Unreal 3 Engine to Skip the Wii

Mark Rein, speaking with Chris Kohler and Game|Life, has stated that Epic's next-gen Unreal engine will never make it to the Wii. Touting the virtues of high-definition gaming, the 360, and the PS3, Rein said that their engine is simply not designed for Nintendo's hardware. He also quickly mentioned the upcoming deal between Epic and Square Enix: "It's definitely a challenge to convince Japanese developers to work with a third-party technology like ours. But Square Enix, they're the granddaddy. I'm hoping that'll be pulling the stopper out of the drain, and we'll gradually crack that nut. We've been looking to hire somebody in Japan, to be our representative there. " Update: 02/06 04:19 GMT by Z : Accidentally misattributed the interview to CVG when it was a Game|Life piece. Fixed. Also, Chris made sure to point out that a partner of Epic's is trying to get UE3 onto the Wii, so ... maybe someday?

Comments

What will wii do

[DesertBlade]

I am sure they will plenty of other engines for Wii. Maybe even a few just for it.

Re:What will wii do

[imsabbel]

Yeah. They can just keep using the ones for the gamecube.
Its the same hardware, after all.

(seriously not joking, the differences are so small it wouldnt even be worth calling it a major refresh. I guess thats the real reason they canned the "revolution" codename.)

Re:What will wii do

[HappySqurriel]

Well, maybe you don't understand but the one of the major selling points of the Wii to developers is they could continue to use the same technology and their development costs would not increase ...

With the Wii you get to produce an Unreal 2 Engine game with some graphical enhancements over a Gamecube game but costs don't explode; in contrast to make a PS3/XBox 360 game your budget will probably explode to being 3-4 times what a PS2/XBox game cost. Now, what I hope happens is that the Wii demonstrates that pushing graphical limits is not necessary so that in the next generation developers produce games which focus on gameplay and have graphics on the level the developer can afford.

Re:What will wii do

[nuzak]

With the Wii you get to produce an Unreal 2 Engine game with some graphical enhancements over a Gamecube game but costs don't explode; in contrast to make a PS3/XBox 360 game your budget will probably explode to being 3-4 times what a PS2/XBox game cost

Reality Distortion Field: disengage.

Having to maintain ports for two different engines is a cost. Textures and models are typically downscaled for consoles anyway. Your 3-4 times figure has zero connection with reality.

Re:What will wii do

[SirSlud]

Unfortunately, it is you who is incorrect. Development costs do "explode" for the 360/ps3 games over the ps2/gc/wii kind of games.

These games are capable of much more power, and with more power, you do not simply not "downscale" as much. Next-gen games feature more assets (more particle emitter assets, more model assets) nevermind that producing environments for next gen games is far more time consuming due to the increased scale.

More power also means you can do far more in code, so typically, you have larger teams of developers in order to produce more complicated AI systems, more complicated physics engines, more complicated shaders, etc.

Also, since the assets 'weigh more' on disk, your tools and technology infrastructure to support explodes. More disk space, more powerful hardware to work on, more files to support (because of more assets being created.)

Game budgets ARE far higher on next gen games, for all the reasons listed .. even more than 3-4 times higher in some cases when comparing a triple A PS2 title to a triple A PS3 title. One of the biggest issues within the industry is how to keep costs down on next gen games since the financial risk is much higher. Procedural art assets is one common discussed potential approach.

And how do I know this? I'm a game developer, at a company that produces both current (ok, well now last) gen and next (okay with now current) gen games, for the xbox, ps, and nintendo families.

So really, he doesn't have a reality distortion field. Its a reality .. a reality that has a lot of developers and publishers concerned.

"Textures and models are typically downscaled for consoles anyway."

Textures and models are typically "baked" (and LoD models set) relatively early in a single-generation production process, in order to ensure that artists are working on exactly what appears in the game. If you downscaled every time you made a build (ie, proceduraly,) you'd never know exactly what you'd end up with. Your comment regarding two ports at the same time, is of course correct. Especially so if you're producing a next and current gen version of the same game, which is why you just won't see it done very often. (Legends was one such example.) But your comment about budgets being generation specific are completely contrary to what the industry is experiencing and trying to grapple with.

Re:What will wii do

[nuzak]

I stand corrected -- thanks for adding some seasoned perspective to the discussion.

Certainly the "AAA" titles have Hollywood-esque production budgets, but a lot of that would seem independent of the technology. Writing, directing, acting, scoring, etc are all part of the package of these games, and while the progress of technology might drive the demand, the gaming culture is demanding it as well. Certainly beefier platforms drive some of the demand, but an increasingly discerning gamer culture does independent of the technology as well. How much of the budget would you say is driven by production costs like that as opposed to technology overhead?

I'm kind of glad to see a platform that isn't primarily focused on the "AAA" titles, though it's downright irritating to see The Faithful play it up as The One True Path To Enlightened Gaming.

Re:What will wii do

[Bobartig]

People have always assumed this arrangement, even though it has never existed:

-Quality of original assets
|
|
-Quality of Next gen in-game assets
|
|
|
-Quality of Current gen in-game assets.

So that next gen and current gen assets come from the same [magical] place somehow. this ignores a lot of things like lighting, physics, and the fact that current and next gen games will use different models.

The statement that assets are 'downscaled' for consoles is of course true. But this statement is irrelavent in terms of comparing current gen to next gen development costs.

Re:What will wii do

[squiggleslash]

That's right, because a revolution is when something more than doubles in size. For example, in the French revolution, France was just a few square kilometers in size, but it became the major country it is today thanks to the revolution.

Seriously, since when has "The same, just more of it" (as with the Wii's major rivals) been revolutionary? When has a radical reconfiguration of what you have to make things possible that weren't before not been revolutionary?

Re:What will wii do

[etnu]

It's ok, as soon as game companies figure out a way to outsource the art department extensively, costs will drop. So far they've only managed to cover engineering and customer service, but I'm confident most art and design will be done in India or China within the decade.

Re:What will wii do

[pilkul]

Outsourcing art doesn't work nearly as well in games compared to animation, since the art people need to work closely with the programmers to deal with the constantly evolving engine and tools. It's not a bad idea but game technology would have to stop evolving as quickly for it to work.

Re:What will wii do

[SirSlud]

but a lot of that would seem independent of the technology

It is precisely what is not independant of the technology. If a company releases a game for the 360 or ps3 and it features the same asset counts, texture resolutions, code base, etc of a current gen game, a publisher will wonder why the hell you arn't releasing it on the PS2 which has such a massive install base that PS2 exclusive games will continue getting made for another 4 or 5 years, most likely. (Certainly, I can promise you of titles that are two years away from release, and our company, as well as others, pick 4 or 5 years as the best guess at this stage.)

but an increasingly discerning gamer culture does independent of the technology as well

The gamer culture has become more mainstream, and it is certainly not more discerning than it was in earlier years. Maybe the more mainstream consumers will not actually become dependant upon the technology. This is the very hotly debated issue within the industry right now, and its why we see two bohemoths, Sony and Nintendo, picking different horses.

The costs such as voice acting is the only real 'hollywood' cost, given the celebrity nature of some of the voice actors. I'm talking in most games. Note that Mass Effect, Bioshock, etc may put alot of money into those fields, but for the blue collar nature of the industry, the 'normal' costs, they are insignificant to paying the artists/modlers/programmers and the technology they need to make the game. But so far, we are seeing HUGE incubation periods, production pipeline costs, etc for next generation technology because to compete, well, you just have to do so much more in order to stand out.

I agree with you regarding that there is no One True Path, but the matter is that creating a game for a next generation system will cost a lot more money, even 4 years down the road when the overhead of learning and perfecting the pipeline is right for the same reasons that creating Office now costs more money than it took to make Office back in the day. You CAN do more, and somebody WILL do more unless you commit to meeting that barrier to market. Thats why making games for the Wii is a significantly less risky scenario from a financial perspective, and alot of publishers see it as a double play; you can make a game for the PS2 and the Wii (I can only speak for ourselves, but I'm sure many developers now have engines that minimize the platform specific code as much as possible) and cover both generations .. the emergent next gen Wii system and the massive install base of the PS2. Believe me that its probably cheaper right now to have an engine that cross-compiles on PS2/Wii rather than a single 360/PS3 engine that takes advantage of everything. I don't know the exact numbers, I just know that the industry itself considers that the costs of making games for the 360/PS3 is spiraling out of control. And the triple A production budgets wouldn't really change too much between next gen and current gen. Its the same actors, and same directors, the same writers, the same composers .. you're don't need to invest nearly as much more into those factors to create critically acclaimed cameracuts/stories/music since those were already being done on the last gen systems. It really is the technology which forces you to hire way more modelers, animators, texture artists, programmers, etc in order to meet the standards of next-generation production values.

Re:What will wii do

[BlackEmperor]

I've haven't actually used the Wii controller before but from the sounds of it a game like Mount & Blade would go well with it. I can imagine using one controller to steer your horse and the other to wield your sword. Would be a lot of fun.

Re:What will wii do

[KDR_11k]

And then you turn around and curse the publishers for not making any games that divert from the safe formulas. This attention obviously makes games a bigger risk and risky game designs (which means any form of major innovation) even less desirable.

Re:What will wii do

[KDR_11k]

It's not major from a developer's perspective because there aren't any new internal technologies to deal with and most of the engine can be reused 1:1 and fed with more complex scenes. The controller interface is much simpler to deal with than, say, adding support for hardware shaders to the renderer.

Re:What will wii do

[SpeedyRich]

And, you know, the world will only ever need five computers.

Re:What will wii do

[DrXym]

With the Wii you get to produce an Unreal 2 Engine game with some graphical enhancements over a Gamecube game but costs don't explode; in contrast to make a PS3/XBox 360 game your budget will probably explode to being 3-4 times what a PS2/XBox game cost. Now, what I hope happens is that the Wii demonstrates that pushing graphical limits is not necessary so that in the next generation developers produce games which focus on gameplay and have graphics on the level the developer can afford.

Which might be viable if there is a PS2 and Xbox around to shoulder some of the costs, but what happens when those consoles are gone? Sites like 1up.com have already been bandying around terms such as "sloppy seconds" to describe the number of Wii titles which are simply PS2 or GC ports. Why is it getting ports? Because it is cheap. Why bother writing Splinter Cell : Double Agent from scratch when you can port the PS2 one, slap on some Wiimote gestures and send it out the door? Once PS2 titles begin to dry up, Wii titles are faced with shouldering the ENTIRE cost of development from conception, implementation, artwork, QA and marketing by themselves.

By contrast, perhaps PS3 & 360 development is more expensive. But if you're developing for PS3 and 360 and PC (and possibly Mac) then much of the expense is common to all platforms - graphics, artwork, models, engines (Unreal, Havok, PhysX etc.) a large percentage of the code, QA, marketing etc.

The Wii is going to be the odd man out here.

Re:What will wii do

[rsunny]

1) Why is it so necessary that u need the Unreal III Engine? For all i know Unreal 2 is an Engine with more than decent capabilities. Why bother when you dont have any pixel shaders in Wii. Yeah you can always write your own and render the CPU to to become one GPU. But the already one size bigger(compared to GFX 68K range PC Graphics) polygons will be lesser in numbers too. 2) Wii never really depends on the cinematic graphics does it? So why do we need those Extra polygons which just adds visual value and brings down the overall gaming experience(Which is Wii's plus point) 3) If you need presence in Japan, try going that extra yard and scale down the particle effects and visual extravagenza from your engine and give it to Nintendo.

Re:What will wii do

[Maxwell]

Once PS2 titles begin to dry up, Wii titles are faced with shouldering the ENTIRE cost of development from conception, implementation, artwork, QA and marketing by themselves.

By contrast, perhaps PS3 & 360 development is more expensive. But if you're developing for PS3 and 360 and PC (and possibly Mac) then much of the expense is common to all platforms - graphics, artwork, models, engines (Unreal, Havok, PhysX etc.) a large percentage of the code, QA, marketing etc.

The Wii is going to be the odd man out here.

Shhhh...there is NO future. Only 5% of America has a HDTV and it will stay that way, forever. 'no one' wants a HD movie player in their living room; NO ONE. And it will stay that way forever. Here on slashdot we are frozen in game/TV time. The Wii is the perfect system for today. The Xbox360 is the perfect next gen system for today. The PS3 is stupid because they force you to buy a BD player AND a hard drive. No one wants that. Nothing will ever change. Please do not attempt to extrapolate into the future. Thank you.

On a side note, a few of the Wii's I know are already packed away with boondoggle and pictionary, waiting for the next party to come out and play for a bit. Four years from now, when the XBOX540 (with HD player! Hard drive! wireless net! HDMI1080p!) comes out THEN we can say the Wii is screwed...unless you buy a 'Wii too'.

JON

Re:What will wii do

[chrish]

Speaking of frozen in time...

I might be the odd man out here, but I have absolutely no intention of "upgrading" to HD until:

1. I feel confident that the "standard" won't be changed again after a year or two.
2. The Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD nonsense is resolved one way or another (ie, one "wins" or 100% of players support both "standards"). I'm unlikely to ever "upgrade" my DVDs to HD, I've still got some VHS tapes I haven't replaced (and I don't even have a VCR hooked up anymore).
3. The DRM nonsense is resolved. No, you can't tell me how, when, or where I can watch movies I've bought, sorry. Most DVDs tick me off enough with their unskippable warnings and ads and whatnot.
4. My current TV, which is only a few years old, kills itself.

My wife got me a Wii for Valentine's Day (I got it early due to the shortages :-)) and it's great fun, and it looks really good on my existing TV. I didn't have to invest $2000 or so in a new TV, cables, HD receiver, etc. to feel like I got my money's worth.

MS, Sony, the MPAA, electronics manufacturers and my cable company have utterly failed to give me a compelling reason to spend big bucks on HD, and plenty of reasons to avoid it (early adopters got seriously boned, several times on this).

Re:What will wii do

[twistedsymphony]

Seriously, since when has "The same, just more of it" (as with the Wii's major rivals) been revolutionary?

Because there is actually more then horsepower behind what makes the PS3 and 360 revolutionary... like an online community connection integrated directly into the console itself delivering a consistent experience across all of the games.

I own both a 360 and a Wii, and I can say without a doubt I'd rather have the Dashboard and Xbox Live features that were added to to the Xbox 360 since last generation then the Wii Remote any day of the week, graphics be damned. Things like Achievements, having instant access to a friends list, the ability to download game add-ons and demos has fundamentally changed how I play games, opened me up to new types of games I wouldn't have otherwise tried, and I think it's done so for the better. I was rarely playing any games at all when the 360 came out, gaming was being replaced with other hobbies but shortly after the 360's release I was enjoying playing video games again and I've have been since. When the Wii came out I waited in line longer then I actually played the damn thing the first week, and now it's just collecting dust. The Wii remote was fun for about an hours worth of Wii Sports but beyond that the Wii remote showed me that it works horribly for shooters, and with action/adventure games like Zelda it's pretty much a tossup. More traditional RPGs are more menu based then anything so they don't really gain anything. Racing games, the motion tracking could be better but really I'd rather have some analog control over my acceleration then a gimmicky steering wheel. If I wanted a wheel there are far superior options on the other consoles. The only way for the Wii to shine in my eyes is if they develop something NEW that utilizes the Wii remote for things that a traditional controller just can't do. Sports titles lend themselves to this but honestly I'm not a sports fan and titles like Wii Sports/Wii Play are just far far too shallow of a gaming experience to hold my attention for very long.

Re:What will wii do

[ShadowsHawk]

Do you even remember how many horrible games came out in the N64 era? 3D was all the rage, but many games were poorly implemented. Some would argue that they STILL haven't gotten a good camera system working. The point is, it takes time to work out any new method of control. Take a breath and be patient.

Re:What will wii do

[MeanderingMind]

In the same way Sony tells us to wait for the games that will blow away the 360, the 360 told us to wait for games that truly made use of the system, and the DS shrugged off the 'gimmick' stigma so too should we wait before pronouncing sentence on the Wii and its remote, for or against.

For me, I like both killing zombies and waving around a remote like an idiot.

Re:What will wii do

[poot_rootbeer]

seriously not joking, the differences [between Gamecube and Wii hardware] are so small it wouldnt even be worth calling it a major refresh.

Similarly, the differences between You and A Bozo are virtually indiscernible.

I would have thought we could have moved beyond these "LameCube 1.5" canards by now, considering how little confirmed information there is about the specifications of the Wii's Broadway CPU and Hollywood GPU. I think it's fair to say that Nintendo was more concerned with power consumption than raw performance when these chips were being designed, but I don't know that any fair, quantitative comparison between the new chips and their predecessors exists or has been made public.

Re:What will wii do

[twistedsymphony]

I realize that it will take time. My point was that things other than a new type of controller can be revolutionary as well. I was simply pointing out that so far, the software innovations on the 360 have revolutionized the way I play games much more then the Wii remote has.

It was a counter argument to the GP who stated that the only thing the the 360 and PS3 offered were more graphics horsepower... hence the quote.

Re:What will wii do

[Prophet of Nixon]

Have you seen 'Bad Day L.A.'? Download and play the demo, finish clawing your eyes out, and then tell us again that art (much less other aspects of game design) should be outsourced to India and China.

Re:What will wii do

[ShadowsHawk]

I do agree that the 360 has changed the way some people play and I'm glad they enjoy. Personally, I don't have the time or interest in online play as I generally do not have more than 1-3 free hours per week. As far as achievements go, I really don't understand the appeal. I suppose it falls into the same obsessive behavior as people who need to get 100% completion on each game they play.

Re:What will wii do

[metamatic]

If a company releases a game for the 360 or ps3 and it features the same asset counts, texture resolutions, code base, etc of a current gen game, a publisher will wonder why the hell you arn't releasing it on the PS2 which has such a massive install base that PS2 exclusive games will continue getting made for another 4 or 5 years, most likely.

I was wondering if that was going to happen.

As I've watched the PS3 launch with its absurdly high price and failure to sell, I've been wondering if game makers wouldn't be better off just continuing to make leading-edge PS2 games for a few more years. After all, they'll run just as well on the PS3, and let's face it, there are a lot of genres where PS2 graphics are plenty good enough. So you get to target the biggest piece of the market, and if the PS3 takes off you can still sell to PS3 owners.

As a bonus, game makers who stuck with the PS2 generation could probably target the Wii as their second platform, using the mature libraries developed for the GameCube, and just have to add motion sensor controls.

When I saw Metroid Prime on the GameCube, I thought "Well, that's it, I don't really need graphics any better than this." Same is true of Ico on the PS2. Give me games that good and I'll keep buying indefinitely, even if they're not making use of PS3-like hardware.

Re:What will wii do

[Grey Ninja]

You know, I actually am employed as a Wii/DS developer, so I can't really say a whole lot on the subject. But I don't really consider the upgrade from a GameCube to a Wii to be any less significant than upgrading a video card or a CPU in a PC. The architecture is very similar, but there's enough new stuff to be called a refresh.

Re:What will wii do

[Xaymot]

Why does everybody act like an industry insider during game discussions? So the cost explodes, who gives a shit? I don't own shares of NoA stock, and the frugality is their gain, not mine. When you play a visually mediocre Wii game YOU can warm your cockles knowing that your shitty graphics allowed someone to have better health benefits. Production costs.... not my problem. Make a good game or get the hell out. :)

Re:What will wii do

[hkmwbz]

Yeah. They can just keep using the ones for the gamecube. Its the same hardware, after all.

Same hardware... Yeah, it was only built from the ground up specifically for Wii, at least 2.5 times more powerful, power consumption being 1/3 of the GameCube's... But yeah, it's the exact same hardware. It's not like new mobile phones that have longer battery time and more power (but still not as powerful as a PC) are state of the art or anything. The only thing that counts is the number of textured polygons you can push around at the same time! Everything else is... just the same hardware, after all.

Re:What will wii do

[SirSlud]

Thats pretty much the state of the industry right now, and I totally agree with you.

I played through Ico last year, and thats exactly the sort of game that makes you want to smash your head on your desk when convention-seeking game designers equate the number of enemies on screen with the awesomeness of the game.

Mexed Mitaphors

[Khakionion]

"I'm hoping that'll be pulling the stopper out of the drain, and we'll gradually crack that nut."

Yeah, better jump under that bandwagon before the train leaves the station!

OOPS

[UbuntuDupe]

Sorry, didn't realize they were only referring to the next-gen version of the engine. I know, I know, "Please read the summary before responding. It's fun. It's like reading, but ... of the summary."

Re:What?

[Ucklak]

Unreal has/had the best software rendering engine so the answer to LOD would be no.

Re:No Wii?

[mingot]

Huh? Nintendo came out said (and proved through actions) that the Wii was not about graphics, but gameplay. Why should it be a surprise that Epic took that to heart and decided not to invest in getting it's latest engine to run on underpowered hardware?

And really, is this a loss for Epic or Nintendo? If a killer game comes out using unreal 2 I think I'd still buy it.

Hasn't this been known for awhile?

[HappySqurriel]

I thought this was known back in August/September?

I swear I saw an interview saying that Red-Steel was an Unreal 2 Engine game and it was unlikely the Wii could support an Unreal 3 Engine game ...

The fact is that the Unreal 3 Engine was designed with a reasonably powerful GPU (probably in the Geforce 6800 range) and a reasonably powerful CPU (AMD X2 3800+ as a guess) in mind and the Wii simply isn't in the same league. The Wii should be able to handle the Doom 3, Unreal 2 and (maybe) the Source engine which are all solid game engines which should be good for several years.

Re:Hasn't this been known for awhile?

[Purity Of Essence]

I have serious doubts that Source and other truly advanced game engines will ever appear on Wii unless they are severely compromised. The sad fact is, as awesome and powerful as the Wii is in a lot of ways, Nintendo made a huge mistake not adding to the feature set of the GPU. GPUs have moved a bit beyond 2001; Nintendo hasn't.

Although on the whole the Wii is more powerful than the original XBox, and Source did appear on the XBox in the form of Half-Life 2, Valve has stated (although I can't find the quote) that Half-Life 2 will not be coming to Wii.

Still, Gabe Newell continues to talk up the Wii saying: "I'm betting that by Christmas of next year, the Wii has a larger installed base than the 360. Other people think I'm crazy. I really like everthing that Nintendo is doing."

And Doug Lombardi said in an interview about Half-Life 2 for PS3: "Understanding the [PS3] has been the biggest challenge of all, since we're still learning a lot about the control and interface. It's really just a design challenge, but nothing impossible to overcome. The bigger challenge will be if we ever did a Wii version down the road."

Valve seems a bit wishy-washy on the topic, so who knows? It seems like an obvious choice to port to Wii, but maybe this quote from Red Steel developer Novel Campos Oriola puts things into perspective (sorry for the bad translation): "I do not have the right to speak in details of what Wii can do graphically. What one can say, it is that on the sum of all that it can do, Wii is more powerful than Xbox. But there are things which Xbox can make and which Wii cannot make." Red Steel uses the Unreal 2 engine.

Re:Hasn't this been known for awhile?

[Ford Prefect]

Although on the whole the Wii is more powerful than the original XBox, and Source did appear on the XBox in the form of Half-Life 2, Valve has stated (although I can't find the quote) that Half-Life 2 will not be coming to Wii.

... But if you're bored, you can always play HL2 with the Wii's controllers. On a PC!

Re:Hasn't this been known for awhile?

[Whitemage12380]

Yes, I also saw that interview. This isn't really 'news' per se... But I guess it makes for interesting discussion!

Re:Hasn't this been known for awhile?

[Afrosheen]

I seriously doubt the Wii has the grunt for Doom3. Hell, a top-of-the-line PC in 2005 barely had enough to prevent massive framerate drops in busy scenes with lots of enemies.

  Sorry fellas but Nintendo gave the world yet another last generation system. They saved money, you save money...but you're stuck with mini-games and bad graphics. Forever.

Square?

[RealmRPGer]

Is the Unreal engine for FFXIII? If that's the case, then does that mean this deal happened quite a while ago?

Re:Square?

[Khakionion]

No, FFXIII uses the White Engine.

Re:Square?

[ivan256]

Why do people forget that Square made much more than the Final Fantasy series... And I'm not just talking about 'B' games either. They've done some of the best side scrollers, third person platformers, and fighting games ever.

Personally, I hope they use the Unreal engine for a new Bushido Blade...

Re:Square?

[RealmRPGer]

Dude. Brave Fencer Musashi is one of my favorite games. Of course I know they make other stuff... But they HAVEN'T really made anything other than KH lately (and even that team is now on FFXIII Versus, soo).

Re:Square?

[dank zappingly]

Damn, good call, I almost forgot about that one. If they'd make a sequel to that one and Xenogears, I think I'd crap my pants.

Re:Square?

[RealmRPGer]

Musashi Samurai Legend wasn't as good as the original, and it just felt odd for the voice actor to try and and deepen his voice.

Re:Square?

[Rycross]

Much of the team who made Xenogears left for Namco. Xenosaga is the end result of that, and it's pretty much the successor to Xenogears. Whether its better than Xenogears is pretty iffy.

One of the related links reads

[antifoidulus]

"never make it to the Wii"

That sounds like a painful medical problem.

Re:One of the related links reads

[__aaclcg7560]

Kidney stones are always fun.

Re:One of the related links reads

[sctaylorcan]

"never make it to the Wii"

That sounds like a painful medical problem.

Or merely a pride-painful but really wet one!!

Re:No Wii?

[Pc_Madness]

No, its because the Wii's graphics card isn't capable of doing the kind of things that this engine is designed for, which is obviously delivering realistic graphics, which isn't the focus of the Wii. Seems abit stupid to gut the main feature out of the engine just to get it to work, only to have an engine equivalent of the previous generation.. I could be wrong, but didn't they say the Unreal 2 engine would work fine on the Wii?

High def gaming?

[ivan256]

What version of the Unreal engine didn't support "high def" resolutions?

Oh, that's right... None of them... Yet they all managed to support running at a lower resolution too. This is a huge load of marketing bullshit.

Besides, they'll change their mind and compile it for the Wii (and the PS2) as soon as not doing it costs them a licensing agreement. (Unless Microsoft or Sony is paying them actual cash to be High-Def only?)

Re:High def gaming?

[Kjella]

Watch me care.. I'd think almost any game engine can pull off 480p at a decent framerate these days, it's not like any game looking for one will come up short. Btw: A note to all Wii gamers, Warioware: Smooth moves is the most overrated game so far with a short SP and hardly any simultanious play in MP. Get Rayman's Raving Rabbits, Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz or hold out for Mario Party 8.

Re:High def gaming?

[JanusFury]

Running a DX9/DX10-class game engine or graphics application on a DX7-class or DX8-class GPU is not remotely close to being as easy as 'compiling it for the Wii and the PS2'. No offense, but if you knew *anything* about game engines, you'd realize this. There are significant hurdles preventing an engine like Unreal 3 from running on hardware like the PS2 or Wii without being designed specifically for it in the first place.

The problem here is that UE3 was designed for a system with a modern graphics processor and fairly high end CPU. The Wii and PS2 have neither of these things, so UE3 simply won't run on them. Obviously, stuff like the previous Unreal Engine (used by Red Steel) runs fine on the Wii, so it's not as if the Wii can't run games. It just can't run UE3.

Re:High def gaming?

[rainman_bc]

Warioware: Smooth moves is the most overrated game so far

Your problem is you haven't turned it into a drinking game yet.

Sit down with a few cases of beer and play it with some friends. Every time you screw up you take a drink.

Fun times. Already starting some new memories now... Well from what I can remember anyway :)

. Get Rayman's Raving Rabbits, Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz or hold out for Mario Party 8.

Wife and I tried Super Monkey Ball and it really wasn't for us. The control is klunky and not very much. I found myself getting quite irritated by the control and the multi-player wasn't nearly as fun as Warioware Smooth Moves.

Re:High def gaming?

[Anonymous Coward]

"High def" is more than just a high resolution. It's also using detailed textures and geometry, and older engines don't really scale to handle that much data.

Re:High def gaming?

[Watson Ladd]

Only the XBOX 360 uses Direct X. The Wii and PS3 both use OpenGL, which has no problems with taking advantage of new features while still working on old cards due to the requirement for a full implementation of a lot of things. Old cards do it in software, new ones in hardware.

Re:High def gaming?

[dbIII]

Running a DX9/DX10-class game engine ... not remotely close to being as easy as 'compiling it for the Wii and the PS2'. No offense, but if you knew *anything* about game engines, you'd realize this

Direct-X and not OpenGL for a cross-patform game on consoles? I'm fairly ignorant on this issue but it looks like the criticism above also is.

Re:High def gaming?

[jZnat]

DirectX is only relevant to PC games (and now Xbox games), so stop using that to compare in the console gaming world. Real console games use OpenGL, so you need to be more specific on what is and isn't supported (e.g. pixel shading).

Re:High def gaming?

[quanticle]

Old cards do it in software, new ones in hardware.

Perhaps UE3 requires a certain level of performance that can only be provided by the hardware implementations present in the PS3/XBox360?

Re:High def gaming?

[ivan256]

High-def apparently means whatever people care to pull out of their asses at the time to best suit their point.

Re:High def gaming?

[nschubach]

I could be wrong on this, but OpenGL does support Pixel Shading through Cg...
This page could be wrong too: http://www.3ddrome.com/articles/cgshaders.php

Re:High def gaming?

[GweeDo]

Did you seriously just recommend Super Monkey Ball:BB to people? Of the 50 mini games in that title about 3 are playable...and you can only play Simon Says so many times. I love my Wii, but I hate that game.

Re:High def gaming?

[ivan256]

Sounds like somebody here (and no offense, since most mainstream gaming writers are the same way) learned everything they know about writing game engines from press releases.

Sure, it's not just a recompile, but it's close, and I exaggerated slightly to drive the point home.

Misreadind trends

[NotthatFrankie]

So Epic wants to have a "representative" in Japan, but their newest engine doesn't support Wii? Doesn't Nintendo own the market over there?

Re:Misreadind trends

[king-manic]

Sony's king actually. Still. Since it'll take a while for the Wii to catch up to the Ps2. This might change later when the ps2 market declines. But the ps2 is still very strong.

Re:Misreadind trends

[earthbound kid]

Well of course the PS2 is still market champ. But if you're talking about the current generation of consoles, then Wii is the champ in Japan, since they overtook the 360 during the holiday season. The PS3 just isn't selling that well. Which makes sense, because it has no compelling software yet.

Re:Misreadind trends

[brkello]

There is actually this small startup over there called Sony. I am sure you will be hearing about them someday soon.

Re:Misreadind trends

[Plaid Phantom]

Yeah, I'm sure the "death of the Playstation division" announcement is coming up pretty soon.

who cares...

[thedogcow]

This is not a troll. Anyway, who cares? The whole point of the Wii is not to deliver stunning movie-quality graphics. The point of the Wii is to change the way games are played. High end graphics are overrated anyway. Doom 3 and Quake 4 both have fantastic fx but the game play is not innovative and is boring. WarioWare for the Wii has minimal graphics, but IMHO, is very replayable. I know I'm sounding old here but I'm sick of the argument that graphics are everything. In other words, the PS3 and the Xbox 360 may render a piece of crap in high detail... capturing all the intricate details and using 16X anti-aliasing to render the post steam convecting off of it... but it still a piece of crap. I want to be able to play with that piece of crap... toss it around like bowling or in tennis. I can do this with the Wii and it smells fantastic.

Re:who cares...

[Spikeles]

Aye, the exact reason Starcraft, Morrowwind, Baldurs Gate, Betrayal at Krondor, Commander Keen, Doom, C&C (list goes on) are all very fun games that i still play these days. They don't have the gfx of todays games, but heck they are still fun! And here is why Bloom sucks.

Re:who cares...

[oOo Shiva oOo]

I'm going to have to exercise my right to disagree about WarioWare... I felt like I was just repeating myself over and over by the 2nd area. By the 4th or so I gave the controller to my friend and said "have fun, this is ass."

I will agree, however, that movie-quality graphics are not a requirement. Its nice to have the option, but its not necessary. I hate hearing these threads about how its becoming too expensive and too hard to code for games because the requirements of the system and making stunning graphics and stuff like that. I love that the PS3 and X360 *can* deliver those features... I just wish they'd make less use of them and spend more time on gameplay. My favorite games are still on the old NES, SNES, and Genesis systems... Stuff like Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy 3 and World Series Baseball and Breath of Fire II, Simons Quest, Metroid.. Megaman... You can't tell me its not possible to make games like that for the modern systems... Every game doesnt HAVE to take advantage of every hz of processing power in the box. Its up to the developers to come up with new and ingenious ways of making games fun and interesting, not up to the system manufacturers to pull new gimmicks out of their butts. The wiimote was a great idea and its fun for some games. So far the only games I've had any fun with are Wii Sports.. and its getting real old quick...

The Wiimote was a great idea and I think it should be incorperated into every future game system.. or at least some rendition of it... but it shouldn't be the sole reason to purchase the system... it should be used as a small part in games for fun or interesting uses... tests of skill or endurance or mini games or what have you..

Thats just my 2c, take it or leave it.

Re:who cares...

[karnal]

You aren't kidding about bloom.

Got my first experience on the 360 using bloom. As a side note, I don't plan on purchasing a current-gen console, since I just sank 1200$ into a dual core machine for my pc gaming. However, I was at a friend's house, and one of the games he had was Project Gotham. Similar in playability (at least my brief tour) to GT4 and it's ilk, I was having a blast tearing up my "host's" times.

Got to the end of a straight stretch where you play for about 20 seconds under a bridge covering, and WHAM. Bloom. What the fuck? Why did you just temporarily blind me? Even if I was ready for it (as I tested with another run on the track) it was still just an annoying trick.

I know that PG was a launch title, but come on... I can't believe that something like that would be popular. That fucking hurt. And it was only a 24" screen!

Re:who cares...

[hansamurai]

But what if you're a developer for the Wii, and wanted to make a first person shooter? Sure, you could build the engine from scratch, but why not buy a pre-existing engine that's ready for you? Maybe that's not the best example because I'm sure the Unreal 2 engine is available instead of 3, but I'm trying to make a point somewhere in there.

Re:who cares...

[nuzak]

Ceasar 4 has perhaps some of the most gratuitous bloom I've ever seen in a game. Every building in it just shines like a thousand suns, and makes your GPU about as hot too. Tilted Mill is now 0 for 2 on picking up Impressions' legacy.

Perhaps it's why Gamespy skipped the Lens Flare Award for 2006 -- bloom won it in 2004, and it deserved to win the dubious honor again, but there's nothing new to say about it.

Re:who cares...

[Broken scope]

Bloom, Ragdolls, "physics", there all just the next "lens flare", poorly implemented features to cram on the back of the box to to tout some intangible superiority.

Re:who cares...

[imsabbel]

Because those games didnt have graphics as their big selling point at the time of their release? Yeah, retrospective reality distortion hey...

Commander Keen: pixel-wise fluid scrolling unseen before on EGA IBM-PCs
Doom: No need to mention. People were blown away by the full-screen (pseudo) 3D graphics. I knew someone who bought a Pentium60 more or less just to play the game for its graphics.
C&C: new frontiers for FMV cutscenes and the best use of the 320x200*8bit vga resolution seen in any strategy-game at that point of time
Baldurs Gate: 5 CDs full of high-resolution scenery graphics back when games didnt even manage to fill one, usually
Morrowind: hyped years ahead for its graphics, the use of shaders, the big visibility range, the water reflections, ect, blabla

just starcraft looked like crap when released.

So your point doesnt exist: just because you picked the games from 1.5 decades that YOU likes, and those of course are outdated now, doesnt give any correlation. Especially since you have games in your list that demanded highest-end computers for their graphics at the release-time (doom and morrowind).

Re:who cares...

[Spikeles]

Ragdolls, "physics", there all just the next "lens flare", poorly implemented features to cram on the back of the box to to tout some intangible superiority.

Bloom yes, ragdolls maybe, but "physics"? I think the way games use the physics to create sandboxes for user designed gameplay are a great idea. How many times have you played Oblivion, FEAR, FarCry, or GTA, and just sat there playing with the physics instead of doing the missions? The physics add so much more playability, they don't need to be fancy, they don't need to be good, but damn, it's fun creating multi-car pile ups in GTA-SA, or seeing how many arrows it takes to hit an apple in Oblivion with your bow! You can make your own little mini-games!

As for ragdolls and physics together, just look at Stair Dismount it may not look flashy, but it has HOURS of fun.

Re:who cares...

[Spikeles]

My point is simply that graphics don't make the games, gameplay does. I listed those games because i liked the gameplay, and the quality of the graphics does not impact how i feel about the game. This is in contrast to the myriad of players who see the latest and greatest Battlefield game and go "OOO! Shiny" and rave on about how awesome it is, although the gameplay is crap ( this is my biased opinion though ).

So you want some more recent games that have awesome gameplay that don't need the latest and greatest computer and graphics card?, Ok...
Soldat
Flow
Warning Forever
Dismount games
Solitaire

I'm sure there are more...

Re:who cares...

[SirSlud]

Show me a game that actually lists having a "lens flare" on the back of the box.

The key to all these features is using them properly. When the effects are shoved down your throat at a detrement to gameplay, than yes, it sucks. But start actually looking out for lense flares in games; you'll be surprised how many games have them and you've never even noticed it before. Those are the games that use those features to enhance the level of immersion .. you just don't notice how frequently they're used properly because when they're used properly, you don't notice them.

Re:who cares...

[SetupWeasel]

The point is that these games remain fun without the draw to their graphics. It is time to realize that we are in the computing era of "good enough." Processors were good enough about 5 years ago for most useful tasks. There are exceptions, but those applications that constantly need more power will probably never be completely satisfied.

Once developers realize that they can make a game that has good enough graphics and superior design and sell like gangbusters, gaming will start its renaissance.

Nintendo is thriving today, because they realized that. Sony is in trouble because they don't. The foundation has been laid by the likes of Nintendo, Game Freak, Blizzard, Fraxis, some people at Square and Namco, and Rockstar (though they might be changing), and those who do not see will be left in the digital dust. Sure there will always be a market for the big-budget blockbuster, but even Hollywood is starting to realize that people won't pay for simple shine over substance anymore.

Re:who cares...

[acidrain]

I care. When EA bought Renderware a few years back they created a vacuum that Unreal was filling. But now Unreal sucks on the PS3 and won't run on the Wii which is shockingly turning out to be a more compelling platform than the PS3 and competitive with the 360. So this means that all the big game companies who have to target all platforms for simple financial reasons (Unreal's real-world technical concerns meaning nothing to the people who tie their ties right in the morning) cannot turn to Unreal as the video game console "OS" of choice. Lacking a industry wide engine, there will be a lot more jobs in the industry for people who are interested in lower level gaming technology as everyone rolls their own. (Which is good for me.) Expect to see more diversity and performance per-game being made because the engine will continue to be more customized to the game being made. Where does that leave us? Going in the same direction as always. Smaller and independent developers cannot afford to play, and the big companies continue to churn out predictable titles with larger and larger teams.

Re:who cares...

[GWBasic]

Anyway, who cares? The whole point of the Wii is not to deliver stunning movie-quality graphics. The point of the Wii is to change the way games are played. High end graphics are overrated anyway. Doom 3 and Quake 4 both have fantastic fx but the game play is not innovative and is boring. WarioWare for the Wii has minimal graphics, but IMHO, is very replayable. I know I'm sounding old here but I'm sick of the argument that graphics are everything. In other words, the PS3 and the Xbox 360 may render a piece of crap in high detail... capturing all the intricate details and using 16X anti-aliasing to render the post steam convecting off of it... but it still a piece of crap. I want to be able to play with that piece of crap... toss it around like bowling or in tennis. I can do this with the Wii and it smells fantastic.

I just bought a Wii. It's the first console I've spent serious money on in over 10 years. I specifically bought it because Nintendo made games for it that are fun and innovative.

I must admit that I wish Nintendo put in a little bit of anti-aliasing. It's a little distracting (for me) to see Link's fishing line as a dashed line. (Granted, if Nintendo built a super-console, it'd cost as much as a PS3!)

Re:who cares...

[PoderOmega]

I am hoping Bloom is just a fad right now. First it was lens flare (many PS1 games, Wing Commander Prohpecy), then it was the "make everything look sealed in Saran wrap" (Halo, Doom3), and now the fad is Bloom (Oblivion, Half Life 2 Lost Coast). Hopefully we have something decent for the next fad.

Re:who cares...

[PenGun]

I sure like my HDTV. /fires up Doom on the the big Sony ...

Re:who cares...

[Spikeles]

A little bit of bloom is good, but most games use overkill, Oblivion and Full Spectrum Warrior are examples, some of the bloom looks great! but alot of it just makes the scene look bad. As SirSlud said use them in the right amounts and in the right places and it looks good.

Re:who cares...

[rm999]

Play unreal tournament 2004 - it has amazing gameplay (I have been playing it regularly for 3 years now). I predict UT 2007 will be about as good.

Of course, those are better as PC games, so I still may agree with you for consoles :)

Re:who cares...

[Plaid Phantom]

Great. Now I'm trying to imagine high-def solitaire.

Re:who cares...

[Broken scope]

I put in "physics" as opposed to physics for a reason. The "" were supposed to denote games where physics serves as nothing but a gimmick, and add nothing to gameplay. "physics" refers to games where you can throw your gun on the ground and watch is slide with no real physics.

As for stair dismount, that was hosted on my county school systems file servers courtesy of me for a while. Along with Q2, tribes, tribes2, and Truck dismount.

Re:who cares...

[Broken scope]

I was not saying lens flare in relation to modern games. There was a time however when it was a "feature".

Many games use lens flare. I do notice, I do look for the proper application of certain graphical things. I also tend to say things like "Shit?! I wish my maps looked as good as these." and "Wow, I would have been fucked had I not been able to hear where he was coming from."

Yes, I know how the little details go towards making the whole. I study this stuff because I want to do it myself one day.

Re:who cares...

[Frangible]

Um, and aside from Wii sports (which gets boring) and Zelda (which ends), there's really nothing worth playing atm on the Wii imo. The XBox 360 has an excellent game library, with solid titles that are pretty *and* fun. If you want to rate systems regardless of graphics in terms of a fun game library, the XBox 360 certainly takes that crown from this generation, and while that is opinion, rating on metacritic will certainly bear it out.

Yeah, I like Nintendo too, but c'mon. That's totally misrepresenting the reality of the market.

Re:who cares...

[SirSlud]

There was a time however when it was a "feature".

Cmon, that was a challenge. Okay, so we admit it was never on the back of the box, and of course, at one time, it was a feature, for those 'in the know'. Just like any advance in graphics technology or anything you could do with increased power from newer hardware. But why shouldn't that be a feature. Its now something you can do which, properly used, can increase the level of immersion and/or make the game look prettier.

I will launch into my own diatribes about amateur photoshop that abuse lens flare and emboss filters to produce posters for community plays. I think there is nothing wrong with those filters. They just can be abused. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

In that respect, its better to actually champion the use of a good lense flare rather than dismiss it outright. This thread resulted in a massive hate-down on bloom, but the greater point is, if a programmer or designer or texture artist or modeler can't do a lense flare or bloom simply because they think that in 5% of the games they see it in, it really sucks, they are doing themselves a professional diservice.

So to go back to your original post, maybe we can suggest that alphas were too high on lots of lens flares. Also, alot of games dont randomize the alpha and the scaling of the flare textures in order to properly simulate the real effect. Plus, a lot of texture makers don't get how to make it nice, so the flare sprites end up either not looking very realistic, or kick you in the face because they're just way too round and white.

Its all good tho; what are you interested in doing, in games?

Re:who cares...

[TheQuantumShift]

"The whole point of the Wii is not to deliver stunning movie-quality graphics. The point of the Wii is to change the way games are played."

Not really. Nintendo realized that a technological arms race would leave them dead last and bankrupt (they might have to steal from the "Pokemon Trust Fund" for a while).

To me, the wiimote is an interesting add on, much like the specialty controllers for say Guitar Hero and Steel Battalion, but not the "revolutionary input device" it has been billed as. It's a gimmick, plain and simple, and not a very good one at that. The only thing worse would be if one of the other main players suddenly tacked on motion sensitivity at the last minute. Hmmm...

Basically, I saw screw the Wii, the PS3 and I might buy a 360 in a year or three. Until then, there's a grillion reasons to have an original Xbox and a PS2 hooked up to one's TV.

Re:who cares...

[palad1]

Betrayal at krondor! Thank god for DOSBox!
I can't wait for a GC/Wii homebrew version of DOSBox (+virtual keyboard)... That would be neat. *sigh*

Re:who cares...

[Broken scope]

Mapping or tool design. Improving my background in programming. Trying to improve my mapping skills to a point where I don't cringe every time I compile a map. I'm improving my texturing to. The further I go the more I will specialize, while keeping a good general knowledge base. I will probably never make it in the industry but hey I'm gonna try. If all else fails I'll put my CS degree to good use elsewhere.

Re:who cares...

[EastCoastSurfer]

Keep in mind the xbox360 has been out over a year now...

Re:who cares...

[grumbel]

### My point is simply that graphics don't make the games, gameplay does.

Gameplay alone isn't enough for many games, you also want to have story, character design, interesting environments and such and good graphics help to bring them to life. Graphics are of course not so important that one should push the price into the unaffordable like the PS3 did, but neither are they so unimportant that you can just slap last generation technique into the box and sell it as new and get away with it in the long run.

Just look at the games you listed, do you want the nice smooth vector graphics of a Flow or Warning Forever to be blown up as a pixel mess on a HD-TV? Wouldn't you prefer to have them as smooth as their creators intended them to be? Having graphics rendered in 1280x720 or 1920x1080 on a display that supports the resolution looks a heck of a lot better then the blurry mess that the TVs scaler will make out of a 640x480 signal. The Wii can't even do anti-aliasing on games as simple as Wii Sports, sorry, but that just isn't exactly what I expect from a next-gen machine. Focus on gameplay is alright and perfectly ok, but totally ignoring the graphics isn't exactly a good thing.

Re:who cares...

[poot_rootbeer]

So you want some more recent games that have awesome gameplay that don't need the latest and greatest computer and graphics card?

How about Tetris?

That's a game that only requires a 20x10 monochromatic grid to be playable. And yet it's one of the best computer puzzle games of all time.

Re:who cares...

[Abcd1234]

It's a gimmick, plain and simple, and not a very good one at that

That's funny... you could just as easily be talking about the DS. And yet, look at how wrong people were about that...

Re:who cares...

[imsabbel]

Much of this "remaining fun" is also nostalgia. There are many games from the early 90s that i still love, but cannot get other people to get into it.

It has no impact in the way modern highest-end games will or wont be seen as "classics that stayed fun even though they have outdated graphics" in 8 years.

Re:who cares...

[SetupWeasel]

No no. You don't understand. Games with outdated graphics are hot sellers... NOW. The viability of games with good enough graphics has been proven for at least a decade (Pokemon). Until last console generation (ps2, gc, xbox), however, 3D graphics weren't good enough yet. Now they are. The graphical race is now a side note. It is simply one feature among many.

Wii's hardware isn't up to the task....

[CasperIV]

It's the same with PC's, either the graphics hardware is up to the task or it isn't. There is no reason to spend more money crippling your engine to run on a specific console when you know what it will look like anyway. When people bought the Wii, they basically bought a Game Cube with a cool controller. I'm not saying the Wii isn't entertaining, I'm just stating the fact that the hardware was not designed for good graphics quality (by today's standards). Just don't hold your breath for some stunning new engine for hardware such as the Wii.

Re:No Wii?

[Anonymous Coward]

Fine, shoot yourself in the foot. (I bet it's because of an under-the-table deal...)

The Wii is good for a lot of things, but Nintendo stated from the get-go that it wasn't aiming for high-end graphics. These guys simply agree.

If you make Formula One cars, it's not "shooting yourself in the foot" to ignore the go-cart circuit. Go carts may be fun and they may be way more plentiful than Formula One cars, but you're not going to get your customers really excited about your F-1s by saying, "look, we also have a huge presence on the go cart circuit!"

It says nothing worse about their business sense or their market savvy than the fact there is no Zelda:TP for the 360 or PS2. Zelda may have sold well on those platforms, but it was designing for the unique capabilities of the Wii. Unfortunately, the Wii doesn't also have the capabilities to handle the needs of the Unreal Team.

BTW, you're gonna see a lot of this. There are a lot of games that will look awesome on the other platforms but will not look good on the Wii. Nintendo made their choice and they picked Fun and Inexpensive. A lot of games striving for high-end visuals will opt to go with the platforms that chose High-End Visuals rather than put out a port that looks like Far Cry.

Re:What?

[Dutch Gun]

It could be that Unreal 3 simply has too much overhead to be practical on GameCube, but I have my doubts about that. While the new-gen consoles are very powerful, it's not exactly like the Wii is a complete slouch in terms of processing power. Games tend to be fairly scalable by their very nature. After all, there's nothing that *demands* a certain number of polygons in a scene. I worked at a company that (in a different division) made kids games using the Unreal Engine. They even integrated a software-renderer for the inevitable compatibility problems that would crop up.

My guess is that, as alluded to, Epic felt that the market simply wasn't/wouldn't be there for a middleware engine. It could be that they were predicting the demise of Nintendo's new console, and simply guessed wrong.

If they suddenly realize there *is* a big middleware market, I'd guess you'll see a pretty quick about-turn. It's not all that hard to port an engine that already has proper abstraction layers in place (which Unreal3 surely has, being cross-platform). The GC was one of the more straight-forward systems to develop for, and I'd imagine the Wii is no different (although I'm not developing for it at this point).

Re:What?

[be-fan]

1) Yes, but the latest version of Unreal is something else.
2) The Unreal Engine is designed for hardware with shaders. The Wii hardware doesn't have full-fledged shaders like the PS3 and 360 have. Even if Unreal 3 would run on the Wii, there would be no point. Without shaders, you couldn't do any of the fancy lighting and texture effects that Unreal 3 is designed to enable.

Ultimately, it's just Epic admitting that the Wii isn't designed for the kind of games that will use Unreal 3. And that's OK, Nintendo has its niche, Epic has theirs.

Re:No big deal

[be-fan]

You're forgetting the flip-side to that argument. There are a large category of games that are *expected* to look great. Zelda: TP got a lot of flack for looking last-gen, because people expect Zelda to both have great gameplay *and* look pretty. Licensing something like Unreal 3 frees a lot of developer resources to working on other things besides the graphics engine, allowing for better gameplay.

Re:No big deal

[badboy_tw2002]

Exactly! I actually think the graphics on the Wii are _too_ flashy! All those polygons are detracting from my gameplay experience, when really they could satisfy me with simple cubes and squares to represent the players. Why not have Wario be a cube with a W on it, Link a green pyramid with an L, etc. And now seeing as they aren't going to have one of the industry standard engines on the Wii, well, we should probably reduce the expected level of graphics requirements that gamers want since getting anywhere will be that much harder. ...

Ok, I can't continue with that. But seriously, just because it doesn't have the "leading edge in graphics" doesn't mean it has no graphics, or is going to get along with stick figures. Its more powerful than the Gamecube, and the cube had some pretty nice looking games last generation, at least on par with the Xbox and PS2, and in many cases (personal opinion, of course), exceeded them. And yes, yes, the Wii is all about gameplay and not graphics, BUT getting to at least the bar set by the last gen is hard enough - the bar is only going to get higher. Line up a late gen PS1 game next to a late gen PS2 game (or N64 to GameCube). Its a pretty big difference. How do you get to that bar and possibly surpass it while still having lots of resources to focus on the gameplay? By having someone else do the work of course! That's where engines like Unreal come in - they do all the fancy shading techniques so you don't have to. You have extra costs in the terms of artists, but in your average shop the realities of the situation are artists and art techs are cheap, graphics engineers are not. Its a shame they're losing Unreal, which is a great engine. I don't know if Unreal2 is on the Wii, but it seems likely given the similarities to the GameCube.

To sum up: gameplay for graphics was a trade-off made by Nintendo to reduce costs for the system. Its not quite the same for gamedevs - you don't magically get a game thats more fun by firing all your graphics engineers and hiring 2x more designers. You still make models, textures, build sets, etc. Its at least as much work as it was last-gen. BUT those tasks can be done in parallel, and having the code partly done for you gets them completed faster.

One Simple Thing..

[Tainek]

Why would you need anything on the Wii in UE3 that UE2 Cant Already Deliver?

The Reply is simply you wont, its a smart move on Epics part

Not News

[My name is Bucket]

Is anyone really surprised that UE3 won't run on the Wii?

I mean, far be it from me to drone on about hardware limitations, but the Wii wasn't even made for that kind of software. It's all about gameplay, man, the gameplay! When will you people learn that the ability to wave a stick around offers endless gameplay possibilities?!? You can pretend it's a sword or a bat or a racket or a longer stick or some bat/sword hybrid. A bword, if you will. The Wiimote responds to your every movement, duh. It then translates that movement into a general "the Wiimote is moving" signal which then triggers one of three generic sword-swinging animations. How can you not see the potential?

Seriously, though: there may be a shortage of horsepower for the Wii, but thankfully the world will never run out of people to say "Man that game would be soooo awesome using the Wiimote".

Re:Not News

[Chyeld]

When will you people learn that the ability to wave a stick around offers endless gameplay possibilities?!? You can pretend it's a sword or a bat or a racket or a longer stick or some bat/sword hybrid. A bword, if you will.

Sword-chucks!

Just saying...

Re:Not News

[jpardey]

Thanks for that. I am tired of all the hype about the Wii, especially since most of the games don't really track the motion that well. If there was a swordfighting game that you could actually have control of the sword's position in, I would be more interested.

Re:Not News

[rainman_bc]

Thanks for that. I am tired of all the hype about the Wii, especially since most of the games don't really track the motion that well.

I'm into Call of Duty 3 on the Wii right now. Graphics aren't the best, and I grew tired of the WW2 genre 20 WW2 games ago, but the gameplay is cool...

Nothing comes as close to mouse-keyboard as the nunchik-wiimote combo... I can't stand the thumbsticks on other consoles... I think for FPS, the control on the wii is more natural than anything else

Re:What?

[DogDude]

Does Unreal force you to use the level of detail that's currently found on the Xbox 360 and PS3?

Releasing a sub-par version for the Wii would give them a bad reputation among consumers seeing their products on the Wii. Consumers don't know or care whether the limitations are due to the hardware or the software. All they would know is "Unreal sucks" if they saw it on the Wii. It would be a bad business decision to do that.

Re:No Wii?

[19thNervousBreakdown]

There's no reason Twilight Princess couldn't use conventional controls, any Wii-specific stuff is superfluous at best and sometimes more of a main than a joystick.

Re:No Wii?

[jmorris42]

> There's no reason Twilight Princess couldn't use conventional controls, any Wii-specific stuff
> is superfluous at best and sometimes more of a main than a joystick.

Probably because it was released on the wii and the GC, which lacks a WiMote.

Re:No Wii?

[Simon80]

His point exactly - Zelda isn't a Nintendo exclusive for technical reasons, obviously..

Re:No big deal

[Guppy06]

"because people expect Zelda to both have great gameplay *and* look pretty."

I think you're confusing "artistic style" with "shiny polygons." Nobody complains when a new Zelda game graces the GBA, nor was there much outcry about the 2D Four Swords Adventure on the GCN.

The only people complaining about TP's lack of polygons were the ones who were new to the franchise and/or thinking the Wii was outselling the PS3 because it has better graphics.

Re:No Wii?

[electrosoccertux]

Huh? Nintendo came out said (and proved through actions) that the Wii was not about graphics, but gameplay. Why should it be a surprise that Epic took that to heart and decided not to invest in getting it's latest engine to run on underpowered hardware?

And really, is this a loss for Epic or Nintendo? If a killer game comes out using unreal 2 I think I'd still buy it. I think you're missing the very obvious point: if Epic doesn't port the Unreal 3 engine to Wii, then that's Y games that won't be appearing on the Wii.

Here's how it works:

1). Publisher creates game for Xbox360 using Unreal 3 engine
2). Publisher realizes he can rework the control scheme, turn down the model polygon count and texture resolution, and recompile the code for the Wii engine at marginal extra development cost. The profit and revenue generated from hitting an extra market (of 10+ million consoles or however many Wii's are out there) far outweighs the porting cost.
3). Publisher sells video game for not only Xbox360, but Wii also
4). ???
5). Profit!

If the engine isn't there the Wii can't play the game.

Who Cares

[Rev Jim (AKA Metal F]

The people who own wiis, or the target audience for wiis compared to the target audience of Unreal are like comparing Slayer fans to Radiohead fans, they're so far apart it's like night and day almost. I mean there's really no reason to have unreal on the wii when it's on every other platform. That said, there will be FPS titles on the wii and I'm sure a developer with a 3d engine developed for the wii will emerge as the defacto wii 3d engine soner or later, or a ported engine will take that place until something beter comes along. It obviously won't be able to compete graphically, but the gamers on the wii are looking forward to Mario Planet (or whatver it's called) or Metroid Prime to establish what we can come to expect from the wii in graphics as well as gameplay, we don't particuariuly care if unreal makes it to wii or not and we know the hardware isn't going to support Crysis or Company of Heroes really - but that's not the wii's niche anyways.

Re:Who Cares

[dank zappingly]

I like Slayer and Radiohead, but I can't be blasting Reign in Blood when my girlfriend's over. I would be upset if I bought an expensive boombox that could only play one or the other.

Re:Who Cares

[Shadow99_1]

Actually the Unreal 3 Engine is used in a variety of games, not just FPS titles. It's previous incarnations have done everything from MMORPG's to puzzle games and I'm going to assume this version can as well (it already does side scrollers and strategy games besides FPS's).

Re:No Wii?

[seebs]

Aiming the bow (or boomeraing, or whatever else) is much, much, better with a pointer than with an analog stick.

People who have never actually tried the system, and are just talking out their ass, tend to assume the Wii has nothing but motion sensing, but it's not so.

Re:No Wii?

[nonsequitor]

According to the article Red Steel is based on the Unreal 2 engine. And the game play on that is great. I was a little worried about the accuracy of the WiiMote, but after playing the game it proved to be much more accurate than other games, meaning that the driver for WiiMote input used by Red Steel is much more sophisticated than the other games and not a hardware problem as I had originally feared, but I digress.

Re:What?

[Kelbear]

Unreal 3's advantage over previous engine seems to be primarily graphical. I'm going to venture that the reason that it won't be applicable to the Wii is that cutting effects enough to run on the Wii makes the advances of the Unreal engine largely irrelevant. I'm sure some form of it will be usable, but will it really be Unreal 3 at that point?

Re:And Wii Owners Rejoiced!

[jpardey]

Apparently, unreal engine 3 sounded too generic, so the name is being changed to UE:SG, or Unreal Engine: Sour Grapes.

So no uncanny valley for Wii?

[Jartan]

Ok so basically nobody is going to be able to make horrendously ugly "realistic" graphics that end up looking like a 12 year old made them in bryce and poser right?

Nintendo must be sweating bullets.

Re:What?

[LDoggg_]

>>All they would know is "Unreal sucks" if they saw it on the Wii.

How so? They would be comparing Unreal to other games on the Wii, not Unreal on the Wii compared to a different game on another console.

Unreal Tournament & Unreal Tournament 2004 were excellent FPS games. You can take the original on an old PC, turn the graphic settings down, and guess what? It's still loads of fun. (Facing Worlds + Low Grav, FTW!)

Personally, as much as I love Epic, this smells a bit of a copout. They could take their latest and greatest Unreal Engine3, lower the textures and poly count, and I bet it would run fine on the Wii. The problem is that you can't just port it to the Wii without putting a bunch of work into making control with the Wiimote more than just a novelty.

Maximally Mixed Metaphor

[Garse Janacek]

But Square Enix, they're the granddaddy. I'm hoping that'll be pulling the stopper out of the drain, and we'll gradually crack that nut.

My poor little grammar^W English nazi head just exploded :(

Re:Maximally Mixed Metaphor

[rarity]

My poor little grammar^W English nazi head just exploded :(

Then obviously you're just the guy we need to cut the Gordian knot out of the centre of the woodpile.

Re:What?

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps you missed the word "full-fledged" in the parent post. Or were you implying that the shaders are equivalent in PS3/360 and Wii.

different gaming platform, different games

[theantix]

The new Wii controller isn't necessarily going to work with "traditional" games like Unreal. Red Steel for example was completely crap... even if you factor out the bad graphics and horrible voice acting, the gameplay itself was pretty lame *because of the controller*. For me at least, the Wiimote is going to supplant, not replace, the existing types of games out there. When GTA4 comes out I'll grab a PS3 or 360, but when friends come to visit I'll throw WarioWare up on the Wii for everyone to laugh until it hurts.

Re:different gaming platform, different games

[Spike15]

supplant, not replace Umm...this is from Merriam-Webster

1 : to supersede (another) especially by force or treachery 2 a (1) obsolete : UPROOT (2) : to eradicate and supply a substitute for b : to take the place of and serve as a substitute for especially by reason of superior excellence or power synonym see REPLACE Your statement makes no sense, because "supplant" and "replace" are synonyms. Wait...wait...your statement doesn't make no sense, it's nonsensical. Seriously people, grab a fucking dictionary and learn your language before you try and be profound.

Re:different gaming platform, different games

[c_forq]

I am sure he meant to use the word supplement.

Re:different gaming platform, different games

[ookaze]

The new Wii controller isn't necessarily going to work with "traditional" games like Unreal

What do you mean ? You having blinders doesn't mean everyone has some.
These "traditional" games like you say, weren't even made for thumsticks, they were made for a mouse and keyboard.
Some years ago (even now), most PC gamers were saying the same thing about console FPS, because of the controller.
If they managed to adapt FPS for thumbsticks, they can do it for Wiimote too.

Red Steel for example was completely crap... even if you factor out the bad graphics and horrible voice acting, the gameplay itself was pretty lame *because of the controller*

That's your opinion that it was lame because of the controller. Other FPS for the Wii already prove you wrong (CoD 3 for example).

Re:different gaming platform, different games

[cowscows]

Just because Ubisoft didn't get the controls right with Red Steel doesn't mean that the Wii is a write off for FPS games. It took many tries to get a decent setup with regular console controllers, what makes you think it won't get refined and improved for the Wiimote as well?

And although I'll agree that Red Steel wasn't great, I had fun just sort of pointing and shooting and going nuts with an uzi. It wasn't perfect, but I felt more of a connection with what was happening on the screen than I ever did thumbing around to aim and shoot in Halo 2.

Re:Mixed Mitaphors

[Mex]

"we'll gradually crack that nut"

That phrase is just throbbing for a good Wii joke! ;)

Re:No Wii?

[Gulthek]

Your 5 step process falls apart around #2. It's not as trivial as you imply and you make two assumptions that aren't justified.

In Reply to Unreal 3 for Wii

[insaner]

I'm not sure if a lot of people know much about Gamecube hardware, it clearly has more horsepower than the PS2, the reason you couldn't always see the difference was because developers were throwing around ports rather than building games from the ground up. Resident Evil 4 is a perfect example of graphical superiority over the PS2 in every way. PS2 couldn't render RE4 cut-scenes (as Gamecube did) and relied on FMV throughout the game. Besides that, Red Steel on the Wii uses Unreal 2.5, for those who wanted to know. The reason for 3.0 not going to the Wii is obvious, Epic isn't focused on Wii development. But it's wrong to assume it'll NEVER happen, because Mark Rein himself stated the following in a CVG interview back in September: "You know, Unreal Engine 3 can't run on Xbox 1 or PS2 either - and that's not to say that some of licensees wont find a way to shoe-horn it into [the Wii], we certainly have some licensees that are doing some experiments in that area and it could very well happen." This means that licensees are experimenting with UE3 on the Wii, it can happen, but it won't look anywhere near Gears of War quality.

Re:In Reply to Unreal 3 for Wii

[DrXym]

I think it's wishful thinking if you ever believe that Epic would port a cutting edge game engine to a platform which is literally 5 years behind the curve, if not more. The Wii simply doesn't have the graphics, memory or processing power for the sort of games that would want to use it.

Shaders

[Drilian]

In a nutshell:

The UE3 engine is heavily built around pixel shaders. Everything it does is based around shader support.

The Wii is not capable of doing pixel shaders. The hardware can't do it. Period.

Take away the shader support, and UE3 becomes no different than UE2. Note that UE2 does, in fact, support the Wii platform.

This is a hardware issue, it has pretty much nothing to do with Epic.

Re:Shaders

[Purity Of Essence]

The Wii is not capable of doing pixel shaders. The hardware can't do it. Period.

That's not entirely true. The Flipper GPU can do pixel shaders, it's called the TEV "Texture EnVironment" engine. What the Wii lacks is vertex shaders.

Re:Shaders

[Pete Brubaker]

Uhhh... You sure about that? According to an AnandTech.com article it's a fixed function GPU. That and I haven't heard anyone at work speak of it as anything other than a fixed function GPU.

"The Flipper graphics core is a fairly simple fixed function GPU aided by some very powerful amounts of memory bandwidth, but first onto the architecture of the graphics core. Flipper always operates on 4 pixels at a time using its 4 pixel pipelines; each of those pipelines is capable of applying one texture per pipeline which immediately tips you off that the ArtX design wasn't influenced by ATI at all. Since the Radeon and GeForce2, both ATI and NVIDIA's cores have been able to process a minimum of two textures per pixel in each of their pipelines which came quite in handy since none of today's games are single textured anymore.

The fact that the Flipper's T&L is a fixed function T&L unit is a bit of a disappointment as well but it would have been impossible for ArtX to implement ATI's SmartShader programmable pixel and vertex shaders into their design and still meet Nintendo's strict deadlines. The one thing that is playing to the GameCube's favor is that the Flipper GPU was designed solely with console gaming in mind, and the input that went into the T&L unit was much more closely tied to the developers than some of the earlier T&L units for desktop PC graphics cards. Although it may be better suited for its target use than the earliest T&L units for PCs, there is no skirting the fact that with a fixed function T&L pipeline there are limitations to exactly what game developers will be able to do. After seeing what over two years of fixed function T&L support in games for the PC was like, we'd hope for much more out of developer use of Flipper's GPU."

Re:No big deal

[SirSlud]

> you don't magically get a game thats more fun by firing all your graphics engineers and hiring 2x more designers

Shudder .. don't you ever give me that apocolypical mental image again. ;)

Re:What?

[UnknownSoldier]

1) Calling its Texture Stages with Logical Operations a 'shader' is abusing the terminology. At best, it has a PSEUDO-pixel shader, like the DX7 style texture stages, not the PROPER DX8 pixel shaders.

2) The Wii doesn't have vertex shaders -- unless you write your own. Are you going to call CPU skinning a 'hardware vertex shader' ??

So it's not ridiculous to claim the Wii has no shaders. I agree with the gp "the Wii doesn't have full-fledged shaders" At best, it has 1/2 a pixel shader.

Or do we need to take this to the 'rvl.graphics' group?

Re:Who Cares or Wii Players

[WillAffleckUW]

Good point, but as a Wii owner (and, like you, gaming for over 25 years, in my case more than 30 years, love them punch cards!), I'm not exactly worried about a paucity of FPS games.

Besides, we already have one Wii game that competes with CoH - Call of Duty - and that's on the Wii, so it's not like we're hurting for military combat sims.

Re:What?

[Lehk228]

why would they make a Wii version of the Unreal 3 engine? the hardware the Unreal 3 engine is designed to take advantage of isn't present in the Wii, and the Unreal 2 Engine is perfectly capable of utilizing the Wii.

it would be a waste of money since they already have the Unreal 2 engine to sell to developers for the Wii.

Re:What?

[justchris]

That's not the problem. The problem is UE3 is designed to work with DirectX style hardware. The Wii GPU is very different from the GPUs in the 360/PS3, which are more like current PC GPUs. Epic would have to recode some of the low level parts of the engine to properly take advantage of the Wii GPU to get the same kind of effects they can get on the other systems. It's not just poly count and texture depth. It would be a lot of work, and not necessarily for any gain, since UE2.5 already works on the Wii.

Re:No Wii?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, its because the Wii's graphics card isn't capable of doing the kind of things that this engine is designed for, which is obviously delivering realistic graphics, which isn't the focus of the Wii

But couldnt they just crank the graphics and textures down to nil? The wii isn't that crippled graphically.

Re:What?

[pilkul]

The shaders in the 'Cube are "full fledged". Just like a Pentium 3 is a "full fledged" x86 microprocessor, even if it isn't as modern and powerful as Core 2 Duo.

This comparison is laughable. Do you think GPUs are Turing-complete like CPUs? The shaders in the Gamecube and Wii have a tiny instruction limit and no branching or loop support, among other problems. "Gamecube doesn't have full-fledged shaders" is perfectly accurate.

Re:What?

[hobbesmaster]

Just like a Pentium 3 is a "full fledged" x86 microprocessor, even if it isn't as modern and powerful as Core 2 Duo.

My core 2 duo has instructions that my old pentium 3 does not. Any assembly instructions using SSE3 will not execute on the pentium 3, my c2d will do it just fine. The pentium 3 is a fine processor, but it physically cannot do something as there is no circuitry for the instructions. If a program depended on SSE2, SSE3 or having long datatypes, there will be nothing that pentium 3 can do to natively execute the code.

This is the same case with GPUs. If a program assumes circuitry thats not there on the processor, it won't run, full stop. The Wii does not have some render paths that new dx9 and dx10 engines may depend heavily upon - without the circuitry to handle the instructions, theres no way for these new programs to run.

Does that clear things up a bit?

Wiikov Smirnoff

[bobbomo]

In Amerika, Unreal Engine 3 doesn't play on Wii. In Soviet Russia, Wii are not allowed to play.

Epic in Japan... a lack of professionalism

[midnightJackal]

I had the pleasure of hearing a speech from Epic at The Tokyo Games Show earlier this year (titled "Opportunities for Japanese Corporations in Middleware for Next-Generation Hardware"). While Sweeney did a good job of coming off as confident, but not overly so, in the Unreal engine itself. He was willing to offer the mostly Japanese audience a handful of reasons why their engine is and isn't the right way for companies to go, based on what sort of game you're trying to make. I could tell that the Japanese developers around me were on the same page as Sweeney, based on their gestures and the fact that they were actually taking notes about things that he said.

After that, Jay Wilbur decided to add a few words. Or rather, to be American. Now, don't get me wrong, I generally approve of being direct and selling your selling points, rather than mentioning that, yeah, our product isn't going to butter your toast every morning... BUT... when dealing with a Japanese audience, upfront honesty is the best way to go. Sweeney also had the "I'm roughly Japanese-sized" thing going for him. When rotund Wilbur stepped up to the plate, he set a bad tone by telling the rather humble but proud crowd of Japanese developers that "You need this engine". I heard one guy whisper to his friend, "Where does this guy think games started? Huh? *WE* __NEED__ them? Pfft." (in Japanese, so that's paraphrasing, of course)

What started as a good, solid discussion into the benefits of buying A game engine, ANY game engine, was quickly derailed into a product pitch for THEIR game engine. The thing is, Japanese companies, despite what modernizations have happened here, are still rather loyal when it comes to their big huge purchases. They'd rather go with someone they know, and I'm fairly certain that if Wilbur had just said nothing, or said much less than he did, and used much less arrogance and self-pimping in his speech, that the Japanese crowd would have gone home thinking, "You know, there's a company that's honest about their product, and that's willing to come all the way out here to persuade us that game engines are worth buying. We should seriously think about buying theirs". Instead, a lot of people left the room shaking their heads, muttering things about "Typical Americans. All talk. All about them. (etc)"

The thing about dealing with a foreign country is to go in and appreciate their background, their culture, and their style of work. To go in and trample all over their acheivements in an attempt to hock your wares just doesn't cut it.

Re:Epic in Japan... a lack of professionalism

[MemoryDragon]

The thing about dealing with a foreign country is to go in and appreciate their background, their culture, and their style of work. To go in and trample all over their acheivements in an attempt to hock your wares just doesn't cut it.

Typical american mistake!

Re:Epic in Japan... a lack of professionalism

[Slashcrap]

When rotund Wilbur stepped up to the plate, he set a bad tone by telling the rather humble but proud crowd of Japanese developers that "You need this engine". I heard one guy whisper to his friend, "Where does this guy think games started? Huh? *WE* __NEED__ them? Pfft." (in Japanese, so that's paraphrasing, of course)

Are you sure that the Japanese invented video games? Maybe they just perfected them?

They've certainly perfected revisionist history.

The thing about dealing with a foreign country is to go in and appreciate their background, their culture, and their style of work.

Just like the Japanese did when they went into China.

Content Graphics.

[Trendy.Ideology]

It's unfortunate that the Wii will get passed up by some people due to graphics, but really... I'm not worried.

The Wii gave gamers everything they wanted. The Wii seems like Nintendo took a bunch of gamers, and said "Hey, what do you want our new system to do?" And the gamers said "Well, we really don't give a shit about graphics, but this, this, and this, would be nice..." And Nintendo did it all.

Honestly, in terms of bang for your buck, the Wii is the best next-gen console out there.

$250, for the Wii? The Wii is almost as fun as my 360, The only problem is lack of current selection, and it still being VERY new. And it's just over half the price.

In terms of current entertainment, I'd say

Xbox360 > Wii

I frankly think the reason so many BAD games are coming out for next gen systems, is because they spend too much time worrying about what the game looks like, and not enough time worrying about how it plays, how fun it is, testing it, finding bugs, fixing things, changing things, ect...

Re:No Wii?

[MustardMan]

Don't get me wrong, I've been labeled a nintendo fanboy by most people I know...

But red steel as an example of good game play? Give me a break. I own the title, and the controls outright suck. The FPS controls on a minigame in monkey ball are more responsive than red steel. From what I hear, far cry is a massive improvement, and of course we can expect metroid to be better still... but the controls in red steel are, to use the vernacular, teh suck.

Re:Mixed Mitaphors

[Midnight Thunder]

"we'll gradually crack that nut"

That phrase is just throbbing for a good Wii joke! ;)

Damn, you: wii'll gradually crack that wii nut.

Re:No big deal

[chaoticgeek]

I think that Zelda TP looks great, I don't own the Wii version, but I've played it and I think it looks better than what the gamecube version does and I own the GC version. I love the game too and I'm a zelda freak.

Re:No Wii?

[Merusdraconis]

Step #4) No one buys the Wii version because it controls like they tried to shoehorn crappy Xbox controls onto the Wii. This conflicts with step #5, however.

Re:No Wii?

[Ender Ryan]

But couldnt they just crank the graphics and textures down to nil? The wii isn't that crippled graphically.

Uhhh, compared to what the U3 engine is designed for... uh... yes, yes it most certainly is.

Re:No Wii?

[nonsequitor]

I just played it for the first time on my friends 72" plasma, and the cursor was much more accurate than I'm used to (of course my tv is only a 28" LCD so it could have been that). I've played the new monkey ball too, and I thought the controls for that were pretty rough, but maybe if I play more I'll get better. I sucked at red steel, but thats mostly because I kept moving both hands at the same time when you need to gesture with them independently. Maybe I'm overconfident, but I think when I master the controls it'll go pretty smooth.

Re:What?

[pnewhook]

You know, this whole graphics argument is getting Wii-lly Wii-diculous..

In other news...

[Wicko]

Unreal Engine 3 skips the 2600.

Re:What?

[Anonymous Coward]

1) "Proper DX8 pixel shaders" are just a fancy looking layer over register combiners. All it is is a syntax to convert your psudo-assembly into byte code. There are also macros to write shader code directly without using the seperate assembler. Guess what? They are almost exactly the same as TEV macros. I won't mention the fact that there are rougly twice the number of TEV stages and inputs than a "Proper DX8 pixel shader". I will also glaze over the fact that the texture units on the flipper allow for several levels of indirection, which is simply not possible on DX8 hardware.

2) My paired-singles skinning assembly *looked* a lot like vertex shader code... does that count? In all seriousness, good PS skinning code is about as fast as a vertex shader would be anyways. With all the nifty tricks that CPU allows you to do (not to mention the fast memory speed of the system) you end up moving around significantly less data than you do on an identical spec DX8 engine. The problem is of course you can't do anything in parallel while the CPU is busy. On the other hand, a good defered renderer will eliminate most of that problem letting the GPU chew on the last frame data while the CPU works on the current. There are some things that you can do better/easier using DX8 vertex shaders, but a lot of that functionality is provided by the Flipper's texgen unit on the GameCube.

The moral of the story is the DX8 shaders on the Xbox weren't "Proper DX8 shaders" either. There are several hardware specific extensions, as well as several limitations over the PC version of DX8. After having to backport a PC game to the Xbox, I became painfully aware of this (starts with a "T" ends with an "App").

And no, you don't have to get all Warioworld on us. This being the 21st century and all, I think we can have e-penis fights on the intarweb like adults. Newsgroups are so 1990s.

Re:No Wii?

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

Exactly. The wii cant handle Unreal 3's engine. That is why its not coming to Wii.

Re:No Wii?

[Pc_Madness]

Not always. It can be kinda like saying we'll make our brillant DirectX 10 only engine compatible with DirectX 7. Only problem with that is, you've gone and built your engine and the process with which you handle textures depends on some special feature that only DirectX 10 has. Sure, you could completely re-write the process.. and then perhaps change the parts that depended on that process cos of how you've re-done it, but would it really be worth it? You'd be better off writing a new engine from scratch to get better performance. :p Imo of course, I could be wrong and its all just flicking a switch or something :p

Re:What?

[be-fan]

"Full-fledged" was the key-word there. The Gamecube has shaders, but they're a step above register combiners, and not the general processors that you find on modern GPUs. They have a lot more features than the register combiners found in NV20-class hardware, but they're not fully programmable the way the shaders on modern GPUs are. Modern GPUs have shaders with looping, procedure calls, and a full instruction set capable of supporting a C-like language. The Gamecube's TEV's are still oriented around rearranging fixed-function blocks of effects.

Re:What?

[be-fan]

We're not talking about lacking a few instructions here. We're talking about the difference between being a fully-programmable processor and not being one.

Even an 8086 is a "full-fledged" x86 in that it supports the basic semantics of x86 code, even if its missing a few features. The Gamecube's shaders are missing BRANCHING for god's sake.

Re:No big deal

[be-fan]

The power of the system puts a major damper on the artistic style. Zelda: TP's art design looked incredible, but the Gamecube didn't do it justice. The oversaturation combined with the low resolution made things a little hard to see, and washed out details the artist's probably would've wanted to retain (and could've, with an HDR-capable GPU).

The main console Zelda has always been cutting-edge in graphical quality. The power of the N64 really allowed the N64s Zelda's to redefine what an adventure game should look (and play) like, and the Gamecube allowed the novel cel-shaded look of Wind Waker. Even "A Link to the Past", with its huge color-palette courtesy of the SNES, was a great-looking game for it's time.

So don't pretend Nintendo isn't giving up something with their low-power strategy. Zelda was always about great gameplay, but TP is the first one in a long time that also didn't push the state of the art in the technical department.

Re:No big deal

[be-fan]

Oh, LTP was also one of the first games to use an 8-megabit SNES cart, allowing it to have a huge game-world compared to other games of the time.

Re:No big deal

[be-fan]

Zelda: TP does look great (I own it too). But I remember when I got Ocarina of Time, and was blown away by how it looked. When I got TP, I was like "oh, this is pretty", but I didn't have the "totally new experience" feeling I had with OoT.

My point is simply that graphics are part of the whole package. Think back to some of the great games Nintendo put out on the N64. Would Mario 64 have been quite as immersive if it had looked like the blocky, pixelated games on the PSX? No! Mario 64 had the whole package, it played great, and it looked incredible. In a lot of games, good gameplay can make up for mediocre graphics, but in a series like Zelda, where you're expecting 99% of everything, it hurts to not even be competitive in the graphics department.

Re:Mixed Mitaphors

[Wordsmith]

He said a *good* Wii joke.

Re:No Wii?

[shinobiX]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but given what your saying, wouldn't it be about as easy to port X-BOX game Y to the Unreal 2 engine as to the Unreal 3 engine? Basically not easy at all?

But in any case if someone wants to port that game they will. This is probably not as big a story as it might otherwise sound.

Re:What?

[SnowZero]

You're right about the XBox, but that's kind of a moot point -- UE3 isn't going to be ported to the original XBox either, at least AFAICT. UE3 really seems to be targeted at DX9-10, even if they do plan on making it run eventually on some lower end PC hardware. So, let's just say the Wii doesn't have shaders in the sense of a 360 or PS3. The definition of a "proper shader" has been a moving target for several years now, and will continue to be that way. In the meantime, we can revel in the Wii's inexpensive hardware and focus on fun gameplay.

Re:No big deal

[SnowZero]

Shudder .. don't you ever give me that apocolypical mental image again. ;)

I saw it too... and it looked like John Romero.

Different people, different "opinions."

[JackAxe]

Yep, a mouse type controller isn't good for a FPS. Go figure... I'm being "sarcastic." I take it you're of the thumb-twiddling era, where as you think FPS games are best played by aiming with one's thumb on a cumbersome game controller that was designed for 3D platformers.

Red Steel sucked as a game. It looks far worse than many GameCube games and its AI is quite stupid. UbiSoft should be shot for making something this horrid in this day an age. Its controls alhough not refined, were clearly better than any thumb-aiming solution. UbiSoft implemented some odd features, like expecting you to move your arm out to zoom-in, but beyond that its controls offered speed and precision, something that is a farce with an anologue thumb-stick on any gamepad.

The Wii's controller is one of the best options for a FPS game, or any other game that requires a pointer, only second to a mouse. But unlike the mouse, it offers a more comfortable way to play a FPS, so it's better overall in this respect, and of course there's the whole 3D positioning thing...

I would rather play GTA on a Wii, since I could actually bash the guy naturally with a swinging motion, instead of just mashing down my thumb like a dweeb. But I'll gladly pick up a PS3 when tbey release a full blown GT for it and of course a steering wheel setup.

<]=)

It certainly does...

[JackAxe]

Hypocrite!!!

No Unreal on the Wii? Waa

[l0ungeb0y]

...

I kinda doubt it

[sycomonkey]

What do they mean, that the engine is incapable of running in 480i/p?

Maybe they should have said they didn't feel like porting it... or that they didn't think it would sell well. Saying they were going to have some sort of technical difficulty porting the engine to the Wii is just ludicrous.

Re:What?

[Kayamon]

Nyet.
The GeForce 3 hardware had pretty much the same setup, under a different name.
The pixel shader compiler could translate the assembly language into the necessary texture stage parameters.

So it does at least have a pixel shader.
Admittedly not a great one.

Re:No big deal

[vhogemann]

Also,

I'm pretty sure that Epic is able to provide a compatibility layer between UE2 and UE3, so they can share models, maps, texture formats, etc... Also, if the API is similar enough, the same game logic should work with both.

Of course the graphics will be less impressive on the Wii, as it has less power... but does it really matters? I really don't enjoy playing FPS with joysticks... this kind of game is much better served with a keyboard/mouse combo, and the Wii controller is what most resembles this. So the Wii version might have the weaker graphics, but it might have the strongest gameplay.

Anyways, all the three consoles cost an arm and a leg around here at Brazil, and I'm talking about 5x the USA price! I guess I'll be keeping my PS2 for a looooong time, as probably most of the world outside USA/EUROPE/Japan.

Re:No big deal

[ookaze]

How do you get to that bar and possibly surpass it while still having lots of resources to focus on the gameplay? By having someone else do the work of course! That's where engines like Unreal come in - they do all the fancy shading techniques so you don't have to

No wonder FPS are all the same. How exactly do you focus on gameplay when you're using the stock engine ?
You mean RE4 quality on Gamecube was attained by using a stock engine ?

You have extra costs in the terms of artists, but in your average shop the realities of the situation are artists and art techs are cheap, graphics engineers are not

You really believe that the arts are not the biggest part of a game's cost ?

Its a shame they're losing Unreal, which is a great engine

They're not losing it, they don't get the new one. Anyway, you didn't expect PS3 quality FPS on the Wii, did you ?

To sum up: gameplay for graphics was a trade-off made by Nintendo to reduce costs for the system. Its not quite the same for gamedevs - you don't magically get a game thats more fun by firing all your graphics engineers and hiring 2x more designers. You still make models, textures, build sets, etc. Its at least as much work as it was last-gen. BUT those tasks can be done in parallel, and having the code partly done for you gets them completed faster

Actually, Nintendo estimated graphics would be good enough with the small upgrade, and this choice was made to reduce costs for the *games*.
They never talked about firing your graphics engineers, but about reducing the cost of game development. You think your graphics engineers are paid one month or what ?
They are paid for as long as they work on the game, and a higher graphics quality game means more work, meaning bigger costs, with the exact same number of graphics engineers.

Re:No big deal

[Chmcginn]

doesn't mean it has no graphics, or is going to get along with stick figures

You say stick figures like it's a bad thing.

Unreal engines are not good for the wii

[majortom1981]

From what I have read on nintendos patents their consoles are different in terms of how they do things then the 360,ps3 and the PC. The 360 and ps3 approach graphics in terms of how the pc does it. Nintendo has their own way of doing things. You cant just stick an engine from a pc on it. Example (hypothetical may or may not be true) pc and the other console makers might think hey lets build our console to push out as many polygons and put shaders on it. Nitnendo Might say Eh lets push out fewer polygons but make the textures better so you will need fewer polygons because the ones that are there will look beter. So if you then ported over an engine from the other consoles it will not look right because the hardware is different. Thats why Nintendos games usually look better. They are developed for their console. Evemn ubisoft on redsteel used a pc engine. So the unreal 3 engine will not help at all. Nitnendo should liscence out the metroid prime engines.

Re:What?

[LDoggg_]

So you're telling me the Unreal 3 engine is purely eye candy upgrades?

When Epic went from Unreal 1 to Unreal 2 they introduced things like ragdoll physics, scripting enhancements, and vehicles, none of which were dependant on raw GPU performance.

I can't imagine Epic would be happy with a whole new game engine to simply put out better graphics.

Obligatory

[BForrester]

So... will the Wii be able to run Duke Nukem Forever, or not?

Re:No Wii?

[MeanderingMind]

Technically, not one online Wii game has come out period.

This is much more likely due to a lack of proper infrastructure at this point rather than Nintendo intentionally barring the way. Thesuccess of the DS's online service for both first and third-party games is a good indication of that.

Re: Warioware

[twosmokes]

Is Warioware that bad? I was getting ready to sell of my copy of Rayman and pick it up. The 10 second load times + movies between 30 second play times is getting irritating.

I've heard bad things about SMB, so I guess I'm holding out for Mario Party.

And to be perfectly honest.....

[Viewsonic]

Development houses follow the money trail. If the Wii ends up pulling a DS on the console industry, you can bet you'll see the UE3 appear on it. No one wants to be left behind on a run away hit. So many game publishers are kicking themselves in the rear right now for missing the boat on the DS. They could have had two years of strong games sales to have their product on the shelves, and are just only NOW getting their games out. Talk about being blind sided. And yet, here we are in Feb 07, and the Wii is STILL selling out EVERY DAY with people STILL LINING UP for the UPS truck at every store across the nation. Deja Vu? Maybe, but I can put money down some of these publishers and developers are going to be kicking themselves in the rear again.

at least use the indirect texturing unit at all?

[Z80a]

well,as Wii can see on super mario galaxy and others,looks like the Wii,as the gcn has some kind of indirect texturing unit stuff this may allow it to do some ibl normal mapping stuff,so,why hell they just dont do that on UE2 and call it "unreal engine 2 Wii" ?

Fuck Tim Sweeney

[generationxyu]

http://www.shadowprotectorate.net/forums/viewtopic .php?t=3174

Re:No Wii?

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

"Aiming the bow (or boomeraing, or whatever else) is much, much, better with a pointer than with an analog stick."

Aint that the truth. Anybody who has ever played through San Andreas on the PS2 should be able to attest to this. I'm irritated at both Microsoft and Sony for not recognizing this shortcoming and addressing it in their new consoles.

Re:What?

[Chris Burke]

This comparison is laughable. Do you think GPUs are Turing-complete like CPUs? The shaders in the Gamecube and Wii have a tiny instruction limit and no branching or loop support, among other problems. "Gamecube doesn't have full-fledged shaders" is perfectly accurate.

Back when no shader had branching or loop support, all had tiny instruction limits, we still called them "shaders", not "shaders which are not full fledged like the ones that will appear in the future".

Just like we called a 286 an "x86 processor" even though it lacks major features that we would consider critical today, like 32-bit mode. Turing completeness doesn't enter into it; a 286 can't run 32-bit code. Yet future features do not change the original definition.

I see the important distinction being made, but "full fledged" is hardly an accurate way to put it.

Good for Linux

[camg188]

The Epic - Square Enix deal may be good for Linux. The Unreal engine is ported to Linux.

Re:No big deal

[MemoryDragon]

Ahem, i am playing this game as we speak... :-) No dead horse there.

Re:What?

[UnknownSoldier]

Alright, I concede.

You've made some _very good_ points, and I would have to agree with you, about shaders being aliases for register combiners. They certainly started off that way, and just got more general purpose along the way. I'm assuming you've checked out the sweet GeForce 8 hardware? We can finally mix and match vertex/pixel stream data. Yay! :)

I was hoping we were past the fixed pipeline phases on consoles, so if I were to define "proper pixel/vertex shader support" it would be:
- not fixed pipeline
- independent of the CPU (whether it is async or sync timing.)

So technically, while the Wii has '1st generation' shaders, I'd probably call it 0.5 Vertex Shaders and 0.5 Pixel Shaders. Your point about Paired Singles is well taken -- I guess I just miss the VU's from the PS2, but its good to know the paired-singles optimizes quite nicely.

Q. Where did you end up sticking your render geometry, Mem1 or Mem2? What about your collision geometry?

Newsgroups may be passe, but the "official" forums are still the best place to get tech(nical) info.

Grats on your back-porting your title -- I usually don't keep up to date with titles, and/or maybe I'm just dense ;-)

Very nice discussion, btw! Glad things were kept civil. I guess we're "arguing" over splitting hairs. :-)

Cheers

Re:No big deal

[LukeCage]

Well you expressed the point far more succinctly then I did. Unfortunately it seems that there is some obsessed mod with an axe to grind out there against people stating the plainly obvious -- that the Wii is not built for graphics and should not be expected to look cutting edge or get the latest greatest features for graphics. I say this as someone who is going to buy a Wii; it has strengths that the two other console do not havee (but has a weakness, too). I wrote my original post without an ounce of troll in my body and because some fanboy disagrees I lost karma. My only hope is that the meta-moderating system keeps mod points out of the hands of this jerk in the future.