Wii Graphics 'Better Than At E3'

Gamespot and GameDaily have additional details on Nintendo's upcoming console. Gamespot reports on comments by Nintendo President Iwata that they were specifically not going for high-end graphics with the Wii. He goes on to say that some of their staff initially disagreed with the adoption of the Wiimote, but public and internal reaction has allayed the fears of detractors. GameDaily reports on comments from ATI, who says there is still a lot left to see from Wii's graphical output. What was shown at E3 was 'just the tip of the iceberg.' From the article: "Industry sources have said that the Wii GPU would be moderately more powerful than the GameCube's GPU, but how much more we don't know. Conservative estimates from developers have placed the Wii console as a whole at 2 - 2.5 times more powerful than the GameCube."

Comments

They may have a winner

[Puff of Logic]

On price alone, I think Nintendo's going to do well. I'm not a console-gamer, but if I chose to get into console gaming, I'd go with a Wii I think. After all, I already have an incredibly expensive box full of hardware for super-pretty games: my desktop!

Re:They may have a winner

[badasscat]

On price alone, I think Nintendo's going to do well.

If console wars were won and lost on price alone, Nintendo would have been #1 with the GameCube. The fact of the matter is that's not all it takes. In fact, it's rare for the cheapest system to win in any given generation - generally, the cheapest system is cheap for a reason. If Nintendo were operating from a position of strength, they might be able to charge $600 like Sony apparently thinks they can. Trying to compete on price is a sign that you are trying to win back lost market share. It is not confidence-inspiring.

The war will be won or lost on the games available. That's the way it always is; no different now.

Re:They may have a winner

[omeomi]

generally, the cheapest system is cheap for a reason.

That may be true, but it's also worth mentioning that there's never been a particularly successful console that cost anywhere near $600. Not to say that Sony can't pull it off, but Neo Geo and 3DO certainly weren't able to.

Re:They may have a winner

[Jarlsberg]

While that's true, it's fair to say neither NeoGeo or 3D0 (or even Atari with its Jaguar) ever had the market- and mindshare that Sony has to this day. It's going to interesting to see how the PS3 fares when it hits the market.

Re:They may have a winner

[goofyheadedpunk]

My goodness, aren't you a nasty twit?

But you aren't something so what do we care if you WOULD do something that you would never end up doing...

See, that's the rub. Nintendo has stated very clearly that they care what this guy would do. He's the sort of guy that composes most of the non-hardcore gaming market, which, in turn, is most of the potential market. He won't go out and buy every game console, just one. Nintentdo is hoping to be that one. As such he has a very valid point. The full-blown-computer-crammed-in-a-box consoles, as he points out, are far too expensive for most people. Moreover, they don't really offer all that much of a PC, which, again, the GP points out.

There's no reason to be a jerk about things, especially when you really don't have a point at all.

Re:They may have a winner

[cowscows]

True enough, but I think the price discrepancy in this case, at least as far as the PS3 is involved, is well beyond what we're used to from major console competitors. If I'm going to spend $200 on a system, but there's another one that's maybe a little bit fancier for 50 bucks more, I might say what the heck, and spend a little extra. But if the price difference is between $200 and $500-600, there's not even a comparison. That's not even the same market.

If Sony was releasing the exact same system as the PS3, with the exact same specs, and the exact same price, the only difference being that the PS1 & 2 never existed, I think they'd have been laughed right out of E3. $600 for a mass market game console is ridiculous.

The PlayStation name is the only thing that will give the PS3 a chance at that price.

Re:They may have a winner

[0racle]

On price alone

Price is almost irrelevant as the cost of both the 360 and PS3 will come down, it only matters right at launch. Even then, a console will never 'win' based on price as the console on its own is useless if it doesn't have the games you want to play. Both the 360 and the PS3 have large franchises that almost guarantee good sales.

Consoles 'winning' or 'loosing' a generation only matters to the bottom line of the company making them. Users only care about the games available. You want to play Zelda, you have no choice of console, you want to play Halo, you have no choice of console, you want to play the next Final Fantasy, you have no choice of console. Win or loose didn't matter.

Re:They may have a winner

[Anonymous Coward]

First off it's LOSE.

Now final fantasy might not be just exclusive. I'd say Nintendo has the best exclusive market, they just happen to suck when it comes to rpgs and *shudder* sports games which sadly enough seem to make up the bulk of the market.

This next generation seems like it's goin to be interesting either way.

Re:They may have a winner

[be-fan]

Of course, they were competing at a time when their competitor, which was vastly more popular and had a vastly larger game library, was selling its console for $200. Now, with the nearest competitor at $400, and Sony with a fully-competitive offering at $500, and Sony being the one with the huge marketshare and gaming library, the playing field looks vastly different.

Re:They may have a winner

[jgclark123]

Not to mention the fact that, without a PlayStaion 1 or 2, everyone would be confused at the name.
"PlayStation 3? Xbox 360? Winamp 5? Why does everyone skip version numbers?"

Re:They may have a winner

[ZakuSage]

Well, Neo-Geo today, when it was launched, when you account for inflation, would actually have cost about $1000. So while the PS3 isn't really as expensive as a Neo-Geo, I would have to say that in America the psychological price point for electronics at under $400 is a hard, and risky one to break.

Re:They may have a winner

[MBCook]

Yeah, but what was the difference between the two? The PS2 and XBox both launched at $300. The 'Cube launched at $200. So you had a $100 price difference. I can see why people would be able to justify spending that extra cash (especially with the backwards compatibly in the PS2 and the DVD player in the PS2 and XBox). $200 and $300 are rather similar.

But now we are talking about $200, $400, and $600. The first two (Wii and 360) are already pretty different. But when you put a Wii ($200) up against a PS3 ($600) you have to ask yourself: is that PS3 REALLY going to be 3x as fun? Do you need it now or can you wait until it hits $400 or buy it used?

That $400 is a BIG difference.

As others have pointed out, launching $300-$400 above you competition has historically not been a very smart move.

Re:They may have a winner

[__aaclcg7560]

Why does everyone skip version numbers?

It's hard for marketing folks to base their excitement -- and their pay scale -- on bringing out product version "n + 1" to the market. I'm curious to see how Apple handles the transition of Mac OS X to whatever they call the next major upgrade. Of course, they could keep Mac OS X brand name and have version number 11.0 come out instead.

Re:They may have a winner

[Anonymous Coward]

The $200/game cost didn't help the NeoGeo either...

Re:They may have a winner

[Puff of Logic]

Alternatively, I *could* be a long-time PC gamer who has occasionally eyed consoles but never felt sufficiently compelled to buy one. In my eyes, the PS3 and 360 are competing directly for the dollars that would otherwise go to my desktop gaming rig. Nintendo, on the other hand, is saying "hey, we can supply you with a fun pick-up-and-play experience that's pretty cheap." That, as I stated before, may be the reason they have a winner. If Nintendo can, by supplying a decent console at an attractive price-point, finally convince me to purchase a console, isn't that success?

Re:They may have a winner

[Guppy06]

"In fact, it's rare for the cheapest system to win in any given generation"

When was any version of a Game Boy more expensive than any of its competitors?

What about the DS versus the PSP with nearly double the price?

Re:They may have a winner

[be-fan]

Over the lifetime of the system, it won't be 3x the cost. If you buy 20 games over the life of the system, and Wii games and up being $10 cheaper on average than PS3 games*, then you're talking $1000 versus $1500*. That's $500 over 5-6 years, or about $10 a month. Is $10 a month going to make me buy one console over the other? I pay $40 a month for broadband, and $50 for cell phone service. $10 a month isn't going to make a difference --- I'm going to go with the system that has the games I want.

*) People will say, "but Wii content will be cheaper", and I agree, but it won't be *that* much cheaper. Remember, a texture costs about the same to create whether you render it at 1024x1024 or 256x256, and a model costs about the same wether it has 1m or 5m polygons. Indeed, most artwork is created at very high detail, and scaled down for the game using tools, so the cost savings from targetting a less powerful system isn't huge.

*) Why compare the $600 PS3 with the $200 Wii when the $500 PS3 exists? Just to be dishonest?

Re:They may have a winner

[JamesP]

They are probably skip a version so they can come with MAC OS XII

And maybe the successor to Vista will be Windows XPEE

Re:They may have a winner

[be-fan]

The current market is what you'd consider the "hardcore" gaming market. The current market is the 100m people that own PS2s and GCs and XBoxes.

The market Nintendo is targetting with the Wii is the hypothetical casual gamer market. There are some indications that there is such a market, as evidenced by sales of games like the Sims, but saying "most of the potential market" is non-hardcore (by your definition) is misleading. There are no indications that the casual gaming market is anywhere close to the size, let alone bigger, than the "hardcore" gaming market.

Re:They may have a winner

[ka0sx]

well... ps3 and xbox 360 are using cuttin edge technology, that is quite a bit more expensive to produce... wii is just using the same old stuff, different idea. i for one will more than likely pick up a wii based on the price, and how innovative the system is, i already own a 360, so i will have the best of both worlds... sony on the other hand... heh, i think they made a giant mistake this time around with beta-max, erm... blu-ray.

Re:They may have a winner

[The Analog Kid]

Nintendo doesn't have to win the console war to stay afloat. Our of the major 3, they are the only ones who sell their console at a profit.

I will most likely buy Wii over an Xbox360 or a PS3. Nintendo has always come out with 1st rate games, and you can't get Zelda or Mario anywhere else.

Re:They may have a winner

[mOdQuArK!]

market- and mindshare that Sony has to this day.

I'm not entirely sure it's the kind of mindshare Sony wants - even complete non-geeks in my extended family have heard about the Sony rootdisk fiasco (although they don't understand kind what it was about, just that it was something that Sony was doing to try and screw their customers), and they haven't been hearing it from me (the family techie slave).

I've also heard indications that they're not real happy with the complexity or reliability of their various bits of Sony electronics either (a lot of which I think is due to Sony-Content's perpetual attempts to control what the consumer can do with the content that they buy).

At some point Sony consumer electronics is going to have to cut their content division loose to fend for itself, or else Sony is going to get a "strong" reputation as a has-been tech giant that can no longer create anything relevant for today's marketplace.

Re:They may have a winner

[24-bit Voxel]

Correction there, most game artwork is done at mid level detail and then rez'ed up or down to suit needs. Also, it costs exactly the same to export a texture at 1024x1024 as 256x256. You always work on the texture large and export it out small to hide any flaws it may have. Same applies to visual effects.

No one uses the high poly model for the game, it's for cinematics and for normal map creation. Having worked with Maya and 3D studio max for 5 years now, I can assure you there is no magic tool that lowers your poly count without totally wrecking your model. You have to do it by hand, no matter what.

Also, no game model has 1m or 5m polygons. 10k is approaching the limit of lag fest for a model. Keep in mind you often have 20 models on the screen at the same time.

As for your third point, well, who wants to get the hardcore gaming system "lite" version? No one. They are marketing it as 'hard core' and who wants to be $100 less hard core than the Joneses? No one who would spend $500 on a game system that is for sure.

Re:They may have a winner

[MBCook]

The PS3 costs $600.

The XBox 360 costs $400.

Those are facts.

The $300 "XBox 360" is crippled. The lack of a hard drive is pathetic, especially for the console that launched with a hard drive and was the reason Sony put one in the PS3. The lack of the drive also kills backwards compatibility.

The $500 PS3 is crippled. You want to play your games in 1080p like they've been promising? They promised me DUAL 1080p which is now dropped. But if I want to play in 1080p I need a HDMI out and guess what is missing from the $500 version. You want to save your data on memory cards? The PS3 has a 612-in-one memory card reader... unless you don't pay $600.

I was iffy on buying a PS3 when I expected it at $400. There is no way I'm paying $500 for a crippled console.

The console that does (most) of what they promised me a PS3 would do costs $600.

• PS3 - $600
• PSCripple - $500
• XBox 360 - $400
• XBox Three-shitty - $300 (credit to Penny Arcade)

Re:They may have a winner

[Anonymous Coward]

Woah!

You just made yourself look like an idiot to a whole bunch of people. Congrats!

The PS3, both the 499 and 599 models, have around 1/4 to 1/3 of the library of games in development running at 1080p. Component supports 1080p just fine.

The only use HDMI had was for support of the pure digital signal path for the image constraint token - and as people have known for months that is not going to show up for this console cycle.

I know, I know, you really, really want to up the price of the PS3 and try to equate the 499 version with the worthless $299 360 Retard version. So sorry.

PS3 $499 - free online play
360 $599-$649 - 50 bucks a year just to play online for four to five years

And that isn't even factoring in the overpriced 360 add-ons that make the real world cost of the even higher. And that is for a system with more hardware defects than all consoles combined over the last decade, shitty graphics, no backwards compatibility, and a crappy library of mostly pc games.

Oh, but Gears of War does have that oh so cool circa 1999 bumpy/shiny metal effect all over the place...

Re:They may have a winner

[LordLucless]

I think you mean a wiinner

Re:They may have a winner

[dhasenan]

Moreover, if you're a hardcore gamer, an extra $250 for the Wii is relatively minor, even if you've already bought another console. At this point, Nintendo doesn't have to be the single exclusive desire of every gamer; market penetration rather than comparative market share is the current goal.

The next Nintendo console may well be more targeted toward market share, but at this point, no. The Gamecube performed poorly in comparison to its competitors, so Nintendo is using the Wii to regain its reputation.

Re:They may have a winner

[buffer-overflowed]

Couple of points.

First off, the PS3 has to succeed in order to get a library of exclusives(out of which you'd buy 20 titles), this is by no means assured. Most(as in > 90%) of the PS2's titles of note were 3rd party. Contrast this with nintendo, which generally puts out a good 10-15 AAA titles themselves(whether or not these appeal to you left aside for the moment) over a console generation.

So we have a chicken and the egg problem with the PS3. If it doesn't take off then the 3rd parties won't support it and you'll be stuck with SCEA first party titles. Which, well, largely, aren't of note(6 total AAAs in > 10 years, most of them are poor knock-offs, or methadone-style nintendo-platformer clones like Jak & Daxter).

We also have the virtual console added into the mix, with 3 whole console generations of, at the minimum first party titles, that are otherwise largely unavailable outside scrounging e-bay/garage-sales or going the legally nebulous route of emulation. This is, once again, in contrast to PS1/PS2 backwards compatibility, which is worth about $130 USD new, if you don't have a working PS2/PS1.

So, in order to justify the added $300-$400 expense it has to have compelling titles, and it's certainly not launching with them(only 3 exclusive[one of which will most likely not stay exclusive, Assassin's Creed] launch titles of any note[in limited genres no less] versus at least 8 for the Wii[all of which at least offer a new control scheme]). Most of the anticipated titles don't come out until sometime in 2007(most of those are still in a TBA status at that).

So all this adds up to, at launch, the Wii spanking the PS3 up and down the proverbial aisle like a red-headed stepchild when it comes to gaming value for your money. As it stands, right now, if you buy a PS3 at launch as a gaming machine you're what's known as an idiot.

Now, this might change in 2007, but I'm not counting on that. I still remember FFVII being shown on the N64 before it eventually went to the PSX due to disk space concerns and the high-cost of cartridges. A lot of titles could migrate given the realtor/hard-core gamer/dev backlash post-E3, especially if the PS3 fails to gain any real traction in it's first few months. There are other reasons to be skeptical of a solid exclusive content line-up as well.

With blu-ray disks costing 5-10x as much to stamp and master, up to $10 a disk according to some rumors, the exponentially increasing costs of development, and the possible ressurection of an old cartridge based risk due to the increase in costs to produce blu-ray disks instead of DVDs(It was actually possible in the cartridge era to overproduce a title, and even if it was a hit, actually lose money on the deal.), exclusivity becomes an enormous gamble. You're better off hedging your bets and doing a PS3/360/PC deal. Which means you're now talking paying an extra $100-$200 and what's probably going to be an extra $10 per game(over the 360) for... uhh... shoddy Sony workmanship I guess.

And people use the $600 version because one of the few selling points of the PS3 atm is blu-ray. The $500 version is crippled in this respect, because of the lack of HDMI, which will render all advantages of blu-ray null and void once content providers toggle the ICT flag on on their media.

There are reasons Sony defenders have largely gone underground in most major discussion sites on the internet. It's because you're all freakin' tools who are relying on the snake-oil that a massive purchase will become worth it down the line.

Re:They may have a winner

[SilentChris]

Well, actually you're talking $250, $300, $400, $500 and #600, considering all the versions. Most people, when they try to justify a purchase, look at the base model, so really we're talking $250, $300 and $500. That's not a big difference between the Wii and the gimped Xbox 360. If the rumors are true, MS could easily drop the price $50 for the holidays and you'll have two systems at $250.

The problem is, these things are really sold on graphics. When people consider the purchase of a game, they look at paper/web reviews -- a 2D medium. Nintendo can try to put the controller into as many people's hands as it wants. Bottom line is that most people will prejudge based on screenshots before they ever get to the store.

The other issue is age. How will Wii's graphics look 2 years from now? 5 years from now? If you're not at the same level as the others in the current generation, the gap grows pretty wide towards the end of the consoles' lifespan.

Wii has an uphill battle, no matter what way you slice it.

Re:They may have a winner

[apoc06]

thats what killed the neo-geo in my mind. it was WAY too expensive long term. at least with the x360 and the ps3, you dont have to worry about price as much after you get past the initial investment in the console.

Re:They may have a winner

[DJCacophony]

You're deluding yourself if you think the DS has won, and the DS is not "nearly" half the price of the psp.

Re:They may have a winner

[apoc06]

in general, sony products are overall more expensive than other brands. look at the bravia line of HDTVs, or the VAIO line of computers. sony in general sells their products at a premuim.

the sony name equates to quality in the minds of the average consumer. whether that is true of the product or not, that is still the case in the mindshare of j. q. public. people trust the sony name when it comes to consumer electronics; rootkit or not.

for the first time ever, sony game consoles are going to try to bank on that same trust. the psp is generally speaking seen as a higher quality handheld. [hence the DS redesign] the ps3 is supposed to end up being a higher quality home console. [hence the marketing/pricing scheme] they are both more expensive than their competitors. the hardware is there and to alot of consumers thats what matters, but in the video game world software is king.

a couple of months or so after launch, the console and its price start to matter less and less, its games start to mean alot more in the eyes of consumers. since thats where the real money is made, thats where the battle will be won.

personally, nintendo makes some very nice products and great games. their failure to win the console race in the last several years is a result of a lack diversity and a sad release schedule. great games trickle out of the house of N maybe once or twice a year. the wii seems great, but if they dont secure some solid third party exclusives to tide gamers over between the mario-link-samus-smashbrothers-pokemon roundrobin release schedule, i predict a repeat of the gamecube.

Re:They may have a winner

[SetupWeasel]

$499 PS3 - $150-$250 Wii

1080p HD movies - No. Image Constraint Token means no HD without HDMI.

1080p TVs prices are in a freefall - If by free fall you mean too goddamn expensive to consider for at least three years, then yes

1080p games - No 1080p TV see above

Free online play for games - Nintendo has this already. We have yet to see how free the PS3's online really will be.

Support for 25gig game data - Wii reads its 10 GB far faster than the PS3 can read the first 10 GB on a Blu-Ray. Enjoy your load times. "But they will cache to the HD!" 20 GB HD... 25 GB game... do the math.

~15000 library of backward compatible games - Backward compatibility will not be native. We'll see how good the emulation will work. Oh, and no legacy memory card support means no previously saved games.

Linux - Who the fuck cares? No, really. Who the fuck cares?

Online music store - See Linux

Web browsing - Opera Embedded on Wii

Tilt controller - Only tilt? How GameBoy.

PSP connectivity - Wii has DS Connectivity... and people actually own DSs

And an even larger library of exclusive games than with the the PS1 or PS2. - That remains to be seen.

Post with your name, you shill.

Re:They may have a winner

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think that it is a case of cheap verse expensive, but more like, reasonable verse outragouse. From my perspective I can actually aford to buy the Wii, or at least put it on credit, but with the PS3 at its current price, I can only dream of buying one. Also I personally find the price to be obscene in the same way as the price for and armanai suit is obscene - to the point that even if I had the money I wouldn't buy one just for reasons of taste. It just doesn't provide the same value.

Things tend to find a set price of what people are willing to spend, for consoles it is around the two hundred dolllar mark. The PS3 is going to take a long time to reach that point as is the 360 (although this is complicated by having a cheap option with a upgrade path), the Wii already hits that point.

The only argument I can see, which would justify spending that amount of money, would be if it provided more functionality then what I currently get with a computer, and here is the rub, it dosn't.

  I do like the Playstation I just think I will stick with the current generation.

AC

Re:They may have a winner

[be-fan]

The lack of a hard drive in the XBox 360 cripples it, because eliminates a fundemental feature that can be used in games. There are no fundemental gaming elements missing from the low-end PS3. The PS3 will do 1080p over component (like some DVD players already do). Hell, it even has perks like wireless controllers. The only thing the high-end XBox has that the low-end PS3 is missing is a remote, which you don't need if you consider the PS3's media capabilities useless. The two PS3 models are entirely sensical. The $500 PS3 has all the gaming elements, and the $600 PS3 adds all the media extras.

The bottom line is this. If you're in it just for the gaming, its just plain dishonest to claim you need the $600 PS3. That model adds no gaming elements to the console. If you're in it for the video, then $600 is a hell of a deal for a combo gaming machine/Blu Ray player.

Re:They may have a winner

[morcego]

Now, with the nearest competitor at $400, and Sony with a fully-competitive offering at $500,

I don't know. With a 25% price difference, customers are bound to start asking questions.

Re:They may have a winner

[be-fan]

Resorting to lying are we?

1) No ICT on BluRay means HD without HDMI.
2) What do you mean "gaddamn expensive"? Good 1080p TVs are down to $1600. That's not cheap, but in the USA anyway, not really that expensive either.
3) Games don't use ICT! Even if movies do start using ICT, locking out 1080p, games won't.
4) Yes, and a 4MB L2 cache couldn't possibly do a good job caching 2GB of system memory.
5) Linux support means the potential of expanding the PS3's capabilities. Consider a PS3 home media server, or web browsing and e-mail, etc. Consider DVR add-ons, or consolidation of a bunch of other gadgets people spend $200-$400 on seperately.
6) The gameboy had tilt sensitivity, really?
7) Good point about the DS connectivity.

Re:They may have a winner

[be-fan]

The launch prices of the PS1 and PS2 were both 50% more than the launch prices of the N64 and Gamecube. That didn't stop Sony from selling metric assloads of them.

Re:They may have a winner

[SetupWeasel]

1) "We put it in the standard but we don't plan on using it yet." is not "It doesn't exist."

2) I'm not paying $1600 for a TV. I won't pay that for a computer. Wake me up when they are $300 or less.

3) Almost no one has 1080p, and most won't have it for years. I don't see 1080p as an advantage until I am willing to pay for a TV that will use it.

4) how much of a footprint does a PC game take? Anything that is not on the HD will need to be loaded every time. A 2x BD-ROM reads slower MB per MB than a 12x DVD-ROM. If they really need the 25-GB you will have a hard time putting a significant amount of multiple games on the HD.

5)Could expand for you... but will not expand for the layman. Will likely come at a steep cost. Wii again has an embedded browser. Truthfully, they will make Linux for all platforms, but honestly no system will have a OS that is so easy, cheap, and useful that John Q Public will bother.

6)Kirby Tilt and Tumble for the GBC. It was in the cartridge.

Re:They may have a winner

[Guppy06]

"You're deluding yourself if you think the DS has won,"

Well, the DS Lite outselling the PSP in Japan at around 8:1 right now, and at best the PSP is approaching parity with the DS in North America. Factor in the loss of one of the major features of the PSP that Sony is trying to push (UMD movie playback), and I think that the best argument you can make is "losing" vs. "lost."

"and the DS is not "nearly" half the price of the psp."

Bare-bones packages sell for $130 for the DS and $200 for the PSP, the 15% difference seems to justify the "nearly" adjective. Factor in the price of the required Memory Stick for game saves (not an issue for the DS) and the way PSP games tend to be $50 versus the $35 new DS games sell for, and we can even start talking about "less than."

Re:They may have a winner

[nitrocloud]

It may be worth noting that the battle now is not between Nintendo and Sony, but Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft. This threesome wants to invade our houses and establish dominance with games labels and even now, multimedia offerings. I would say Microsoft currently has a hand up with the purchase of many game developers, a reasonable console, and most important the entire current market. There is no _physical_ competition against Microsoft right now, and even though people are holding off for the offerings from Nintendo and Sony, it's quite hard to stare down a $500-$600 price tag. For that sum of money, you could take up marksmanship for enjoyment (which is vastly competitive for those who want competition).

Re:They may have a winner

[Brian_Ellenberger]

The lack of a hard drive in the XBox 360 cripples it, because eliminates a fundemental feature that can be used in games. There are no fundemental gaming elements missing from the low-end PS3.

The thing is, the $300 Xbox 360 brings it into a price range where a kid can get it for Christmas and get the hard drive for their birthday or vice versa. Especially if grandma gets them a game and Aunt Sue gets them a memory card. That same kid could get a Wii too. However, there aren't many families that can go shelling $500 to $600 JUST FOR THE CONSOLE. Microsoft's strategy is that it is better to make the console affordable and upgradable than completely put it out of the price range of most people.

If Sony wants to reach the same levels of sales it has been reaching, it is going to have to drop the price ALOT. They didn't sell 100 million consoles just to fanboys wanting to play FF.

Re:They may have a winner

[KDR_11k]

Correction there, most game artwork is done at mid level detail and then rez'ed up or down to suit needs. Also, it costs exactly the same to export a texture at 1024x1024 as 256x256. You always work on the texture large and export it out small to hide any flaws it may have. Same applies to visual effects.

Uprezing makes no sense since you'd only add interpolated pixels. If you've worked at too low of a resolution you're screwed. If the specs for texture sizes aren't final you should work with the largest size that could happen (or the multiple of it you usually use), if the specs are finalized already it depends on the artist, some prefer working at higher res and downsampling, others work at final res right away. Also lower resolution means less details, PS2 textures are usually pretty detailless because small details would emphasize the texture resolution and look bad. Granted, normalmaps can be rendered at any resolution but even then you have limits to the detail you can feasibly include so you'll spend less time on a 256x256 normalmap than a 2048x2048 one.

No one uses the high poly model for the game, it's for cinematics and for normal map creation. Having worked with Maya and 3D studio max for 5 years now, I can assure you there is no magic tool that lowers your poly count without totally wrecking your model. You have to do it by hand, no matter what.

I think with Doom 3 and its ilk they used a hybrid approach, an automated reduction as the first pass and manual cleanup afterwards. Personally I prefer making the lowpoly from scratch (doesn't take that long since we're talking about ~1-2k tri models) but whatever floats your boat...

Re:They may have a winner

[carninja]

Yeah, I'm sure those were all "casual gamers" standing in that 5 hour line at E3 wanting to play with their Wii's. (I couldn't resist, but my point stands.)

Re:They may have a winner

[MemoryDragon]

The problem with both the N64 and the Cube simply was that the consoles provided significantly less than the others. The playstation had CDs which was a perfect timing for the multimedia hype the PS2 had dvds and was in a moderate price range. Both consoles were easly cracked, while Nintendo relied on their own custom modules and disk formats and made breaking the console hard. In the end piracy made the playstation1 and 2 win over the others. (one fact Sony seems to be totally angostic of)
Nowdays Sony tries to push the same game again with Blue ray, but the situation is different, no matter how much the media pushes it, there is no HDTV craze neither is a next gen DVD replacement craze due to the fact that people are not eager to move on (too little additional value, you need a new TV as well, two different formats, less money) So given the new facts Nintendo with their next gen console, dvd able will have a good start. I think the biggest mistake Nintendo had with the cube was simply that they tried to push it over the price alone, it was no additional value compared to the others, even less value due to the lacking dvd, and the others were not that much more expensive.

Re:They may have a winner

[aussie_a]

If they really wanted to regain their reputation they'd get some games other then Mario Bros Redux. They had some success in this regard with one whole exclusive decent game (FF Crystal). Let's hope they can get that count up to 2.

Re:They may have a winner

[cowscows]

I would say that the DS redesign is more about Nintendo's confidence in the handheld's continued success, and less about the PSP. It's also another chance for Nintendo to make some easy money, cause you know a bunch of people who already have DS's are going to go out and buy a new one just to have it. I also would note that even if the PSP is seen as higher quality, it hasn't really translated into domination of the handheld market that a lot of people were predicting back during all the hype. Like you said, it really came down to games. And in that case, Nintendo seems to have a strong upper hand there. Maybe they've learned something.

Oh yeah, and just looking at the hardware, the PSP released at $250, while the DS was $150. A $100 difference is much less of a premium than $300-400 we'll probably see for the PS3.

As for Sony marketing the PS3 as some sort of high end super console gadget, I have my doubts how successful that will be. In my opinion, the console market hasn't really be itching for that niche, and if you really want to spend buckets of money on a gaming rig, you've probably already got yourself a nice PC. If that niche does exist, and I guess the hardcore gamer is that niche, well, they'll sell some for sure. But Nintendo's whole strategy seems to be that that market isn't growing, possibly shrinking, and not the best place to put your efforts.

But as you noted, games are the key for consumers. But I would think that for developers/publishers, installed base is pretty important. If Sony doesn't keep pace with Nintendo and MS in terms of console sales, the developers aren't going to stick around forever. I don't predict that the PS3 is a complete and utter flop, just that they're not going to have a rough go at it this time around. And I think the console price will be one of the biggest factors in that outcome.

Re:They may have a winner

[Total_Wimp]

If I'm going to spend $200 on a system, but there's another one that's maybe a little bit fancier for 50 bucks more, I might say what the heck, and spend a little extra. But if the price difference is between $200 and $500-600, there's not even a comparison. That's not even the same market.

Your right, it's not even the same market, but for more reasons than price. Sony and Microsoft are selling dramatic updates to their current systems. Graphics, ability to push HD resolutions, network play and even Media are seeing major improvments, but game play style and types of games are about the same.

On the other hand, Nintendo is offering very different gameplay, but with only slightly improved graphics (I don't recall if there will be a media upgrade).

What do you end up with. As you put it, a completely different market. I'll even go as far as to say, the number of people that will buy Wii instead of a PS3 will be miniscule. Those people aren't in the market for a Wii to begin with. They'll get an Xbox 360 instead. Wii might be purchased as a fun game machinge in it's own right, but no one who wants the best eye-candy and traditional gameplay is going to see it as a viable substitute for the heavy hitters, regardless of price difference.

TW

Re:They may have a winner

[It'sYerMam]

£50 per game for the XBox 360? I call that a worrying price after the initial investment. I've seen new game prices get higher in recent years, but I was never aware of them getting that high - £30 was what I would've expected to pay a little while ago for a new PC game.

Re:They may have a winner

[trix7117]

True, but the base PS3 is priced 100% more than the Wii (assuming the $250 report is true).

Re:They may have a winner

[Anonymous Coward]

Another thing to note about the US Market:

The DS Lite is supposed to be released June 11th. I have the original DS, but I know I would like to get a new version. There's also people that want to get the DS, but with a 'better' version coming out shortly, they'll also be waiting for the Lite.

It'd be interesting to see sales numbers between PSP & DS (both versions) in about a month, once the Lite is out.

Re:They may have a winner

[Anonymous Coward]

A winner is you!

Re:They may have a winner

[jamar0303]

I'm just stepping in to give a foreign (I'm currently living in Asia, around China and a couple of other countries) point of view on your response to his points. 1. I'm living in China, so ICT will most likely not be a problem for me (It's not implemented yet, but that doesn't mean it will never be- thank goodness for me living where I can get modchips easily). 2. In China, practically any TV over $1000US is "goddamn expensive". And if you get any HDTVs that aren't expsnseve, then you risk the chance of non-working ports (happened to my friends- tried to save money when they bought an HDTV, got one with non-working component and S-Video and no HDMI (turns out that they were there because they would enable or disable those ports depending on how far up the model line (how close to top-of-the-line) you bought it. 3. I agree with you here, mostly because if such a problem came to be, there will most likely be a modchip available to get around the ICT. 4. I am not enough of a geek to get into this one. 5. I see your point in this- though Linux adoption is starting to get more widespread here, it may take something like this to give Linux a jump-start in the market (People see that Linux can be simple as a game console, they will definitely try it on their desktops, so the logic goes from a local friend). 6. Yes, a Kirby game had it, as well as a couple of GBA games whose names escape my mind right now. 7. I have a PSP. I used it until it broke, and now, with the DS lite and all of the new games (mainly Sawaru Made in Wario/WarioWare Touched and Gyakuten Saiban/Phoenix Wright, as well as a couple of other Japanese titles), I want a DS really badly. So, the PSP connectivity isn't going to do it for me, especially since the PSPs here are all going for over $300 (making lots of money off of 1.5FW PSPs) and the DS is less than half of that, about $225US for the lite and about $125US for the standard (although a lady tried to sell me a refurbished DS as a new one, not realizing that the red label "Refurbished Product" would give her trick away.) Sorry if this was unwarranted, but I felt like getting my point of view about PS3 vs Wii to the Slashdot masses.

Re:They may have a winner

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the modchip had a lot to do with the success of the Xbox.

Re:They may have a winner

[be-fan]

2) I'm not paying $1600 for a TV. I won't pay that for a computer. Wake me up when they are $300 or less.

Lot's of people pay $1600+ for a TV. Are you living in the same United States I am? I honestly cannot remember the last house I visited that did not have a big-screen TV in it. It's not really a luxury item anymore. $1600 just isn't that much for something someone spends a significant amount of time watching, and will use for four or five years at least.

4) how much of a footprint does a PC game take? Anything that is not on the HD will need to be loaded every time. A 2x BD-ROM reads slower MB per MB than a 12x DVD-ROM. If they really need the 25-GB you will have a hard time putting a significant amount of multiple games on the HD.

Obviously, you don't understand the concept of caching. I mentioned CPU caches for a reason: how does a 1-4MB CPU cache perform effectively when your main memory is 1000x bigger? The answer is because you only need to work with a subset of that data at any given time. That's why a 20GB hard drive can effectively cache lots of BD games. It just needs to store enough data to prevent obvious delays. For example, the core game engine could be stored on the HD, so the game UI pops up immediately without any load time. In an FPS, the system could be loading data for the next area onto HDD while you're playing the current level. In a multiplayer game, a map could be cached on the HDD after the first time its loaded. So once the game got going, the load-times would be very short. And of course, there is no reason to cache things like videos or music tracks, which take up a lot of space but can be streamed in from disc during the game.

Could expand for you... but will not expand for the layman. Will likely come at a steep cost. Wii again has an embedded browser. Truthfully, they will make Linux for all platforms, but honestly no system will have a OS that is so easy, cheap, and useful that John Q Public will bother.

What do you mean "could expand for you"? Sony is a consumer products company. They're not going to hand John Q Public a Linux command line! Linux will be used as a platform on which task-specific software can be built. So for example, if Sony adds DVR capabilities, Linux would be used as the OS, but the UI would be some Tivo-like DRV software. And what makes you assume that extras will come at a steep cost? The PS2 hard drive upgrade is $100 bundled with a game. Was that expensive? The PS2 didn't even have expensive add-ons like keyboards, although Sony could have done that. It just used regular USB keyboards.

Re:They may have a winner

[be-fan]

That really wasn't my point. What I'm trying to get at is that people refer to the $300 360 as crippled, because its missing a fundemental component: the HDD. The $500 PS3 isn't missing any fundemental components, as a gaming system. It is thus unfair to call it "crippled". The $600 PS3 is a justifiable "extras" package. It contains stuff that you'd want if you cared about the PS3 as a media center and HD video player. If you don't care about these things, and the people complaining about the PS3's price say they don't --- they just want a gaming machine, then its dishonest to pretend that the $500 PS3 doesn't exist, because it is "crippled" along some dimension you don't care about anyway.

Re:They may have a winner

[Anonymous Coward]

I know one person well with their own HDTV, which they purchased with money obtained selling drugs. I superficially know of a number of others that have HDTVs that they charged, but the number is small and I don't know them well. I know of many institutions with HDTVs used for entertaining crowds of people, rather than for personal use. Apparently you're living in the U.S. where the median income is much higher, because when coupled with all of the other entertainment resources available a $1600 television is right down at the bottom of the list of things for them to buy. But notice of course how you argue from anecdote and third-party summaries rather than providing a credible source of statistics.

People buy $100 jeans because it's fashionable. It might get them laid. They can buy 16 pairs of them for the price of one television. They're much more portable and can be easily sold piecemeal on ebay. They buy $5 coffees because they can purchase 320 of them for the cost of a $1600 television. They can buy 120 CDs. They can see 170 movies. They can buy over 200 books. They could pay a semester's tuition at BYU. They could buy 160 pizzas. That's over 3000 liters of soda.

Someday you'll grow up and you'll have to pay for your own possession from money that you earn. You'll either ruin yourself or come to understand why most people don't have HDTVs.

Re:They may have a winner

[apoc06]

no disrespect, but the DS redesign isnt about the fans. its a pr move for nintendo to sell more units and simpify design/ production costs.

nintendo is trying to change their image and the original DS falls in line with the old nintendo design philosophy. the new design philosophy is to very much be like the apple of consoles [minus the price]. they are trying to shed their kiddie image; make a more sleek device. no other console has come out with a redesign after one year, why is nintendo doing so now? its a smart move, but it certainly isnt service to the fans.

Re:They may have a winner

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm buying a Wii for my kids because I hate both Sony and Microsoft. End of story.

Re:They may have a winner

[Frenchy_2001]

If console wars were won and lost on price alone, Nintendo would have been #1 with the GameCube.

Number #1 in what? It all depends how you rank your competitors. Market share? Sure, nintendo is #3, close behind MS and far from Sony.
Now, if you count profitability, then the picture change. Nintendo jumps easily over MS, as they have ALWAYS been profitable and every sale brings them money. MS gaming division has lost 4 BILLIONS dollars since its creation. They have traded market share for monney. Sure, if you give your goods away, you can grab a good market share. Internet ".com" companies followed the same principle, but it did not make a sound business plan. (I'm not sure how profitable the SONY Computer Entertainment division is. I know it has been higly profitable, bringing in as much as 33%+ of sony's profits during some good years).

Nintendo may lose in number of system, but they win in profit. Personnaly, I know which is the strongest company in the long term...

Re:They may have a winner

[PeelBoy]

Last week in Japan the DS out sold the PSP by almost 10:1 and The New Super Mario Bros. game sold almost 900,000 copies in that same week.

Re:They may have a winner

[siegecraft4]

Since when is calling people shills the latest trend on Slashdot. Defeat them with logic and facts, not petty insults. Labeling someone is not an instant argument winner.

Re:They may have a winner

[barawn]

2) What do you mean "gaddamn expensive"? Good 1080p TVs are down to $1600.

blink

What?! $1600 is "gaddamn expensive" if it can be effectively replaced by something that's $100. Market price for televisions has been $100-200. Maybe $300. $1600 is luxury-level. You might think it's not expensive, but if so, you're not exactly mass market. You can't expect the average price of a TV to jump by a factor 5 and keep the demand the same.

Then again, a $500 game console isn't mass market either, as Sony will rapidly find out.

Re:They may have a winner

[Jarlsberg]

Well, I don't know, but the non-geeks I know haven't heard about the rootkit fiasco, and are all positive wrt. Sony. (Though they balk when I tell them just how much the PS3 will cost when it is launched.) The rootkit thing did hit the mainstream newspapers here in Norway, but it didn't seem to have much effect. It's probably different in the US.

Worthless article.

[Spazntwich]

How does crap conjecture and speculation on the Wii's power keep making main page slashdot?

Who cares until Nintendo releases real, hard numbers?

Re:Worthless article.

[Anonymous Coward]

Who even cares about real numbers? If you want pretty pictures of the same old rehashed games, get an xbox 360 or PS3, hardly rocket science!

Re:Worthless article.

[donscarletti]

Even hard numbers arn't enough to make this hype worth caring about. Frankly, I won't know if a Wii is any good until I've played one. Will the launch titles be fun to play? Will the motion sensing controller make games more fun or less fun? Will the hardware (which we know is going to be modest) be unable to satisfy requirements for modern games and modern gamers, or is the PS3 and XBox360 just computational overkill? Will the wiimote force nintendo to be innovative in their games, or will they keep pounding out their 20 year old franchises and leave innovative gameplay wholly in the domain of PS3 developers like last generation?

Numbers cannot help with these question, only time and experience. I for one look forward to playing the Wii and maybe even getting one if it is good, though until then, I don't care.

Re:Worthless article.

[DrXym]

One word - Zonk.

Re:Worthless article.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah hard real numbers are so applicable and objective.

Like MHz between Intel and AMD.

I mean damn, compare the PS2's and xbox's graphics when compared to something actually programmed well such as RE4 on the gamecube.

Numbers barely mean shit unless they're of a massive difference.

Re:Worthless article.

[adachan]

I wish more people had the balls to say such things these days. Totally Agreed.

Re:Worthless article.

[Andrew Kismet]

Hey, just a minor point of contention - their "Pounded out franchises" have grown and developed over time, frequently switching to complete new or unique gameplay structures. A lot of sequels make the mistake of rehashing the gameplay every time. Compare GTAII and GTAIII, or Link to the Past and Ocarina of Time for what I'm trying to get at here.

Re:Worthless article.

[heinousjay]

Plenty of people on Slashdot have the 'balls' to post contentless trolls. Read at -1, you'll see them all.

Re:Worthless article.

[Anonymous Coward]

"innovative gameplay wholly in the domain of PS3 developers like last generation?"

I hope that was a joke.

Re:Worthless article.

[donscarletti]

Ok, I understand that. That's why developers of games like Katamari Damacy and Ico stay the hell away from the PS2.

Re:Worthless article.

[donscarletti]

Yep, I know some things change, but also some things don't. Compare the three donkey kong country games, they are all good, but they are pretty much the same. What about the two super smash brothers games, they are even on different consoles, but they are both the same game, one with minor enhancements. To go with zelda, compare Ocarina of Time with Majoras Mask, or Link's awakening with Link to the Past. How many Super Mario 1 games with slightly better graphics have they rehashed on Snes and various Gameboys for the last 20 years?

Don't get me wrong, I really like nintendo games, I don't have a console at the moment (I play on PC) but when I used to play console games it was always nintendo, however I am really sick of people claiming that nintendo is the holy grail of creativity just because their new controller is different. I've never had a playstation but I'm sick of people demonising sony because it has focused on graphics this generation, even though its developers are for all I know as innovative as always. Things were different when Shugiru Miyamoto could write two games a year by himself, but in this world of increasingly complex games, Nintendo's inhouse tallent is like spoonful of jam spread over a loaf of bread. Millions now have to be invested in any game that many people would be willing to play, leaving nintendo in the position of only milking their sure winners with almost the same dedication as Squaresoft or ID. I don't blame Nintendo for this, I don't dismiss Nintendo for this, but I sure as hell arn't able to overlook it for another chance to hate Sony.

Sony are evil, Microsoft are evil, I've always bought Nintendo, so why don't I hype Nintendo? It is because Nintendo deserves its current console fate more than anyone is willing to remember, when it was at the top it did some stupid things, first of all it betrayed its then ally sony when it abandoned their "Playstation" collaboration. Nintendo did not keep its deal with Sony to promote CDROMs for the SNES and this caused Sony to enter into the market with the PSX and distroy Nintendo. Also, Nintendo did not treat its 3rd party developers well, it charged extortionant licence fees, used legal thuggary to keep developers under control and entered into favourable deals with certain developers (erroniously known as 2nd party by Nintendo literature) with the exclusion of others, thus now Nintendo has almost no titles apart from the ones they made themselves. This cannot compete with Sony and particually Microsoft who will sacrifice themselves totally for their 3rd party developers and now command the loyalty of most big game houses who don't trust Nintendo.

Nintendo have been down on their luck in the living room for 10 years, but they are not angels.

Hmm, on rereading my post, I've really gone off on a tangent after the very first paragraph, whoops.

Re:Worthless article.

[Krimszon]

The interesting thing is they have not yet released real hard numbers. Actually, they might never.

Re:Worthless article.

[justchris]

How will numbers help? According to the numbers, the original Xbox was about twice as powerful as the Gamecube. Instead of the 10% more powerful it actually proved to be in practice.

The numbers won't tell you anything. The primary reason the 360 is more powerful than the Xbox has nothing to do with how fast it's processors clock or how much memory it has. It has to do with the fact that the Xbox was built like an all purpose pc, and the 360 is built like a dedicated games console. Even if the 360 had a single core procssor at the same clockspeed and the same amount of RAM as the Xbox, it would still be heads and shoulders above the original Xbox in performance.

Numbers at best tell you half the story. And you'll never hear numbers from Nintendo. At best you'll hear numbers after the system is released and enthusiasts take it apart and clock everything for themselves.

Personally, if someone from ATI says, 'We're building a better GPU than the one that was in there for the final product', which is what I got from the summary, then I'm inclined to believe there will be at least some improvement. The only question is: how much?

Re:Worthless article.

[Andrew Kismet]

If I could moderate you (+1, Rant) I would.
I pretty much get your point, just making sure you weren't oblivious to the fact that the franchises aren't just carbon-copy clones every time, like many people seem to think.
I know Nintendo make mistakes. But they've always tried to innovate; occasionally they've backed down at the wrong time (CD-ROMs) or pressed forward unwittingly (Virtual Boy) but occasionally, their innovations make them stand out from the crowd. This is what I'm hoping the Wiimote is going to be, a positive change in console gaming. Something to stop the stagnation of rehashed control schemes and gameplay.

Nintendo's inhouse tallent is like spoonful of jam spread over a loaf of bread
Wonderful analogy. Maybe you and BadAnalogyGuy should task some time...

I always got the impression...

[Parham]

that the Wii was only a little better (hardware-wise) than the Gamecube. Everything I've read has either suggested that the Wii was only slightly better in hardware than the Gamecube (if not equal in some aspects). However, if the Wii has 2 to 2.5 times the hardware power of the Gamecube as the above article suggests, then they've fulfilled my expectations by more than enough.

Re:I always got the impression...

[Knuckles]

The 2-2.5 number has been around for months.

Re:I always got the impression...

[Ford Prefect]

However, if the Wii has 2 to 2.5 times the hardware power of the Gamecube as the above article suggests, then they've fulfilled my expectations by more than enough.

A 2 to 2.5 times increase in performance is pretty shitty for five years of additional development - it suggests that the new graphics chip is really, really cheap compared with the old one.

Re:I always got the impression...

[w33t]

My expectations are being raised all the time by announcements. I'm trying very had to keep them in check by playing original NES and SNES titles - just so when the Wii is released it will seem even cooler! Kind of like running around the pool makes it feel warm when you jump back in ;)

Which brings me to the thing I find so tantilizing about this system - the excitement I feel when I think about the Wii is something I haven't felt since I was a young child on christmas morning when my parents suprised us with the NES. I was flabbergasted! I played Mario for hours and watched my siblings play for hours. I never thought I would feel the same again about a video game console - and I haven't yet.

But the excitement around the Wii and hearing how developers simply laugh and laugh while playing it is making me feel like that 12 year old wearing his pajamas until sundown fighting bowser.

I'm so EXCITED :D
--
Music should be free

Re:I always got the impression...

[KarmaMB84]

I think I'll take this shitty console at half the price of the "non-shitty" competition, thank you.

Re:I always got the impression...

[Anonymous Coward]

A 2 to 2.5 times increase in performance is pretty shitty for five years of additional development

Is it?

I know I'm going to appear stupid here, but I have no idea what a 2 times increase in "power" even means in this context.

Does it mean that an average gamer is likely to feel that the graphics are subjectively "twice as good" when comparing new to old, or does it mean something more objective or something completely different?

Re:I always got the impression...

[Anonymous Coward]

mod parent up... i'd also take a more innovative system with shittier graphics than a system that hasn't done anything to change my gaming experience.

Re:I always got the impression...

[Otter]

I plan to, also, but his point is still a valid one...

Re:I always got the impression...

[Anonymous Coward]

This post is about as insightful as "I like chocolate ice cream."

Re:I always got the impression...

[EdMack]

Graphics give diminishing returns. Look at the transformations ten years ago compared to XBOX `now with armpit hair' 360. The Playstation has 10x more power (or some silly statistic like that) and it definately does _not_ have 10x better graphics. Nintendo was right on - Until another leap and bound we cannot create proper photorealism, and developers should accept that limition and aim for stylised art (that doesn't mean cartoons).

Re:I always got the impression...

[7Prime]

These "2 or 2.5 times more powerful" figures are pretty arbitrary, don't you think? I mean, what does that actually mean? To be honest, I'd define the PS2's graphics as being about "2 to 3 times as powerful" as the PS1s. I'd put the XBox 360s as being about twice the power of the original XBox. The N64 seemed a little more, more like 4 or 5 times as powerful as the SNES (probably mostly due to it's adoption of 3D graphics processing). I was rolling my eyes when Sony and MS were claiming things like 25 - 30 X more powerful! Nintendo's estimate seems to strike me more in line with what I've thought of previous generation leaps. Hell, the Gamecube feels about twice as powerful as the PS2 to me. The bottom line is, a system's "power" is just as much defined in its ease of expansion, from a programming standpoint, then the actual clock speeds and size of instruction sets.

I expect that the Wii will be the least powerful system of this generation, but I'm not sure it's going to be the "ancient relic" that everyone makes it out to be. I think most games will be comparible in quality, with the PS3 and 360 having some titles that go a bit above it. Remember, that the cost of a graphics processor goes up exponentially as the actual output quality increases. So the PS3's graphics processing may be twice as expensive as the Wii's, I would expect it, then, to be around 1.5x more powerful, or thereabouts. THEN you have the whole HD conondrum. If I remember correctly, PS3 games will be REQUIRED to be, at a minimum, 720i, that takes a LOT MORE processing than 480i, which most Wii games will be set at. So all of that lovely graphical power that you get from that super expensive graphic hardware goes bye-bye right there. On normal TVs, I expect the Wii's graphics will be practically IDENTICAL to the 360 or PS3, possibly even slightly superior, due to the games being created specifically for viewing on 480i.

PS2 is noticable inferior to the GCN and XBox, yet it dominates both in the US and worldwide. I don't think the Wii will be noticably inferior, on standard TV sets, from the 360 and PS3.

Re:I always got the impression...

[cowscows]

I'm okay with that. I played with an Xbox360 at a store kiosk the other day, and the games looked nice and I had a good time, but I certainly wouldn't say I had even twice as much fun with it than I did at the old Xbox kiosk sitting next to it.

Nothing that I've seen from the PS3 demos looks like twice the fun I've had with my PS2. And how many times more powerful is this next gen hardware?

Where's the bang for the buck? Knowing how many shaded triangles the system can push isn't fun. Knowing how many polygons are on screen isn't particularly exciting. The returns on pushing the hardware to the limit just aren't as big anymore.

And so Nintendo is saving everyone a little bit of money by recognizing that, and instead putting their effort towards creating something that really will offer some return on the investment.

Re:I always got the impression...

[scot4875]

To put this in perspective...

The Wii will be able to output graphics 2-2.5 less 'shitty' than Resident Evil 4 or Metroid Prime.

To do some simple, non-irrefutable math:

2-2.5 * pretty fucking good = what the hell more do you want?

Seriously, you people need to listen to yourselves once in a while.

--Jeremy

Re:I always got the impression...

[Ford Prefect]

2-2.5 * pretty fucking good = what the hell more do you want?

Keeping up with Moore's Law (or nearest equivalent for graphics tech), providing me with greatly improved graphics hardware for exactly the same price (or less!) than the old lot?

Decent artwork and design are still the most important factors in good computer game visuals, but half-decent hardware is always appreciated. You can, however, go the other way - the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 seem specially designed to pump out huge quantities of hot air in order to show off intensively pixel-shadered, photorealistically rendered, billion-triangled Bad Art.

Re:I always got the impression...

[be-fan]

At least the competition is expensive because they're giving you a lot of hardware. How do you justify Nintendo selling die-shrunk 5yr-old tech for the same price as they did originally, despite the fact that the cost to manufacture the hardware has shrunken to a fraction of its original price?

Re:I always got the impression...

[ZakuSage]

Is 2 to 2.5 times GC hardware really enough, though? Look at it this way: 2 times PS1's hardware power would still look like shit. Hell, wasn't N64 like twice as powerful as PS1? That wasn't a very large improvement. PS2 is easily around 10+ times more powerful then PS1, and even for some that's not satisfying enough.

I for one think that Nintendo -should- have gone for some real graphical and hardware improvements, not just minor ones that can barely bring them out of this generation of gaming. Really, if I'm going to be paying $250 for a piece of electronics, I want my money out of it in all areas. Look at MGS4: it's going to be one hell of an immersive experience, one that just wouldn't be possible on PS2, Gamecube, or XBox 1 simply because the hardware couldn't handle what it's trying to offer. With technologically next generation consoles, games like it are going to be possible that bring new things, innovative things even, that are only possible because of **Tim Alle voice** MORE POWER. I'm not saying that Wiis controller and cute little simple games are bad, I'm just saying that making them look beautiful in a technical and aesthetic way is also very important.

Re:I always got the impression...

[Anonymous Coward]

According to high school physics, power is energy over time...

Maybe it's twice as hot ;)

Re:I always got the impression...

[NeMon'ess]

Look at the specs for the xbox and the 360, then just use some common sense.

Going from a Celeron 733MHz to three PowerPC cores at 3.2GHz is going to offer much more than double the performance. Going from a GeForce 3 GPU to a chip competitive with a 7800 is going to do over eight times as many polygons with many more effects. A GF 5900 was twice as powerful as a GF 3. The 6800 was 2x compared to the 5900, and the 7800 was 2x compared to the 6800.

PC Games bear this out, as will the 360 games this Christmas.

Re:I always got the impression...

[Knuckles]

The hardware will be a lot faster (don't be mistaken there), it will have a motion-sensing controller, it has built-in wireless, it will be way smaller, it will have an online service with old games, it will play GC games anyway. Sounds good to me.

Re:I always got the impression...

[bariswheel]

The fact that there are rumors going around about the Wii being 'slightly' better in hardware compared to the gamecube makes me SUPER EXCITED. This means that they are either trying to rip us off (not likely) or that they've spent their time and energy on sommething else, and being that that something else is unique, this is super super exciting. I can't wait.

Re:I always got the impression...

[Anonymous Coward]

By taking what you wrote literally...

No, you're wrong. Your post is much less insightful than "I like chocolate ice cream."

Re:I always got the impression...

[be-fan]

1) Each generation of console is 10-20x more powerful than the previous one. It's not Sony and MS exaggerating their claims, but rather the fact that increasing preceived graphical quality by a little bit takes a large increase in the system's power. Consider something like anisotropic filtering. It can easily double the performance requirement from the hardware, without delivering what you might consider to be a doubling in graphical quality. However, it's worth it, because it makes touches like text on billboards so much sharper and easier to read (ie: more realistic). In reality, the PS2 is easily 20x faster than the PS1. That's why it can deliver graphics that you might consider to look 2-3x better overall.

2) When ATI speaks about hardware performance, they're talking about actual performance, not perceived visual quality. So that 2-2.5x number likely means a few more pixel pipelines, a 50% higher clockspeed, and that's it. If game developers don't actually use any next-gen feature (ie: stuff like anisotropic filtering, shaders, etc), games could look substantially better, but they won't look anywhere near "twice as good" in the sense that you think PS2 looks twice as good as PS1.

3) Your scaling about the relative delta in graphics performance is completely off. The PS3 GPU and the Gamecube's GPU are in completely different leagues. The PS3's GPU can theoretically draw 12 gigapixels per second (24 pixel pipes, 500 MHz clockspeed). Moreover, it's got special hardware for reducing the impact of stuff like anisotropic filtering, and its got pixel shaders and whatnot for special effects. The Gamecube's GPU can draw 660 megapixels per second. If the 2.5x figure is accurate, then the Revolution's GPU can hit probably 1.3-1.4 gigapixels per second, with far fewer special effects and no pixel shaders, putting its theoretical performance about 1/8 the theoretical performance of the PS3's GPU. Even given the difference in resolution, the Wii just won't be able to compete, graphically.

4) The proof is in the pudding. Look at the screenshots of Zelda: Twilight Princess in this weeks EGM. When I saw them, two things popped into my mind. One: they are so artistically drawn, and really do look great. Two: the Revolution really can't do the artwork justice. Nintendo, faced with limited hardware power, did the rational thing: the made a game with beautiful colors and textures, but with limited quality in the details. Most Revolution games will likely look the same way. They'll look good, because of good and somewhat stylized artwork, but they won't have the detail, smoothness, sharpness, and special effects that PS3 and Xbox 360 games will. That fits right in with Nintendo's policy of creating "fun, easy to develop" games, but don't think for a second the same games wouldn't look a ton better done on the PS3 in 720p.

5) The PS2 is actually faster than the GC by a substantial margin. However, it's designed more to push a huge number of polygons with relatively few special effects. If you look carefully at PS2 games versus Gamecube games, you'll notice that PS2 models are substantially higher in polygon count, while Gamecube models tend to mask lower-polygon counts with rich textures and special effects.

Re:I always got the impression...

[be-fan]

To put it into perspective: the GC's GPU is about 10x-15x more powerful than the N64's GPU.

Now, considering the graphical delta between the GC and the N64, does a 2.5x difference still sound impressive to you?

Re:I always got the impression...

[Anonymous Coward]

Innovative system?? People keep throwing around that word, and cheapening it's meaning.

There's really only been one thing that's innovative in the console world (not counting the Virtual Boy as a regular console here) and that's the CD-ROM. And even that was just a natural progression in storage.

Re:I always got the impression...

[Knuckles]

When ATI speaks about hardware performance, they're talking about actual performance, not perceived visual quality. So that 2-2.5x number likely means a few more pixel pipelines, a 50% higher clockspeed, and that's it

Only, ATi to my knowledge never talked about 2-2.5. If we stick the direct ATi quotes in TFA together , we end up with this:

"I think what you saw [on Wii] was just the tip of the iceberg of what the Hollywood chip can bring to the Nintendo Wii. (...) I'm really not here to talk about the design specs... other than the fact that ATI worked closely with Nintendo. The team that worked on this chip also worked on the Flipper chip that was in GameCube, and they've been working with Nintendo for a very long time so there's a great chemistry with the two teams working together. (...) I really don't think that it's about the [specs]; I think it's about the innovation that it brings to the table--the motion-sensing, the always-on capability, which is really cool too--the fact that the chip is powerful enough and responsive enough to be there at a moment's notice, and I think that's pretty cool for the average gamer. (...) [about comparing the 360 and the Wii chip] They're different chips for different platforms and different uses. I don't think it's a fair comparison to put them on a chart [to analyze]. That's not what it's all about... I think if you focus on the capabilities that the chip will have for the average consumer, with the amazement and wow factor, I think that's the value that we bring."

For the Nintendo fanboy there is a lot there to look forward to I think.

I don't think TFA is a basis for your conclusion, "and that's it." The 2-2.5 number has been mentioned for months, means nothing at all, and in TFA only appears as a comment by the article writer,

Industry sources have said that the Wii GPU would be moderately more powerful than the GameCube's GPU, but how much more we don't know. Conservative estimates from developers have placed the Wii console as a whole at 2 - 2.5 times more powerful than the GameCube.

Otherwise, yours was IMHO a very interesting post. One more thing though (and I admit I own a GC and have very limited PS2 experience). You said, "If you look carefully at PS2 games versus Gamecube games, you'll notice that PS2 models are substantially higher in polygon count, while Gamecube models tend to mask lower-polygon counts with rich textures and special effects." I don't really see that - the main thing I notice on PS2 is that everything is so darn blocky. Case in point: GTA: SA.

Re:I always got the impression...

[Anonymous Coward]

to put it into perspective: Even the 'good' games on the N64 looked blocky and many games were actually hard to look at sometimes.

Now, considering most reasonable gamecube games look pretty darn good and easy to look at, is the graphical improvement "multiplier" still a big deal to you?

Re:I always got the impression...

[Andrew Kismet]

Excuse me? Did you just miss, uh, analog sticks, rumble packs, game controllers over keyboards/joysticks...? While all of them are natural progressions, many modern games just wouldn't work WITHOUT analogue. Rumble and force feedback has become an integral part of the gaming experience, for me as a console gamer, at least.
Innovation just means a leap is progress. Even if it's not a very big leap.
"A new and unusual thing: novelty."
New is subjective in all gaming innovations, but the Wiimote is quite a novelty, and definitely unusual.

Re:I always got the impression...

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't 2-2.5 = -.5? in which case it would be exponentially less than what I want.

Re:I always got the impression...

[barawn]

The proof is in the pudding. Look at the screenshots of Zelda: Twilight Princess in this weeks EGM. When I saw them, two things popped into my mind. One: they are so artistically drawn, and really do look great. Two: the Revolution really can't do the artwork justice.

Which would matter if Zelda: Twilight Princess was a Wii game.

It's not. It's a GameCube game. Its control scheme was updated and it'll be sold as a Wii game, but graphically it won't look any different on the GameCube vs. the Wii. Other than maybe progressive scan.

If you want a good comparison of Wii vs GameCube level graphics, look here at the evolution of the Super Smash Brothers artwork. It's - uh - not a small jump at all.

Then take a look at the SSBB trailer (which is an in-game trailer). The one thing that popped into my mind while watching it (and while playing Kingdom Hearts 2/Dragon Quest VIII this week) is this: graphically, if we want to reproduce cartoons, we're done. They're essentially perfect - the limiting feature at this point is the desire of the programmer to put in the details, not the console to output the graphics and the artist to take the time in making them.

Now, if you want realistic looking games, you've got a ways to go, but the limiting feature there won't be the graphics anyway - it'll be the AI, motion capture, and physics. Who cares if the thing on screen looks like Indiana Jones if it moves like a mannequin?

And that's why the Wii's graphics will do fine - because they're good enough to replicate cartoons, and game developers are too lazy to make realistic games look realistic.

Heck, that's the main issue I've had with PC gaming for a while. They keep trying to make things look realistic and pretty, which leads to great still shots... but things just look like a computer game when things start to move again.

Re:I always got the impression...

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want a good comparison of Wii vs GameCube level graphics, look here at the evolution of the Super Smash Brothers artwork. It's - uh - not a small jump at all.

This actually kinda illustrates his point. The main difference seems to be shading and textures, not polygons...

Re:I always got the impression...

[SirSlud]

> 5) The PS2 is actually faster than the GC by a substantial margin. However, it's designed more to push a huge number of polygons with relatively few special effects. If you look carefully at PS2 games versus Gamecube games, you'll notice that PS2 models are substantially higher in polygon count, while Gamecube models tend to mask lower-polygon counts with rich textures and special effects.

I'm a game developer, currently working on a console title that will release on PS2 and Gamecube, and you're repeating an oft quoted but totally baseless myth with point number 5 here. The gamecube hardware is more powerful than the PS2 .. substantially? Well, maybe not, but lets just say unarguably. For a recent visual example, look at the Resident Evil 4 port to PS2 - it still looks awesome, but models all have lower poly counts. Note that the PS2 came out significantly before the gamecube too .. you really think a console that came out almost 2 years before the gamecube has more powerful hardware? We have to optimize to hit 30 fps on the PS2, while the gamecube cruises along at a nearly flawless 45 fps.

It is a testemant to Sony's "Super computer" cell processor hype and Nintendos "Its not about the power" company line that keeps this old wives tale still perpetuated in 2006.

But make no mistake, the GPU and CPU on gamecube are more powerful than those of the PS2. Higher clock rates, more ram (although the non CPU addressable ARAM in the gamecube requires more management for memory use optimisation) .. just about everything except for raw disc capacity due to the use of mini-DVD on the gamecube, although the S3 texture compression here helps. I'm no fanboy; I own both systems, and they both rock .. but just because I work 50 hour work weeks doesn't mean I won't take the time out to correct some baseless myths.

Re:I always got the impression...

[SirSlud]

I'm about a month away from getting my hands the Wii development kit once it arrives at work. Things are looking real nice from my end ... had he put point number 5 as point number 1, I would have stopped reading. Its like 2001 all over again. Knowing at what stage in development the titles at E3 would have been in, the Wii will have no problems producing some pretty stunning stuff.

Re:I always got the impression...

[Anonymous Coward]

wait...Sony is releasing a six hundred dollar console, and you're complaining that Nintendo is charging too much?

Re:I always got the impression...

[wvitXpert]

My TV has 640*480 pixels resolution. Am I going to be able to tell the difference?

Re:I always got the impression...

[DJCacophony]

That's cute, you think nintendo made all those things.

Force Feedback in a game controller - made by CH Products before nintendo. http://www.thecomputershow.com/computershow/review s/chforcefx.htm
Analog Sticks - made by Atari and used by both Atari and General Consumer Electronics before nintendo. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analog_stick
Gamepad - Used before nintendo. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamepad

Perhaps you should educate yourself before spouting this crap.

Re:I always got the impression...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's cute, you have trouble with reading comprehension.

Where did the parent say anything about nintendo making all of the listed inovations? He was responding to a post that claimed that the only inovation in the console market had been CD-ROM technology (which has nothing to do with nintendo).

Additionally, while nintendo didn't (in the strictest sense) invent the inovations listed, they were responsible for making them functional and mainstream in the console market. All of rummble/analog sticks/gamepads became standard shortly after Nintendo adopted them to their own consoles. Either the big N does a lot of trend-setting, or they make really good guesses more often than not.

Re:I always got the impression...

[be-fan]

If the initial specs of the Wii are accurate (die-shrunk GC chips), then, yes. Nintendo sells the current GC hardware for $99 at a profit. If the Wii is indeed a tweeked Gamecube like everyone is reporting, then at $200 Nintendo is going to make a nice amount of money on the machine. Their development cost for the console was minimal, and on a modern 90nm or 65nm process, the whole Gamecube chipset can be put on a single chip with a very small die size. Unless the gyros in the controller are super expensive, their manufacturing cost is going to be tiny.

The PS3 is a serious amount of hardware. It's got a big CPU and a big GPU, each connected to some expensive RAM and with some fat busses inbetween. You might argue that this hardware is not necessary, but you can't argue that its cheap. Sony is not overcharging for the PS3, by any reasonable conception.

Re:I always got the impression...

[barawn]

This actually kinda illustrates his point. The main difference seems to be shading and textures, not polygons...

Yeah. Because Wii has a significant amount more texture memory and shader capability than the GameCube did.

Not everything is about polygons.

Re:I always got the impression...

[computertheque]

If you want to go by stats only, no, it isn't impressive. However, take into account the actual quality that the GC was able to produce, is 10x-15x really required for a good gaming experience or is 2.5x capable? Why are people still playing old games via emulation, or buying compilations from the past? Some people don't need to be impressed by visuals anymore.

Re:I always got the impression...

[DDLKermit007]

And this matters...why? Oh yeah...your part of the "oohhhhh look a shiney" crowd. Either that or you bought a 360 off Ebay when they were a grand and now have to convince yourself it's worth the cost.

Re:I always got the impression...

[ESqVIP]

Actually, to me it illustrates the exact opposite.

When I saw those comparisons, the first thing I noted was how the Smash Bros. Melee graphics (which when released looked simply perfect to me, as you barely notice any polygons on screen) lacked textures. His point was that the Gamecube was strong in textures, but weak in polygons, while SSBM features enough polygons to look smooth in play but uses relatively few textures, relying more on clean surfaces.

Re:I always got the impression...

[Wdomburg]

If the Wii is indeed a tweeked Gamecube like everyone is reporting

Tweaked? That's not how I've heard it characterized. A progression of the architecture, sure, but if that qualifies, all three consoles are using "tweeked" versions of the PowerPC 601 released back in 1992.

Truth is that noone has nailed down specs, aside from the oft-repeated conjecture of "2-3 times faster". Nintendo has made it clear that their strategy doesn't rest on performance, so I expect they won't hit the same level of the PS3 or 360, but the decision not to support HD this generation eliminates one of the major motivations for a huge jump in power.

Their development cost for the console was minimal, and on a modern 90nm or 65nm process, the whole Gamecube chipset can be put on a single chip with a very small die size.

It's known (and published in Nintendo's site) that they're using a 90nm SOI process. It's also known that they're using a brand new CPU and GPU codenamed Broadway and Hollywood, not the chips from the Gamecube, which were codenamed Gekko and Flipper.

It's got a big CPU and a big GPU, each connected to some expensive RAM and with some fat busses inbetween. You might argue that this hardware is not necessary, but you can't argue that its cheap. Sony is not overcharging for the PS3, by any reasonable conception.

It is by the conception that it's a machine to play games and there are machines to play games which are a hell of a lot cheaper. Processors and ram and chips have absolutely no intrinsic value to the end consumer, it's what they can do with the product that counts.

To some people the PS3 will likely have enough value to offset the price, but to people who don't have televisions capable of HD resolutions (9 out of 10 right now) and don't give a rat's ass about Blu-ray it's a matter of paying for something they don't need or want. You might as well gold-plate excrement and claim it's a good value.

Re:I always got the impression...

[KDR_11k]

That's nice and all but I think he was talking about perception. The XC is a lot faster but to the player the increase looks nowhere near as large as it is. That's one possible interpretation for the Wii's "2-3 times", a user will perceive it as an increase of 2-3 times.

Re:I always got the impression...

[vux984]

Look at the specs for the xbox and the 360, then just use some common sense.

Yes lets use some common sense. More Polygons and Effects don't automatically make games more fun.

The remake of Resident Evil with updated graphics didn't make the game more fun.
Quake 4 wasn't 20x more fun than Quake 2; despite the huge leaps in gfx technology.

Call of Duty 2 would still be a great game even if you couldn't see the guys sweat. And a crappy xbox-1 FPS (pick whichver you hated most) ... would not have been any less craptastic if they added in sweat.

Plenty of people STILL use 5900 series cards. They are playing the same latest games with them as someone with a brand new card. And while they might not have the gfx options maxed out, they are enjoying the game pretty much the same as someone who does. If the game sucks both the 5900 and 7800 players will agree it sucks... if the game was great both groups will agree. No doubt the extra eye candy, and smoother framerate at higher resolution will give the richer player more to see; but unless the game is outright unplayable due to shit framerate or something the player on a lower-end card will enjoy the game about the same.

Consider a PS3 + 1 game (no point in owning it without 1 game) will run around $700 after taxes. For 700 bucks you can probably get a Wii, a 2nd controller, and 4+ games for that $700.

The Wii's graphics will be DVD quality; the PS3's will be HD. If the price were close, yeah, I'd go with HD. But they aren't close.

Wii has a major advantage right now. Yeah, the market droids and salespeople are going to tell consumers how much more powerful the PS3 is, and a lot of consumer-sheep are going to buy into the idea... sadly even the ones without an HD tv to even take advantage of it. But the price is going to be hard to swallow if the Wii is sitting next to it at half the price; with graphics that hold their own. Parents will be thinking to themselves, that they can get a couple more games, a 2nd controller, or (-gasp-) they could even get their kid something else too this year.

At the end of the day, its going to come down to the games. If the PS3 shows up with a lot of must have exclusives it will fare alright. If all the important titles are on the xbox360 or wii, or are multi-platform releases it will be in serious trouble.

And this time round, the Nintendo system isn't just a cheaper ps2 with Mario. Its got the new controller that has a lot of potential to make some truly new gaming experiences, and above all, it seems to be properly focussed on delivering the games -- the launch library has a number of titles I already want. Come time to buy, its going to be a nobrainer for a lot of people to pick up the Wii along with several titles vs a PS3 and a single game.

Re:I always got the impression...

[KDR_11k]

You said, "If you look carefully at PS2 games versus Gamecube games, you'll notice that PS2 models are substantially higher in polygon count, while Gamecube models tend to mask lower-polygon counts with rich textures and special effects." I don't really see that - the main thing I notice on PS2 is that everything is so darn blocky.

A more direct comparison is the PS2 port of Resident Evil 4, the devs said they had to cut the polygon numbers by half to make that work.

Re:I always got the impression...

[NeMon'ess]

If 7prime was talking about perception, then that was his mistake, becuase the great-grandparent's comment says

A 2 to 2.5 times increase in performance is pretty shitty for five years of additional development - it suggests that the new graphics chip is really, really cheap compared with the old one.

Ford Prefect is clearly talking about the polygon pushing power of the new chip, not perception.

Furthermore, 7prime is presumably talking about polygons because he compares Sony and MS's claims of 30x power to his experiences. Since he knows Sony and MS mean polygons, his comparison logically relates to polygons with respect to the Wii's 2-3x.

Re:I always got the impression...

[NeMon'ess]

I basically agree with what you wrote, but I was just replying to 7prime with respect to polygon performance, which is what he was talking about, not perceived performance improvement, or even if the visuals matter all that much.

Re:I always got the impression...

[Knuckles]

Aaah, interesting. so it is exactly the opposite of "PS2 models are substantially higher in polygon count"? Seems to fit better with what I seem to remember to have read: PS2 is optmized for high fill rates.

Re:I always got the impression...

[Knuckles]

had he put point number 5 as point number 1, I would have stopped reading. Its like 2001 all over again

Yeah, I was tired and didn't really get it :) I mean, everyone knows that the Xbox and the GC have better graphics than PS2, and blockiness is PS2's specialty. And that PS2 was optimized for high fill rates, IIRC.

And thanks for the insight. I'm sure Wii will be able to do pretty stuff. People thought GC specs were low too, but they were the only specs of that generation that were reached in practice, and the GC could do beautiful stuff.

Now people run around adding up the GHz of the 360 and PS3 cores against the Wii, but are forgetting that developers curse the complexity already.

Re:I always got the impression...

[7Prime]

No no no.

Where in my post did I EVER say anything about polygon performance? I was specifically NOT talking about polygon count. I was talking about percieved performance increase. And, btw, the quote from Nintendo was not an objective statement about processing power, it WAS talking about percieved power, as in "it will feel 2 to 3 times more powerful than the GameCube". So many people seem to think Nintendo was making some kind of benchmark comparison, but they never have even come close to doing so.

Re-read my post. I really hate it when people keep putting words in my mouth. I thought I made it quite clear that I was talking about the perception of performance. My whole point was that actual performance increase doesn't mean crap if the perception of a performance increase isn't there.

Here's a possible psychological response to performance increase:
Sony: Actual performance increase of 30x = percieved performance increase of about 3 - 4 times
Nintendo: Actual performance increase of ???? = percieved performance increase of about 2 - 3 times

That puts the Wii in the ballbark of about 20x more powerful than the GameCube. Of course, this is all completely speculation, based on a bias perception BY the manufacturer. But still, this notion that the Wii is actually only 2-3x more powerful is simply stupid, and has never once been Nintendo's claim. The whole reason they threw out the "will feel 2 to 3 times more powerful" claim was because Nintendo wants to shake itself (and hopes that others will follow) free of this reliance on completely un-aesthetically based benchmarking, which produces claims that are no where near the actual percieved performance increases of the systems. People need to stop putting words into their mouth about what the actual performance increase will be until the specs come out (which they have not). I fully expect that this generation will see a comparable performance difference to the current generation, with the Wii being like the PS2, and the 360 and PS3 being close together, a bit noticably better, like last generation's GameCube and XBox. At most, the Wii will be this generation's DreamCast (in performance), but it's not going to be an NES sitting next to a PS2, as many comments seem to suggest.

Re:I always got the impression...

[Anonymous Coward]

Force Feedback in a game controller - made by CH Products before nintendo. http://www.thecomputershow.com/computershow/review s/chforcefx.htm

That's not a gamepad, it's a joystick.

Analog Sticks - made by Atari and used by both Atari and General Consumer Electronics before nintendo. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analog_stick

The first analog stick (not joystick) was made by Emerson Radio Corp for Arcadia 2001. This analog stick wasn't used as the modern ones do (with the thumb finger), you hold it between forefinger and thumb (I had one). Arcadia 2001 analog stick was far different from the standard, the N64 analog stick. Atari 2600 had not joypads but joysticks, and although they were analog, they were used as digital joysticks in most games. Some people see a stick and they think it's all the same...

Gamepad - Used before nintendo. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamepad

In your links isn't written which was the first gamepad. In fact, you can deduce that NES' pad was the first pad. Read your links before post them, I have been searching for a while and I haven't found any refference to the first pad other than the NES' one.

Re:I always got the impression...

[7Prime]

Then take a look at the SSBB trailer (which is an in-game trailer). The one thing that popped into my mind while watching it (and while playing Kingdom Hearts 2/Dragon Quest VIII this week) is this: graphically, if we want to reproduce cartoons, we're done. They're essentially perfect - the limiting feature at this point is the desire of the programmer to put in the details, not the console to output the graphics and the artist to take the time in making them.

Wow, this is quite possibly one of the most insightful comments I've seen since the Next Gen battles began, I'd mod you up, but it looks like you don't need it. We're practically at the point that if you put a disney cartoon next to a Wii game, or even most GameCube games, the quality is there now. I too am playing Dragon Quest, however, and though the game is absolutely wonderful, it would have been SO MUCH BETTER had it been on the gamecube. I'm starting to feel that, for the styles of graphics the GCs design was centered around, it did them practically perfectly, yet every PS2 game I've ever played felt like it had room for graphical improvement. Just compare Tales of Symphonia to Dragon Quest VIII, and while I won't argue that DQ8 is probably a better game (both are great, however), Symphonia feels complete, where-as the lack of polygon smoothing in the PS2 makes even simple cell shaded graphics look a bit grainy. Now, I don't care if polygon smoothing has anything to do with pure power output or not, but its one thing that makes an instantly noticable difference in the percieved quality of the graphics of the two systems, therefor, the GC feels substantially superior, graphically.

Bright blocks of color, smooth "hand drawn" looking outlines and cells, with just enough detail to not be distracting: SSBM was practically perfect. Even if you look at Brawl, it doesn't look like anything that couldn't be done with a GameCube... because it doesn't require much more power. So they added a bit of texture to Mario's overalls... they totally could have done it on the GCN, but at the time, it was probably more that they really didn't think to do it than anything else.

Bottom line is:
Zelda: Twilight Princess and SSBB are going to look like the greatest Disney-styled animation ever, I don't think people are going to disapointed
Metroid Prime 3 is going to blow the crap out of sci-fi comic book style.
Red Steel may have a bit of a disadvantage, in attempting realism, but from what I've seen, I'm still awed by it.

Re:I always got the impression...

[KDR_11k]

I don't know what the PS2 is optimized for but I know devs regularly curse the bottlenecks in the system.

Re:I always got the impression...

[SamSim]

I'd suggest that it's not laziness (or at least, not JUST laziness) on the part of the developer which stops realistic games looking realistic - it's time and effort. Only a very small number of developers have the manpower and budget to actually fully USE all the graphical capability available on the current platforms, and even then, it takes two to three years of development time to get the game looking that good. Smaller developers just can't use that power for its intended purpose and therefore can't meet the expectations of the rabid graphics-hungry gamers. They're getting edged out of business.

I don't think this additional processing power is a curse, though. Developers have TOTAL freedom to make games as detailed or as sketchy as they want now. What I want is for more people to understand that it's not necessary to use EVERY last polygon if your game is to be any good. c.f. Geometry Wars.

Re:I always got the impression...

[fwr]

Hmm, by your own calculations it takes 20x raw performance gain in order to get 2-3x perceived performance gain. So, with the Wii only 1/8th the raw performance of the PS3 it's interesting that the PS3 won't even be 2x the perceived performance of the Wii, yet cost 3x the money. Not to mention that you'd need a HD setup in order to realize that less than double performance gain, so you are talking a heck of a lot more than 3x the money. Just doesn't sound worth it to me.

Re:I always got the impression...

[TravisO]

I'd like to point out that when talking about 3D graphics, 2x as powerful isn't enough to notice a difference. It's the classic high school math question that 90% of students seem to mess up, a 2x2 cube is NOT 2x the size of a 1x1 cube, it's 4x. If you want double the resolution, double the texture sizes, double the polygons and double the effects we're talking significantly more power, in the area of 8x. You need to jump in iterations of at least 4x to even see a difference but more along the lines of 8x to actually impress people. Back in the 2d days you didn't need to make such extreme improvements in speed, obviously just double the CPU and minor improvements to video means you could have thousands of colors instead of dozens, and you could double or triple the number of objects on the screen, often allowing for very large bosses vs small ones, and all of this looked really impressive compared to the previous hardware.

Re:I always got the impression...

[barawn]

I'd suggest that it's not laziness (or at least, not JUST laziness) on the part of the developer which stops realistic games looking realistic - it's time and effort. Only a very small number of developers have the manpower and budget to actually fully USE all the graphical capability available on the current platforms, and even then, it takes two to three years of development time to get the game looking that good.

Well, laziness was my way of saying exactly what you said above in a more snarky way. After all, a poor-looking video game just means that the managers didn't break out their whips and chains and were soft enough that they gasp let the programmers and artists leave! Lazy bastards.

Smaller developers just can't use that power for its intended purpose and therefore can't meet the expectations of the rabid graphics-hungry gamers. They're getting edged out of business.

That, really, is why Nintendo's new system will do fine. Because they won't be able to afford to make graphically-competitive PS3/XBOX games. They will be able to make competitive Wii games.

That's why I'm kinda miffed that Nintendo's considering dropping GBA support. The GBA is a cheap handheld. Keep it that way. Let the DS be a "mid-range" handheld (and the PSP can have the two or three gamers that want a "top-end" handheld). Price the games accordingly - $15-20 for a GBA game, $25-30 for a DS game, and I'd bet that both consoles would survive admirably.

Then again, maybe there just isn't enough developer interest. It might also help if the GB Micro cost $50 retail. That's what I paid for mine, but that's because I'm lucky. :)

I don't think this additional processing power is a curse, though. Developers have TOTAL freedom to make games as detailed or as sketchy as they want now.

They don't have total freedom, though. They're limited by one thing - budget. And it really remains to be seen whether or not that market will actually happily accept $70-80 console games. Personally, I don't think it will - not if there are $40-50 console games that look half as good but play just as well.

If you think about it, upping the cost of a console game is kindof a losing proposition for game makers. They're not going to get more people to buy a game by pricing it higher. The only way they'll actually make more money is if an equal number of people buy it. Which means, essentially, that they're just trying to squeeze more money out of gamer's pockets. Sony, insanely, thinks that it can just arbitrarily do that. They're nuts. Gamers don't have infinite money.

Which means, really, there's a graphics wall at some point, where you can't make enough money back in sales to make up for the development/artwork cost. I think we hit that wall in the last generation, and I think Nintendo realized that too.

Re:I always got the impression...

[be-fan]

When I say "tweeked", I mean slightly modified. All the chips in in this generation are not "tweeked" versions of the PPC601 --- they look more like a PPC601 internally than they do a Pentium 3. On the other hand, it is fair to say, for example, that the Power5 is a "tweeked" Power4, or that a Pentium-3 is a "tweeked" Pentium 2. I should also point out that the Pentium 3 (Katmai) and the Pentium 2 (Klamath), had different codenames.

The most precise reports I've seen thus far indicate that Hollywood and Broadway are "tweeked" versions of Gecko and Flipper, in the "Pentium 2 to Pentium 3" sense of the word. Such reports are consistent with reports of a 2x performance improvement. A 90nm die-shrink, with a little bit of circuit tweeking for the new process, could result in single-chip solution 1/2 the size of just Flipper or Gecko by itself. The resulting chip could also likely run at twice the clockspeed without pushing the thermal envelope. That's be consistent with all the reports, and would be extremely cheap for Nintendo to make.

Of course, those reports could be wrong. Broadway and Hollywood could indeed be genuinely new chips. In that case, I have a very hard time believing the performance improvement is only 2x. The Gamecube's CPU was about 50 mm^2, and its GPU was about 100 mm^2. It had a 162 MHz 128-bit bus to its 1T-SRAM. For reference, the PS3 CPU is 230mm^2, its GPU is close to 200mm^2, and it has 2 128-bit busses, one to VRAM and one to main RAM. If the Wii followed the same development process as the GC, to hit the same size targets, and thus similar costs, Nintendo would get a *lot* more than a 2x improvement in performance. Within the 50mm^2 envelope, you could fit a pair of Gecko cores running at 1+ GHz, with a substantial boost in cache to top it off. Within the 100mm^2 envelope, you could fit one of ATI's RV515 chips, with 4 pixel shaders, 4 vertex shaders, a full palette of 3D effects, running at 500 Mhz. To top it off, you could clock the 1T-SRAM at 700 MHz for over 11GB/sec of memory bandwidth. These are all conservative assumptions, working from tech that is already very cheap today.

The resulting system would be a lot more than 2x more powerful than the GC. It'd be closer to 4-5x more powerful, and could make use of modern features like pixel shaders while maintaining performance. The fact that Nintendo isn't citing bigger numbers points very strongly to the Wii being a "tweeked" Gamecube, not a substantially reworked design.

As for the PS3, hardware does have intrinsic value, in the sense that it has an intrinsic cost. That value may not be worthwhile to a particular consumer, but there is little arguing that the intrinsic cost of the components in the PS3 are not at all out of line with its selling price. It's not like Sony is taking $50 of components and trying to sell them for $500.

Re:I always got the impression...

[Daveznet]

That may be true, but does having 8 times as many polygons and however many times as fast going to make it anymore more fun. Better graphics and a faster CPU does not make the system better overall, harware wise yes gameplay, no.

Re:I always got the impression...

[Andrew Kismet]

Didn't mention Nintendo once. The AC claimed that the only gaming innovation was CD-ROM. I corrected him.

Re:I always got the impression...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hell, wasn't N64 like twice as powerful as PS1? That wasn't a very large improvement.

Bwahahahahaha!!!! Did you realy look at PS1 and N64 multiplatform games? Did you look at N64 exclusive games compared to PS1? Come on! That wasn't a very large improvement? It wasn't even comparable!!!

MGS4: it's going to be one hell of an immersive experience, one that just wouldn't be possible on PS2, Gamecube, or XBox 1 simply because the hardware couldn't handle what it's trying to offer

Are you sure about that? Or did you mean that "PS2/GC/XB coudn't handle such graphics"? Think if it's possible a MGS4 with less graphical efects, the same game but worse looking. Maybe the rigid body dynamics engine... but XBox showed power enough to move Havok so...

Re:I always got the impression...

[ZakuSage]

Do you remember N64? It pretty much looked like shit with vasoline. Really, it was only a small step up from PS1, granted though more striking then any gap visible this gen (PS2/GCN/XBox).

MGS4 has some really crazy things going on that can only be done with good hardware. A good simple example is the new fully destructable environments, which actually play a very large part in what you can and can not do to hide in the game. The old tag line "No place to hide" was in direct reference to the fact that everything can be destroyed properly in the game. Another more subtle thing is the removal of the exlaimation points and question marks above the enemies heads. Now, the emotions and thoughts of the enemy are actually displayed on their faces, which is much more immersive, and not possible on PS2/Xbox/GCN. The other thing with enemy emotions is that you can actually fuck with their heads and actually scare the enemy off. There's a lot more neat stuff like this that Hideo's doing only possible with next-gen in the game. Also, looking absolutely beautiful helps a lot to make things more immersive, and suck me more into an already amazing series.

Re:I always got the impression...

[MaverickUW]

There's definitely a good point here, especially with the Hype machine that is Sony Computer Entertainment. Remember, the PS2 put out 100 million poly's per second or some BS like that, and Nintendo claimed the gamecube did about 12 million. Difference, tech-demo vs in-game situation. Notice how games that were designed for the gamecube first in mind (Resident Evil 4) and later ported to the PS2, it's amazing how a 1 year old game looked crappier on it's newer console than it's old one, even though that newer console it was on was supposed to be better.

Nintendo is the king of underestimating.

Remember the wavebird? Official usage distance of 6 meters, which is more than good enough by itself. Actual range in situations could approach it to 20-30 meters and still work. Personally, I'd rather have something that's underestimated than over-estimated. Think about it, if it's better than you think it's going to be, you'll be surprised and happy. If it's not as good as you've been told, you'll be disappointed.

Re:I always got the impression...

[PeelBoy]

Video cards alone have come a long way in the past 5 years. Even if the Wii has a lower end card it'll still be quite a bit faster than the one in the GameCube.

I'm not sure why people seem to care so much about how fast the machine is. It has almost never mattered in the console wars. The PS2 is almost half the speed of the other consoles if not more and look how well it's doing.... Was the PS1 as fast as the N64? Look how well the slower DS is doing compared to the much faster PSP.

Re:I always got the impression...

[MaverickUW]

Conservative estimates from developers have placed the Wii console as a whole at 2 - 2.5 times more powerful than the GameCube. I think this is a good indication. If you look at the fact that developers are probably looking at games like Resident Evil 4, and the fact that Resident Evil 4 was about the best looking game of this generation (on the middle-console power wise even), they're taking the safe road. I bet you most developers when they started working with the gamecube devkits had no clue the gamecube could produce a game as beautiful as RE4. When you're at the "Tip of the iceburg" as quoted from the ATI release, you don't know what you're capiable of. Give it a few years of life, and I bet that developers will be surprised themselves at what the Wii will be capiable of.

Re:I always got the impression...

[NeMon'ess]

I was specifically NOT talking about polygon count. I was talking about percieved performance increase.

Not according to the context of your comment in the thread, and not according to your phrasing.

Parham (892904)
I always got the impression that the Wii was only a little better (hardware-wise) than the Gamecube. Everything I've read has either suggested that the Wii was only slightly better in hardware than the Gamecube (if not equal in some aspects). However, if the Wii has 2 to 2.5 times the hardware power of the Gamecube as the above article suggests, then they've fulfilled my expectations by more than enough.

Ford Prefect (8777)
A 2 to 2.5 times increase in performance is pretty shitty for five years of additional development - it suggests that the new graphics chip is really, really cheap compared with the old one.

7Prime (871679)
These "2 or 2.5 times more powerful" figures are pretty arbitrary, don't you think? I mean, what does that actually mean? To be honest, I'd define the PS2's graphics as being about "2 to 3 times as powerful" as the PS1s. I'd put the XBox 360s as being about twice the power of the original XBox. The N64 seemed a little more, more like 4 or 5 times as powerful as the SNES (probably mostly due to it's adoption of 3D graphics processing). I was rolling my eyes when Sony and MS were claiming things like 25 - 30 X more powerful!

Parham and Ford Prefect are addressing hardware power. Numbers. If you want to talk about how the visual quality improved, you have to use words like those. If you're still using the word "powerful" in a discussion over performance numbers, how do you think readers should interpret you? To me and probably those who modded me up, you sound like you are disputing the hardware performance increase of the 360 vs. the xbox. It sounds like you are guessing the actual hardware performance increases.

Worse, then you bring in Sony and MS' claim about their's being 25-30x more powerful. By doing so, you've reassociated your numbers of 2x or 2-3x, with raw hardware performance numbers.

Re:I always got the impression...

[Billly Gates]

Have you tried the alpha versions of the Wii at your company?

How fast is it and how are the graphics compared to the ps2? I wonder what effects are included in hardware?

Re:I always got the impression...

[7Prime]

Parham and Ford Prefect are addressing hardware power. Numbers.

How could they? Those numbers don't exist, noone knows the actual specs of the Wii... at least, I have yet to see any REAL data on it. Ford Prefect and Parham are speculating just as much as I am. The fact is, WE DON'T KNOW!!! We're using symantics to twist data in one direction or another: one person uses the term "power" as a synonym for clockspeed/processing power, while another person uses it as a synonym for percieved increase in performance. Both are accurate representations of the word, and have been used in talking about computer performance since its invention. One party speculates that Nintendo was refering to processing power, the other (me) suspects that Nintendo was using it to described percieved increase in performance. These yield TOTALLY different results, as processing power must be increased exponentially to yield a linear increase in percieved performance.

Nintendo have released no detailed hardware specs, and have never, in the history of the Wii/Revolution marketting strategy, used any kind of specs to sell the product, so when they said "power", I jumped to the obvious conclusion that they were talking percieved perception, of which I still have no reason to doubt, though I could very well be mistaken (we all could).

My comment about Sony and MS's "power" announcements was worded that way because that is the way THEY worded it, not me. This is the whole problem: Nintendo gives an arbitrary number corrisponding to what they THINK the perception will be of the increase in power, while Sony uses "power" to deliniate processing speed. The ambiguous nature of these figures is why we're all arguing in the first place.

To me and probably those who modded me up, you sound like you are disputing the hardware performance increase of the 360 vs. the xbox. It sounds like you are guessing the actual hardware performance increases.

Let me give you a piece of advice, as someone who's been around the block a few times here: NEVER... EVER... use your "mod points" as a reason for people to listen to you, it just comes across extremely childish.

Re:I always got the impression...

[SirSlud]

believe it or not most consoles even conpensate for over-scan .. really on most consoles you're seeing 640 by 440 or something .. hehe our engine apis return the actual number in code so I dont have them memorized

Graphics..... whatever.

[ABeowulfCluster]

When the graphics are 'realistic' or 'realy really realistic' it comes down to gameplay if people are going to buy their console and have fun with it.

Re:Graphics..... whatever.

[greyduk]

That's the thing with Nintendo... whether intentionally or not, they've fallen behind in the cutting edge graphics and focused more on a different market than Sony and Microsoft. Nintendo games for the most part have simpler controls and are designed for a casual environment, either a party or when you just wanna relax and have a little fun. I still play solitare on my computer every once in a while, when I get sick of devoting time and energy to complicated RTSs and FPSs. I think that's the demographic Nintendo is aimed at here.

Graphics Schmaphics

[Anonymous Coward]

Wii will win by gameplay, hell I would take a good 2d sidescroller or topdown game over the latest cookiecutter FPS....

Just Hype?

[mc calculust]

Specs definitely don't matter for this console at all. It's about getting games back to how they used to be; short or moderately long pick-up-and play type games. I could definitely buy the idea that the games shown at E3 were hurried more with getting a fun game out on time than maximizing visuals, but ultimately it really doesn't matter, the games will be fun or they won't. The only games I play any more are games you can pick up and get into the heart of the gameplay instantly; Smash Bros. and Counter-Strike: Source. New Super Mario looks fun. So does Galaxy.

Re:Just Hype?

[MBCook]

I agree. Better graphics are good.

I'm happy with the 'Cube. I've asked before and I don't remember getting any responses. Did the graphics of Super Smash Brothers Melee hurt the experience at all? Did you think Resident Evil 4 didn't look like about the best game on the market? Was Metroid Prime 2: Echos ugly?

The 'Cube had great graphics. It had all I need.

But if they are going to improve it, that's fine by me. Add full-screen anti-aliasing for every game you've fixed the only graphical complaint that I've had in the last generation (this especially applies to you PS2). If on top of that you have the ability to double poly counts or draw distance or something like that then good.

Even if your graphics are "bad" they can be hidden by making them stylized. I've heard the main reason Katamari Damacy (great game, awful controls) looks the way it does is because even if they wanted to make it look less blocky the PS2 wouldn't be able to handle it. Yet no one really cared. The only possible complaint would be the aliasing issue.

The cube's graphics were great. If the changes they made will make it easier for other developers to make RE4 quality games than I'm VERY happy. I don't need anything else, at least not this generation. Other than the AA, I'm not sure how much more would be noticeable on my TV (27" SD).

I'd rather have people focus on other issues that bug me like foot-planting. It's 2006, why can't more games foot-plant? How annoying is it to have all these ultra-high poly models in beautiful surroundings and their feet slide around when they walk or get pushed? Same with air that cuts through shoulders when someone turns their head.

The rumored on-board physics co-processor on the Wii (said to have 32MB of RAM) would help with this.

Re:Just Hype?

[Knuckles]

The rumored on-board physics co-processor on the Wii (said to have 32MB of RAM) would help with this

Sounds interesting, got any more on that? Thanks.

Re:Just Hype?

[TrancePhreak]

Full screen anti-aliasing is an almost set in stone requirement for every 360 game. I've heard of one case of someone getting MS to agree to let the game be released without it, and that game is not yet out. I don't think the Wii is going to be able to do this with it's limited hardware, but perhaps they can work something out. The Nintendo DS has it, even though it doesn't have bilinear filtering or anything else like that.

The bigger issue for me with last gen was non-progressive signals. I have a progressive scan HDTV, and let me tell you Smash Bros. does some nasty stuff that shows up when not being run in HD mode. Flickering polygons and the like show up every other line. It was just icky. Nasty aliasing on some PS2 games really put me off as well.

Re:Just Hype?

[MBCook]

Game Informer seems to have leaked a bunch of stuff, although it is rumor quality. It apparently comes from a "What are the pros/cons of the Wii" type question. The forum post with the details is here. I've copied it below because it comes from forms which could get hit hard (/., Dig, and tons of others).

This article from the upcoming Game Informer magazine focuses on the pros and cons of the development environment of the upcoming Nintendo Wii. As well as revealing the last big secret concerning hardware functionality. Here are some summarizations from that article.

-Pros-

-Inexpensive graphics development.

-Developer-friendly "camera" program

-Will support HDR lighting, normal maps, bump-mapping, nurbs rendering, and panoramically-composted depth-composited cubemappng, ray-tracing.

-Chipsets are very inexpensive although EXTREMELY powerful, WILL incorporate many aspects of the Project Reality study.

-Nintendo is providing extensive documentation to ease the incorporation of the Wii-mote.

-Cons-

-Challenging to program effectively for the Wii-mote, due to it being very new to the industry.

-Marketing to be more challenging for bigger third-party franchises due to nature of the innovative qualities.

-The development cycle to possibly equal the time cycles of PS3 and Xbox360 due to the time needed to be innovative and effectively program for the controller.

-The challenge of marketing the Wii's controller in ads and commercial may turn third-parties away from exclusivity. (The challenge to display through ads how "playing is believing")

-The Final Secret/minor surprises also-

-Wii will include a built-in decent resolution camera that can be used to add your face to character models and add innovation to games. These snapshots can be tweaked as well. It is still being decided whether to allow camera to record and stream video. Mention made to have this feature be a strong feature in online play.

-A wireless headset will be made available at launch.

-SD cards will range from 2GB to 7GB and will be priced "within reason".

-A new router technology is still in development and not yet available to developers. In the final product Nintendo hopes to be able to make every Wii a sort of "Wi-Fi hotspot" with each user connecting to that user and so on. They also want to be able to allow different users to share things and are thinking about setting up a pseudo-P2P network through Connect24, where users can share content and "other things". This means that even if you have a dial-up connection or no internet, you can still connect to Wii Connect24.

-The Wii will indeed have a PPU included in final hardware. It will have only 32MB though, which will still take a considerable amount of pressure off of other chips.

-A still-in-development simple dev tool will be made available to users through the Connect24 network. It will allow users to create a simple game in 2D or simple 3D and share it with the world. This will hopefully be available on the network by launch.

-The last big secret is the "graphics solution". It revolves around a whole lot of non-volatile RAM (opting out of HDD support, RAM is much faster than a HDD). And a development interface that centers on a AI-controlled command-line interface. This additional tech only included in final dev kits, while most developers don't have access to final dev kits.

Re:Just Hype?

[Knuckles]

Thanks. Makes me even more excited. PPU, 2-7 GB SD cards instead of slow HD, amateur dev kit, hotspotting: this sounds all very good. Since we have to scratch something from the list (rumours and all), "and a development interface that centers on a AI-controlled command-line interface" sounds like made-up.

Re "Project Reality": I thought that was what ended as the N64. Was there more/revolutionary stuff that only comes to frutition now? (Couldn't find unfulfilled stuff when googling)

Re:Just Hype?

[Knuckles]

Ah, ok, thanks. found more about this part of Project Reality in the link you gave.

Re:Just Hype?

[Anonymous Coward]

There's an additional core on the GPU that is completely dedicated to FSAA, so games can enable FSAA without a performance hit. I'm talking about the X360 in case it was unclear.

Video enhances gameplay: but it's only a topping

[w33t]

I have to say, that even though the graphics have never been the issue with the Wii/Revolution I am still very happy to see that they appear very much "next gen".

I have to face the fact, that even though I admire gameplay and that "game-play" is really why we "play-games", graphics are darn interesting.

Additionally, the fact that the Wii is going to offer such a unique interface device will, I think, allow us to see "graphics" which will be completely absent on the other consoles. What I mean by this is that because the wiimote offers such a more intimate and intuitive interface with the console's game world that we will be able to interact with it in ways that will have the effect of looking even more "real-life" than a console with simply raw video processing power.

Example: by being able to hold a cooking skillet or wok and flip, shake, swirl and turn the food around in it the resulting imagery on the screen should looks very much and especially FEEL very much more "life like" than by being forced to use a joystick or keypad to move the virtual cookware.

Any additional video processing power should only serve to further enhance this experience. And that's truly what video should be for video games - the enhancement part (like a spice) - not the main course.

Hmm, I'm using a lot of cooking examples - is it lunch time yet?
--
Music should be free

Looking better and better every day

[czarangelus]

I've been a Sony gamer since the PS1... but Nintendo really seems to be shaking things up. Between the HD-DVD less 360, and the unbelievable trainwreck that is the PS3, I might be convinced that simplicity is a virtue. What good is a next-gen console if all the games are just the same rehashed 6 titles over and over?

Re:Looking better and better every day

[coop535]

I'm okay with rehashed titles, provided there's the same feeling of fun. The mario series is a good example. I am craving to play their newest title which they put out for the DS.

So many game developers focus on graphics, artwork. and performance. (imo) They spend only a portion of their time and effort making the game fun, balanced, and / or intuitive. It makes it tough to continue a series and keep it alive if the strongest thing you have is the 'cool' factor. It's tough to continually make things 'cooler'.

Re:Looking better and better every day

[radish]

I'm just curious, but why is a HD-DVD-less 360 a problem whilst an equally HD-DVD-less Wii is not?

Re:Looking better and better every day

[0racle]

Because its cool to like Nintendo and hate Microsoft.

Re:Looking better and better every day

[Knuckles]

Dunno, maybe because 360 outputs games at HD resolution, so to make it worth it you need a HDTV, but the 360 doesn't let you play HD movies on it? While the Wii does not output HD, so the point is moot there, plus for the price difference between a Wii and a 360+HD I can buy a standalone HD player when the market has shaken out.

Re:Looking better and better every day

[Deluge]

Yes, and why even bother with HD-DVD when (all corporate loyalty aside) BD's got 60% more capacity?

I actually want BluRay to win the war, not because of the movies, but because I want recording media with 25GB per layer.

Re:Looking better and better every day

[NeMon'ess]

Does Oblivion look like an xbox game when played at 640x480? Does Burnout Revenge on the 360 look like the xbox version? Nope and nope. HD is not required to make the games worth it.

Re:Looking better and better every day

[Knuckles]

No, but most of the graphics power (and price) of a 360 and a PS3 are needed to push the high resolutions. If you're only doing 480i, the Wii can do roughly the same as the 360.

Re:Looking better and better every day

[Anonymous Coward]

How well is that going to work though? I don't even use writable DVD as anything but temporary storage because they are so damn fragile; upping the data density by at least three times is not going to help matters...

Re:Looking better and better every day

[TrancePhreak]

Without good shaders and the like, your comment is pretty much false. A good deal of the power of the 360 is used to push... effects, which would be missing from the Wii version. Take Call Of Duty for example. They use one of the cores for particles. Without all the smoke and debris, CoD becomes DOOM. A game you've played ago, as opposed to the newer version with elements like fog and smoke or just plain things that blow up on demand.

Re:Looking better and better every day

[Knuckles]

Without good shaders and the like, your comment is pretty much false. A good deal of the power of the 360 is used to push... effects, which would be missing from the Wii version.

Right, I was too short in my GP. But: on 480i many of these effects are not that visible anyway.

Take Call Of Duty for example. They use one of the cores for particles. Without all the smoke and debris, CoD becomes DOOM

This ("without particles CoD is Doom") is either also false, or a very good reason not to play CoD or buy a 360. I have played enough Doom, thank you very much, I don't need to replay it with particles enabled. To have me as a customer, the makers of CoD would have to make new and interesting games.

Re:Looking better and better every day

[NeMon'ess]

See I don't understand that. Maybe it's because of how specialized the design of consoles is. 720p is 3x as many pixels as 480p/i. 1280x960 is 4x as many pixels as 640x480, or 2.56x as 800x600. Yet modern video cards do not have a 2.56x fps difference between 1280 and 800. They often end up being CPU limited. Internally the memory bandwidth is what matters, and these cards have more than enough because they don't really take a fps hit until 1600x1200 or above.

So a modern console GPU doesn't need to devote most of it's power to the higher resolutions. As I remember, nVidia claims they designed their chip to have no performance hit in HD, and I presume, no performance gain in SD.

Also, shading and particle effects are most definitely noticeable at 640x480. Good looking sparks, fire, smoke, and water, are quite visible on xbox games at SD. Pixel shaders and High Dynamic Range Lighting will make 360 games played at SD look much better too.

Re:Looking better and better every day

[Knuckles]

As I remember, nVidia claims they designed their chip to have no performance hit in HD, and I presume, no performance gain in SD.

Does it matter? I dunno - if you design the console and the game for a lower definition, you can simply leave many things out. I'm sure the 360 could still calculate some more than the Wii if both targeted the same 480i/p - it would just not be extremely visible.

I don't want to look like I'm arguing that good-looking graphics are totally irrelevant, and what moving images I've seen of 360 and PS3 does look awesome. However the Wii definitely will be able to do a lot more than the GC, and on a low-def TV, I don't think the difference to 360 will be all that great - Resident Evil 4 + is not bad.

Re:Looking better and better every day

[DDLKermit007]

Yes and then you can have 25gigs of data "rot" on you. The 25gig disks still cost $20 to press (no for the burnables which are ALWAYS more). It's by far much cheaper to buy another HD which is re-writeable and stands up to the test of time if you stick it in a USB enclosure and disconnect it when not needed.

Re:Looking better and better every day

[nexarias]

But Nintendo does the same with Zelda, Mario, Donkey Kong and their various spinoffs. I don't get the "sequel" criticism directed only at Sony -- Nintendo milk just as much, if not more.

Re:Looking better and better every day

[MemoryDragon]

Actually Nintendo is worse, I am playing the current DS lineup now, while all the games are fun, some of the Nintendo titles feel totally rehashed. Lets face it, an rpg, while having excellent gameplay and humor, still feels rehashed if princess peach is capured the 100th time and mario and luigi set out to recapture her. Same goes for mario cart in its 5th incarnation and the mario ds was a straight port from the N64. It is not like the 5th rehash of the games and concepts but more like the 20th with its first incarnation being Donkey Kong. Same goes for Castlevania which is in its 30th incarnation or so, with slight modifications from one title or the other. While those games are fun, being used to PC gaming I constantly get the feeling that console gamers are happy to settle for less for more money. FF7 is no comparison gamewise to the Ultima series or Gothic it simply is subpar, same goes for most other console games, but in the end they are also fun, that is what counts.

Re:Looking better and better every day

[leland242]

A thousand other people have made this point, and have been refuted with this:

Just because Mario or Link is in a game, does not mean it is just a derivite sequel. In fact, those characters are there to help sell the game - which, typically, has new gameplay models that might otherwise go unnoticed without some star attraction.

i.e. Mario Golf is not equal to Mario 64 is not equal to New SMB is not equal to Mario Kart...

Re:Looking better and better every day

[poot_rootbeer]

I don't get the "sequel" criticism directed only at Sony -- Nintendo milk just as much, if not more.

The difference from my perspective is that even though Nintendo puts the same cast of characters in game after game, there is often an attempt to tweak the formula of the game each time, to bring something new to the experience. Yoshi's Island, Super Mario 64, Mario & Luigi Superstar Saga, and New Super Mario Bros. are all very different games, even if they all share a common ancestor in the original SMB of 20 years ago.

I haven't seen that same evolution of gameplay in many of Sony's flagship franchises. Sure, each successive EA Sports title or Ratchet & Clank is a little more refined than the previous, but there seems (to me at least) a hesitancy to mess with the formula more than just a little.

Objects are bigger than they appear...

[MarkRose]

Looks like it's not such a wii little graphics card after all!

Wah?

[Anonymous Coward]

I never understood this whole problem. The Xbox2 does not look 2.5 times better than the first one. It doesn't even look twice as better. It's something lower than that. If the Wii is two times better looking than the Gamecube, then I'm going to be completely amazed.

Re:Wah?

[KingBraden]

I hope that you aren't serious. How can this be modded insightful? Just because a system is 2.5 times more powerful does not mean the graphics are 2.5x as good. In fact just being 2.5 more powerful will have very little difference in graphics. The X360 is something like 25X as powerful as the Xbox, but the graphics are not yet twice as good.

Re:Wah?

[Anonymous Coward]

The X360 is something like 25X as powerful as the Xbox [..]

I have really nice bridge for you...

Re:Wah?

[Senzei]

In fact just being 2.5 more powerful will have very little difference in graphics. The X360 is something like 25X as powerful as the Xbox, but the graphics are not yet twice as good.

So why is this huge power increase important then? If 25x more hardware capability gives me marginal benefits for significant cost increases what good is it? I would rather pay less for a 2.5x hardware increase with more gameplay avenues and still come out approximately close in graphics quality. Especially considering that most of the big name titles will be ported to all platforms, and will lean towards the graphical lowest common denominator anyways. So the only areas where you are going to see the full advantage of all this extra hardware are exclusive titles, and Nintendo arguably does better there to begin with.

Current gen on up with the Wii?

[Dark Paladin]

When the Gamecube first came out, I was actually pretty pleased with the graphics - Monkey Ball, for example, was smooth and just a pretty game (as well as being a blast to play - playing "Monkey Punch" is one of those cracktastic party games).

The current Wii games that have just been shown look to be as good as "current" Gamecube games, which doesn't surprise me. Most of the dev kits the developers have were modified Gamecube kits with the controller, so odds are, that's the level of tech they focused on. So E3 shown games looked just like Gamecube games.

Since we can bet that the graphics chip has gone under a 2.5 - 3 x increase since the Gamecube, that should mean that within a year or so (as devs get used to the actual Wii developers kits and their power level), games should look better graphically.

Then again, with the Wii, most of us will shrug and go "Whatever". I've been playing "Digital Devil Saga: Avatar Tuner 2" today, and only just noticed that there were reflections on the floor. Then I tuned it out while I played. With the Wii's controller, odds are they won't have to compete on the graphics, letting Sony and MS developers spending the extra money on artwork that could have gone to game play.

Re:Current gen on up with the Wii?

[comp.sci]

For those who havent heard of it -
"Monkey punch", flash version:

http://www.robrob8.com/games/slap_the_monkey.htm

WTF?!

[nutshell42]

First generation of games half a year before launch are not the pinnacle of what said console is capable.

I'm shocked. Shocked!

The same is true for all consoles and all games (as long as they're actually running in real-time on the real hardware and are not just bullshots or "target renders" *cough*Killzone2*cough*)

"At a moment's notice"

[Knuckles]

The real news here seems to be some kind of quickstart capability. Yes, that you would get software pushes if you kept the Wii powered on around the clock was revealed a few days ago, but it seems to be niftier than that. The ATi guy says

"I think it's about the innovation that it brings to the table--the motion-sensing, the always-on capability, which is really cool too--the fact that the chip is powerful enough and responsive enough to be there at a moment's notice, and I think that's pretty cool for the average gamer."

The Wii...

[Dragoonmac]

No Wireless.
Less space than a Nomad.
Lame.

Re:The Wii...

[Knuckles]

No Wireless.

What are you talking about?

Re:The Wii...

[Knuckles]

Thanks to the AC, I understand you now. Still wrong :)

Re:The Wii...

[freeweed]

(S)he's talking about this.

Re:The Wii...

[Guppy06]

"Less space than a Nomad."

Come to think about it, I think we need side-by-side size comparisons between the Nintendo Wii and the Sega Nomad.

Re:The Wii...

[Anonymous Coward]

Not funny because you're wrong. Plus, Slashdot seems to like it, unlike the article you took that from.

Re:The Wii...

[Tolookah]

here are some side by side comparisons between all the consoles, some fun info there is the size of the PS3 is BIGGER than the XBOX that was made fun of by tons of sony fanboys when it came out...
http://byonabi.haru.gs/ma2/html/uppp37602.html
the Wii is about the size of a double-wide DVD case
there is no nomad, but well, its a pretty good size comparison to the recent ones.
Enjoy.

Games that made you use your imagination

[bariswheel]

I have always been a fan of game playability/fun factor/games that make you use your imagination, similar to a book. IMHO complicated graphics, sound, and movies inside games seem like they tend to take away from the fun of the game. If I wanted to play a game that looks absolutely like real life, I guess I woulnd't use a game console and go play real tennis. The 256 colors and the 8-bit sound had a magic to it.

There used to be a game by Lucasfilms called Indiana Jones 3, Last crusade, on the PC, around 1990 or so, in the game you could go anywhere you wanted, and solve puzzles not necessarily in the order that they need to be solved. Graphics were VGA, 256 colors, but now that I think about it, the fact that I used my imagination more might have made the game a bit more fun; the fact that the boss didn't look picture perfect helped him out a bit, similar to reading a book and visualizing the characters.

It's hard to pin down what I'm really trying to say here, but I loved the sierra games in the 80s, but maybe it's beause I'm older, but today's games just don't do it for me anymore. The other day I played mario kart and super mario world (is that what it was called) on the super nintendo, and had tons of fun, despite how old it is. Seems like Wii is trying appeal to this kind of demand.

Re:Games that made you use your imagination

[16K Ram Pack]

I don't think it's about graphics, but about gameplay.

The real problem is when the thing is beautifully done, but the gameplay sucks. I personally like the C&C/Total Annihilation games, but my favourite is Total Annihilation, even though it's older. The graphics/game segments in the more advanced C&C are better, but TA has, for me, the better gameplay. It's much better balanced.

Re:Games that made you use your imagination

[grumbel]

Do you know what my first thoughts were when I saw Monkey Island for the first time ever back then in 1990? Can't remember my exact thoughts, but it was something along the line of "This are the best damn graphics I have ever seen in a game", "Maniac Mansion" earlier on the C64 triggered similar feelings. Adventure games simply were one of the best looking games around that time, all those Jump'n Runs and other tile based games just looked flat in comparism to the '3d' scenary you got in an adventure game. Now I am not saying that the technical aspects of graphics are overly important, but graphics itself, ie. the art behind them certainly is. MonkeyIsland1 vs MonkeyIsland4 kind of demonstrates that in a drastic way:

http://www.vgmuseum.com/end/scd/a/monkey-25.gif
http://bonusweb.idnes.cz/obrazek/na_mi05.jpg

vs

http://www.activewin.com/reviews/software/games/m/ images/mi4_019.jpg

MonkeyIsland1 might suffer a bit from limited resolution and color palette, but boy, the art in there is just lightyears ahead of that shit that they put into MonkeyIsland4. So what does that mean? Not much probally, but it shows that advances in rendering don't necessarily lead to a better looking a game.

Now that brings us back to the Wii, on one side I don't see its limited abilities as much of a problem, especially since we don't know how limited it really will be (will there be HDR and Shaders support?). However its limits won't be a problem only as long as the developers make good use of what they have at hand. If they just try to develop the same style as they do for PS3 the Wii will probally end up with a bunch of ugly and jerky games, just look at 'Burnout' or 'NfS:Most Wanted' for the NintendoDS to see how wrong games can get if they are rushed and don't make proper use of the hardware.

In the end I think you are right, even with shiny high-end graphics, most of the 'world' in a game exists still mainly in our head and not just on the screen. What is shown on the screen however can and has to support the imagination and not work against it to make the game as a whole work. 'Photorealistic graphics' when done wrong can easily fall into the uncanny valley and spoil all imagination, while cartony graphics on the other side are reasonably save for most part. Now I don't want all games to look chartony, but developers have certainly to be carefull to create an overall pleasant looking game and pure CPU/GPU power alone won't help to compansate lack in arstitic skill. And as such lack of CPU/GPU power won't stop people from creating great looking games either, the days of 4 color CGA where lack of graphic ability might have hindered good looking games are long gone and no matter how much power the Wii has, it will certainly be more then enough to bringt some good graphics onto a TV screen.

Fuzzy math question

[DiamondGeezer]

Conservative estimates from developers have placed the Wii console as a whole at 2 - 2.5 times more powerful than the GameCube."

WTF does 2.5 times more powerful mean? Can they quantify "power" of a graphics processor to one place of decimals?

Re:Fuzzy math question

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesnt mean anything.

Modern consoles are complex beasts, and its reached a point where its the interaction between the components that matters more then the processor speed (BIG NUMBERS!) itself.

Watch nintendo do more with less, keep costs down significantly, and be graphically competitive with both the xbox360 and the ps3.

While I doubt itll do the HD resolutions, does that REALLY matter to anyone anymore?

Re:Fuzzy math question

[mobby_6kl]

> Can they quantify "power" of a graphics processor to one place of decimals?

Yep. If the old chip used 10W and the new one requires 25W, that's 2.5 times more "powerful".

Re:Fuzzy math question

[igotmybfg]

it probably means it can draw 2 - 2.5x more triangles or something similiar

Re:Fuzzy math question

[Stormwatch]

WTF does 2.5 times more powerful mean? Can they quantify "power" of a graphics processor to one place of decimals?

I think they can. There must be some benchmark test for that!

ha ha ha...

[Anonymous Coward]

He said "wii wand"

MOD PARENT UP: CLASSIC

[Anonymous Coward]

http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23/ 1816257

Slightly-OT

[Gogo0]

What I find really amazing is that they managed to pack at least double the performance of a Gamecube (this has been known for quite some time) into a chassis even smaller than the Gamecube.

Look at THIS image and marvel at what Nintendo's engineers are capable of.

Re:Slightly-OT

[Ford Prefect]

What I find really amazing is that they managed to pack at least double the performance of a Gamecube (this has been known for quite some time) into a chassis even smaller than the Gamecube.

My MacBook Pro manages to pack at least double the performance of my Toshiba T1100 PLUS into a much smaller chassis.

Technology improves over time... ;-)

Re:Slightly-OT

[KDR_11k]

The DS has better graphics than the N64 at a MUCH better framerate yet it's a lot smaller. As technology progresses you can get older tech in miniature versions.

Re:Slightly-OT

[Aladrin]

Even worse is the fact that they probably do not actually mean what they said.

'2 - 2.5x more powerful' is what they said... They probably actually MEAN '2 - 2.5x as powerful'. It's quite a difference.

If you make the GC a 1 for power, the first statement makes the Wii a 3.0 or 3.5. The second statement (the one they probably mean) would make the the Wii a 2.0 or 2.5. Quite some difference.

In the end, numbers like these mean nothing because you cannot trust the speaker to:

A) Know WTF he's talking about
and
B) Know WTF he's actually saying

Re:Slightly-OT

[Gogo0]

Not to say that Nintendo is entirely truthful, but they have a good track record in understating the real-world performance of their consoles. Hell, a gamecube launch title (Rogue Leader) surpassed their pre-launch in-game polygon announcments.

Re:Slightly-OT

[SoapDish]

Regardless of it being a few years later, the size of the Wii is really incredible compared to the other consoles. I'm almost afraid I'd lose it with some DVDs

Thanks for the picture.

Re:Slightly-OT

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice, though we would have to wait to see how it would cope with the heat.

Funny. But it needed the reference link.

[JackAxe]

Without AC's post, it was easy to misconstrue your post.

<]=)

Re:Video enhances gameplay: but it's only a toppin

[4D6963]

Additionally, the fact that the Wii is going to offer such a unique interface device will, I think, allow us to see "graphics" which will be completely absent on the other consoles. What I mean by this is that because the wiimote offers such a more intimate and intuitive interface with the console's game world that we will be able to interact with it in ways that will have the effect of looking even more "real-life" than a console with simply raw video processing power.

Example: by being able to hold a cooking skillet or wok and flip, shake, swirl and turn the food around in it the resulting imagery on the screen should looks very much and especially FEEL very much more "life like" than by being forced to use a joystick or keypad to move the virtual cookware.

I think the word you're looking for is "immersion"

Super graphics with no HDTV

[chilledinsanity]

I find it ludicrous that they're boasting about the improvement in graphics over the gamecube seeing as how they're still going to have regular analog TV output. TV may not look so bad if that's all you've seen for a while, but compared to a monitor or an HDTV image it's a blurfest.

Re:Super graphics with no HDTV

[Anonymous Coward]

You and the 14 other people with HDTVs can go buy a $800 PS3 then and shut the hell up, ok?

Re:Super graphics with no HDTV

[mgabrys_sf]

re:"you and the 14 other people with HDTVs can go buy a $800 PS3 then"

(a) More than 14 people own HDTV
(b) More than 14 people will buy an HDTV in the next 6 years
(c) The PS3 is 500 and 600 respectively
(d) You're a troll. But - still - how do you keep your apartment under the bridge looking so fresh?

Re:Super graphics with no HDTV

[mgabrys_sf]

Actually the NYT last Sunday had an interesting article about that - right now Sony's profit margins are around 2.6 percent compared to Samsung or Apple which are 14 and 12 percent respectively.

So - ja - they've tricked out the ps3 to the gills, but a whopping profit margin isn't one of them. They're hoping to raise the margins to 5 percent by 2008.

I'm more concerned by reports that there are NO GRAPHICAL DIFFERENCES between Zelda for the Gamecube, and Zelda for the Wii (wii.ign.com). That means - if you want to really save money - just get a GameCube.

Re:Super graphics with no HDTV

[frickendevil]

Sure the PS3 costs $600, but add a couple of games on top of that, another controller or 2, then it starts to add up. Then again, havent you heard of a http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=hyperbole hyperbole?

I know 1 person with a HDTV, not only do tehy cost a ridiculous amount, IMO they make TV look bad because of the faults in the original recording, which are blurred out in low definition. I probably won't buy one until the price comes crashing down, and the old technology is phased out. God bless CRT.

Re:Super graphics with no HDTV

[mgabrys_sf]

ALL gaming starts to add up. Or did you buy 2 games for the life of your system?

As for the rest - hey Dreamcasts are really cheap and look great on normal tv. Go nuts! As far as cost - I'm sure that computer you're typing on was a bargin. Commodore 64 is it?

Re:Super graphics with no HDTV

[Twisted64]

This may be incorrect, but the poster might be Australian (like myself). On google:

US$ 600 = 801.496126 Australian dollars

I don't want to meet the kind of people who are willing to spend that kind of money on a console that promises exactly the same experience, with the same games, and better graphics. A friend of mine bought an X-box 360 two months ago and already the games are less interesting than the idea of hacking it to play DivX so it can totally replace the media centre PC.

Re:Super graphics with no HDTV

[ZachPruckowski]

You assume that Nintendo wants a 6 year lifecycle. They may well have a 4 year cycle in mind. In any case, Nintendo is probably gonna go into the black in the first year, whereas Microsoft might take 2 or 3 years, and Sony might not get there until 4 years from now. In 8 years, when the PS4 is where the PS3 is now, Nintendo will be shipping the Wii2 (or whatever name it has) for the last year or two, and rumors will be floating around about Wii3. And even a low-end to mid-range console system in 4 years will beat the PS3.

Re:Super graphics with no HDTV

[hibiki_r]

Well, there are some differences. It seems that the gamecube version won't run on 480p, and it won't have a widescreen aspect ratio.

Re:Super graphics with no HDTV

[Anonymous Coward]

So you are just pulling random numbers out of your ass?

The fact is no one knows what the development costs are for Nintendo - the silly assumption that it was cheap to make/develop seems to come completely from people reading the inane stories confusing the early Dolphin based devkits with the real final Rev hardware.

Microsoft last stated that they were looking at a "best case scenario" of going into profitability after three years. And that was using all sorts of crazy assumptions like the 360 selling at PS2 rates and people buying insane numbers of games. With the 360 selling at less than half the rate of the first Xbox...Throw in the massive hardware defect problem Microsoft still has six months after the console hit the shelves. Ouch. The 360 is going to be swimming in red ink for years to come.

The most expensive part in the PS3 is also the most heavily subsidized with the BluRay drive. Sony is a manufacturing power unmatched when it comes to console hardware process shrinks and cost reductions. Betting Microsoft gets to profitability before Sony does would be a very bad bet to make.

Re:Super graphics with no HDTV

[chilledinsanity]

"you and the 14 other people with HDTVs can go buy a $800 PS3 then" I don't have an HDTV, I don't even have a console, I do all my gaming on my computer. Whenever I see games being played on a regular TV, my first thought is "jesus, this is blurry". Other people are going to think that too once HDTV's gradually roll out. DVD's rolled out gradually as well, something Nintendo also didn't include which made the PS2 and Xbox seem more attractive. My point is that with all this technology invested in making the graphics look better it seems kind of futile. It's like going from generic motherboard sound to an Audigy 4, yet still using the same $10 headphones you got from Wal-mart.

Re:Super graphics with no HDTV

[ZachPruckowski]

You totally, totally missed my point. My point was that the Wii would probably return a profit first. MS concedes it'll be years until profitability, and the PS3 costs (if within a mile of the reported price of $800-900) are huge. Even if N's losing a little bit on the Wii, they're still likely to be profitable first. That lets them make another console quicker, which'll probably meet or beat the PS3 or the Xbox 360.

Re:Super graphics with no HDTV

[frickendevil]

No, but i tend to buy 2 when i first buy a console, as opposed to none. However my $800 will last longer with either a xbox 360 or the wii. I love my dreamcast to death, and i still drag it out every now and then, I just like to play new games as well. My computer isnt great, but it does what i want it to, believe it or not, i use a 17" CRT with 1024*768 resolution, which isnt particuarily great, but it makes my source code look just as good as a 24" widescreen LCD monitor with a massive resolution.

Re:Super graphics with no HDTV

[leland242]

Ridiculous amount? I suppose that is in the eye of the buyer...

When I bought my HDTV, it was not so I could continue watching stuff on the low-res channels. And they don't make normal TV look bad - it looks bad on it's own.

However, I agree, I look forward to when normal tv is phased out - HD is really, really, nice. ill probably sell my existing 1080i and get a new, cheap 1080p system...well, assuming that i can actually connect a 1080p signal to it.

Re:Super graphics with no HDTV

[mgabrys_sf]

Just a tip, do what I did. I use apple-stock but I found previous generation cinema displays being cleared out for under 700 bucks (big ones). Sure it's not as shiney as the new stock (or as high-rez) but 22 inches of LCD goodness for 600 bucks ain't bad, and will hold up until the 23 inch displays that I like come down in price. Check craigslist - they're all over the place in some of the cities supported.

(disclaimer - check ADC adapters for your computer millage may vary etc)

Wii graphics will be substantial

[wick3t]

I still think the GameCube ports of Resident Evil 4 and the new Zelda still hold up very well compared to many of the titles I've seen for the XBox 360 and PS3. If the Wii is 2 to 2.5 more powerful than the GameCube I'll be more than satisfied.

Let's not forget the Wii does not need to be as powerful as the other two consoles as it doesn't need to output HD. The Wii graphics should be very good in 480p.

Re:Wii graphics will be substantial

[Kazzahdrane]

You're right, but I'll point out that Resident Evil 4 for the Gamecube wasn't a port, the GC was the first platform it was available on :)

Re:Wii graphics will be substantial

[KeiichiMorisato]

Just remember that Resident Evil 4 was not a port. It was developed for the Gamecube first....AND it won the best graphics award from IGN for ALL platforms. A Gamecube game BEAT OUT all other platforms for the best graphics.....

Re:Wii graphics will be substantial

[schweinhund]

I have to agree. I have never thought GC graphics were not good enough, etc. Paper Mario looks so perfectly smooth, it's like reading a comic.

Re:Wii graphics will be substantial

[wick3t]

I knew that. I must have been tired when I wrote it. :P

Re:Video enhances gameplay: but it's only a toppin

[w33t]

That was the word I was looking for! ;D
--
Music should be free

How things change

[suv4x4]

It wasn't long time ago we were posting jokes about the Wii name, have you noticed how this stopped? Noone jokes with the name anymore.

So it was indeed a temporary thing. Good lesson in marketing, and a great decision to announce it the week before E3 instead of E3.

Also notice how this brought them popularity: they're all over the press with articles about Wii's performance, remote, features, price and so on.

The PS3 is almost invisible around Wii.

Re:How things change

[mgabrys_sf]

Yes kids everywhere will be running home to play with their wee's.

OH damn.

Re:How things change

[novus ordo]

You obviously haven't seen this.

Re:How things change

[suv4x4]

You obviously haven't seen this.

That's really old toon, not related to Wii, just people linked to it, just like they linked to the "weeee" Firefox flick ad with the brought-to-life browser icons.

Re:How things change

[Anonymous Coward]

It wasn't long time ago we were posting jokes about the Wii name, have you noticed how this stopped? Noone jokes with the name anymore.

That's because the jokes got old. The name isn't any better now than it was. People would be talking just as much if they'd named it the "HappyBox" they just wouldn't chuckle every time they said the name.

Re:How things change

[Anonymous Coward]

No, lots of us still hate it. But it wont make a difference to my purchase, just I'll never refer to it as that name.

Re:How things change

[Garse Janacek]

Noone jokes with the name anymore.

Good point! Let's fix this right now.

"And Sony cried Wii! Wii! Wii! all the way home..."

Whew! I feel better. Thanks for reminding me.

Re:How things change

[assassinator42]

But what about the people who haven't heard the name yet? Like, say, parents who will be buying one for their kids.

Re:How things change

[Indefinite, Ephemera]

No longer joking about the name doesn't entail being content with the name, however; it's just that the name has ceased to provide amusement.

Re:How things change

[Daetrin]

First of all, it's still a stupid name. Second of all, i don't know who you talk to but people _are_ still making jokes about the name. The initial rush has worn off so the jokes aren't as common, but they're still out there.

I'm still going to get one, but _damn_ "Wii" is a stupid name!

Wii and Opera

[Mongoose]

I noticed this blurb on kotaku:

Opera Drops Details On Wii Version
http://www.kotaku.com/gaming/nintendo/opera-drops- details-on-wii-version-178216.php

Personally, I don't think anything less than HD resolution for a TV is horrible for webbrowsing. I've used hand helds, dreamcasts, etc. The only console so far worth web browsing on was a PS2 with netfront. Want to know why?

1. No one designs their site for NTSC.
2. The PS2 browsing was SVGA resolution ( at least the way I was running it over a monitor )
3. You need a real keyboard and mouse at some point.

I'm hoping my playstation 3 will have branded kb+mice at some point, since I like such things to match. At least the other consoles can display the resolutions needed for me to read the websites. It's ok for nintendo since I doubt anyone will do more than browse demos anyway. Also I need a PSP kb, since I still haven't found a better way to use google maps in a handheld. If DS isn't ass for it I'll buy a DS lite for portable web browsing. =)

Re:Wii and Opera

[Anonymous Coward]

"I've used hand helds, dreamcasts, etc. The only console so far worth web browsing on was a PS2 with netfront. Want to know why?"

Two words: VGA adapter.

The Dreamcast was rather nice for web browsing.

Re:Wii and Opera

[hmccabe]

Good, I would hate for something to happen on the Internet and you miss it.

Re:Wii and Opera

[damsa]

Web browsing is fine on 800x600 screens. Unless you are posting to websites or doing anything heavily text oriented. But for looking at Myspace profiles and playing you tube 800x600 is not too bad. But of course the question is we know the Wii cannot do HD but can the Wii even do 800x600.

Re:Wii and Opera

[Mongoose]

No it'll be NTSC. NTSC is 640 x 480.

Re:Wii and Opera

[Knos]

Isn't NTSC rather like 720x508 (modulo the tv's overscan)?

I do hope that we get to have a decent vga support in the wii, though.

Re:Video enhances gameplay: but it's only a toppin

[jeffbax]

I don't know, I'm still not sold on Wii. The thing is, I'm not convinced 3rd parties will dedicate the time to the machine. For the most part, 3rd party DS games still suck, or are quite a bit lacking compared to Nintendo or some of the other top developers like Sega who are known for their creativity. I'm not sold on the fun of "hiking" the ball in Madden (not that I like Madden... just an example). E3 reports give games like Sonic Wild Fire a mixed bag... they are simple yeah - to the point that some say that the 360 version still feels more of a Sonic game than the thing the Wii is getting. Another thing, Wii sports.... that is going to be fun for about 15 minutes. As for the FPS... Metroid Prime 3 and Red Steel do not inspire confidence in me for the Wiimote on FPS. The turning speed is absolutely atrocious, and looks very awkward and even less fluid than using dual analogs. Don't even get me started on Zelda... watching them demo Zelda was quite painful, he kept running into the environment and enemies when he never should have... and Zelda controls have been perfect since N64. While at the same time, I like "simple" pick up and play games, I'm still not convinced about the Wii. I love my DS - I own New Super Mario Brothers, Sonic Rush, Advanced Wars Dual Strike, Castlevania Dawn of Shadow, Metroid Prime Hunters (though it controls pretty crappily on my DS Lite with the lack of thumbstrap), Nanostray, and Mario Kart DS. This has proven its worth time and time again. I still have a lot of hope for the Wii. I think playing games like Pikmin will be great as will other games, but the emphasis on simplicity scares me. I don't know about you, but have you TRIED going back to some of the old games? Many of them are downright archaic and while they were a total blast during their prime, they aren't something you really want to go back to for more than a few nostalgic trips with some exceptions of course. I dunno, I'm personally very excited about the upcoming 360 Library. I don't have one yet and don't know if I'll get a 360 or Wii (not really into Playstation) but 360 has both the epic games - things that will change our perception of how great a game can be like BioShock or Mass Effect, and then it also has tons of high-quality, simple games on XboxLive Arcade like Geometry Wars or Mutant Storm. Seems like a best of both worlds thing. This past generation I tried supporting an Xbox and GameCube and Windows PC. I got a bit of a gaming overload... tons of great games and not enough time to spend on one before I got a deal on a new one... next gen I am looking to try and stick to one (and I've also gone the Intel Mac route since day one... so not really into Windows gaming anymore except for exceptions like Half-Life 2) Right now to me, 360 seems to have a nice balance of amazing new properties and epic games, and then a lot of simpler games too. I'm not sold on Wii yet... mainly because my confidence in developers making truly great things on it isn't too high as seen by what is done on DS.... the games that take advantage of it really kick tons of ass, the rest are pretty mediocre. Another thing, I'm also not sold on Wii's online play - which is a big deal to me. I have a ton of friends I keep in touch with on XboxLive and its awesome. DS's Wifi Connect is an absolute nightmare. Friend-codes are the worst thing I've ever had to deal with for online play, and if the Wii is anything like DS I'm going to be really upset over this. Mario Kart online is great... until you come to the fact you can't communicate with anyone because Nintendo wants "safety first". Then you have to enter a unique code per friend per game... versus one single Gamertag on XboxLive. Thats right, ever game a person gets on DS gives them an extremely long unique # you have to have each friend add per game, so if you and 5 friends play 5 games together, you have to enter 25 of these stupid, annoying codes. Don't take this as anything other than skepticism. I am really looking forward to Wii but I am not on the pretty incredible hype train it seems to have going so far.

Re:Video enhances gameplay: but it's only a toppin

[Richthofen80]

All the examples you provide required very little innovative thinking or advances in technology to have. The powerglove could have provided a cooking simulator, but surprise surprise, no one's running out to buy cooking simulator 5000. Why? because cooking is a fucking chore. No one is going to immerse themselves in a universe of feeding my goddamn face.

Real adults are so lazy they DON'T GET OUT OF THEIR CARS IN ORDER TO CONSUME FOOD. It needs to be handed to us through a window pre-prepared. Do you think this same adult is going to buy a game where I have to engage in a motor skills learning curve just to figure out how to mimic in real life some lame activity?

The Wiimote isn't going to revolutionize gaming. Sony and later microsoft threw millions into the industry to try and bring gaming to everyone. Prior to that, gaming was a kids thing or a small segment of adutls thing. Now its huge and tons of people game. That's why Sony and Microsoft are #1 and #2, because they brought gaming to everyone and made a game for every type of person. Nintendo is instead taking a different approach by marketing their product with a bad name and creating a user experience that's way different for a group who just figured out how to use an analog joystick.

Want proof that controllers don't matter? Look at sales of racing games versus sales of racing wheel controllers. Racing wheels suck, even though they're the most sensible way to control a car. But they are very rarely sold because the immersion that you're looking for comes in bringing the best looking cars, with real licensed brands, and actual recorded exhaust sounds, and ranking systems and online play. Not gimmicks.

FPSs are just the hot genre right now

[Headcase88]

"the latest cookiecutter FPS"

If there were more side-scrollers out there, many of them would be cookie-cutter also (I'm not talking about NSMB or Mario Adventure here, more like say, Sonic Advance 3. Sorry, but I truly hate that game despite positive reviews).

If they were mainstream, there'd be 100s of side-scrollers that all have the same old moving platforms, treadmills, spikes, enemies, etc placed in boring, predictable patterns that "we've all seen before".

But... there'd probably be more 'good' ones as well. Hopefully the Wii will re-introduce some of the dormant genres I love.

Dot product please?

[Anonymous Coward]

I always felt that the GameCube GPU is more flexible than the Xbox or PS2 GPU... Definitely much more then the PS2 GPU, but the PS2 sacrifices flexibility for an enormously high fillrate.
If there is one thing negative about the GameCube GPU, it is that there is no atomic dot product pixel operation like on Xbox. Instead you have to sacrifice several texture stages to make one manually.
I can live without vertex shaders, but they would be a nice addition as well. :)

Re:Video enhances gameplay: but it's only a toppin

[muhgcee]

Dude...hit the enter key once in a while.

Rosy eyed nostalgia

[donscarletti]

You know, I've been gaming all my life and I've played a lot more cookiecutter sidescrollers than FPSs.

Back before technology became good enough for FPS, big development houses were pumping out platformers at a rate they could only dream of doing with the more technologically complicated FPS. How many games have you played with Mario, Sonic, Donkey Kong, Metroid, Duke Nukem, Commander Keen etc. in their names? Furthermore, how often have they had something unique compared to the rest of their franchise or the other franchises for that matter? That doesn't mean they wern't fun, they just wern't unique in any way shape or form.

As for top down games, how about the Command and Conquer series, the Legend of Zelda series, the Ultima series the war/star craft series and anything by squaresoft (I know some of those games went 3d later on, but retained the original gameplay)? I played and enjoyed all of them too, it doesn't mean that they had any differences to one another of any significance. Remember when every man and his dog had a top down RTS in the late 90s and they were all the same apart from subtle unit naming differences?

Nostalgia is a beatiful thing, but it never gives you the right to be judgemental. The game industry has always been an incestuous nest of copycats, but they have always made us happy with what they have produced as long as our expectations have been low. If anything, I think it is getting better, with games getting bigger there is more places they can accidently do something slightly differently to their last game.

Re:Video enhances gameplay: but it's only a toppin

[jeffbax]

Holy crap, I forgot I had to type in HTML breaks :( noooo! (why is there no edit post option?).... retry!


I don't know, I'm still not sold on Wii. The thing is, I'm not convinced 3rd parties will dedicate the time to the machine. For the most part, 3rd party DS games still suck, or are quite a bit lacking compared to Nintendo or some of the other top developers like Sega who are known for their creativity. I'm not sold on the fun of "hiking" the ball in Madden (not that I like Madden... just an example). E3 reports give games like Sonic Wild Fire a mixed bag... they are simple yeah - to the point that some say that the 360 version still feels more of a Sonic game than the thing the Wii is getting.

Another thing, Wii sports.... that is going to be fun for about 15 minutes. As for the FPS... Metroid Prime 3 and Red Steel do not inspire confidence in me for the Wiimote on FPS. The turning speed is absolutely atrocious, and looks very awkward and even less fluid than using dual analogs. Don't even get me started on Zelda... watching them demo Zelda was quite painful, he kept running into the environment and enemies when he never should have... and Zelda controls have been perfect since N64. While at the same time, I like "simple" pick up and play games, I'm still not convinced about the Wii.

I love my DS - I own New Super Mario Brothers, Sonic Rush, Advanced Wars Dual Strike, Castlevania Dawn of Shadow, Metroid Prime Hunters (though it controls pretty crappily on my DS Lite with the lack of thumbstrap), Nanostray, and Mario Kart DS. This has proven its worth time and time again. I still have a lot of hope for the Wii. I think playing games like Pikmin will be great as will other games, but the emphasis on simplicity scares me. I don't know about you, but have you TRIED going back to some of the old games? Many of them are downright archaic and while they were a total blast during their prime, they aren't something you really want to go back to for more than a few nostalgic trips with some exceptions of course.

I dunno, I'm personally very excited about the upcoming 360 Library. I don't have one yet and don't know if I'll get a 360 or Wii (not really into Playstation) but 360 has both the epic games - things that will change our perception of how great a game can be like BioShock or Mass Effect, and then it also has tons of high-quality, simple games on XboxLive Arcade like Geometry Wars or Mutant Storm. Seems like a best of both worlds thing. This past generation I tried supporting an Xbox and GameCube and Windows PC. I got a bit of a gaming overload... tons of great games and not enough time to spend on one before I got a deal on a new one... next gen I am looking to try and stick to one (and I've also gone the Intel Mac route since day one... so not really into Windows gaming anymore except for exceptions like Half-Life 2)

Right now to me, 360 seems to have a nice balance of amazing new properties and epic games, and then a lot of simpler games too. I'm not sold on Wii yet... mainly because my confidence in developers making truly great things on it isn't too high as seen by what is done on DS.... the games that take advantage of it really kick tons of ass, the rest are pretty mediocre.

Another thing, I'm also not sold on Wii's online play - which is a big deal to me. I have a ton of friends I keep in touch with on XboxLive and its awesome. DS's Wifi Connect is an absolute nightmare. Friend-codes are the worst thing I've ever had to deal with for online play, and if the Wii is anything like DS I'm going to be really upset over this. Mario Kart online is great... until you come to the fact you can't communicate with anyone because Nintendo wants "safety first". Then you have to enter a unique code per friend per game... versus one single Gamertag on XboxLive. Thats right, ever game a person gets on DS gives them an extremely long unique # you have to have each friend add per game, so if you and 5 friends play 5 games together, you have to enter 25 of these stupid, annoying codes. Don't take this as anything other than skepticism. I am really looking forward to Wii but I am not on the pretty incredible hype train it seems to have going so far.

Re:Video enhances gameplay: but it's only a toppin

[NutscrapeSucks]

I think the word you're looking for is "immersion"

Either that or "gimmick". The worst case scenario is that the controller will be used for only for titles like "Virtual Wok" and that regular action games would still be better played with the normal controllers.

(... and it's never been done before)

[Headcase88]

Yeah, classic.

You know what would have been even more classic? If he followed it up with "In Soviet Russia, Nomad plays you!", because, you know, that would be funny...

Re:Video enhances gameplay: but it's only a toppin

[cowscows]

But the more likely scenario is that if the regular action games do still work better with the normal controllers, then some worthwhile developers will create all new types of action games that do work with the wii remote. And if you still miss the old action games, there's no one stopping you from playing them on other systems.

Re:Video enhances gameplay: but it's only a toppin

[jeffbax]

Yeah, I noticed as soon as I replied... really a pain with no edit post option. I fixed it up and replied again if you want to read what I had to say :)

Downside of high-powered graphics. . .

[Zobeid]

Personally, I think too much graphic advancement may be making some games harder, or at least harder to get into. When you have too many objects on the screen, and those objects have more and more detail visible. . . It approaches sensory overload, and all the clutter becomes like camouflage. Older games had a very clean look because of their technical limitations, but that also made them easy for the player to deal with and get right to the gameplay mechanisms. Now you sometimes have to search through a graphical jungle to find the game.

Re:Downside of high-powered graphics. . .

[bariswheel]

Well said. Now I'm off to pursue the space/police/king's/hero's quest games and play them.

Re:Video enhances gameplay: but it's only a toppin

[Knuckles]

The worst case scenario is that the controller will be used for only for titles like "Virtual Wok"

Whose, Nintendo's? If Virtual Wok excites the casual gaming market like Brain Age did, I don't think Nintendo will see it as worst case.

Re:Video enhances gameplay: but it's only a toppin

[w33t]

You make good points, and they are valid.

I would argue that the innovation of the Wiimote comes from the fact that it is not just simple, but also non-encumbering.

Also, the food example was just the first thing that sprang to mind - I probably wouldn't play a cooking game either, to be honest. But who knows?

The reason the wiimote is unique is because both a steering wheel and the powerglove require effort from the user. I own a steering wheel for my computer, and it's fun. but most of the time all it does is sit in the closet. Why? Because it is big and bulky. I need to latch it down on my desk, or I would need to dedicate some room for it - precious desk real estate and precious time and effort.

the powerglove was cool - but you needed to wear it. It surrounded your hand and arm. You had to "slip into it" to use; it was inconvienient.

The wiimote is essentially a stick, a rock: a ball. You pick it up and you swing it around. This is probably what the very first toys were. The worlds most popular sport requires no more than a single item: a soccer ball.

Playing catch, frisbee, kick the can, snowball fights. Simple is fun. I'm not saying complex isn't fun - playing cards are a testament to complexity. But you don't need shuffle the snow before you play with it.
--
Music should be free

Slashdot v. Gamespot

[KingBraden]

I find it interesting that the slashdot summary talks about how the graphics will be better than at E3, while the gamespot article is titled "Nintendo is not working on a next-generation console" and it emphasizes how it is a lower end graphics console.

Re:Slashdot v. Gamespot

[ClamIAm]

That's because Gamespot is a "mainstream" gaming publication. Any mainstream gaming writer that shows Nintendo in a favorable light compared to the 1337-extreem Sony or MS will be immediately fired. And probably shot.

Old news...

[abigsmurf]

Wasn't this being said by nintendo even before E3?

Tech specs aren't THAT important

[realmolo]

The fact is, the Wii is good enough. Games aren't going to look TERRIBLE or anything. In fact, they'll look way better than the last generation, which already looked pretty awesome.

Look, I'm as much of a "tech-spec" geek as the next guy, but talking about how good a console is based on specs is akin to talking about how good a novel is based on the quality of the typesetting job.

It really *is* the games that count. And the Wii remote really is pretty cool. I haven't owned a Nintendo system since the NES, and I'm excited about the Wii, because it FINALLY gives us a new way to play games. Maybe it's not the "revolution" that Nintendo claims it is, but at least it's something new and different.

Re:Tech specs aren't THAT important

[be-fan]

Look at this month's screenshots of Zelda: TP in EGM and tell me that.

I looked it them and had a very mixed reaction. On one hand, it looks pretty good. On the other hand, in a day-and age where I watch Boston Legal in HD, the pixelated trees in the distance really killed the scene for me.

Graphical immersion in the game matters. If the graphics on a system are noticibly inferior to what a person is used to elsewhere, that'll kill the immersion, even if it wouldn't have if the person hadn't been exposed to better.

Wii's graphics will likely be okay for its target market, but only if its target market is different from the 360/PS3 crowd (which is a good bet). As I said, Zelda TP looks great, artistic and all, but this is 2006, and 480p is still 480p, and Link's hat had far too few polygons.

Re:Tech specs aren't THAT important

[jensen404]

Zelda:TP was developed for the Gamecube. If it had started development as a Wii game, there very well could have been more polygons in Link's hat.

Re:Tech specs aren't THAT important

[realmolo]

You are what we used to call a "graphics whore".

I mean, really. "Link's hat had far too few polygons"? Listen to how ridiculous that sounds.

And as far as 480p goes, well, as has been said before...

DVDs run at 480p. Is there a game that looks as good as a DVD? Or even regular broadcast TV? No. 480p is PLENTY of resolution. It's all in how detailed the graphics are. Even the 360's graphics are a long way off from looking completely realistic.

Re:Tech specs aren't THAT important

[killmenow]

...but this is 2006, and 480p is still 480p...

Yeah, and here in 2006 less than half of US households own HDTVs. The minority of you who do have them can keep right on creaming your pants over how sweet it is and blow your wad on a PS3.

But to the majority of the population, you sound just like the proponents of BluRay and HD-DVD trying to explain how much better it is than standard DVDs while we all sit back and look at our DVDs saying: "Maybe...but this looks pretty damn good to me, and it's a metric assload cheaper."

You and I both know the only reason HDTV will succeed is because our government mandated it. If we actually had a free market in this country, HDTV would likely never be more than a niche market for high-tech dweebs and super rich idiots who don't know crap about it but want it because "it's the best" and because it makes them feel special since loser poor people can't afford it.

Re:Tech specs aren't THAT important

[buffer-overflowed]

You realize that that's a gamecube game, right?

And if I really absolutely cared about graphics I'd be one of those clowns that put $500 a year down on a new video card.

Seriously, judging by your comments in this article, how much are you getting paid to be a Sony shill? Because damn, I'm not getting paid atm and serving almost the same function, and if it can pay the rent, maybe I'm in the wrong line of work.

Re:Tech specs aren't THAT important

[be-fan]

TP was delayed when it was announced for the Wii. The graphics have improved *a lot* since then.

The Wii version isn't identical graphically to the GC version. As one of the premier launch games for the Wii, Nintendo would be stupid to make it so.

Re:Tech specs aren't THAT important

[be-fan]

1) Less than a quarter of US households have PS2s. According to Sony's research, 34% of PS2 owners have HDTVs. That makes HDTV ownership among PS2 owners twice as high as HDTV ownership among the general population. If that trend holds, at current rates of growth, the majority of prospective PS3 owners will have HDTVs in the next few years. If you can expect half of your prospective users to have HDTVs over the lifetime of the console, it makes perfect sense to offer something that lets them take advantage of it.

2) What's with the invectives? Did I call you names? Just because you don't feel a need for better technology, you shouldn't ridicule people who do. For a technology site, there are an incredible number of luddites here...

3) Your argument about the free market would be valid if:

a) If the airwaves weren't a limited public resource. It is entirely consistent, under modern economic theory, for the government to control such resources within a free market system.

b) If the current massive growth in HDTV adoption rates was the result of an impending transition deadline, but the deadline is still many years away.

As much as I'm sure you'd like to believe the current HDTV adoption is the result of "high tech dweebs" (coming from someone browsing Slashdot? Please!) and "rich idiots", you can't rationalize that position. People aren't buying HDTVs now because they're worried about some government transition in 2009 (at which point they'd have to buy a cheap digital conversion box, not a whole new TV), but because HDTVs have dropped dramatically in price, and lots of people have been switching to LCD and plasma displays (which are mostly HD), for asthetic and space reasons. They also buy it because its dead obvious to anybody with eyes how much better an NFL broadcast looks in HD versus SD resolution.

Re:Tech specs aren't THAT important

[be-fan]

It has nothing to do with being a graphics whore. I've been playing video games since the 1980s. I've played all these "simple but fun" games all these Wii fanboys keep talking about. And you know what? They were a ton of fun back in the day, but this is 2006, and I'd rather play a game that looks like it was made in 2006.

People are intensely visual creatures. The visual aspects of products are important, and change with time. Products with out-of-date visual styles are perceived negatively, even if they would not have been at their original time. Arguing that its "whorish" to hold a game's outdated graphics against it is like saying its "whorish" to hold a suit's 1970's style against it. Hell, that polyester number covered you up just great in 1970, are these fancy new suits really that much better?

As for 480p being enough, that's bullshit. Play a first person shooter at 640x480 on a 24" LCD, then play it at 1920x1200. Tell me which one is more playable, in terms of actually being able to see the shit you're shooting at. 480p looks just fine on a small TV, but big-screen TVs aren't exactly a luxury item to most people who have enough money to waste on video games, and 480p on a big screen is insufficient. I've been playing through Wind Waker this week, on a 70 inch TV, and while its great, it'd be a whole lot better if it didn't look like I needed my contacts adjusted.

Re:Tech specs aren't THAT important

[Queer Boy]

In fact, they'll look way better than the last generation, which already looked pretty awesome.

I bought my Gamecube when Windwaker came out. I always thought the games looked really good but I stick mostly to first-party games. I buy Nintendo hardware because I think Nintendo makes the best games. However, I recently got Metroid Prime and to be totally honest I was blown away, and that's an old game. I have heard Resident Evil 4 is amazing. So I am not at all surprised that they based the Wii on the Gamecube and just pumped it up. It's a great development concept and very attractive to developers who want to maximise their profits.

Re:Tech specs aren't THAT important

[cornface]

You and I both know the only reason HDTV will succeed is because our government mandated it.

Where do you find this crap? The government has mandated digital broadcasts. Not HDTV broadcasts.

That's like getting digital cable and pretending that all your channels are HDTV. You don't do that do you?

Do you?

Oh god, you do.

Re:Tech specs aren't THAT important

[jackbird]

I'd rather play a game that looks like it was made in 2006.

I'd rather play a game that plays like it was made in 2006. cf. Cave Story.

Re:Tech specs aren't THAT important

[cflannagan]

Actually, you *are* a graphics whore. And since you are one, you would be sorely disappointed if you got a Wii because it wouldn't be as good as Xbox360 or PS3. So do us all a favor (us = those who are getting Wii.. Nintendo fanboys and fans (non-fanboys)), don't buy a Wii so we can be spared of your future whinefests about graphic capabilities of Wii. Thanks.

Re:Tech specs aren't THAT important

[killmenow]

As to your first point: I have no problem with Sony offering HD. I agree that it's perfectly reasonable if they expect (and they do) the majority of their target market already owns HDTVs (or will very soon), to offer a console that provides for that. But I think this kind of makes the point for why Nintendo isn't gaga over HD. HDTV ownsership in the US is quite low. (I don't know about the rest of the world.) Nintendo is attempting to broaden the market to people who aren't already gamers. It's highly likely to expect (as Nintendo does) the majority of this market does not own HDTV sets. Supporting anything more than the 480p they already had in the GameCube only adds expense and turns off a large portion of Nintendo's target market. It wouldn't be wise for them to do that.

As for #2: Sorry if I offended. We all have bad days. I just get sick of the comments from HD fans, PS3 fans, etc. who come across as if they think anybody who doesn't have at least one HDTV "in 2006" is retarded. Most people still do not own HDTVs. That's a fact. I read one article (not going to waste my time googling it now) wherein it was discussed how a majority of HDTV owners are watching SD broadcasts over them and don't even know the difference. They just think because they plugged their HDTV in, it's all HDTV.

As to 3a: okay, I'll give you that. But, as to 3b: you are right in that it appears there's been (roughly) a doubling of HDTV penetration over the last few years (~ 7% in 2004, 15% in 2005, 26% by the end of 2006). This uptake, however has as much to do with TV manufacturers preparing for the cutoff as buyers. It's akin to the numbers Microsoft quotes for how quickly a new operating system they release sells. Take XP, for instance. It sold X numbers right off the bat because people were just replacing old PCs and XP is what came on the new ones by default. It would take extra effort to get one without XP. This is like buying a new TV today, without HD support. It takes more effort.

I think HDTV uptake is a more of a symptom than a cause. It's as you say, a lot of people are replacing existing tube TVs with LCDs or Plasmas because of space and aesthetics...and HDTV just follows...it may be icing on the cake, but I can't believe it's still the driving factor in most cases. There's just not enough HD content still yet.

For example: I have a 35" tube TV that's going on 10 years old and beginning to show a hotspot on the middle right of the tube. If I wish to replace it, and I'm a typical consumer, I'm going to go into Best Buy or similar, looking for a roughly 35" TV and find a plethora of HDTVs (LCDs, Plasma, rear projection, etc.) sitting out in all the displays...and might find a SD 35" TV if I look around a bit...at which point the salesperson is going to recommend against it because I'll have to buy an adapter in 2009 if I want to keep watching TV on it...but if I buy this 32" LCD HDTV, it'll take up less space, weigh about 150 lbs less, and be good to go for the foreseeable future...and they cost the same. Hell, I'd buy the LCD model just because the space savings and the fact that it'd weigh in the 30lb range whereas my 35" tube TV weighs nearly 200 lbs. It's a major PITA to move it...even just to pull it out to plug or unplug a game console, new DVD player, etc.

But, rest assured, I wouldn't be buying an HDTV so I could see the quarterback's ass in higher resolution when "the big game" is on. Although that might be a driving factor in getting my wife's approval.

2-2.5X = slightly better

[Zobeid]

In my experience, you have to just about double the processing power of a system before the difference becomes readily noticeable to the user. So if Wii is in fact 2 to 2.5 times as powerful as the GC, then it's fair to call Wii "only slightly better". Which means it's unlikely to WOW anybody.

But who cares? I love Nintendo's strategy with this system. An inexpensive console with fun and relatively simple games should do well. It's the same formula that propelled the NES.

Re:Real Wii Graphics Better Than The 360

[cowscows]

95% of my "main" gaming consists of having something fun to play when there are people over. The way the world generally works, as you get older life dumps more and more responsibility on you, and free time quickly becomes your most precious commodity. I don't spend only three or four hours per week in front of the TV playing video games because I don't like them that much anymore. That's just all the time I can spare now-a-days.

That wasn't such a big deal 5-10 years ago, cause all those adults didn't know what they were missing. They didn't grow up with video games. But now a bunch of us childhood gamers are busy with the real world, but don't want to completely give up a hobby that has brought us so much enjoyment. Nintendo has noticed this, and noticed how big of a market we are (and how we've generally got a decent amount of disposable income), and is gearing their console towards our needs.

Furthermore, I'm not sure why you're so certain that we're going to get bored with this new controller. Is moving your arms around a little somehow innately less fun than just pushing a bunch of abstract buttons stuck on a piece of plastic? I think you're still sort of stuck in some sort of mindset relating back to those little control demos that Nintendo showed back when they first announced the remote controller. Just because your imagination hasn't allowed you to see any involved or engaging uses for the controller doesn't mean that game designers are having the same problem.

When the party atmosphere is gone, people will stop playing certain games. But instead of putting down the Wii remote and picking up a PS3 controller, maybe they'll just put a different disc into the Wii, and play something else.

Re:Real Wii Graphics Better Than The 360

[Knuckles]

The real problem for Nintendo is people really love the controller for a brief time and then seem to get bored with it quickly and go back to playing 'normal games' with a normal controller

I'm curious. This is evidenced by what?

Re:Video enhances gameplay: but it's only a toppin

[Brian_Ellenberger]

What I mean by this is that because the wiimote offers such a more intimate and intuitive interface with the console's game world that we will be able to interact with it in ways that will have the effect of looking even more "real-life" than a console with simply raw video processing power.

Wii looks like a ton of fun. I miss platformers and more simple games on the current line of consoles. However, I'm curious to see what they do with some of the sports games. The problem with sports games is that their is alot more going on, at least in Madden and MLB2k6, than just "throw the ball" or "swing the bat".

For example in baseball, while batting you also have to control the baserunners---how far they lead off, when to steal, etc. In football, you have audibles, hotroutes, motion, etc. Will Wii just remove these from the games, or will they somehow find a way to incorporate them in? And if so, how.

It will also be interesting to see how they translate the movement with the actual motions of the players. For swinging the bat I'm assuming they aren't going to have a one-to-one mapping of a player swinging the controller to the player actually swinging a bat. And all players in the major swing the bat at different speeds (ex pitchers are generally slower).

Re:Video enhances gameplay: but it's only a toppin

[Danga]

Preview the damn post first next time and you won't need to edit it.

Let's hope so

[Mr. Samuel]

Personally, when I saw screens of Wii Sports (the tennis) and the upcoming Tony Hawk title, I was surprised by how poor the graphics were. Those screens specifically couldn't even compete with previous-generation stuff. To be fair, I haven't looked at Super Mario Galaxy, and I'm certain that there will be some titles that are graphically impressive in standard definition (i.e. Zelda).

Nintendo is wise to not promote the Wii as a direct competitor to the PS3 and 360, but at the same time I'm doubtful sounding like the typical online "OMG gameplay 4 LIFE graphix r 4 NOOBS" thing will win the masses over. Nobody wants to buy a new console sporting graphics from two generations ago.

I must admit, I'd like to see Nintendo regain some of it's former glory here.

Re:Let's hope so

[Guppy06]

"but at the same time I'm doubtful sounding like the typical online "OMG gameplay 4 LIFE graphix r 4 NOOBS""

As opposed to "OMG graphics 4 LIFE?"

"Nobody wants to buy a new console sporting graphics from two generations ago."

Nintendo wants to sell consoles to people who didn't even buy a console in the previous two generations.

Re:Let's hope so

[Mr. Samuel]

As opposed to "OMG graphics 4 LIFE?"

No, certainly not, but as a primarily visual medium, I think people prefer the immersive properties of well-crafted graphics as opposed to less refined, obtuse graphics. This doesn't necessarily mean X trillion polys per second, but more the whole package of art design/style and technical execution/polish.

Nintendo wants to sell consoles to people who didn't even buy a console in the previous two generations.

I agree, they want to create a new market. But I wouldn't underestimate the impact of a Wii demo sitting next to a Halo 3 demo at Best Buy, not that I'm suggesting that the Wii would always fare poorly.

Re:Let's hope so

[MykeAbner]

Nobody wants to buy a new console sporting graphics from two generations ago.

Gamecube sported some of the best graphics last gen (Metroid, Resident Evil, etc)

Wii is 2.5 times more powerful than Gamecube.

Logical conclusion? Wii graphics are 2 gens old!

Seriously, who cares how crappy games like Tennis and Tony Hawk look? There are some X360 titles that look a lot worse than Metal Gear Solid 3 did.

Re:Let's hope so

[Mr. Samuel]

Gamecube sported some of the best graphics last gen (Metroid, Resident Evil, etc)

This is true.

Wii is 2.5 times more powerful than Gamecube.

This is a vague estimation reportedly made by someone in the industry, not fact.

Logical conclusion? Wii graphics are 2 gens old!

I suggested the screens I looked at from those *two specific titles* looked two gens old, if that. Of course games like Zelda will look far better. The Wii Tennis screen(s) I saw looked awful from a graphics standpoint. And yes, I'm fully aware graphics aren't the point of Wii Sports.

Seriously, who cares how crappy games like Tennis and Tony Hawk look? There are some X360 titles that look a lot worse than Metal Gear Solid 3 did.

I'll take your word on it.

Re:Let's hope so

[Anonymous Coward]

I would suggest that you do check out Super Mario Galaxy. It alone comforted me about the abilities of the Wii.

Just ignorant

[MuNansen]

Anyone that questions Wii's potential graphically doesn't know anything about graphics beyond the buzzwords Sony and M$ shove down their throats. Don't listen to them. There's some very simple and telling facts about the Wii:

- 2-2.5x the power of Gamecube is a CONSERVATIVE estimate.

- The graphics in Resident Evil 4 were considered better on Gamecube than on any other platform. The graphics rivaled even the best of PC games like HL2 and Doom 3. The Gamecube was NOT a weak system, it's potential was just rarely reached.

- The Wii architecture is near identical to Gamecube, just multiplied in horsepower a few times. This means anyone that worked on Gamecube doesn't have to learn a new platform. This is unique to the Wii among consoles.

- Some very big names like BioWare and Capcom are onboard for the Wii, and their developers are excited as hell. You can pretty much count on these companies to squeeze everything they can out of the hardware and blow everyone away. Can you imagine a Resident Evil game with 3x the graphics of the 4th one, AND with new gameplay enabled by the Wiimote?

It's telling of Wii's upside just how desperate and weak the trolls' description of the downside sounds. There's never a guarantee and it will all come down to the games, but the naysayers really don't have anywhere to stand this time. If the Wii fails it will be against ALL rational expectations. But if you wanna hedge your bets and troll it, oh well, your loss when it's a success. I know how hard it is to say anything positive on the internets. Can't risk the e-peen.

Re:Just ignorant

[some guy on slashdot]

Actually, I feel that the GC fared better graphically for almost every game on the system. Even cheaper titles like Harvest Moon and Lost Kingdoms looked very smooth. Compare that to the PS2, where even big name titles like Shadow Hearts and Final Fantasy X had obnoxious flickering edges and sparse environments. I know I'm not the only one who played Shadow of the Colossus thinking, "man, this would be so much better on the GameCube."

Hell, if you wanna start a graphics fight, lets pull out Luigi's Mansion and...lets say...Midnight Club and Halo. Which one is the prettiest? Halo ain't bad, but Luigi's Mansion is just...damn. Beautiful.

Re:Just ignorant

[Suddenly_Dead]

- The graphics in Resident Evil 4 were considered better on Gamecube than on any other platform. The graphics rivaled even the best of PC games like HL2 and Doom 3. The Gamecube was NOT a weak system, it's potential was just rarely reached.

Okay, now that might just be a bit of hyperbole on your part. Sure, said games were definately at the top for that generation of consoles, but they weren't HL2 or Doom 3 level; even when running those two games on my two year old desktop PC with its 9800 Pro. Not that that's unexpected or bad or anything, but I'm just saying.

Re:Video enhances gameplay: but it's only a toppin

[Anonymous Coward]

why is there no edit post option?

Immediately below the comment entry textarea is "Use the Preview Button!"

Re:Video enhances gameplay: but it's only a toppin

[daemon_mf]

even though I admire gameplay and that "game-play" is really why we "play-games", graphics are darn interesting.

Exactly.. and this is why the PS3 will win in the gee-golly factor.

Re:Video enhances gameplay: but it's only a toppin

[honkycat]

How much of "bringing gaming to adults" was actually due to Microsoft and Sony, and how much had more to do with a generation who grew up with Atari and NES becoming adults and retaining an interest in gaming? These platforms were able to provide them with games that still interested them, but I think there was really an aging market out there looking for someone to keep feeding their already-formed addictions.

Re:Pool Temperature.

[hackwrench]

Funny, the pool always feels cold to me when I first jump in, and after I've been in it for a little while it no longer feels cold. Getting out just resets the process.

Re:Real Wii Graphics Better Than The 360

[TheRaven64]

About the only console game I play regularly is DeathTank on the Sega Saturn. This is a mini-game which you can get at in Duke3D, if your memory card has a Quake savegame on it (or you complete Duke, destroying every single toilet in the game). The graphics are very simple polygons - the game arena is a yellow height map, and the tanks are trapeziums. Oh, and it supports up to seven players.

It's fun, because you can quickly pick it up, you can quickly get quite good at it, and almost as many people can play as can fit around the screen.

Lies!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't anyone remember that when the GameCube came out, Nintendo was holding the same kind of speach? The GameCube was officialy known for pushing 6 million polygons while Sony said its machine, the PS2, could output 66 and Microsoft was bragging about 300 million for its Xbox. It was clear that Nintendo -and probably the other two too- were lying and the GameCube's GPU was capable of effects unavailable on the other two consoles.

Re:Real Wii Graphics Better Than The 360

[SupaKoopa]

I think you should look at what Sony offered at this year's E3 again before you stick to the claim that PS3 will wipe the floor, graphically, with 360 and Wii. Take a close look--none of their games are $600 better than any 360 games...in fact, I'd venture to say that they were all about on par. Sony can give out all the spectacular numbers they want, and show all the CG they want, and give out "bullshots" to the press, but they haven't proven anything yet.

adoption of the Wiimote

[jthill]

Has anybody asked whether they've rounded up some serious talent and started talks with Warner Bros?

Re:Real Wii Graphics Better Than The 360

[Anonymous Coward]

From the reactions people had at E3 and the people who are playing early versions of Wii games at our company the reaction to the Wii is very similar to people who discover MAME for the first time. There is an initial period excitement and lots of talk about 'old school gaming' and 'getting back to gameplay over graphics' which lasts a week or so and then they are back to playing modern game like everyone else and their MAME directory goes untouched from there on out.

With the image constraint token not going to showing up this console cycle you will have:

Wii at 200-250 (free online and online play, pay for IP/content - real backwards compatibility) tilt/point controller
PS3 at 499 (free online and online play, pay for IP/content - real backwards compatibility - 1080p HD movies/games(yes there are already a large number of 1080p PS3 games - tilt controller
360 at 399+~200 bucks for online play over four years - no real world backwards compatibility - graphics no better than the Wii - hardware defects - the ridiculous amount of graphics problems - mostly pc games - and on and on

There were two major events waiting to happen for the next gen console race:

1) The image constraint token going away - effectively making the PS3 499 and not 599
2) The choice of 200 vs 250 for the Wii - 200 and Sony has serious competition this gen, 250 or so and we'll see

The only piece of the puzzle left is 2) I'm not sure what Microsoft can do to get back in the race outside of coming out with a brand new piece of hardware. Right now they are dead in the water in sales with a console that is priced near the PS3 and performance like the Wii.

Re:Real Wii Graphics Better Than The 360

[Anonymous Coward]

-Pats the silly person on the head-

Need help finding your way back to teamxbox.com fella?

Seaking of real tennis...

[Corngood]

The big Wii demo at Nintendos E3 conference was tennis; not trying to look any more like real tennis, but definitely trying to play more like it. If a fancy looking tennis game with a gamepad makes you want to play real tennis, what about one where you actually have to swing the controller around like a raquet?

Playing sports games for me has never been a replacement for playing the actual sports; it's not a simulation of athletics, it's a simulation of the mental side of the sport. Wii tennis though (and baseball, etc), really makes me wonder why I would stand in my living room making serve and forehand motions with a controller rather than going out and playing for real.

Re:Seaking of real tennis...

[MykeAbner]

Wii tennis though (and baseball, etc), really makes me wonder why I would stand in my living room making serve and forehand motions with a controller rather than going out and playing for real.

Because if you want to play a quick match of tennis with before dinner or a movie or something, it can be hard to get dressed up, get to a tennis court, and play a match in five minutes.

Re:Seaking of real tennis...

[Anonymous Coward]

Because it's raining.

The Underhype

[courtarro]

In an industry greatly influenced by massive hype machines Sony and Microsoft, Nintendo has mastered the art of the underhype. In some ways they've become the Apple of gaming: the old classic that has continuously kept the larger companies in check by reminding them what gaming is supposed to be. Much like Apple they don't hype raw numbers, but rather the greater experience. They make weak claims about power without sounding presumptuous, and rather than saying "we know better than you and you don't need power" as many companies might, they're saying "we'll show you that you don't want power". It's that sort of soft language that represents underhype.

Thus, they're simultaneously lowering expectations about power while building anticipation for something completely subjective (fun), rather than something mechanised and unaffected by opinion, like polygon counts or megahertz. Thus, when they finally release the Wii and it actually does turn out to be a reasonably powerful machine that also seems to make gaming fun again (if people want to believe this, they will), Nintendo can say "Gaming is fun again! Oh yeah, and it's powerful too". Nintendo wins.

Deep down, people want to believe that gaming is more than just graphics, and if the Wii gets it right, we'll all believe them. Everyone wins (except Sony and MS).

Re:The Underhype

[Mancat]

Nintendo isn't dumb. They don't have to overmarket their product, since they have a rabidly loyal fanbase that does it all for them. Why is this article on Slashdot? Do you see very many negative comments? In all of the glowing comments given to the system in this particular Slashdot discussion, how many of the users make unsubstantiated claims about the power of the system, and how great the games will be, despite the fact that they've seen almost nothing of either?

Free marketing, courtesy of Slashdot and the rest of Internet Fanboyland.

Re:The Underhype

[ClamIAm]

Why is this article on Slashdot? Do you see very many negative comments?

Hmm, it sounds like you weren't around when: the DS was announced, the Wiimote was announced, or the "Revolution" was named Wii.

Re:The Underhype

[MaverickUW]

At least Nintendo doesn't follow everything apple does. I've found a core duo laptop made by acer that has the exact same hardware under the hood as one of the new macbook pro laptops. I'd get the macbook pro, but I don't think OSX is worth the extra $1500 that the apple machine costs.

Re:The Underhype

[rolfwind]

At least Nintendo doesn't follow everything apple does. I've found a core duo laptop made by acer that has the exact same hardware under the hood as one of the new macbook pro laptops. I'd get the macbook pro, but I don't think OSX is worth the extra $1500 that the apple machine costs.

Extra $1500 that the Apple one costs? Interesting, that mean the Acer machine is $1500 cheaper.

Can you give me a link to this Acer Machine, I assume by your post that it is identical/similiar or maybe even better specs than the Apple machine as well.

Re:Video enhances gameplay: but it's only a toppin

[jthill]

because cooking is a chore

C'mon. So's raising three kids as a single mom.

Contextual graphics argument

[mgabrys_sf]

I'm trying to imagine 2 kids in 1982 having some fanbuy argument.

Bob: Hey! I heard Atari is going to put out the 2600 which is just like the VCS graphically except it's in a black case instead of a faux-wood one.

Joe: Screw that - I'm getting a ColecoVision.

Bob: Graphics aren't everything - there's also gameplay. I don't care about graphics.

John: Anyone seen this Famicom in Japan? It's got great graphics.

At which point above do you think one of the characters blew milk out his nose?

Re:Contextual graphics argument

[SoapDish]

The only problem with that argument is the how percievable the jump in graphics between those systems is.

I'm sure you have just as much or more experience with old video games as I do. I haven't played an Atari :( but I did grow up with Vic 20->C64->NES->etc. and I had a Colecovision up until 4 years ago.

So I think you'd agree that the differences in graphics and processor power were very noticible. I would say that it had a huge effect on gameplay back then (and the NES controller is clearly superior to the Colecovision).

The following comparison to sound tech should clarify:

Colecovision: Mono
NES: Stereo
SNES: Stereo, but with much better speakers
N64/PSX: Early surround
NGC/PS2/XBOX: 5.1 surround with varying cable qualities
360: 6.1 suround
PS3: 6.1 surround, but with gold connectors
Wii: Who knows

Re:Contextual graphics argument

[mgabrys_sf]

re:"and the NES controller is clearly superior to the Colecovision"

Oh well hell if you're going to nit-pick, bashing yourself over the head with a brick is clearly preferable to the Colecovision Controler.

Anyone else having to hit refresh every 3rd time to get the white background to load?

Re:Contextual graphics argument

[Z80a]

yes,nes got better graphics than coleco and Atari VCS,but it also got a lot more ram and rom space than atari,and as the PPU did basically all the video work,then you did not needed to waste 70% of your processor time doing the graphics,what allowed nes to have really superior games in all the aspects,not just graphically

Re:Contextual graphics argument

[mgabrys_sf]

You're missing the point though. The point is no one in their right mind is going to say "graphics - phooey", when buying a new system.

Yes (unless you overlook repackaging characters now pushing freshness dating into the 26 year old column) Shigeru Miyamoto is god - do you hear me? GOD. Yes he interviews like Forest Gump and doesn't play games - but G.O.D. gotit. Good.

  - BUT -

There's at least - 2 - or heck THREE decent PS2 games - out there - and I suspect - several games coming out for the PS3 are not going to feature ducks from Atari's Adventure. So yes - gameplay gamplay gamplay (and 39 more Mario/Wario/Yoshi & some guy named Hank who was drunk out back at the loading docks - and perhaps a new Zelda game after 3 more years of waiting) your nuts off.

Disclaimer: Unless Shigeru Miyamoto (and his non-game-playing godlike genius) wants to re-introduce the "ducks from Adventure" into his new epic "Mario-takes-a-shit-and-gives-Luigi-a-blowjob RPG Smash Mini Cart for your Wii" - in which case, it's GENIUS. Godlike Genius!

I suspect I won't be cursing the PS3's graphics though my teeth in 2 years while playing the latest 1080i/p based bloodbatch from the next Grand Theft Auto game - where the hookers will be high-rez, and you'll taste the salt in the blood. Taste it! (although if I did complain I'd be sure to do it in a Charlton Heston voice: "DAMN YOU NICE LOOKING GRAPHICS - DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL! - you MANIACS!")

And as for all those superior NES games - I recall - a few - THOUSAND - generic side scrollers that didn't just beat a dead horse: It beat, pummled, scraped off the pavement, inserted the remains into a howitzer shell, fired it at the ground not once - but - 5 - times, and then took THOSE remains and put them into the bumpers of the 1973 AMC Pacer.

Re:Contextual graphics argument

[Christopher Rogers]

Actually the NES had mono sound.

Re:Video enhances gameplay: but it's only a toppin

[Anonymous Coward]

woah...

Do you know when virtual wok is due out? sounds kick ass...

Re:Video enhances gameplay: but it's only a toppin

[WhyCause]

For example in baseball, while batting you also have to control the baserunners---how far they lead off, when to steal, etc. In football, you have audibles, hotroutes, motion, etc. Will Wii just remove these from the games, or will they somehow find a way to incorporate them in? And if so, how[?]

From what I understand of Wii Sports Tennis, you do not actually control how your character moves across the court. Realistically, there's no need -- of course you are going to run towards the ball, and it's no fun to play if you can't make it there because you forget how the controller works. With the Wiimote, the controller works as you would expect, namely you swing it to hit the ball. If you hit it with the correct spin, you hit the ball to a place where your opponent cannot reach it, thus you win the point. You can likely pick characters based on ability; a strong hitter may not be a fast runner, and vice versa. In basebal and football games, the elements you ask after are all likely there, just not under your direct control.

Think about playing a real game of baseball. When you're at the plate swinging, you expect that your teammate (or the third-base coach) knows how far to lead-off. With a video game, you can spend some time before the game starts picking your lineup and batting order, planning out how this should work in the course of a game. That way, when you're swinging at air while batting, you don't have to be fumbling with the controls trying to tell "Big Jim" to get back to the bag.

By simplifying the controller, the Wiimote forces players/developers to change the way games are played. Instead of taking advantage of all thirty-seven buttons on the controller, you have to think about the lineup and batting-order before you actually step up to the plate for the core of the baseball experience -- swinging for the bleachers.

This may, actually lead to a deeper, more entertaining game of baseball, because you focus on the 'fun' part. It also leaves intact, however, the management aspect, without the micro-management that a button-loaded controller allows a lazy developer.

Re:Just release the controller for GameCube...

[Anonymous Coward]

Do some research before you express your uneducated opinion... oh wait it's slashdot.

2 times better is enough

[Anonymous Coward]

Since when has twice as powerful not been enough? That's good and sane, and about what we've come to expect for console power upgrades. Isn't the 360 about twice as powerful as the original X-Box? There have been some very beautiful Gamecube games and Galaxy looks like it'll be graphically awesome just for the sense of distance alone. It's definately going to be pretty enough for me.

Neo Geo Cost A LOT More

[Nazmun]

It was around $1k when i saw it for sale and each game was $200ish. Add inflation and it's a hell of a lot more.

3DO once again with inflation would be more expensive.

Third their is very little that the "crippled" ps3 cannot do. It has as much hd space as a premium xbox and hdmi isn't necessary to get full hd resolutions.

I wouldn't be surprised if the $499 ps3 moves a ton of boxes.

Re:Neo Geo Cost A LOT More

[Firehed]

and hdmi isn't necessary to get full hd resolutions

Not for gaming, but it is for Blu-Ray playback (or at least will be for movies flagged with the ICT). Considering they're using Blu-Ray playback as a large selling point, that's going to cause a hell of a problem. Not that Joe Blow will notice a difference anyways (unless he's looking at the input resolution), seeing as the downsampled version is still slightly higher resolution than DVD, and chances are that even right to DVD's 480i it would still have a bit more detail.

Re:Video enhances gameplay: but it's only a toppin

[GTMoogle]

That struck me as funny, because I just pulled a loaf of banana bread out of the oven. It was fun to make. Granted, a cooking game would not be so tasty.

As for the sales of wheel controllers, they are used in games that were designed to play with joysticks, and are thus unnecessary for the experience the developer was targeting. Only car nuts would buy them.

2-2.5x is nothing

[Nazmun]

In relative computing power 2-2.5x more powerful is NOTHING in the realm of consoles. The console cycle is 5-7 years. Usually performance increases are anywhere from 10-20x that of the previous generation. The ps1 had 1MB of vram and to get to ps2 graphics it had 16mb of vram and 32x the system ram. It also pushed about 16-20x the polygons. I don't remember off the top of my head but it went from several hundred thousand to a figure over 10 million.

The ps3 is a similar jump.

Re:2-2.5x is nothing

[Anonymous Coward]

OK good point but consider this:

1.)Buy Wii now at 200-250

2.)Buy top end PS3 two-three years from now at 399

3.)profit!

Now I am not saying that the PS3 will drop that much but it could and you would end up with two great consoles for about what you would have paid for the PS3 at the initial release. Ofcourse hard-core gamers need not apply to this because they will shell out whatever price shows up at release date.

3rd Grade

[Frightening]

If a processor can do 4 Floating Point insts. per sec, and another can do 10 Floating Point insts. per sec..

Apple not hyping raw numbers?

[hsoft]

New Intel MacBooks! 4X faster! insanely great spec_int performances!

Re:Gamecube Power - Proof in Pictures

[obby.net]

5) The PS2 is actually faster than the GC by a substantial margin. However, it's designed more to push a huge number of polygons with relatively few special effects. If you look carefully at PS2 games versus Gamecube games, you'll notice that PS2 models are substantially higher in polygon count, while Gamecube models tend to mask lower-polygon counts with rich textures and special effects.

I'm not sure how accurate that statement is, but this comparison casts some serious doubt on it, after all, the proof is in the pictures(and videos):

http://www.gameswelike.com/web/re/RE%20Comp.htm

Capcom has lots of experience making games for both consoles, moreso for the PS2, so I'm sure they did the best they could with what they had in terms of power, and the results aren't pretty. Image quality, poly count, and special effects all suffer on the PS2 port.

The GameCube looks like the superior machine to me. Perhaps this is why Nintendo is taking its focus away from graphics this generation, it didn't do them much good to have the 2nd most powerful console on the market last time(barely behind the x-box, according to some developers)...

It's All About The Games

[Anonymous Coward]

For me it's mostly about game play. If you give me games that I enjoy playing, then I don't really care what platform they're on. It's why I keep playing older games like Tribes 2, Operation FlashPoint, and Falcon 4. The graphics quality on these games sucks by today's standards, but the game play is tremendous. Long live vintage games!

Re:Just release the controller for GameCube...

[MykeAbner]

Last week's sales in Japan:

• DS 289,151
• PSP 27,227

Not to say that their strategy is a sure fire success or anything, but they started climbing that hill a while ago and they've done pretty damn well so far.

Re:Just release the controller for GameCube...

[k-sound]

Its just clear that they have to take a hit this generation and shift their strategy towards new ideas, rather than best technology.


Maybe they could stop competing with Sony and MS on high end hardware and just make a cheap, small, decent console and revolutionize the way people play games by inventing a new type of controller.

...

oh wait

PS: although I liked consoles since I first played double dragon on the NES I never owned a console myself. The Wii will be the first one I'll own so maybe there is a bright future for nintendo after all.

Re:Just release the controller for GameCube...

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't have a clue what you're talking about!

Re:Just release the controller for GameCube...

[Kyace]

Its just clear that they have to take a hit this generation and shift their strategy towards new ideas, rather than best technology. Its the classic "outsmart your enemy with the bigger and better army, by using creative thinking"

I seem to recall Hannibal going against an est. 80k trained fully equiped Roman troops with 50k or less troops patchworked together from several armies at Cannae. Say, anyone remember who won?

You can't really pigeon hole creative thinkers because they refuse to be.

Re:Video enhances gameplay: but it's only a toppin

[TemporalBeing]

Why? because cooking is a fucking chore. No one is going to immerse themselves in a universe of feeding my goddamn face.

There's a lot of restaurants out there ready to do that. All you have to do is go to one.

Real adults are so lazy they DON'T GET OUT OF THEIR CARS IN ORDER TO CONSUME FOOD. It needs to be handed to us through a window pre-prepared. Do you think this same adult is going to buy a game where I have to engage in a motor skills learning curve just to figure out how to mimic in real life some lame activity?

I wouldn't call them "real adults" - but rather "lazy adults". Personally, it is very rare for me to go through the drive through - I usually park, get out, and go in - even if I am taking it with me.

Prior to that, gaming was a kids thing or a small segment of adutls thing. Now its huge and tons of people game. That's why Sony and Microsoft are #1 and #2, because they brought gaming to everyone and made a game for every type of person.

Neither Sony nor Microsoft did anything to bring gaming to the masses. It was primarily Atari, and Nintendo did that - yes, Nintendo. Sony and Microsoft jumped on the bandwagon late in the game (no pun intended) and took over the market as a generation of gamers grew up - and that "small adult" group became a rather large group. Sony and Microsoft have neither done much to innovate in the gaming market either - all they have really done is add more graphical features. In the process, they left a good majority of the masses behind, and targetted only on that "small adult" group.

Nintendo is instead taking a different approach by marketing their product...

Nintendo, on the other hand, has primarily focused more on the masses than on that "small adult" group - and the Wii/Revolution only goes to show that even more. The Wii/Revolution will be a revolution because it once again brings gaming back to the masses. Nintendo will take over because their games will appeal to a far wider audience than Sony or Microsoft are looking to appeal, and an audience that does not care so much about graphical quality as they do that the game is just plain fun and entertaining. Joe Shmoe does not want to have to learn how to play a game for 4 hours before playing the game - they want to just sit down, play, and have fun. That is certainly an aspect that Sony and Microsoft have forgotten - or never intended to remember to start with.

Want proof that controllers don't matter? Look at sales of racing games versus sales of racing wheel controllers.

The problem with this analogy is that the Wiimote will be provided with the Wii; where as you would have to go out and buy a racing wheel in addition to the system - no system has offered a wheel as its de facto controller. The Wiimote, on the other hand, it a very innovative device that captures the ease of using things in real life (a sword, a stick, a golf club, etc - things people already know how to use) and brings their normal, intuitive use into the gaming experience. Suddenly, it becomes a lot easier for real golfers to play Mario Golf - as golfing experience and a little gaming practice can make you very good; but a newbie to golfer, who may be able to hit the buttons at the right time on an NES, will have a learning curve just like in playing a real game of golf - they can practice and get it right - there will (of course) be slight differences, but it becomes a lot more natural to do various activities, such as playing golf, or playing the drums, or swinging a sword.

And best of all, the Wiimote is the default controller with the Wii - which means it will be widely accepted.

best looking cars, with real licensed brands, and actual recorded exhaust sounds, and ranking systems and online play

Ironically those are all gimmicks themselves. "Licensed brands" are just a way of aiding

Re:Just release the controller for GameCube...

[KingBraden]

I seem to remember one army having elephants which overwhelmed the opposing force. It wasn't creativity that lead him to victory, but big powerful elephants.

Re:Gamecube Power - Proof in Pictures

[be-fan]

If you actually look at the raw hardware, you'll see that the PS2 is substantially faster. The PS2 had a GPU with 16 pixel pipelines running at 150 Mhz, resulting in a fill rate of 2.4 gigapixels/sec. The GC had a GPU with 4 pixel pipelines running at 165 Mhz, giving it a fill rate of 660 megapixels/second. The GC did T&L in hardware, but the PS2 had a seperate vector coprocessor running at 300 MHz to do T&L.

If you were displaying a flat-shaded CAD model, the PS2 would indeed be tremendously faster. The problem with the PS2 was that every extra feature you enabled resulted in a huge hit in fill rate. The GC did all these effects in hardware. So by the time you'd gotten roughly comparable features enabled (lighting, filtering, etc), you'd also lost your polygon count advantage. The PS2 was really designed to run games like FF X and The Boucer, with very high-poly models and relatively simple shading and lighting.

Re:Just release the controller for GameCube...

[KingBraden]

It seems I may have been wrong, the elephants may not have been at Cannae. I will need to do more research.

Re:Just release the controller for GameCube...

[Kyace]

Right guy, wrong battle.
"But by the battle of Cannae all Hannibal's elephants had died." from http://www.roman-empire.net/army/cannae.html

Still, extending this back to Nintendo, would that make the Wii controller their elephants?

Re:Video enhances gameplay: but it's only a toppin

[MBCook]

Wow. I can't believe you got modded up. To me, you look like a classic troll. Let's play dissection, shall we?

The PowerGlove. Favorite "Nintendo sucks" point of everyone. Let's start off with the fact it didn't have a killer game. Then let's add the fact that it costs 50% as much as the NES. In todays dollars, it would have cost about $175 (based on adjust NES price). Then we'll add the question "how good of a cooking simulator could the NES have made" and that point is rather obvious.

Real adults are lazy. No kidding. How many adults would buy a game where they would have to learn new motor skills to simulate a real life activity. Hmm. I wonder how many copies this obscure game sold before it failed on the market with it's $80 price tag? And let's not forget that if you had to swing a golf club all the time for a game or swing a sword, it would get tiring. Don't you think they will take that into account when companies make the games?

Sony and MS threw millions into gaming. What have they done... hmm.. instead of little kids, now some adults pay games too. Amazing! Yet, as a proportion of the total population, very few people play console games. TONS play little web games like Popcap's games. That is what Nintendo is trying to do. As for the "advances" that Sony and MS have made let's see about those...

• PS1 - Sony added a second set of shoulder buttons from the controller they stole off Nintendo. Wow.
• PS1 Analog - Sony added two analog sticks in rather dumb spots. Nintendo added an analog stick first.
• PS1 Dual Shock - Sony added rumble. Nintendo did that first too.
• PS2 - Hmm... nothing changed. No... wait... analog buttons. How many games use those successfully? Yeah, basically none.
• XBox - Took the Analog Saturn controller, move the main analog stick to where it should be, and made it the size of a bear. Oh yeah, it had those vestigial black and white buttons too.

Nintendo has, on the other hand, made the d-pad, the analog stick, rumble, the first excellent wireless controller, the first microphone in a controller (in the Famicom), etc. Nintendo introduced an expandable controller with the N64. MS copied it (and the DC's controller) to the letter.

Want proof controllers don't matter? Let's point out a special controller that costs at least $40 for a piece of junk (the wheel) and probably $100 for a good one, is only good for one kind of games, and is not included with the system and see how well it sells compared to the games. You're kidding right? You're comparing a single use controller that isn't bundled in (see: any fishing controller, light guns since after the Zapper) to a multi-purpose controller with motion sensing, accurate pointing, a speaker, a microphone (according to some), and more that will come bundled with the console?

In conclusion, the Atari 2600 killed the game industry because it was flooded with crappy "me too" content and Nintendo came around and resurrected it. Now Nintendo will kill the industry by innovating and trying new things while Sony and MS flood the market with crappy "me too" content which will save it thanks to their innovative new controllers that add two vestigial buttons.

I hope your post was sarcasm and every mod (and me) just misread it.

Re:Just release the controller for GameCube...

[KingBraden]

I am not sure what would be the elephants. I was just trying to criticize the parents use of argument by analogy.

Re:Video enhances gameplay: but it's only a toppin

[tolendante]

It certainly wasn't simply the old school gamers growing up. The videogame market is absolutely huge compared to what it was before the crash. Back then, videogames, though they made a lot of money, were still a niche hobby. Now, they are pretty much mainstream. I don't give Microsoft a lot of credit though. It is Sony who has led the industry for two straight generations (and an entire decade), something never done before.

Re:Video enhances gameplay: but it's only a toppin

[buffer-overflowed]

Yea and why the hell would someone want to virtually play a guitar, or dance on a virtual pad, or play a virtual game of football, etc. etc. !?

Same old games... depends who you ask...

[JFMulder]

Why would people be tired of the games we have right now with Sony and MS? My Xbox was the first console I owned since my NES more than 10 years before. I played a bit on the PC for a few years, but mostly FPSes and Blizzard games. When I got the Xbox, I got back a bit in RPGs with Knights of the Old Republic (I followed the Final Fantasies over the years, waching friends play them and except for the FMVs I couldn't care less), started playing 3rd person games like Ninja Gaiden, got into Burnout, played innovative titles like Kingdom Under Fire.

All those game were new to me, and so were they to MILLION of other people who had been out of gaming for years or just started playing for the first time. We are definitely not blasé about the current crop of games. I'll gladly play Kotor 3, Ninja Gaiden 2 (well, technically, that would be 5), Halo 3 and Dead or Alive 4. That's why I got a 360 a month after it came out. I knew it would be more of the stuff that got me back into console gaming. I have no problem playing a game like Ghost Recon : Advance Warfighter, I never even played a tactical FPS before this one. While this game may only be Ghost Recon 2 + pretty graphics + better AI (tough, I'm not impressed about the AI... anyway) to a lot of people, to me it was a fresh new experience that got me into that genre. I'll probably take a look at Rainbow Six Vegas when it comes out.

Why would I even want a Wii for it's groundbreaking new controller? Most of the stuff I played on my Xbox and now the 360 are maybe not ground breaking to others, but they are to me. Sure I could experience new ways of controlling the game, but I'm already experiencing so much new with the 360.

I get if you've been playing games for the last 20 years through every generations, you might feel the need for Nintendo's Wii controller. I really respect what they are trying to accomplish and I'll probably have fun playing with it at a friend's house. Me personnally, I'll probably have fun discovering genres that are new to me. Even with my "primitive controller" (which, btw, feels like the nicest controller I've ever held in my hand. Give me an Xbox controller over a dual shock any day.)

Re:Same old games... depends who you ask...

[neuroPuff]

The Xbox must be an orgasmic machine with fabulous games for anyone who's been living under a rock for the last twenty years. But a part of taking the plea of ignorance is also accepting that it being innovative is exclusive to you, the beginner, not a matter of fact. Also, people like you, the casual gamers, are less likely to try out the Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 than they would with a Wii. The mainstream consumer being attracted to it is the result of its innovation, and for the hardcore gamer, makes controlling a game like an extension of your penis.

Re:Same old games... depends who you ask...

[JFMulder]

It's not that I been living under a rock, I mean, I've been closely following the console space for years, but due to money, I have held on buying a console until the Xbox in 2003. I knew that the a lot of the games were rehashing ideas from the previous years, I'm not deluded at all, and I wouldn't consider myself a casual gamer, as I've gamed pretty much everyday since I got the original Xbox, bought over 20 games in diverse genre and even got a DS right after launch, tough my experience to it is lukewarm (I have way more GBA games than DS games... 6 GBA games to the only DS game I have, Castlevania DS (another rehash I am sure, but fun nonetheless ) ). As for not buying a Wii, I would love nothing more than buying a Wii, but I've already invested over 750CAN$ on the 360 (the premium console, an extra controller, and a extra two year warranty) and I can't feel that I can justify a Wii for at least a year, since I've already spent so much so far. I'll probably have a wait and see approach with the Wii and try it out at a Nintendo fanboy's place first.

Re:Same old games... depends who you ask...

[dyslexicbunny]

I get if you've been playing games for the last 20 years through every generations, you might feel the need for Nintendo's Wii controller. I really respect what they are trying to accomplish and I'll probably have fun playing with it at a friend's house. Me personnally, I'll probably have fun discovering genres that are new to me. Even with my "primitive controller" (which, btw, feels like the nicest controller I've ever held in my hand. Give me an Xbox controller over a dual shock any day.)

That's debateable. I don't feel the need to have the Wii controller. I'm just tired of playing games the same way I have always been. Perhaps it might be subconscious at this point but to me, it's a fresh and inventive experience that no one else is offering. Along with the other offerings (especially price point), I think I would be damn fool not to get anything else. Other people can make their own decisions but I've made mine.

Most of the stuff I played on my Xbox and now the 360 are maybe not ground breaking to others, but they are to me. Sure I could experience new ways of controlling the game, but I'm already experiencing so much new with the 360.

Bulls eye. That's really what it's all about and I think that is what too many people aren't getting. My experiences are going to be different from yours and everyone elses. Who am I to judge.

Re:Just release the controller for GameCube...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's always possible to say that the 80K roman soldiers were a patchwork themselves. Little training, crappy equipment, etc.

The battles with Carthages is the reason why Rome became powerful. They got their asses kicked too much and decided not to let that happen anymore.

Re:Video enhances gameplay: but it's only a toppin

[SetupWeasel]

The Wiimote isn't going to revolutionize gaming.

You say this because you cannot grasp the amount of control that the Wii-mote will bring.

HDTV's are not expensive!!!

[Cyno01]

Seriously, i'm a "poor college student", but im gonna save $150 from each of my next three paychecks (just started a summer job), and get a 1080i HDTV by the middle of summer. Yeah you can get a 20" non-flad SDTV for $150, but why bother now. Yeah the TV i'm getting isn't 2" thck, but who cares, its higher rez than any of the $800 LCDs walmart offers. $450 for a 30" brand name 1080i TV is not a bad deal, and you know what systems i plan on hooking up to it? My original Xbox (chipped with a big HD), and a Wii when it comes out.

Re:HDTV's are not expensive!!!

[SenorCitizen]

$150 from each of my next three paychecks (just started a summer job), and get a 1080i HDTV by the middle of summer. Yeah you can get a 20" non-flad SDTV for $150, but why bother now. Yeah the TV i'm getting isn't 2" thck, but who cares, its higher rez than any of the $800 LCDs walmart offers. $450 for a 30" brand name 1080i TV is not a bad deal

There's also a world outside the US. In Europe, there are no CRT HDTVs. There are no HDTV broadcasts. People who buy big LCDs now are getting "HD Ready" screens, yes, but not everyone wants to pay through the nose for something that's practically useless for a few years still. As long as the Wii supports widescreen SDTV formats it's in the clear. HDTV might be nice, but it's just not here yet.

Are tech-specs really important to the player?

[VenomPhallus]

I really don't think it matters. There's diminishing returns on upping the power of your chipset, especially when you're also upping your output to HD etc etc. Plus you have to charge people through the nose or make a loss on the console. These days, all games can look good; some can look amazing, but they can all look good. It's a cliche, but it really is becoming more about the gameplay and accesibilty. Who would have said 2 years ago that sales of the ugly, not very powerful DS (with its odd touchscreen hook) would be blowing the sleek, sexy, powerful PS2-in-your-pocket PSP out of the water? And yet here we are. I know the handheld market doesn't map directly to the under-the-TV, but I don't struggle to imagine the sucess of the DS being mirrored by the Wii.

Re:Just release the controller for GameCube...

[Anonymous Coward]

Last week's sales in Japan:

        * DS 289,151
        * PSP 27,227

Not to say that their strategy is a sure fire success or anything, but they started climbing that hill a while ago and they've done pretty damn well so far.

Posting a single data point to serve ones purpose is misleading. The DS sales in the past few weeks were notable due to the relese of New Super Mario Bros. However, that fact shows that although 'tech specs' (and appropriate pricing) may drive initial sales at a console's launch, it is quality software that carries console sales momentum into its maturation in large numbers (which is when the money is made).

visual comparison Smash Bros.

[Anonymous Coward]

Now, I understand that you want to see the photo-realistic graphics ...

I don't blame you, I liked FEAR as much as the next guy, but I don't see any benefit to forcing all companies or all platforms to support photo-realistic real time graphics; the cost of these graphics is too expensive. I can only talk about the company I work for, but currently the total budget for Wii games is about 1/3 that of the PS3+XBox 360 games (those games are multi-platform) but there are just as many Wii games as there are PS3+XBox 360 games; in my opinion the Wii games are a lot more fun at this early stage in development (you'll see them at next years E3) but that is just my opinion.

BTW. the graphical improvements of the Wii are nothing to spit at:

(Thanks to the geeks at the PA forums)

Link: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e8/Link comparison6sa.jpg
Samus: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/4b/Samu scomparison2.jpg
Mario: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/5c/Mari ocomparison9.jpg

What you're noticing from Wii games is that they're very high polygon models that have an insane level of texture detail on them; the Smash Bros. Models are (probably) as high of polygon detail as any character that was ever on the Gamecube with much higher texture resolution, and these are models which will only take up 1/32 of the screen (or less). What is really lacking (compared to the PS3 or the XBox 360) is normal maps and certain material shaders. I've been saying this for a while now and no one seems to listen.

Basically, here is the reason why the Wii doesn't contain hardware for these effects:

When people make a game for the Nintendo DS (or the N64/Playstation) the teams were in the 12-18 person range and the development time was in the 9-12 month range (on most projects that I know of) so you're looking at a development cost of about 1-2 Million dollars; a PS2, Gamecube and XBox game typically had a development team in the 24-36 person range and a time frame of 18-24 months. Now, XBox 360 and PS3 games may require about 40-60 people and 24-30 months to produce meaning that (at the high end) game development would be in the 20 Million dollar range. The Wii on the other hand has development budgets in the PS2/XBox/Gamecube range (or somewhere in the 5 Million dollar range); so as certain large publishers have already announced, it costs about 1/4-1/2 as much to produce a game for the Wii.

The thing I don't think people understand is that if you're doing the same number of texture passes, and same number of models it doesn't really matter too much if you're producing a model with 2-4 times the polygon detail, or 2-4 times the texture detail, because a lot of the time you lose producing higher detailed assets is gained from having to be so concerned with hurting performance. On the other hand, when you start adding normal maps, and material shaders, you add a lot of extra work to produce the same asset.

Re:visual comparison Smash Bros.

[ZakuSage]

SSBM was a launch game. It doesn't look very good compared to many other Gamecube games. If you compare the stuff in Brawl to more recent GCN titles, maybe Twilight Princess or something, it doesn't really seem all that impressive. Just a small hop, not the massive leaps 360 and PS3 have taken.

Re:Just release the controller for GameCube...

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

yes... DS... READ DS...

Now compare the gamecube to PS2 world wide.

The Wii is not a handheld device...

I'm well aware that the PSP is a flop. We're talking consoles.

The fact that nintendo's DS is outselling PSP is just more proof of my point that Nintendo cant compete when it comes to technology, but instead has to compete with inventive design.

PSP is far superior to the DS (hardware wise). Nintendo's DS is a peice of junk in every aspect when you look at its hardware. HOWEVER It has a touch screen, and of course it has great games like Advance Wars.

Nintendo's only hope is to compete with their radical ideas, rather than their inferior technology. Thank you for prooving my point.

My point is Nintendo is spinning the bullshit yarn on this Wii issue. Nintendo cant deliver the same quality hardware, so instead its going to try to do something new with interactive design.

Will it work?

We'll find out, but it certainly is a sign of death for nintendo when they cant keep up with todays technology.

Re:Just release the controller for GameCube...

[Anonymous Coward]

The elephants would be the exemplification of 'wrong tool for the job'.

It is questionable whether 3 STI cores would be easy to program to get the best game made that takes advantage of the entire machine.

It is doubtful whether 7 SPE and 2 PPE would be easier to program than 3 STI cores.

If you only get 1 core to program, it's now a lot easier to deal with problems through reduction instead of trying to figure out how to put it onto another core.

The 80k 'crap' romans soldiers would be the easy ports of games from the previous console generation. Too much crap and then the quantity becomes irrelevant unless you have enough quality. This is the PSX/PS2 strategy.

PSX won over Saturn at the start due to price. However, the reason for PSX winning over Saturn in the long run was not because of performance. PSX won in the long term due to the availability of quality titles, which was possible due to ease of programming to get an appropriate performance level. This let PSX get a large library. Saturn ended up being a very good machine but you may have had to figure out how to program two cores. SEGA learned this lesson with Dreamcast, which was apparently pretty easy to program for. PS2 only won in the long term because it could play DVDs and PSX games, and because it was apparently financially bad to continue a console that didn't need to be modded for piracy.

The 'right tool for the job' for easy-to-write, well-performing games is one decent cpu core with high bandwidth to a GPU with high enough fill rate, and enough high-bandwidth to RAM for game mechanics and access to the render list, and sound. Everything else is just a marketing gimmick that a programmer would have to work at using to get limited return of benefit.

Re:Gamecube Power - Proof in Pictures

[eqisow]

Well, yeah, there's that. And there's also the fact that Sony always bullshits us on hardware specs, while Nintendo is honest. Nintendo gives real world numbers, and Sony gives "theoretical" (ie bullshit) numbers. To back that up, check out this spec comparison. Now, seeing as how the specs are similiar (contrary to your claims), how does the PS2 pull of 6-12x the polygon count of the Gamecube? That's right. It doesn't.

You should stop drinking the Sony kool-aid.

Re:Just release the controller for GameCube...

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

Oh I agree. Its yet to be seen if Nintendo's move will be effective, but its clear that they are out numbered, or out "teched" in this case.

Nintendo is certainly going to try to be creative and that is the right move considering nintendo's situation.

I'm not saying nintendo is a bad company. I'm saying they are at a severe disadvantage on the technology front and now they're going to be creative to try to make up for it. I dont know if it will work, it certainly could... But one thing is for sure Nintendo is clearly trying new ideas to survive because its failing badly in image and clearly it cant compete with the hardware.

I'm not saying nintendo made the wrong move. I'm just pointing out the bullshit in their spinning PR.

Re:Just release the controller for GameCube...

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you for making this long time console engineer vomit.

Let me guess, you're some dude whose graphics/game/multimedia hardware experience completely centers around the archaic x86 pc and x86 GPUs...

And you parrot 'console hardware/engineering experts' like, oh let's take a wild guess, John Carmack, to try to sound like you have a fucking clue.

So fucking sad. But not as sad as the fact that there thousands and thousands of idiots just like you out there blabbering about which system is 'hard to program'.

Great Things for Wii

[kingofmyexcuses]

I think this is a great announcement for the Wii. I'm in the same camp that says that the Gamecube's graphical capabilities weren't always fully tapped, and I heard that saying when RE4 came out and blew my mind. To expect more Nintendo games with even better graphics AND the added gameplay possibilities of the Wii-mote delights me. I have to ask this, though. When did Nintendo announce the $200 pricepoint? My monitor fried and I've been away from the net for a while.

Re:Great Things for Wii

[PhotoBoy]

They haven't announced a $200 price yet, all they've said is less than $250, which could mean anything from $1 to $249.99. I suspect it will be a little higher than $200 because they've been so coy about it all. If you've got the cheapest machine then why not shout it from the rooftops? It would be nice if it was $200 as that's been their traditional launch price for every home console I believe, but given inflation that's a much harder price to hit now than ever before, even if you consider the lower spec of the Wii hardware.

Re:Great Things for Wii

[kingofmyexcuses]

Ah, last thing I heard, the Wii was definitely set at $249 from one of the Nintendo bigwigs. I'll try and find when they said that, but thanks for the info. I'm definitely getting one as soon as I can. Money's a little tough, but I'll definitely budget around it.

Re:Great Things for Wii

[Anonymous Coward]

If you've got the cheapest machine then why not shout it from the rooftops? Because that would give MS time to adjust their Xbox prices accordingly before Wii release.

Xbox360, PS3 & Wii

[aurifex]

The 360 has a lot of potential, that is still untapped. My only complaint is that the damn thing gets too hot. The PS3 has tried to fool E3-goers more than once, by showing a pre-rendered movie, trying to pass it off as actual gameplay footage. The Wii is promising gameplay as it's main attraction, not image quality or raw processing power. This will come down to the input device (controller), and how the games are developed themselves. The internal hardware will play a small part when compared to the 360 and PS3.

I'm really interested to see how the Wii finally turns out.

Re:Just release the controller for GameCube...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well if you are a long time console engineer, then tell us what you think will be needed... It would be a lot more useful than making ad hominem attacks.

Re:Just release the controller for GameCube...

[Dorceon]

Nintendo is contracting out the hardware design to the same people designing the hardware for the X360 (and the same people who designed the GCN hardware). If they wanted more powerful hardware they could pay for it and pass the spendings on to the consumer. It's not like they can't win on tech, they chose not to so they could reach a more accessible price point.

Graphics vs Gameplay? Place your bets...

[lcllam]

This may very well settle once for all the Graphics vs Gameplay issue. Hopefully the console manufacturers (and all the rabid fanboys) will get the picture and the industry will benefit as a whole.

Tip of the Iceberg...

[Anonymous Coward]

The details-details department must have gone AWOL

Please Reread Parent

[winkerton]

"Better Than At E3" "Tip of the Iceberg"

This is pure fluff if you have nothing tangible to back it up.

I think I speak for a lot PC gamers when I say

[funkdancer]

...wii don't care!

(ducks)

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

HD vs power

[mrb000gus]

After sacrificing hi-def, do the math :
- 640x480 -> 1080x780 = approx 3 times the pixels on screen.
- Which means approx 3 times the detail needed to be processed for a 1080 picture, the same quality as a 640 one.
- Suddenly 2.5x cube vs 10-20x xbox/ps2 (divide by 3) doesn't seem as radical, since you're compensating with a lower resolution.
- Or we could stop getting religious over numbers, and go back to believing our eyes instead ;)

Re:HD vs power

[bWareiWare.co.uk]

You HDTV numbers look wrong:

1080p is 1920x1080 and 60Hz insted of 30hz. They are pushing 13.5 times as many pixels as NTSC.

720p is more common but even this is 1280x720@60 or 6 times the pixels.

Re:Just release the controller for GameCube...

[MemoryDragon]

Ok letzs look at the crap design, the crap design allowed nintendo to be almost half as expensive as the PSP, it allowed nintendo to be able to bring out a handheld which allowed 8 hours of straight gaming without being plugged into an electrical outlet. If you look at the games lineup, the PSP had a clear advantage with most except than Nintendos own titles coming out for the PSP, but the thing did not sell. Reason, the advanced design caused the battery to drain, the advanced design pushed the thing into a pricepoint which did not work out. Most people, me included simply had the console in their hands and then did not buy it due to various reasons one being the huge price compared to the DS. Sorry to say it sony blew it there. Same goes for their disk format, with movies sold for 25$ with drm enforced while you could get the same for 10$ with non enforced drm (broken drm) it is a no brainer which format to buy, and believe me it was not UMD. Sony would have had the chance if they had sold the umd movies at the next supermarket for 2-3$ then the price of the PSP probably would not have mattered. But as is, Nintendo is currently being king of the occiasional buyers market due to their low entry prices of their consoles (the games are a different matter they are as expensive as the rest). But if you need a console for the kids or if you are tight on budget Nintendo is a no brainer while Sony more and more becomes a no buy.

Re:Just release the controller for GameCube...

[MemoryDragon]

Actually Nintendo like most others do not do their own hardware design, they push contracts into third companies and have a division supervising their ideas. It would have been simple to get a better processor in, to get a faster graphics hardware in. But at what cost. You would have to add fans, which are distracting, you probably would lose backward compatibility like the PS3 and the XBox360 would, and the pricepoint would be way higher. Nintendo would have ended up at the same pricepoint as the 360 and still would have to sell the console at a loss. Now they have their own niche and will earn from both the console sales and the game sales. They are in a pretty good position.

Re:Just release the controller for GameCube...

[MemoryDragon]

Actually the battle of Canae was a turning point in war history. The main problem was, rome was already strong, they had a stronghold over entire italy and small parts of greece already, but they relied like most ancient armies on sheer man force, their people were even in Canae well trained, but advanced strategy was not applied. Hannibal was the first to apply advanced strategy and tactics to the battles. (Even Alexander has not applied it to that extent) One lesson the romans ultimately learned from Hannibal, especially Scipio was advanced tactics and strategy.

No HD might be a good thing

[SargeantLobes]

the cheapest system is cheap for a reason

Absolutely true, the Wii doesn't have HD, and most people at home don't have HD. So X360 and PS3 need to precess about four times the pixels the Wii has to, and most people won't even see the difference (since they don't have HD sets).

I don't know if 4 times more pixels means you need 4 time the power, but you definately need more power. So the Wii just might push out graphics (nearly) as nice as the X360, at a much lower price tag, and with awesome innovative gameplay.

I've sure as heck picked my winner.

since september 05

[whereisaxlrose]

the first insider screens i saw for the wii were back in september '05. and they looked exactly like the red steel ubisoft screens shown at the e3.
graphics will be the last thing nintendo / dev will worry about. as much as it's easy to play, the WII is easy to dev on. yes but it's a HELL for gamedesigner and playtesters.
it is indeed HARD to design a game for wii.
before you had to worry about buttons and that's it.
now you have to worry about the player moving his hand.
seriously, as much as i love nintendo, i don't see any third parties games making it at first.
only the nintendo release will be solid enough in their design.

"Common sense" tells me I can't see it

[ianscot]

Look at the specs for the xbox and the 360, then just use some common sense.

Let's see. Common sense. Can I afford a $400-$600 system which would then require another $1000-$1400-$2000 monitor just in order to see the improved graphics it puts out? Nope. The performance numbers just cited don't match the experience I would have on either of those systems, because I don't have the monitor to display them. In terms of perception, if I had such a system right now I'd be far more likely to say it was maybe twice as good as the old one than to say it was eight times better or whatever.

Meanwhile, do I want to extend myself that far in order to support either a)Microsoft's market share ambitions, which God knows it will never abuse; or b) Sony's attempt to win the HDVD standards war by leveraging its PS market share? Neither gesture particularly inspires me...

Common sense also tells me that my experience with Mule in 1983 was superior to most experiences with modern consoles, for that matter. I could provide comparative estimates of the number of enjoyable hours, or something, but I'm not sure the math would quite explain things...

Re:Just release the controller for GameCube...

[LupusCanis]

And I remember a hopelessly outdated English navy almost completely destroying the technologically advanced and numerically superior Spanish Armada.

Underpromise = Win

[superguido7]

I think that Nintendos strategy of constantly and consistently downplaying the significance of graphics for their next generation console is going to pay off for them in the long run, because no matter what the games end up looking like, no one will feel deceived. And thanks to the fact that they'll probably be better than expected, people will be amazed by how much better they are than was expected. And delivering way more than you promised is a very, very good thing.

Of course, Sony sold a lot of PS2's by overpromising, so.....

Re:Gamecube Power - Proof in Pictures

[obby.net]

If you actually look at the screenshots, you'll see what all those specs amount to. Did you even click the link? Even without all the extra special effects the PS2 version still has a lower polygon count.

Re:Gamecube Power - Proof in Pictures

[Anonymous Coward]

don't mind be-fan, he's just an aeronautical engineering student who obtains most of his hardware knowledge from the interweb

Processing power != Visual quality

[Anonymous Coward]

When you go to the optometrist, you sit in the chair and he/she flicks around the little eye glass things, and says 'better or worse'. he doesnt say 'how many times better is this than the last one?'

the system may be 2.5 times faster than the previous, but its not going to look 2.5 times better. its just going to look 'better' and in the end thats the result everyone wants.

Computing power does not directly translate into visual quality, so any speculations as to how good the graphics will be is pretty pointless until we start seeing it for ourselves.

Re:Video enhances gameplay: but it's only a toppin

[Anonymous Coward]

PS2 - Hmm... nothing changed. No... wait... analog buttons.

Copied from Dreamcast (Dreamcast's shoulder buttons were analog, Sony made every button analog).

Nintendo has it.

[ral8158]

They've won this console war. Sony's princess is in another castle (Home-media? What? Can play... Blu-ray? So? If I want to play Blu-ray discs, I won't use something that will probably break them, if we're talking about the PS2's "fun" with DVDs) Microsoft is stuck on Halo 3 as a last saving grace (Honestly, what games do they have? Oblivion... FFXII (Port) Call of Duty (Port) Dead or Alive (Port) King Kong (Port).... I mean.... hello, just buy a decent PC that costs less, and performs just as well, and it doubles as having a much larger selection...)

This fanboy is going to be buying 4 copies of every accessory for the Wiimote Nintendo makes, if just for parties. It'll still be hella cheaper than buying the PS3. (On a side note, will the microphone, used in Mario Party 7 and Odama, have a different version for the Wii? I was mad it used the memory card port, because that meant it could only be used for the quiz games in Mario Party (and the team things), and Odama is just one player)

Re:Just release the controller for GameCube...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, as others have pointed out... its not like they are "unable" to make a "powerful" console, not like ATI/Nvidia/IBM/Intel won't sell them the same chips. They could sell you a pre-packed quad SLI nvidia quad core "computer" in a SFF and call it their next console if they wanted to. It was a design & philosophical difference in their approach to the concept of console gaming, nothing more.

Re:Just release the controller for GameCube...

[justchris]

Nintendo is dead. They're spinning this because they are out of the technology loop. Sony is spending far more money than Nintendo on new technology because they can afford to. Nintendo can not compete and they are now trying to spin it.

And you are wrong. Dead wrong.

Nintendo currently has approx. $6 billion cash on hand. Not yen. American dollars. 6 billion dollars. In cash. That's liquid assets, not investments.

Compare that to about $11 billion for Microsoft. And around $3 billion for Sony (more of Sony's money is tied up in investments).

Also consider this. In over 100 years (116?) Nintendo has had one unprofitable quarter. Not even an unprofitable year, just one quarter where they did not make money. Counting both the GC & GBA, Nintendo has sold 95 million consoles this generation. Compare this to 112 billion consoles sold by Sony (selling only the ps2). Both of Nintendo's consoles sold for less money, and Nintendo sold less than 1/4 as many software units as Sony.

And yet this generation Nintendo has made 4 times the profit of Sony's game division. In fact, Nintendo made almost double the profit of Sony Corp as a whole. That means that Nintendo, who's business is almost exclusively in gaming & merchandising, made more money than Sony Games Division, Sony Movie Division, Sony Computer Division, Sony Hardware Division, Sony Music Division and Sony Media Division (...I'm missing one somewhere, Sony has seven divisions). Now, admittedly, only 3 of the 7 divisions of Sony actually made money, but still, to make double the profit of one of the largest corporations in the world with only two areas of revenue is a feat pretty much unmatched by any other company. Why do you think Microsoft was so eager to get into the video game market? Nintendo has been making money hand over fist since the days of the NES. Even with a system that is considered a comparitive failure (the gamecube) Nintendo is still making more money than it's competition by significant digits.

Nintendo could offer a system 3 times as powerful as the PS3, they could licensce Blu-ray or HD-DVD if they felt like it, they could make it surf the web, play movies, organize your appointments, receive your email, and record TV. All that, and still include the new controller. It would cost about $800, but would blow anything else anyone has to offer out of the water. Nintendo isn't going to do that, though, because it's not a smart move for them from a business standpoint. They're making a weaker system not because they lack the money (they have more liquid assets than Microsoft lost making Xbox a success), but because from a business standpoint, they stand to make more profit this way.

The PSP vs. DS fight is worth looking at for more than one reason. Not just because the DS is outselling the PSP by about 6 to 1 worldwide atm (most of that is Japan, a little Europe, they're dead even in the US). Sony is not losing money on the PSP, every unit sold makes them money. Nintendo is not losing money on the DS, every unit sold makes them money. But Nintendo has a far, far higher attachment rate (games sold per consoles in the wild) than Sony in the handheld space. Also, the best selling Nintendo games are developed and published by Nintendo. Games like Brain Training are about the closest you can get to pure profit. The hardware doesn't matter, Nintendo's business strategy is just flat out better, and they are making the kind of money most company executives have wet dreams about.

Now, compare the Wii to the PS3. This is in no way confirmed, but there is a very good chance that Sony will actually be losing money on each PS3 sold. That means the PS3 will be the first console Sony has ever lost money on the sale of. This means that Sony absoluted must dominate the console market, or they stand to repeat Microsoft's feat of losing money. Nintendo, on the other hand, can sell to the same 20 million customers they already have, and as long as they keep a steady stream of games, they still beat their competition in profit.

Don't ever make the mistake of assuming Nintendo is not doing something because of money. They have plenty to spare.

Re:Just release the controller for GameCube...

[Anonymous Coward]

A collection of newly discovered personal writings (compiled in a book released some time last year) reveals that the Spanish Armada was actually composed of fewer and less technologically advanced ships than the defending English Navy, contrary to legend. It was still a hard-won victory, however.

Whatever the case, I think Wii is going to come out on top with real gamers, by virtue of being less technologically sophisticated than the competition in some ways (and much more technologically sophisticated in others).