Homebrew Discussion Why isn't anyone working on bringing Wii games to the Switch?

[NathanBrown]

Before I sound entitled,
The NVIDIA shield in China has the same chipset as the Switch, yet Nintendo has built an emulator that can play Wii games and upscale it to 1080p. It exists out there, so why isn't anyone working on bringing that emulation to the Switch?

 

[Hayato213]

Probably not enough interest for developers.

 

[yusuo]

Not enough interest is my guess, wii is cheap enough and easy enough to mod

 

[Clydefrosch]

because nintendo knows a lot more about their systems so they can make a much better emulator.
also, from what i remember, weren't those games modded in some capacity so they'd run on the shield? it wasn't as easy as just putting an iso on the shield

 

[linuxares]

Because they aren't 100% the same system. So it's not a carbon copy.

 

[nicoboss]

Incase somebody is interested how they packed Wii games (in this case Super Mario Galaxy) for the Chinese NVidia shield:

 

[xbmcuser]

I dont think this is an emulator. I think these have been recompiled to nvidia shield binaries. Nintendo does have the source code. I would imagine they will bring wii games out on the Switch on there store.
However i think it will be on Switch 2 (or Pro)

 

[Techjunky90]

To the people that think it isn't an emulator, it is. One of the dolphin developers were hired to help develop the emulator. In theory you could possibly sideload the apk on android but I think there is drm that needs to be bypassed.

 

[xbmcuser]

To the people that think it isn't an emulator, it is. One of the dolphin developers were hired to help develop the emulator. In theory you could possibly sideload the apk on android but I think there is drm that needs to be bypassed.

Still might not be an emulator, the developer might have just coded various low level interfaces where porting the code from wii to shield may have been too hard. We may never know, time for some developers to crack this thing open.

 

[IncredulousP]

It exists out there, so why isn't anyone working on bringing that emulation to the Switch?

I dunno, why aren't you?

 

[SeongGino]

To the people that think it isn't an emulator, it is. One of the dolphin developers were hired to help develop the emulator.

*Citation needed

 

[willy101]

I was actually thinking about this today. Maybe we should create a bounty to incentivize?

 

[Teletron1]

I thought Nvidia developed a whole a.i program that studied the texture packs and recompiled them in HD while Nintendo ported the game code to run on the hardware

And this was only done to a handful of games right haven't really heard much about this is a while

 

[Nasedase]

someone learn chinese, I don't have the time.

 

[Basketto]

Wii emulation already exists on the switch, just not on horizon. Even then gamecube would come first most likely and would probably run worse than the dual boot alternatives.

 

[Jhynjhiruu]

Still might not be an emulator, the developer might have just coded various low level interfaces where porting the code from wii to shield may have been too hard. We may never know, time for some developers to crack this thing open.

It's emulation.

 

[willy101]

It's emulation.

It’s been confirmed that it’s an emulator

 

[Deleted User]

i would love the idea of wii/gamecube games on horizon, but i feel that it's going to be a while alway from when it'll be developed and devs have motivation towards the idea. besides, ubuntu and android do a good job at emulating for now

 

[The Real Jdbye]

Because they aren't 100% the same system. So it's not a carbon copy.

True. They are made to run on Android which is completely different from HOS.
But maybe there's a chance of getting them running on Switchroot Android? Although overclocking would probably be required. It's based on Shield TV source, and with the shieldifier addon even spoofs a shield TV, so it should be possible.

It’s been confirmed that it’s an emulator

That's what I heard too.

Before I sound entitled,
The NVIDIA shield in China has the same chipset as the Switch, yet Nintendo has built an emulator that can play Wii games and upscale it to 1080p. It exists out there, so why isn't anyone working on bringing that emulation to the Switch?

Dolphin already runs pretty well on Switch with Vulkan.
Not sure if it works best in Lakka or in Android. They are based on the same kernel though so there shouldn't be huge differences I guess.

 

[linuxares]

True. They are made to run on Android which is completely different from HOS.
But maybe there's a chance of getting them running on Switchroot Android? Although overclocking would probably be required. It's based on Shield TV source, and with the shieldifier addon even spoofs a shield TV, so it should be possible.

That's what I heard too.

Dolphin already runs pretty well on Switch with Vulkan.
Not sure if it works best in Lakka or in Android. They are based on the same kernel though so there shouldn't be huge differences I guess.

Hmm wouldn't it be possible to get Dolphin working on the android?