Hardware Android rumoured to be integrated

[kaputnik]

What if it was a chip dedicated to running android os? it can be hacked, but the wiiu is locked still. or like dsi-3ds modes on 3ds.

Backwards compatibility is one thing, they still make money selling games for older systems, but there's no sense in adding expensive extra hardware for ancillary functionality that doesn't generate any sales. Knowing Nintendo and their obsession of keeping hardware costs down, I just can't believe that will ever happen.

 

[FAST6191]

Granted I do not tend to follow tablets and other such things that well but I have seen a fair few android devices use vendor specific (unofficial is perhaps the wrong word but as long as something like cydia or equivalent does not immediately pop into your head it holds) store fronts. Equally it would probably be better in the long run- console refresh cycle being somewhat longer (even if the wii u does end up being a short stopgap) than mobile phones (looking mainly at contracts) means the wii u risks being out of date/unable to run the latest and greatest after a while.

Nintendo introducing competition on their own platform... possibly but it might also be a hook- All your favourite android stuff as well as your favourite Nintendo stuff. One has to also consider the difficulty of setting up a new platform like this (see sony floundering with the vita equivalent and moreover their deal with steam on the PS3), I agree historically they have not really done much with third parties (deal with opera and maybe the likes of netflix, facebook and the others aside although more on that in a moment) but business wise Nintendo have not been doing that well (again see the stock price year on year- Stock:Nintendo (NTDOY) in addition to the financial reports we have seen) and I can not see too many business analyst/advisor types faulting the principle of the deal alone (specifics certainly but that is just everyday business) and many of those are looking at the mobile side of things as something worth noting in general and for existing platforms. Equally you are going to need to have some very good arguments if you are going to try telling us that a percentage enough to be truly significant that would not have known of android and the ultimate conversion rate away from Nintendo of those (or maybe in general) is enough to tank the idea. It possibly cuts the other way as well- nintendo VC content on android marketplace (sega seem to be doing OK on android and many other classics are appearing there)- emulators are doing fairly well there and it would be free money for Nintendo.

How it would run- I imagine they would stick an ARM processor in there somewhere (for backwards compatibility with the wii if nothing else (wii IOS modules that run on the ARM coprocessor do have a fair bit of stuff to do and act as a library of sorts for developers to use)) not to mention it would be a nice hypervisor. Nintendo have some experience/relations with ARM (GBA through 3ds as well as wii) and stuff like the raspberry pi able to stick a decent ARM in there for not a lot of money chip wise. Also if they do have android based something they might be able to offload their web browser and other such functions to it which would be better for them*- can we all agree that the internet channels and equivalents have not been good compared first to a somewhat older PC stuff and second to the likes of android, maybe IOS (especially even/if you take their gimping alt web browsers into account) and other embedded platforms (granted I am told it was probably android underneath but some of the smart TV stuff is not bad once you get past the interface)?
*going further and looking at MS doing things with skype and the 360 the chances for android or google driven communications platforms is probably a very interesting prospect to both companies (Nintendo as their online offerings on the matter have not been very strong and google as they do not really have one- google talk, wave and everything else having thus far failed to achieve a great foothold in IM with even AOL, yahoo and arguably even bbm being more relevant than anything google has- their XMPP/jabber offering being about the best one they have and that is nice with a lot of nice features for the hacker/developer set but very limited in general appeal).

I should probably also say I see nothing special about making your own unique platform and have not done for a while (I was not surprised but could have seen a merge happen this time around and indeed I am of the opinion the PS3 vs 360 pretty much comes down which controller you like better and which online platform your friends are on if you care about that neither of which are a technical thing and aside from motion control offerings (for obvious reasons) I do not think any exclusives are either).

 

[Guild McCommunist]

While I do agree that it's not very feasible, I don't think security concerns is the reason. Sony basically did the same thing with OtherOS on the PS3, so open source stuff on consoles is nothing new. Sure, that feature got removed in the end, and there's no doubt their official reasons for removing it was corporate bullshit, but the fortress still held for quite some time. If they do it right, it should be very possible from a security standpoint to run Android under some kind of hypervisor, without restricting Android itself all too much.

Their official reason for removing it was security concerns since there was an exploit using it. I don't think Nintendo would make a similar mistake.

 

[kaputnik]

Their official reason for removing it was security concerns since there was an exploit using it. I don't think Nintendo would make a similar mistake.

No doubt that was the real reason, but did they actually admit to that? I was under the impression they wanted us to believe the reason was that the maintaining costs couldn't be justified when put in relation to the small number of PS3 owners that actually used the feature.

 

[snikerz]

Vigilante the Wii was built with a somewhat known version of unix

Eh, what? Complete BS.

 

[FAST6191]

Sorry misremembered that a bit (I recalled mentioned of uclinux in the presentation), went back and watched it again
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rjaiNIc4W8
Early 7 minutes.
Custom microkernel from broadon.

 

[xwatchmanx]

Vigilante the Wii was built with a somewhat known version of unix

Eh, what? Complete BS.

DId you even research what he said before calling BS?

 

[Joe88]

While I do agree that it's not very feasible, I don't think security concerns is the reason. Sony basically did the same thing with OtherOS on the PS3, so open source stuff on consoles is nothing new. Sure, that feature got removed in the end, and there's no doubt their official reasons for removing it was corporate bullshit, but the fortress still held for quite some time. If they do it right, it should be very possible from a security standpoint to run Android under some kind of hypervisor, without restricting Android itself all too much.

Their official reason for removing it was security concerns since there was an exploit using it. I don't think Nintendo would make a similar mistake.

it was actually fees to keep it updated every time they upgraded the ps3's firmware, ps3 slim shipped without linux and sony mentioned this was the reason, this was way before talk even started of a possible linux exploit
basically it was a financial burden on them to keep pumping money into a feature that barely anybody used in the first place
a representative did say linux support would still remain on the fat ps3's but I guess that changed, I doubt because of an "possible exploit" but because they still had to pay to keep it updated

it was a gimped version of linux to begin with, not sure why anyone cared about it (even though about 90% of the people who complained never even used it)
pc's you find on the curb in the trash will run better versions of linux

getting slightly off topic now~

 

[mysticwaterfall]

Vigilante the Wii was built with a somewhat known version of unix

Eh, what? Complete BS.

DId you even research what he said before calling BS?

As far as I understand it, the Wii system menu is totally proprietary. There was a *rumor* going around back in 2006 that it would be based on a heavily modified version of linux that would facilitate easier updates. This was based a misconstruing of what Iwata said in an interview and the person who started the rumor took it back and said he was wrong.

EDIT: Didn't notice Fast had already posted a video about this. Sorry Fast.

 

[xwatchmanx]

As far as I understand it, the Wii system menu is totally proprietary. There was a *rumor* going around back in 2006 that it would be based on a heavily modified version of linux that would facilitate easier updates. This was based a misconstruing of what Iwata said in an interview and the person who started the rumor took it back and said he was wrong.

Ah. Interesting.

 

[koji2009]

it was a gimped version of linux to begin with, not sure why anyone cared about it (even though about 90% of the people who complained never even used it)
pc's you find on the curb in the trash will run better versions of linux

getting slightly off topic now~

First time I've ever heard this... and it's a load of bullocks if it is true. Having the PS3 reboot into linux cost them nothing, and if they were paying Yellow Dog for their version of Linux (which was the semi-official version) it was unnecessary since there were SEVERAL COMPLETELY FREE ALTERNATIVES that were made simply on a fan basis (See PSUbuntu for probably the largest example)

As for not being fully featured... to me it sounds like YOU are the one that had never tried it since these were complete and feature rich distros... The only thing lacking was true proper graphics acceleration which limited some gaming and video encoding/decoding apps, but there were already many work arounds for it (people had begun to program drivers to use the SPU for such tasks, though the RSX was intentionally locked out by sony)

 

[Joe88]

it was a gimped version of linux to begin with, not sure why anyone cared about it (even though about 90% of the people who complained never even used it)
pc's you find on the curb in the trash will run better versions of linux

getting slightly off topic now~

First time I've ever heard this... and it's a load of bullocks if it is true. Having the PS3 reboot into linux cost them nothing, and if they were paying Yellow Dog for their version of Linux (which was the semi-official version) it was unnecessary since there were SEVERAL COMPLETELY FREE ALTERNATIVES that were made simply on a fan basis (See PSUbuntu for probably the largest example)

As for not being fully featured... to me it sounds like YOU are the one that had never tried it since these were complete and feature rich distros... The only thing lacking was true proper graphics acceleration which limited some gaming and video encoding/decoding apps, but there were already many work arounds for it (people had begun to program drivers to use the SPU for such tasks, though the RSX was intentionally locked out by sony)

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/08/28/sony_ps3_slim_linux_install_loss/

I did mean gimped by the RSX was locked out

 

[chris888222]

Well, this rumor is too unlike Nintendo. I'll take it lightly.

 

[Taleweaver]

This is flat out retarded. This is what you get when you make a controller that looks like an oversized smartphone. Either some nitwit likes the console as much as his smartphone, says something like "it would be even better if it would run android" and gets misquoted by others, or some blogger with too much time on his hands writes an "you know what would be awesome? If brown cows would make chocolate milk If pigs would fly we could sell them as balloons if that new wiiU console would run android" article.

At least that second link from the opening post (this one) is pretty straight about things.

 

[xwatchmanx]

At least that second link from the opening post (this one) is pretty straight about things.

Thanks for providing info.

 

[Deltaechoe]

Possibility of rumor aside, considering the shirt I'm wearing at this very moment, this would be awesome

 

[Foxi4]

Nintendo creates their firmwares in-house, I've never heard of an instance where they used outsourced software to power the basic functionality of their hardware and I doubt that the WiiU will be an exception.

 

[Deltaechoe]

Well yeah, this rumor has a very small chance of being true, I'm not naiive enough to believe otherwise. I would just like it to be true because I'm a hard core android fanboy

 

[Pleng]

While I don't for one minute believe this to be true, thought I'd clear some things up.

Well it would not be the first time a mobile OS has been merged into a console (DC had a version of windows CE)

Did DC actually use WinCE in the firmware? I know some games (a very few) made use of WinCE libraries, but I don't think the system actually had any CE stuff built in?

Third, you would be sacrificing game performance, as Android apps are all run through a Java VM.

Well if Andriod did get included, you can be sure that Wii-U games would bypass it.

And do you really think Nintendo would take Google Marketplace or Amazon Marketplace? Probably not, they'd do their own marketplace (eShop). Which would kill the point of having a marketplace.

Personally I just dont see what Nintendo has to gain from allowing it; there's absolutely no money in OS or app sales for them, unless they do what you suggest, and restrict it so much that everything that is great about Android is removed (I wonder what Google would have to say about that btw, it might be quite damaging to the Android brand, as the openness is one of it's main selling points).

Well there's no reason Nintendo couldn't enter into a revenue-sharing system with Google Marketplace. Though this might be an awkward precedent as mobile device manufacturers start saying to google "Look, we bring in x% as much trade as Nintendo. We should be sharing y% revenue too, else we'll switch to using xyz market". The other option, of course, would be for prices to be higher for the Wii-U and Nintendo net the difference. Wouldn't be too hard to implement.

Backwards compatibility is one thing, they still make money selling games for older systems, but there's no sense in adding expensive extra hardware for ancillary functionality that doesn't generate any sales. Knowing Nintendo and their obsession of keeping hardware costs down, I just can't believe that will ever happen.

Well a Raspberry Pii costs, what, $25? And it would be more than enough to run Android. It's not really ancillary functionality, either. As Android could be looking after the WiFi, network connection etc while the Wii-Us main hardware concentrates on running the game.



Anyway, despite all these observations, there's one more that needs to be noted:


This is NOT going to happen!