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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."
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.
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.