Gaming Wii U Devs Gauging Interest in Media Player

[Hyro-Sama]

Not sure if this has been posted as of yet. One of the devs from Helix Games made a post on reddit asking if people would want a Media Player for Wii U. Could be interesting if this goes anywhere.

I'm one of three developers at Helix Games, and right now we're looking into developing a media player for the Wii U. You would need to transfer the media over LAN, but it should be able to be stored on the Wii U's flash storage.

Nintendo have some funny regulations with non-game software, so nothing's set in stone. However, we'd just like to verify that there's enough interest before we commit resources to this.

Source
Original post on reddit

 

[Foxi4]

...well, at least they're trying to "fix it". :melow:

 

[trumpet-205]

The biggest problem with media player is licensing cost from commercial codecs like H.264, MPEG 2, MP3, etc on top of standard licensing fee from Nintendo.

When you add those up it'll drive up the cost quite a bit.

 

[linuxares]

They should just team up with Plex or something to make a player on the Wii U.

 

[laudern]

Zero interest. But since I've played enough of MK8, I'm back to having zero interest in the wii u again.

 

[Foxi4]

They should just team up with Plex or something to make a player on the Wii U.

Plex is a player based on streaming, and you know how Nintendo feels about anything online. A native player is a better idea, and to be honest, if there's anyone who should work on adding multimedia features to the system, it's Nintendo themselves. It's pretty embarrasing that the hardware is capable of decoding multimedia formats and only uses it for online streaming - that box could do so, so much more than it does.

 

[Gahars]

Sure. At least this way, the Wii U can play something.

Hiyo!

 

[Jan1tor]

I use "Play on" and it allows me to stream any video from my pc to the Wii U browser. Works great.

 

[trumpet-205]

Plex is a player based on streaming, and you know how Nintendo feels about anything online. A native player is a better idea, and to be honest, if there's anyone who should work on adding multimedia features to the system, it's Nintendo themselves. It's pretty embarrasing that the hardware is capable of decoding multimedia formats and only uses it for online streaming - that box could do so, so much more than it does.

Except that'll never happen.

Remember, Nintendo go as far as hiring Panasonic to custom design GC, Wii, and Wii U optical discs to avoid paying licensing fee to DVD Forum and Blu-ray association (whereas Microsoft and Sony are perfectly fine to pay them).

Asking them to add multimedia player to Wii U? I don't see it happening any time soon.

 

[Foxi4]

Except that'll never happen.

Remember, Nintendo go as far as hiring Panasonic to custom design GC, Wii, and Wii U optical discs to avoid paying licensing fee to DVD Forum and Blu-ray association (whereas Microsoft and Sony are perfectly fine to pay them).

Asking them to add multimedia player to Wii U? I don't see it happening any time soon.

They can still add MP3/MP4/AVI etc. support, there's nothing standing in the way of that and they've done it previously for the GBA, the DS etc.

 

[anon3536]

Honestly id rather have nintendo do one so it could be system wide, id love to be able to listen to my music while playing mk8 or pikmin instead of playing through my headset hookup on tv

 

[WiiCube_2013]

If it's not plug-and-play-the-video (of course you'd need to pick the one to watch) then I don't care, not even if they had compatibility with MKV files.

I already have a 360 which does this so I'm not bothered that Wii U lacks a media player.

 

[the_randomizer]

The biggest problem with media player is licensing cost from commercial codecs like H.264, MPEG 2, MP3, etc on top of standard licensing fee from Nintendo.

When you add those up it'll drive up the cost quite a bit.

Or just support OGG, FLAC, MKV and xVid no having to pay royalties.

 

[Fishaman P]

If it had support for 10-bit 1080p24 H.264 in MKVs, I would jump all over it.
HEVC/H.265 and VP9 support would be icing on the cake, though I don't know how feasible they are.

Nevermind the fact I don't have a WiiU.

 

[trumpet-205]

They can still add MP3/MP4/AVI etc. support, there's nothing standing in the way of that and they've done it previously for the GBA, the DS etc.

MP4 and AVI are containers. They can house variety of codecs underneath.

Nintendo are quite conservative about license fee. For example Photo Channel 1.0 supports MP3, on 1.1 they added AAC but dropped MP3 support. Likely because they don't want to pay both at the same time.

Or just support OGG, FLAC, MKV and xVid no having to pay royalties.

Except that none of them are widely used. If you release a player that only supports free codecs/containers, you'll leave a lot of people behind.

If it had support for 10-bit 1080p24 H.264 in MKVs, I would jump all over it.
HEVC/H.265 and VP9 support would be icing on the cake, though I don't know how feasible they are.

Nevermind the fact I don't have a WiiU.

10 bit H.264 is impossible to do for Wii U. So far 10 bit playback on PC is CPU only, and Wii U is known to have a weak CPU, with much of Wii U games rely on GPGPU to offload CPU workload. No GPU in todays market is known to decode 10 bit H.264.

H.265 and VP9 still have a long way to go before it becomes a widely used video codecs. It took about 5 years after initial H.264 standard were published to see major usage. Many early Blu-ray releases use VC-1 or MPEG-2 instead.

 

[Foxi4]

MP4 and AVI are containers. They can house variety of codecs underneath.

I'm well-aware of that, I was merely saying that the "official" standards are supported. I'm not expecting the Wii U to play XVid's, I'm merely stating that your usual media file will play just fine.