of the problem I'll explain next).
It would become too unfriendly for something which should be used by people from all ages.
We already have users complaining about the current difficulty of the loader.
So, we limit the reorder feature to the Channel Layout only.
If it's only for Channel layout:
When you switch to List/wall/carousel layout, would the order carried away? or reseted? as it's not possible to order them in these layout, switching back and forth is not the easier solution to move a game.
But, let's keep the solution that the user need to switch the layout to move games.
If you have 500+ games (yes, some users have that many games!), while grabbing a channel how many screen would you have to switch until you find an empty place? we are not talking about 48 slots like the System menu, but infinite pages.
You can imagine yourself placing the channels where you want manually? that's a new game by itself!
Let's (again) imagine that you don't have hundreds of games, but only 40 titles (easily reached with channel, gamecube, wii)
You prepare your Wii Title disposition and are happy with it.
Now, you want to search for "Mario". Will it hide the other channels without moving the Mario games? (please, scroll all pages yourself to find your games!), or better way is to temporarily regroup the channels without leaving spaces.
It will prevent you from moving a channel on a hidden Title location, but you can't use the search feature to reorder your games easily.
Search feature is not the only problem:
The loader let you Display/Hide games permanently (not on temporary search string) based on:
- Parental Control
- Origin (Wii, GameCube, Channel, EmuNAND)
- Category
- Favorite switch
With the Origin System, you can decide to display only Wii Games.
You start sorting them like you want.
Then you decide to display only GameCube Games, and again you sort them like you want.
What would happen if you decide to display both Wii and Gamecube games at the same time?
How will the loader decide the channel location when a game will share the same location information for two different Title?
We move one of the conflicted Titles (There can be a lot on the same spot), on the first free slot? It would be a catastrophe as your ordering is now all broken! it's in random order, even worse than a simple "sort alphabetically" or "sort by rank" etc.
The only way to not mess it would be to keep an "Order file" for each possible combination of these 7 switches, which means 5040 different "memorized" states. (without counting all the possible state that the User's Category allows you to create).
So, for each of these 5040 combinations of display settings, you will have to order your 40 games. (I'm already pretty sure you won't do more than 10 times before getting bored!)
Now, imagine people with 500+games.
Do you think they would like to spend their time reordering their game on each possibilities? Not even twice!
Conclusion:
The Rearranging sound very interesting feature that users would like, but it's:
- too much work and time spent for the developer
- Even much harder for the user for a feature which will not be used due to the usability complexity.
And I'm pretty sure I missed few other reason which make it harder to implement, like adding a new game, etc.
