Nintendo's official OS

[coolbho3000]

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=16503

Apparently Nintendo is developing an open source operating system called "ES." It's built for x86 processors, strangely, which no Nintendo system uses. Speculation is that it may do for Nintendo systems what XNA has done for the 360. It was first released on August of last year, I've never heard of it, but the above article link is from today so this may be the first time the press has reported on it.

Just took a look at the code, it seems to be commented in ENGLISH (yay)

Download links:
http://nes.sourceforge.jp/

 

[sekhu]

What?! They want more games from Conspiracy Entertainment? Seal of Quality my ARSE!

 

[Awdofgum]

I still don't understand, what is the purpose of this.

 

[sekhu]

for those too lazy to read the article...

The OS is a 'research system,' meaning that there is no specific application for it at present, and is being used for experimentation. However, a story commenter on Gamedev.net theorizes: that it could be the framework for something like Microsoft's XNA, and is certainly expandable to platforms other than PC with a little work.

The commenter, 'ravyne2001' postulates: "Officially, it's simply a "research operating system." Something Nintendo is toying with and which may or may not lead to an eventual release in much the same way that Nintendo has always been in constant hardware development..."

"The working theory" he continues, "seems to be that this OS might be the early stages of something similar to Microsoft's XNA -- basically a sandbox environment which offers hardware acceleration and a userland based on some form of VM execution, ECMAscript in this instance. Although the current build is against X86, it could be ported over to PPC to run on the Wii, for instance."

 

[coolbho3000]

I know it's experimental, why would they bother developing something open source and not for a Nintendo system? I've heard of Nintendo licensing franchises to the PC (Mario teaches typing comes to mind) but I've never heard of anything from Ninty has been open source.

 

[shadow1w2]

Strange news, I hope this is an early sign for something good in the future.

 

[Lukeage]

I know it's experimental, why would they bother developing something open source and not for a Nintendo system? I've heard of Nintendo licensing franchises to the PC (Mario teaches typing comes to mind) but I've never heard of anything from Ninty has been open source.

Because x86 processors are extremely cheap, readily available and there are tonnes of people who already know how to work said hardware. Given I assume it is mostly written in C/C++, porting it to any official Nintendo hardware isn't a huge effort.

 

[Noitora]

That's strange

 

[rhyguy]

nintendo are going to take over the computer scene too

 

[JKR Firefox]

Perhaps it's for the development of WiiWare. Maybe Nintendo will be releasing these kits to budding game designers to make their own games on the service. At a price of course...

It's just speculation on my part but it sounds like it could be possible. They could do the development on PC and then port the game onto the Wii.

- Fitzy

 

[Lumstar]

Maybe they want to have something like the Virtual Console on PC?

 

[Deleted User]

There's already a lot of os features in current development kit for nintendo consoles (for example the home button shows that). The next step for them will be to have a full fledged os to allow wiiware to run non intrusively on the wii.

 

[nephdj]

proberly just a OS for there dev kits, since they pay companys atm for the software on them... was stated the gamecube dev kit had MS tech in it

 

[CockroachMan]

Really weird.. looks like something for developers only, probably something like XNA for the Wii. Didn't expect to see something open source from Nintendo..

Weirdest thing is that Nintendo has not made any official announcement about that..

 

[dodol]

why would they do announcement if nothing is going to be made from the OS ? (at least not yet)

 

[leetdude_007]

This gives me the impression of how much work they are doing in R&D. I like the route their taking with their underlying software. Probably something for the developers out there.

 

[Deleted User]

proberly just a OS for there dev kits, since they pay companys atm for the software on them... was stated the gamecube dev kit had MS tech in it

No, only company working with nintendo on dev kits are Metrowerks and Intelligent systems. The latter being a subpart of nintendo. Metrowerks has worked inhands with MS but it's a separated company, well knowned in the ppc compiler world.

 

[Banger]

Seems interesting hope it works out the way they want... But what that is i dunno.

 

[moshii]

Given I assume it is mostly written in C/C++, porting it to any official Nintendo hardware isn't a huge effort.

C/C++ (You shouldn't write OS code in C++, that'd be retarded...) can be as un-portable as assembly code. Issues like processor endian come to mind. Aside from that Nintendo hardware is very "console", and the processor etc don't usually include "OS" supportive features like TLB, MMU etc and so forth. This is why Linux DS is a port of the crippled uClinux.

 

[coolbho3000]

This can't be just for professional developers, it is open source after all.