Wireless Woes for Nintendo and Sony

Warning: this isn’t a flower article. This gets deeply technical quickly. It’s important based on what’s being discussed, but I apologize to any readers I lose in advance. I will try my best to keep things clear, at times this may mean I over simplify an issue, the intent however, will be obvious.

I’ve lived and breathed WiFi (802.11) for over a half a decade. I’ve reviewed WiFi test plans and my software is used as part of various certification test-beds. I however have serious issues with DS and PSP claims for their wireless support.

To start with, their technologies are seriously muddled. The PSP claims to be WiFi compliant (I have a bad feeling about this) and the DS claims a mixed wireless of proprietary and 802.11b.

It’s not that 802.11 is a tall order to achieve, but I would regard the claims as dubious. This article is about why.

1. Regionalization
2. Network Interoperability (or Ad-hoc vs. Infrastructure in 802.11 terms)
3. Issues using old technology

Regionalization
I’d level this complaint at Sony, but the problem is also Nintendo’s. Both companies talk about borderless gaming. They make a point of explaining how their solutions don’t contain any region-locking technologies.

This is important for them. The court battles these companies have with piracy would go a lot easier if the Game Cube and PS2 weren’t region locked. They did it as these devices were created in the era of DVD when people thought market control worked, however in the internet age buying power is a strong force for change. It will be unlikely that the PS3 for example will be region locked.

Without region locking court cases against people making by-pass chips works better, simply as the only reason you would own or develop such a chip is if you’re copying media. It’s no small reason that the PSP breaks with Sony’s traditions; even the UMD movies are supposed to be region-free.

So you’d assume that a Japanese, North American and European PSP would be identical right? Wrong. The FCC and the equivalent European and Japanese regulatory bodies prevent this. Each key market region (and their sub regions) requires different frequency requirements for the unit. You’re literally not allowed to sell the same unit.

Ah ha, big problem for borderless gaming. What happens when a Japanese, European and American player get together in the same room to boogie on down to Excel Blaster Six? Well it depends. Either they’ll have to declare to the unit where they are geographically or somebody is gonna be an unhappy gamer.

This is a technical battle I fight every day. The problem is polluted by when these gamers go home. If they don’t remember to reset their unit to their home country they’ll become very confused. It will appear to the gamer as if their wireless is broken not wrongly configured; players just won’t appear in their multiplayer list.

But before I leave the subject of regionalization let me drop my final bombshell. According to FCC regulation anything certified for a particular range of frequencies cannot be changed in software to a different set of frequencies; i.e. a tourist with a Japanese PSP would break the law in North America if he turned on the wireless without reconfiguring it first, and an American PSP user might find he can’t reconfigure his PSP at all when in Japan.

So where are we? Well I simply don’t know. There’s insufficient information related to wireless support from Sony and Nintendo; I don’t have the dev kits to check. If they have solved this problem I’ll be wholeheartedly impressed; I’ve worked on it for years and not seen a useful solution.

Network Interoperability
There are two types of wireless network: ad-hoc and infrastructure.

Nobody ever uses ad-hoc

The reason is a master-slave issue; you need somebody to coordinate the network. In an infrastructure network this is a router box called an Access Point, it dishes out addresses to equipment, gives you internet access and so on.

In an ad-hoc network there is no network coordination

Ad-hoc networks work, but not how you think. So, just imagine for the moment that the PSP and DS only support ad-hoc and not infrastructure networks. This would mean your handheld wouldn’t connect to your home network (it wouldn’t know how) and you wouldn’t get internet access; making online gaming a little tricky.

I’ve seen no documentation that Sony or Nintendo’s wireless works with infrastructure networks

Now, it is possible to make an ad-hoc network connect to your home network but it requires a complex bridge; typically your home computer with two network cards, one of which is wireless.

Neither Sony nor Nintendo have expanded on how they operate 802.11, and this is why I’m concerned. If these handhelds did support infrastructure networks natively then they would be peddling internet access for all its worth.

Using Old Technology
This is a simple issue that you’ll only be aware of if you mix 802.11b and 802.11g equipment.

802.11b is capable of speeds up to 11Mb/s, and
802.11g speeds up to 54Mb/s

802.11g is fully backward compatible with 802.11b equipment and can share the same resources. But if you mix 802.11b and 802.11g equipment together you,

Slow down the entire network

The issue is to do with ensuring backward compatibility, and as these handhelds use 802.11b, our wireless networks compatibility will be brought into question at some point. You can lock-down your 802.11g network to only accept 802.11g devices, but that would preclude handhelds from sharing the resources.

If Nintendo and Sony had used 802.11g things would be different, but I’d imagine issues of cost and space limited their design choices, are you however aware of what impact this could have on limiting your own network?

My bug bear in all of this is the lack of information. Granted, these are highly technical issues, but I would regard compatibility for borderless gaming, network connectivity and compatibility so important that Sony and Nintendo would jump to appease everyone.

Instead I’m noticing their silence. The subtle way they redirect the issues. The way they gloss over things. As I said before, something doesn’t smell right in gamer land.

[EotM]

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