Doesn’t “non volatile” just mean it’s steady-state, no moving parts? And I’m really, really, really bummed about having to stick batteries in the controller.

I doubt the controller Wiill be used for the function stated above. The DS has like 512kb of memory, but we don’t store anything on that. It’s just used for WMB and some crap, I forgot it in technical terms. But it’s really useless.

But if they do find a way to do something like you stated above, please, make fun of me as you wish. I sure hope it goes your way too.

But isn’t the one who disapoints Nintendo? =P

Knowing Nintendo and their love of accessories, in the months following release, they will probably come out with a rechargable battery that fits in the AA battery slot. The included cradle that displays your sexy new wiimote will be able to fully charge it in a matter of hours. You have to admit, they know what they are doing since almost everyone would prefer this to constant battery changes.

Non-volatile? That makes me laugh.

No varying degrees of rumble? Aw, man…

I’m sure the 6KB is simply to save which controllers are which when the remotes turn off. It’s too small for anything else.

“No varying degrees of rumble? Aw, man…”

I don’t think they would do that only for the reason if it got too strong, your hand would start shaking, and therefore you get out of a perfect block in Red Steel and lose your head or something.

Pure speculation for the reason of why we don’t have that feature. >_>

I think the memory inside the controller is to indentify you in the house hold, or anywhere else.

Robert: Can’t see how that’d work.
Shiro: Red Steel = suckage k? And stop spamming.
Picc: Didn’t XBox have only one rumble state?

My opinion: Ah well I have rechargable AA’s.

Actually, I read in the IGN article that if the game turns the rumble on and off rapidly it will cause the rumble to be much stronger than if it was just left on. A little more work and battery life for the Wiimote, but I think it would be quite worth it.

“Doesn’t “non volatile” just mean it’s steady-state, no moving parts? And I’m really, really, really bummed about having to stick batteries in the controller.”

No, non volatile memory means you can remove power and the information will remain intact. Hard drives, flashcards, etc. are all non volatile. Volatile memory such as RAM will lose all of its information when power is cut.

To all the AA haters: http://rayovac.com/recharge/index.htm

Now quit yer bitchin’.

I’d much rather have rechargeable batteries, which can be easily switched out in the middle of a game, than a rechargeable battery which would require me to stop playing the game to put the battery in the charger (or perhaps dangle a cord in front of me whilst playing, thus defeating the point of a wireless controller). I agree with Dtax as well - Nintendo and third parties will come out with a rechargeable battery soon enough, for those who haven’t grown to love rechargeable batteries by that time anyway.

Are we sure that 6KB is the final value? If so, that really is too small to do anything useful with. And considering the documentation gives no information on interacting with it, I would assume it’s used for purely internal, technical reasons (keeping information about where it is currently located in space relative to the sensor bar so you don’t have to recalibrate it everytime you play, if you play from the same spot).

Shiro - Nyah ha.
Ben Johnson - Spam has a definition, look it up.

Anyone remember how long batteries lasted in the Wavebird? Ya know, just to compare…

NO!, I guess this means it’s time to buy rechargeables. It’s a big reason i bought the GBA SP over the regular.

How many hours will the batteries power the Velociratrix?

I have to say that I don’t know what the hell Nintendo is thinking with the AA batteries. While *I* have rechargeables in the house already, for the average consumer, and especially for the non-gamer, this is going to seem like an annoying chore. 30 hours isn’t very long in the life of a piece of consumer electronics, especially for an ACCESSORY to a larger product that remains plugged in all the time. I think it’s pretty safe to say that everyone expected for the Wiimote to have a rechargeable and a cradle, so I’m curious as to why Nintendo decided against that. They can’t possibly expect people to play for more than 30 hours in a row…

I dont think 6kb would be enough to actually store information thought. I’m going to agree with IGN and say its for the sound. And if not, maybe something to detect the attachment or sometrhing. Sorry, i’m not technical and eveyrthing.

Batteries. What is this, 1989?

yeah what a shame the contoller does not use cold fusion cilinders instead

think of how fast the batteries would degrade and how expensive the wiimotes would be if they were powered by internal rechargebles? i dont like the idea of my controller pulling an ipod on me and refusing to work. Double A for the win!

Did anyone notice that the plug for the sensor bar kinda looks like it’s a gamecube plug?

30-60 hours is enough time to get through most games - and that’s with a regular AA battery.
I’d go with a 2500 mwh NiMH battery and get more playtime. - they tend to lose their charge after a month (without use) - so you have to keep extras in a charger. Get a smart charger that turns off when they’re full.

Ben Johnson: Sorry O’ Holy Moderator of the Comment Box.
Go moderate your own forum, jacka**.

:/

Anyways, yeah, I don’t see why everyone’s upset about no lithium-ion rechargable batteries. Is there a problem or something? You can still recharge AA… =o

aw man, that would be awesome if you could keep your character, and to whoever said it wouldn’t be enough space, its just a few lines take in mind, cause the head itself is in the game, and the face design is a few lines, maybe the hair would be a bit big, but it could fit. also, i’ve always had to use batteries for controllers, (wavebirds) and i don’t mind it, its not a problem as long as you have the batteries when you need em.

and i will state, i bet the faces for sigeru and reggie are in the game already, because they’re pretty big people. (and just an idea but, the memory could be used just to help the transfer for sound and rumble so that it times correctly, without lag or troubles in connection)

6kb would be enough to store the necessary information to associate a remote with a player account, which is really all it needs. There’s full (really old lol) NES games that clock in that small, so just storing some textual info isn’t a major issue.

My only concern is that developers have no access to that or the speaker, at least according to this. But for all we know, IGN talked to one person who 1) didn’t know or 2) didn’t have the info yet. Doesn’t mean it’s true of every one.

I think that the 6kb memory will be used to store settings in the controller for individual players in the household.

Senario: The gaming wizz-kid maybe wants a fast controller (like fast in Windows options for the cursor), but his mom might wanna have slow movement in her cursor och in this case wiimote.
Nintendo I think has a goal that everyone inte the household has his own wiimote. Hopefully we get lots of colours to chose from.

But i’m only guessing so that I can say “I told you so” if i right =)

I think Nintendo or Joytech will make a rechargeable batteri like the Xbox 360 has. But how cares I’ll buy 2 no matter what.

I’m a little disappointed that the controller isn’t a rechargeable unit. Sure, I can use rechargeable batteries but it would be a bit nicer if the unit itself could be charged.

Now, who doesn’t think this is interesting?

“Interestingly, according to documentation the Wii-mote is able to act as something of an eye, measuring coordinates between 0-1023 on the X axis and 0-767 on the Y axis, which means that it is more or less seeing a megapixel image. Whether or not this data can be interrupted into visual information remains unknown, but we’re not ruling out the possibility that the pointer could sub as a camera.”

Camera attachment much?

Nintendo mentioned the idea is that every member of a household will have their own wiimote, and that each one will store its own unique settings and configurations.

“I’m thinking that you’ll be able to store your character that you designed on the console, you know like they did at the E3 press conference with Reggie and Shigeru Miyamoto”

…thats been speculated that that’s what it is for, for awhile now. Not really much new here besides battery life.

6kb is a ton of memory. ALOT of informatino can be stored in 6kb.

That said, I’m officially waiting for rechargeable controllers, NOT THIS TIME NINTENDO!

@ALH
Your iPod may randomly hate you, but I have never had a DS or a GBA SP stop working when it was charged.

6KBis obviously used to store your name, and your controller preferences.

As was already said, the difference between a permanent battery in the DS and a permanent battery in the Wii controllers is that it’s much easier to play the DS while it’s plugged in to charge than it would be to play the Wii. Clearly, being able to change out batteries on the fly is far preferable to having to stick your controller in a charger for a few hours, thus not being able to play. And you definitely wouldn’t be able to play most games… look how much people are moving the controller in the videos! By the way, did everyone whine when the Wavebird used AAs? I don’t remember.

odd, That’s exactly why I didn’t like the Wavebird.

Anyone remember how long batteries lasted in the Wavebird? Ya know, just to compare…
—
MONTHS! Batteries FTW! 2500 AA’s last forever! I’ve got a tonne for a digital camera of mine, my bluetooth keyboard & other things & am really happy about this decision. When my wavebird gets low, I just pop in a new set and away I go. At least with the Wiimote you’ll be able to tell when the batteries are getting low.

Or, in other words… STOP SOOKING!

Guys, you didn’t like Wavebird because it didn’t have rumble, but now Nintendo manages to fit all the features of the Wiimote in without a hit to the battery life (a huge feat of power saving engineering) and you still complain? I’m just thankful the thing has rumble on top of it all.

I’ve written some software that works with memory at low levels (bit-level actually, which is 1/8192 of a KB) and 6KB is plenty of memory to store simple settings, most of which could be set with a single bit being on/off, but this is highly reliant on what the software would be reading. Most of you have no concept of how well small amounts of memory can be used if you do things the right way, but oh well. And I like using NiMH AA’s in my Wavebird, I can’t remember the last time they were dead.

Thanks for the headsup, Luckybum.

I agree with whoever said it could identify the user. I mean, not actually who is using it, but if you have like, a profile on each controller, it could tell the system whose controller is being used and load up that user profile or something.

There worst news in this article, that everyone seems to have missed completely, is the fact that there are no analogue trigger buttons on the wiimote or the nun-chuck:

“All of the buttons on the Wii controller are digital in nature. This includes (obviously) the D-Pad, as well as A, B, 1, 2, -, +, Power and SYNCHRO. The C and Z buttons on the nunchuk unit are also digital.”

I am really gutted about that. What about racing games?

“no analogue trigger buttons on the wiimote or the nun-chuck…I am really gutted about that. What about racing games?”

You forget that the controller and nunchuck themselves ARE analog devices. Of course it’s up to the developer to decide how to use them, but I could imagine pulling back hard on the controller to slam on the breaks, and pushing forward gently to accelerate (pushing foward hard could either spin your tires or give you a “nitro boost” depending on arcade or sim style racing). It could end up feeling much more natural than analog triggers, which don’t have enough travel in them to be worth much imho.

Of course I didn’t forget that, but I’m having trouble seeing that as an acceptable substitute. For a start, when driving a car you have two ‘analogue triggers’ - brake and accelerator. They have a complete OFF state, then a smooth level of control reaching a complete ON state. How are you going to acheive that with a wiimote? There’s no fixed frame of reference to give you that digital/analogue blend that you get with a trigger, or indeed a car pedal.

last i checked the best racing game burnout revenge only used 3 main buttons one for go one to drift and a boost button