Slashdot Mirror
Some Truth to Wii as GameCube 1.5?
Newsweek's N'Gai tackles the allegation that the Wii is a glorified GameCube. He specifically looked at recent comments by Microsoft's Robbie Bach saying that 'the video graphics on it aren't very strong; the box itself is kind of underpowered; it doesn't play DVDs; there are a lot of down-line components [that] aren't actually that interesting. ... They don't have the graphics horsepower that even Xbox 1 had. So it makes sort of the comparison set a little bit difficult.' LevelUp spoke with a pair of technical experts at third party publishers and learned that, essentially, Bach's comments about horsepower are accurate. However, "the 'Gamecube 1.5' moniker, while accurate, doesn't mean that gamers won't see graphical improvements on the Wii. 'There are three main differences which will result in graphics improvements. One, the increased memory clock speed, from 162 megahertz to 243 megahertz, means that it is easier to do enough pixels for 480p mode versus 480i. Two, the enhanced memory size of the Wii gives much more room for image-related operations such as anti-aliasing, motion blur, etc. The performance to these memory systems from the graphics chip is also improved. So full-screen effects and increased texture usage seem likely as a result.'"
Who cares, the thing is fun to play, so maybe the Wii's wee isn't as big as the xbox 360 or the PS3 -- does that really make such a big difference?
I'm surprised a suit would say that comparison is 'difficult', when sales figures are readily available. Maybe what's difficult is having to explain them to billg?
Yep, I'll agree to all but the last sentance. One can easily compare sales and popularity figures.
Kinda that something that can have all those complaints, which are accurate, with such a lousy marketing campaign (come on, two creepy Japanese guys telling a little girl, "Wii would like to play"? There is so much that is wrong with that), could even get 10% of the market share of the current XBox or PS consoles, and yet it does.
Says something rather bad about MS and Sony if anything.
34486853790
Connection too slow for X forwarding? Try "ssh -CX user@host"
"Cry more n00b!" I'm pretty sure that he said that at one point.
Regards, Ian
He specifically looked at recent comments by Microsoft's Robbie Bach
A competitors review of a product, real informative.
Though I think the real issue is that the Wii is getting the market share of consumer attention in spite of the superior graphics processing power of the XBox and the PS3, and maybe they should do an article on not the resolution and frame rates but on the human interaction and game play of the consoles.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
Isn't this something people were saying before the Wii was even released? I don't understand why this is news again, almost (or possibly more than) a year later.
Did you know that my AMD64 is really just a Pentium III 1.5? I heard it on the Internet, so it must be true!
I wish people would get a grip. Especially since these specs have been know for... oh.... EVER. Get over already, will you? Yeah, it's the first console since the 80's to perform upgrades to components rather than replacing them outright. That's not a big deal. The console still has more than enough power to play games like Zelda, Super Paper Mario, and Red Steel.
Let me put it another way. In the Super Nintendo generation, it was less powerful than the TG16, the 3DO, the Phillips CD-i (pardon me while I die laughing), and the Neo Geo. But it was also worlds less expensive. Its only real competitor in that generation was the Sega Genesis, a console that was less powerful than the Super Nintendo!
The lesson to learn from this is that graphical power != better games. Better games == Better games, and damn the graphical power. The sooner people realize this, the better. (Or should I say, the sooner they get over their insecurity at having purchased a PS3?)
As for the Gamecube "1.5" nonsense, it's two Gamecubes duct taped together. Get it right, will you?
* Critics can shaddup about this one, too. If you can't get past learning the controls, well, that's too bad for you. But many of us actually find the controls to make the game. And the graphics aren't nearly as bad as they're made out to be. Sure, there are some dull hallways and whatnot, but there are also rooms full of steam, radiosity from windows, and other nice effects that help draw you into the game. And drawing me into the game is all I care about.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Blah blah blah. What do you expect them to say? "Oh, the Wii kicks our ass. It's cheaper to build and is selling more. We're fools?" Give me a break.
I wonder if I use bold in my signature, people will notice my posts.
OK, so the XBox 360 is state of the art, full of raw processing and graphics rendering power, has a bleeding-edge software DVD player? Guess what? I bought a Wii and it is damn good fun. I enjoy it, my wife enjoy's it, my two boys (6) enjoy it... in fact everyone who has come round to visit has played Wii Sports. And do you know what? No body ever played with my XBox apart from my brother.
Microsoft wants to drive the market, but the market wants something else. They need to wake up and realise this, and stop dissing everyone else. I guess this is a similar ethos as to where those comments about business not wanting the iPhone originated...
Microsoft are no longer the piper, and they really need to start thinking about this soon.
Any fool can talk, but it takes a wise man to listen.
Yes, the Wii architecture is fundamentally the same as the Gamecube architecture, but so what?
All the way up the PC scale, each improvement is an incremental improvement on what went before. Does anyone complain about that? No.
Fundamentally, computers all do the same things. As long as you can perform the fundamental turin operations, you can do anything. Yeah, multi-core machines can do these same operations at a greater rate, but there's nothing different that what they are capable of (apart from making programmers worry about race conditions and such like).
People don't complain about the similarity between upgrades in PC processing power for a good reason, you don't have to spend many months training your programmers in how to get started and them watching them spend years before they are capable of fully utilising the system. With a similar architecture as you are already used to, the learning curve and associated costs are much much lower, programmers are more productive and happier.
Graphical power isn't the only measure of a game system, but you know, it is still important. The fact that developers are already complaining about the limits of the system means that in another year or two, when the novelty of the motion detector has worn off a bit, the wii's popularity will start to slide.
The note at the end is supposed to point to Red Steel. Excuse my flubby fingers. Here's a wonderful review on Red Steel from IGN to help make up for it:
http://wii.ign.com/articles/747/747541p1.html
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Microsoft and Sony find themselves out of the boat in pushing high end rendering machines as game consoles when what people really want is fun games.
Wii wins with a new way to interact with the machine making it fun and for having the standard Nintendo appeal of social games that involve a group of people vs the solo sniper approach.
Nintendo has a winner, Sony and Microsoft have dogs, very pretty dogs, but dogs. Of course Sony and Microsoft are going to point out their dogs are pretty. But they are not popular.
Things learned from this
1) group games have more mass appeal than solo games
2) interaction with the game can be fun
3) game play is more important than graphics
4) cheaper is better
5) make a console that is not a loss leader
So Microsoft is upset with Nintendo because they were smarter? After spending huge amounts of money MS ended up with a new machine based on making everything faster while nintendo spent their money on researching new ways to play games and applied them to what they already had.
I have a 360, it has some great games, but its still just a prettier version of the xbox that is barely backwards compatable. I cant get my wife or relatives to play the 360, but all of them seem to gravitate to the wii. I came home from work yesterday and caught my wife bowling at 3 in the afternoon, I can guarantee I've never come home and caught her playing halo.
So perhaps MS feels like they wasted money and resources? Have we finally reached a point where the old argument about graphics vs gameplay is actually a legitimate one?
Would you rather play a first-person shooter game on the Wii, which means less amazing graphics but more precise controls (Wiimote+nunchuck = almost as good as keyboard+mouse) or on the Xbox360/PS3, which means better graphics but useless controls (screw those stupid little analog sticks). It doesn't matter if a game looks better if you can't play it.
Another detail that a lot of people don't take into account: load times. If you got a lower resolution graphics then it means lower resolution textures which means it loads faster. It doesn't matter if the game looks better if you need to wait 2 minutes between each level. You may be used to long load times but as a Nintendo gamer I hate load times.
One last detail that hard-core players keep forgetting: the console price. Not everyone can afford to shell more than 400$CAD for a damn GAMING BOX. Not everyone can afford a 800$-2000$CAD+ television either. Not everyone cares about specs over fun. Brag all you want about your PS3 and Xbox 360 connected to your 50" plasma screen, I don't care.
The Xbox360 and PS3 may be selling, but I'm glad Nintendo is taking over again. Fun is back!
Hax-fu?
When I first got my Wii, my father-in-law (retired, likes to spend his pension) came over and had a go. He was hanging out for a new XBox 360 (don't ask me why - he hardly plays the XBox he has), but was interested in trying the Wii out. An avid sportsman (or so he tells everyone) he played all of Wii Sports (except the boxing - something about his knees?!), but it was the golf that really intereted him. He played all nine holes over and over, and really got the hang of it, but at the end decided that it was a kids game as the graphics were cartoonish. He asked if someone was likely to bring out an 'adult version' of the game. Stifling my laugh and assuming that he meant one with more realisting graphics, I asked why that would make a difference. He didn't really know, but I do understand everyone's obsession with graphics these days. For so long the market has pushed the boundaries of visual realism, with both hardware and software, that we stand today with some amazing technology. It is a pity that in the meantime, gameplay didn't progress as much.
I think that Nintendo have done a fantastic thing with the Wii and the Wiimote - it has opened a new an exciting (and accessible) avenue for video games and entertainment.
Any fool can talk, but it takes a wise man to listen.
Why is dvd playback such a selling point? Does anyone NOT have a dvd player that will buy a wii? A dvd player is 30 dollars!
s p . So now we're around 85 percent; factor in old people and I'm sure we're just left with luddites and the margin of error.
As of the end of 2006, over 80% of households have dvd players http://blogs.zdnet.com/ITFacts/?p=12220 . Do you think the other 20 percent are choosing between a console or dvd player? 3.5 percent of households are below the poverty line http://www.soundvision.com/Info/poor/statistics.a
What are they going on about?
NJ Local Music Scene
Lets pick up our favorite mantra: Technology does not equal game play.
... and that's a lot of work for ... what? In the end, it doesn't make the game more interesting. It'll knock your socks off the first few times you play it ... and then you'll play it and think no differently of it as when you play Wind Waker (assuming you can get over yourself playing a cartoon).
The Wii owns the best game play right now, hands down. Graphics are just icing on top of the game play cake. And for too friggin' long game companies have been trying to sell their games with graphics rather than gameplay - all icing, no cake. For some people, this is a good thing. For me, not so much.
I can't tell you how much time I have spent playing on the Mii Channel. Caricaturing people is a lot of fun and oddly very engaging for my entire family (my wife, two boys under 5, and myself). Watching them play in Wii Sports - awesome! We've even set up a competition with some friends to try to make the better Mii's and send them to each other via Wii-mail. And the Mii Channel? Crappy graphics. Even my wife (not a gamer) has commented on how simple and unimpressive Mii's are on the surface - but that's really the source of the fun. For all its simplicity, the amount of seamless variety is amazing.
If graphics ever truly equated to fun, computer games would never have been successful. Granted, graphics can totally destroy a game, but that's due to poor design and planning - for consoles, it's never the fault of the graphics card.
And if you can produce a game like Princess Twilight, I don't think there's too much more to want in a game, graphically. The only thing left is photorealism
If you wish to make the processing power of the Wii your main concern, then yes, you might be able to make an argument that the Wii is only 1.5 gamecubes. Unfortunately, you'd be entirely missing the point of the Wii.
If you consider a new control scheme to be more interesting, then the 360 is more like Xbox 1.1. The PS3 has some motion detection added in, so we'll call that a PS2 2.0, but they couldn't manage to get the rumble back in, so we should probably dock them something for that. Let's just say it's a 2.0 that shipped before it was really ready. Nintendo, on the other hand, has shipped an entirely new product line.
And the best part for Nintendo is that this isn't just some BS excuse that they're making up for not being able to keep up in the technology race, it's a very deliberate strategy that they've implemented in both their handheld and living room consoles, and sales have proved it to be extremely successful. Good for them.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
There's more to creating beauty than polygon fill rates and shader algorithms.
I think a game like Super Paper Mario, for example, is absolutely gorgeous; it's obvious that a huge amount of effort went into the art direction for the game. Who cares if the graphics could have been generated by a last-generation GPU? They're still beautiful.
Hell, I still occasionally play Duck Hunt on an old Nintendo. Graphics power?? Ha!! Who needs it when you get to blow the crap out of feathery little ducks with a physical gun?
Until folks like Microsoft and Sony realize this, they're going to fall behind in the market. Loads of graphic power can be a great thing, but only if it's used to make fun, innovative, creatively "different" games.
Deja Moo: The distinct feeling that you've heard this bull before.
I sympathize with the fatigue many people are feeling with the "my console's wang is bigger than your console's wang" flamewars, and I agree that better games often have little to do with graphics horsepower.
However, it's important to realize that most great games take full advantage of the hardware they run on, and therefore they are limited by their hardware. The parent post mentions the SNES generation, so I'll use that as my example.
The SNES had the best sound hardware of its generation, which made the excellent music that accompanied Final Fantasy IV-VI possible. It had excellent sprite rotation and scaling capabilities, which were used as an integral part of gameplay in even the first batch of games, including Super Mario World, F-Zero, and Pilotwings.
Want more proof how much the raw hardware matters? Some of the best games on the SNES required expensive co-processors in the game cartridges. Starfox has a RISC processor on board that's at least as fast as the CPU in the SNES. Similarly, Super Mario Kart was only possible due to the DSP chip it included.
This approach was possible back in the cartridge era, but it's impossible to do in the modern day. You can't put accelerators on a DVD. All of the hardware has to already be in the console.
It's not the power of the console, it's how you use it.
'tendo has put their efforts into other innovations, particularly around controllers and responsiveness. These are tougher things to develop than raw horsepower, but more valued by the user community. MS has chosen the lazy development way. The problem is they will find it difficult to become more innovative, while Nintendo can catch up on graphics any time they choose. It's not rocket science, just brute force. These same comments largely apply to Sony, too.
I really think Nintendo approached the Wii intelligently. When trying to shake things up in the gaming world and going with a whole new control scheme, using a revved-up Gamecube might not be a bad thing. Think of the risk involved. If they put out a platform that rivals the Xbox or PS3 with a new control scheme, the console would be expensive and people would not take the risk of learning something new. Nintendo is dead in the water.
But if Nintendo bumps up the specs on the gamecube (small risk, graphics are decent) while introducing a new control scheme (big risk) while keeping the price cheaper than the other two consoles (still making a profit on each console), people can afford to take a risk...and they have. The Wii is a success so far, and caught the game makers with their pants down. They weren't prepared for this and now they have to shift too.
What is really interesting, in this experiment by Nintendo, is that because the Wii is so far a success, this lowers the risk of incorporating higher end graphics, HD, 720/1080, etc for Wii 2.0.
The article shows why so many dislike the Wii. I'll try to explain why, the Wii is a jumped up Gamecube (or Gamecube 1.5 if you prefer) but it has one key difference is the Wiimote. Its barely a technical upgrade but it has this 'amazing' Wiimote, it advertises the Wiimote first and the games second. I've seen two Wii demo setup's and both spent more time showing people through that remote around then spend times on the game.
The games aren't selling the console, this bugs people alot there are already alternative input controllers for systems like the PS2. When I buy a console its a game/games thats sold the console to me, not controllers, DVD playback, power or speed. With the Wii people are buying it because its cheap and you get to wave your hand around.
Why does the low power and apparent 'fun' factor of the Wii worry me? Half Life was a great game it gained a lot of support, years later Half Life 2 is released with some major enhancements and it really produces a real advancement in gaming. Half Life 2 Episode 1 was just HL2 with some minor enhancements on and a shiny new toy (HDR lighting) its a great deal of fun but not really an advancement if it had been more expensive I might have been upset. HL2 Ep2 has taken almost as long to be released as HL2 but isn't going to offer the mind bending difference's that Hl2 gave us when compared to HL. The Wii is like episodic gaming, sure in some applications its perfect but it would kill off the pace of advancements in gaming (much like Episodic gaming.)
Do you know what I would have been working on ever since the Wii became so popular? If I was Sony I'd make my own Wiimote, package a few first party games (something similar to Wiisports) and kill off the buzz its created. I'd have it run on Bluetooth (with a bluetooth adapater for the PS2) sell it at a dirt cheap rate (say £40 with SonySports.) I'd have flung alot of recources at the issue and had a PS2/Sonymote out before the end of the year and packaged for £140. Then again I'm not a sony executive, at best you've just stillborned the Wii and at worst you've eaten a little into Nintendo's new market.
They (the Wii) don't have the graphics horsepower that even Xbox 1 had.
i don't know enough about the topic to back up the following claim, but that smells a hell of a lot like bullshit. Isn't the Wii graphically more powerful than either the Xbox or the PS2?
You just got troll'd!
Man, and all this time I was having a lot of fun with my family and friends, playing 4 player games that end up with everyone laughing and having a good time.
Rats, I'm really going to miss that.
There are 01 kinds of cars in the world. The General Lee, and everything else.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
A competitors review of a product, real informative.
This just in, a competitor downplays a rival's product! News at 11!
-- toolie
I think the Wii has been tough for the gaming media. First off, the gaming media primarily consists of hardcore gamers, which is exactly the market that the PS3 and Xbox360 were designed to target, and not the primary market for Nintendo. The Wii didn't appeal to much of the existing gaming community, because Nintendo wasn't as interested in what those people wanted. It's probably a mixture of the gaming media not understanding what Nintendo's trying to do, and also them feeling a little slighted that Nintendo doesn't feel the need to pander to them as directly as Sony and MS do.
But even beyond that, the way advertising works these days is all about the visual. You promote a game through screenshots and videos and such. A magazine or a website can include screens and talk about them and the connections are right there in front of the reader and easy to make. Gameplay is much harder to describe with words, although over time gamers have built up a vocabulary that allows many of the concepts to be communicated reasonably well. But the way you interact with the Wii and the Wiimote is very different from what's come before, and I think a lot of the gaming media reviewers have been at a loss to describe it. It's really something that you have to try to understand. It's tough to articulate how it plays with the pre-existing gaming vocabulary, and the only place where you can reasonably compare it to the other systems or previous systems is via the output, because the Wii has not changed the output, only the input. Because of all of this, many are still clinging to the visual aspects as paramount.
Over time, this should change. As games continue to be released, a more useful vocabulary will build up to describe the ways you interact with them, as well as having a bigger catalog of old games to compare the new stuff to. And as the system moves further beyond the "controller experimentation games" stage and into more refined control and gameplay models, the hardcore gamers will become more comfortable with the Wii. It's already started to happen.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
So in a way was/is the DS. It was in fact claimed by Nintendo themselves that the DS was NOT the full sequel to the GBA.
The Wii is NOT a next generation console as we have come to expect. It is decidely underpowered, even compared to last generation.
The lack of a dvd player is trivial, anyone who wants one can get one so cheap nowadays it is pointless to have it as a feature and either HD-DVD or Blu-Ray just wouldn't fit with its low price point.
The simple fact is the the Wii is an attempt to go a different route. Can Nintendo succeed in selling games that despite not being able to compete on graphics terms are considered fun enough to be bought? Or perhaps an even simpler bet, that not enough people will have HD tv screens to notice the higher res graphics of the PS3/360? After all, unless your tv is HD ready you won't see much improvement anyway.
But does anyone else find it ironic that Microsoft who has made billions in the last decade selling point upgrades to their OS is commeting on someone else doing a 1.5? Could windows 98 be considered a full .5 upgrade to 95? How about XP to 2000 and 2000 to NT4 etc etc?
The simple fact is that right now the Wii, no matter how underpowered is the one console still sold out. No I don't see why. I do NOT like its games. Then again, I in general don't like consoles. But for a 1.5 console, Nintendo ain't doing bad. If anything MS and Sony should be really worried because with the cash Nintendo is taking in they could be the ones who in a couple of years could launch a 2.5 console that will truly blow the PS3 and 360 out of the water while these consoles by then will be considered old.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
By the same argument, couldn't I just argue my current PC is version 1.5 of my old PC? Does that mean it wasn't worth buying a new one? There is no need to completely redesign your architecture at every upgrade, just bump up the version of everything. Has worked for Intel for a long time.
Combination - fun iPhone puzzling
Crap, now I have to go take my Wii back. I wish I had known all this before. I just started playing the games and didn't really think. Now that I know its a gamecube 1.5, the games aren't any fun at all! I didn't spend enough money to have that kind of fun and it shows in the specs.
Me: "Hi Store clerk. I want to return this."
Clerk: "Why are you returning it, was it not fun?"
Me: "It was fun."
Clerk: "Is it broken?"
Me: "uhh, no"
Clerk: "Was it too expensive?"
Me: "no"
Clerk: "Well what was it then?"
Me: "Microsoft said it wasn't any good."
Clerk: "Ok, Good, we have a check box on the return form especially for that. Let's see, oh here it is- Customer is a moron. Anything else I can do for you?"
Me: "Do you sell Vista? Bill Gates said there are new total system security exploits coming out every day for my MacBook Pro."
Clerk: "Oh gosh, that must be terrible."
Me: "Yea...the exploits are so good that I've yet to detect one or see any information published about them. Its such a false sense of security."
Clerk: "We sell it, but only online."
Me: "Your web site only works with IE 7 though..."
Clerk: "You don't have a windows machine you can use?"
Me: "Yes."
Clerk: "So what is the problem?"
Me: "Its infected with so much spyware and virii that I can never get to your web site."
Two words: Guitar Hero
I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it by not dying. - Woody Allen
It's like the jock complaining that the stoner dudes get all the chicks. After all, jocks are bigger, faster, and have larger penises, so the stoners are obviously inferior, so how come women hang out with the otehr guy.
Hmmm - maybe 'cause they're fun to be around?
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
YES! The Wii isn't much faster than a Cube. Nintendo itself said so a year before the Wii was even available! How fast is it? Twice as fast? Three times as fast? Who cares! Can we just get over this and go back to talking about games? Thanks.
The games are fun! Does it really matter if skin doesn't look perfect on the Wii? No - it matters what games are available for it. And the Wii has the games that are fun.
http://timcol6.freehostia.com/
that's damned good engineering: finding ways to make a product better for the user yet economical to produce and bring to market at the right time.
Any fool can make a better product out of pure unobtainium that will be ready to ship after the Trump of Doom.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Just a bit of supplemental info...
Star Fox used a 10.5 MHz (underclocked) math coprocessor. (We call those an "FPU" normally.) Later SuperFX chips were clocked to their full potential - 21 MHz. All the while, the SNES' 65c816 ran at a "measly" 3.8 MHz. Oh, and it had a total of 128KB of RAM.
Just to put a bit of emphasis on "console wang" fatigue... The SNES has, arguably, the biggest wang of them all. Some of the greatest games ever were made for it. And when you compare it "by the numbers" to modern consoles, it puts them to shame. All those good games with a 3.8MHz CPU and 128K of RAM.
be this true yet still totally miss the point...
Yes, you should be scared. Very, very scared. Here's more.
If i recall, the Nintendo CEO had something to say about that. It was something along the lines of, art and paintings reached the point of photorealism hundreds of years ago, and yet people are still painting, and few of the best paintings of all time are photorealistic. If graphics had any bearing on the enjoyment of a medium, then Claude Monet would have been run out of town, people shouting, "What is this fuzzy crap? Haven't you ever heard of anti-aliasing?!"
Just my $0.02
A couple of years before there's a PS4, XBOX 720 or whatever, Nintendo can release a Wii+ featuring a better CPU/GPU for HD graphics, a better optical drive and sell yet another generation of consoles and games at a proper profit margin and still within normal prices for consumer electronics.
I judged the "next gen" console wars over when I walked into an EB, and tried to play the demo games on a 360, PS3, and Wii. And guess what? Only ONE of those systems allowed you to pick up the controller and just fucking play a game. And it wasn't the expensive ones, neither.
It's that simple. I'd rather play C&C Red Alert with it's circa 1996 graphics or Alpha Centauri (1999) than a similar 2007 game with awesome graphics and crap content.
Short of Guitar Hero, there aren't any games on the other systems that are as incredibly fun to play at parties or with groups of people. That's what sets the Wii apart. If Microsoft is looking at it's graphic capability for the answer to its success, they're blind (pun intended).
"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much." - Oscar Wilde
If it is so terrible why do they sell out in the first 15 minutes a store gets them typically? And why are there huge piles of $600 PS3s sitting at the big electronics stores? The Wii is hot in the market right now, probably because it's new, novel and has the proper pricepoint for the market. I suspect PS3 is only being picked up by hardcore gamers.
One of Xbox 360's problem is it is not an "Xbox 1.5", meaning that its ability to play original Xbox games is imperfect. But it did add something pretty novel over the old Xbox, the ability to play PC/Web games remade for the Xbox like Bejeweled. It gives you something to do while saving up for another $60 game.
I'd like to see someone release a $50 game system with 1/10th the graphics and processing power that mainly did the feature of connecting to a site online to play free and inexpensive games. And maybe bundle a free devkit with profit sharing plans for posting your game on the website. (feel free to steal that business idea). But I prefer something that can be picked up and played for a little mindless challenge (like tetris, 1942, raiden, etc) than some game where I am supposed to be immersed into a movie-like experience. (I must admit, Halo was pretty fun to beat)
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
A picture is worth a thousand words. This sums it all up: http://youtube.com/watch?v=Blz5v1swwXw
Ah, so Ballmer's playbook has been stolen again!
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Yes, that's quite brilliant. Complain about the graphics on a game that is universally ridiculed as having terrible graphics on every single platform it was released on, not to mention being all around terrible. Obviously, this MUST be because of the Wii's inferior graphical capabilities.
I like to think of online DRM as something akin to a college -- you pay for lessons until you learn something.
They are hammering our sacred WII! Bash the infidels!
Didn't notice the > missing when I previewed.
"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much." - Oscar Wilde
My first instinct is that sure, the Wii would be more powerful as it has about 50% more RAM than the XBox 1. However, it doesn't have custom shader operations, so it's possible that to for it to perform the same effects the XBox1 pulls off it would be bottlenecked at the GPU. The reports I've read on Wii shader limitations have been inconclusive on that point. And other than RAM and Shaders, the Wii is mostly an overclocked Gamecube (so not very far from an XBox 1).
Though, honestly my expertise is much more software-oriented rather than hardware-oriented, so I was really hopeing some Slashdot post would provide a detailed breakdown.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5cPVP_llfo for those who haven't seen it.
You have to keep in mind that the gaming press is biased, misleading, and easily duped into marketing. They're the worst segment of the online press besides political blogs. They're the reason everyone was once obsessed over "8-bit" and "16-bit," because those amateur journalists didn't understand what the terms actually meant, so neither did we. They bought Sony's PS2 hype, and they made Halo out to be the greatest game ever played by the entire world (even though the XBox only tied with the Gamecube at 15% marketshare). Now they're having to take notice with the Wii and come to grips with the realization that they really are a small, hardcore segment of the market that is outnumbered by everyone else.
The original NES used an old 6502 chip, a cheap processor that came out in the 1970s. The NES was underpowered compared to some of its competitors but was so well-designed that it got the good games. It appealed to the wider, mainstream market like the Wii. Remember the track pad? The educational games? The Zapper games, the puzzle games, the side-scrollers, the RPGs, and so on? It appealed to everyone, not just sugar-high kiddies playing a neverending series of XBox 360 first-person shooters.
"Sufferin' succotash."
The article below seems to, quite insultingly, imply that Bach may, in fact, be an idiot.
http://videolamer.com/index.php/2018
- skinnytie -
When I started the Wii, I really enjoyed the UI. My net at the time was slow, so the first day I had it I did an udpate, downlaoded the web browser and shut it down. Next day, I told my wife I would wait for her tot ry it, so i jsut browsed the web and made a Mii. This was pretty entertaining, and I had to fight the temptation to blow money on the virtual console.
When i first started Wii sports I thought shit, I should have gotten the 360, the graphics are kind of lame. But the games are smooth, fast and a lot of fun. We still play Wii Sports. I know redsteel as gotten some bad reviews (it is easy and graphics do suck) but the controls are fun and monkey ball is awesome.
Now, Resident Evil4 on the cube is way better then anything I've seen on the Wii (I have only played 3 games to be fair though). So this tells me a few things.
1. Devs are being lazy! I remember reading an interview with someone from factor 5 saying they could blow away whats been done with the Wii so far (they made the rogue squuadron games and I thouht they looked awesome, had tons of effects graphicaly)
2. No more wiimakes - unique content should make devs make assets specifically for the Wii.
3. The controls are just way too much fun, I don't really want more power now, even though i have yet to see anything that beats the PS2/cube stuff.
4. I know this sounds odd, but it would have been really nice to have optical audio, that way if there is dvd software later it would be nice. I do own a DVD Player like everyone else, but my cube doesn't get used anymore and I havent felt the need to turn on my PS2, it would e nice to replace everything with 1 box, ut since I don't have optical out I can't - although a $100 dvd player would probably outperform a Wii using software to do so. Although maybe it could be done though a USB to Optical dongle? Can USB stream a DTS track? (I have no idea, I am asking).
Same ol' same ol'. Xbox and PS3 fans are screaming "We're cool because our system is more powerful". And yet the Wii community responds with a big "So what?".
... "So what?". Your system is faster, more powerful, better looking ... whatever you feel like saying that makes you feel better. And you can keep it ... I'll go have fun on the "Gamecube 1.5"
Bottom line is the Wii is fun to play. It has a new style of interaction with the system and the games are engaging. This isn't a strong man competition, the idea of a 'game' system is to play and have fun. So I come back to the earlier response
-asleep
if i ask questions like:
- what would wii be like without the wii remote?
- what if microsoft and sony were to develop a wiimote clone?
- all else being equal, do graphics matter?
- does price really matter to an avid gamer?
am i going to get tarred and feathered?Yes, I won't deny that Wii is fun to play, has a great controller and a few games which make excellent use of it. OTOH, the graphics is clearly behind. Keep in mind that these systems are supposed to last for ~5 years until the next gen. It kinda' sucks to start behind the curve.
The Raven
I own both a 360 and a Wii, and the 360 dominates my and my wife's gaming schedule, while the Wii is more of a novelty we bring out when company is over.
Saying that the 360 only innovated on graphics is selling Microsoft short. Both of us play the 360 much more because of Xbox Live arcade. Nintendo is selling old emulated games on Virtual console, Microsoft is selling new low budget indy games. Who is innovating and who is resting on their laurels in that situation?
The Wii has problems, and I hope they patch them out. The amount of effort it takes to add a controller each time is ridiculous, on 360 I just press a button. Everytime I want to download something I feel like I'm being punished by their progress bar, if it even succeeds, the 360 background downloads and works everytime. Last is the game library is still small. The party aspect is worth the price, but the longevity of play is quite short.
Right now the 360 is clearly better for us. Nintendo would have to patch their software, release some better games, and fix their online experience for me to spend more time with it.
Case in point.... http://www.nethack.org/
Even Miyamoto says it - "The hardware is basically a GC. We've upgraded our development tools to new versions but, you can still use GC programs as they are. With that in mind, I thought we could remake GC titles for the Wii and modify them to work with the Wii remote so that they're more fun to play.".
Come on. The wii can make games with better graphics then resident evil 4 on the cube. Not 360 wise but better then the cube. On a standard def tv that should be good enough. HecK I am playing it on a 1080i 26 inch widescreen crt and I dont have a problem with the graphics. The wii is cheap enough to buy it and a 360 together anyway. With games like brain age wii health, wii music, and wii sports coming out and out already for the wii it doesnt have the same user base as the other 2 consoles anyway. Plus we all know that the wii is making a profit for nintendo already. My theory is also that the wii was not meant to be a 5 year console anyway. I honestly think it was put out just to tide nitnendo over till they can come out with their real next console. If the wii all of a sudden starts tanking nintendo wouldnt have lost any money . I do have to say this. Nitnendo does know its stuff. They know hopw to make a profit and stay in business.
so by MS's standpoint we can justly say that Vista is XP 1.5 (in desperate need of patches)??
Is the complaint here that you can't spend millions on the development of a game. I seem to recall EA bitching about the cost of making games in today's world, and they seem all to happy to jump on the Wii bandwagon of late. Maybe games just shouldn't take 100+ people 2 years of development. Compare raw manhours for games of today to games like the original mario bros and tell me that this whole push for graphics hasn't been more than a little misfocused for years now. God of War was fun, but I really doubt I'll fire it up again much in the future. I still play mario bros from time to time. Maybe in the future we can have the computer procedurally generate all those minute details that cost so much for a human to make, and maybe right now we should just concentrate on gameplay, fun factor, physics is fun. Why should games always ride the bleeding edge of technology anyway? Maybe they should stay comfortable back a few paces until the smart guys figure out how best to use that power on the other end. Maybe then I wouldn't have to upgrade (read completely replace) my console more often than my PC.
The video card on my Wii died and so I got a replacement Wii. The sticker on the bag inside said "Advanced GameCube." I think there's no doubt that naming it "Wii" was a triumph of Marketing over (i guess) bad Marketing.
Iff they enable new gameplay. The transition from 2D to 3D graphics was certainly important, for instance, because it enabled fundamentally new types of games. The problem especially for the Xbox360 is it's really just an incremental upgrade. More CPU cores (but not enough to really enable anything fundamentally new), advanced shader architecture GPU blah blah. This is nice, and enabled some very nice eyecandy, but it doesn't really enable any fundamentally different kinds of games. Microsoft's only real innovation was Xbox live, and all they've done on the 360 is offer incremental and logical improvements to the Live experience.
The Wii certainly offers no improvements in terms of graphics or processing capabilities, but the control scheme is so unique it will enable fundamentally new kinds of games. They wont be the prettiest on the block to be sure, but I'd bet real money they'll still feel much more "new."
I think the PS3, once developers get the hang of it, will also be able to offer real innovation. The PS3, unlike the Xbox360, has enough raw processing power to enable some impressive physics. That's also a fundamentally new capability and will enable developers to create genuinely new gameplay. The 360 is really the odd man out this generation, in terms of offerring anything fundamentally new. Not that it isn't a fine console, but I suspect it'll be relegated mostly to ports and clones of existing formula, while the PS3 and Wii will see genuinely new gaming concepts emerge.
The technical specs don't matter as long as the entertainment is there.
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
means that it is easier to do enough pixels for 480p mode versus 480i
OK... unless you can 100% guarantee you game will run over 60fps all of the time, you will get nasty interlacing artifacts unless you have a full 640x480 display buffer available at all times. From that standpoint, 480p and 480i are exactly the same as far as the number of pixels they need to render. 480p games were available on every single console last generation too...
sig fault
People have been slagging off the Wii since it first came out, the problem is that anyone who actually plays it LOVES IT.
It is totally inovative, and if i can get my girlfriend and my Gran to both play it and enjoy it when they havenever played a console in their lives then it says something.
If you want fancy graphics then get a PC, oh wait anyone reading this already has one!
Games should be about fun, Dizzy on the Speccy was a great game, as was matchday 2, Sensi Soccer, Worms, Lemmings, in fact all of the most addictive games were purely about gameplay and not over involved with fancygraphics.
I would rather play a game that is so much fun i forget about the graphics, instead ofbeing a nerd who sits there admiring how many pixels are on the screen.
Wii is Old School fun for the next gen crowd
Microsoft doesn't have the concept of "less is more".
South Park, Family Guy, The Simpsons. Some of the most entertaining cartoons ever, and they all have very basic "graphics". I don't need to see the hairs on Homer's ass to laugh out loud. Its about style and substance, not flash.
...Elebits.
I don't usually play FPS. I've played Red Steel, and my brother owns Call of Duty. Red Steel has obvious problems. CoD is somewhat better, but it's lacking online. The only FPS I've really played is Elebits. And it is an FPS. Yes, you're shooting cute little Pokémon thingies, but the game works really well, it's extremely responsive (unlike in Red Steel, I can't detect any lag from the pointer), and it shows that the Wii is a great console for FPS, even if the currently available games can't measure up.
This is exactly why PS3 does not appeal to me at all. Better gfx? Whoopidoo. I still play Tetris Attack.
'Once scientists, even the dim-witted social scientists, get muzzled, the Western Civilization is finished.' - oldhack
"How were the graphics?"
http://www.zestuff.com/tshirts/extralife/533/
Who cares? Graphics are a nice addition to an already great game, but as the PS3 has demonstrated, just because a game has good graphics, doesn't make it a good game automatically.
You compare the Wii Remote to the Power Glove, but complain about getting modded Troll? Here's a thought: Maybe it's not some kind of weirdo conspiracy against the truth. Maybe you simply are a Troll.
Also, nobody claimed that graphics were not needed to make games. But thanks for the point, Captain Obvious.
Not exactly, but you probably should. I'm just going to point out the senselessness of your proposed questions, instead.
...Huh? Does the canonical "avid gamer" have unlimited cash at his or (ha!) her disposal? Of course price matters. To everyone. Ever. Except accomplished thieves. Many would tell you that price is often the only thing that matters, given that price == money and money drives almost everything that happens in the world (money and the Sun, I guess).
In order,
- Why in the blue fuck would you even ask that question? You can't buy a wii without a wii remote. It's a package deal. The question isn't even academic, it's just misguided.
I guess the answer, if one were to dignify the question with one, would have to be: the wii without the wii remote would be like a Gamecube and a half. Or like 1/5th of an Xbox 360 (1/10th, whatever). It would be exactly what the PS3 and Xbox 360 are - uncreative, mindless iterations of a product that has been made at least twice already. (Oh, plus Nintendo franchises.)
- If Microsoft and Sony did that, it'd be a great idea, judging from the excitement the wii version has created. It might not be enough, though, since
a) as someone has already pointed out, the wiimote is the standard controller for the console, not a Super Scope-style gimmick that will discourage developers from making games geared towards it; and
b) the wii is already out there, seems to have a fair market share (of the market composed of people who want a wiimote experience), and has a growing catalogue of wiimote games already; and
c) a wii, with a wiimote, costs something like $250. A different system, with a wiimote, would have to cost one to four hundred dollars more.
For a large portion of the crowd that is snatching up wiis, assuming the wiimote is the selling point, the cheapest and best wiimote-using console to buy would STILL be the wii. Easily.
- Yes, arse, graphics really matter, with "all else being equal." Which is why everyone flocks to the Xbox 360 and PS3 when all else is equal amongst all the consoles. Remember, "all else" is anything I can come up with (and more!), so that includes
- price
- gameplay
- creatively conceived controllers
- perceived enjoyment
So, when those things are all equal, the wii will be in a lot of trouble.
-
Your question smacks more of adolescent snarkiness than of honest reflection or intellectual curiosity. In fact, it brings to mind a segment from some kind of TV show I saw, where ten 11-year-olds were offered either a wii or a PS3 to play with, and the one kid who considered himself a "gamer" was disgusted by the other nine kids, who all gravitated towards the wii (because it was FUN).
No matter how much you make fun of us for being "fanboys," or for failing to meet the standards for "avid gamers," the rest of the world - those of us who think with our brains, not with our prejudices and our parents' wallets, are going to stick with this wii, which entertains us and even allows us to enjoy games with old people and girls (none of whom have ever really wanted to play Halo with us).
> He specifically looked at recent comments by Microsoft's Robbie Bach saying that 'the video graphics on it aren't very strong; the box itself is kind of underpowered
I stopped reading there. The *Gamecube* was on par with the Xbox, and the Wii is at least 2x the Gamecube (maybe even 3x due to increased efficiency on top of increased clock speeds). Just because most of the Wii launch titles used Gamecube dev kits doesn't mean the system is underpowered. Look at the PS2 launch titles, they looked far worse than anything else out at the time.
Yeah, because polygon count and memory speed arer what really matters for great gameplay, right?
What this really is is the denial phase of a very important (and very painful) lesson that MS and Sony are about to learn: That throwing more hardware at a console doesn't solve the problem of creating an entertainment product. Or as Steve Jobs just said: If money were the solution, Microsoft would be shipping good products.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
But even beyond that, the way advertising works these days is all about the visual. You promote a game through screen shots and videos and such.
There's another thing I have (and maybe others too) about these game previews - that is showing the ultra-rendered cut scenes instead of the actual game play, I watched the E3 coverage on G4 a while back and was pretty ticked that all the big upcomming announcements showed primarily these cut scenes, which many times has no bearing on gameplay or environment. I wonder how many kids feel suckered in when they saw those cool Final Fantasy VII (IIRC) cut scenes on TV ads and didn't know the game was something else entirely.
Most of those cut scenes were done on PCs not game systems ands hooked to render farms to grind out the video in pixel perfect detail. At least it would be more balanced if the cut scenes were rendered by the game engine instead (Harry Potter comes to mind here as an example).
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
The SNES had a pretty nice architecture; a full 16-bit DSP sound engine running alongside, a sprite blitter and scalar engine with its own memory, programmable DMA controllers for accessing them and the cart. It was nice. You didn't really need a fast CPU when it wasn't doing much other than game logic and orchestrating the rest of the components. And you didn't need much scratchpad RAM either; cart ROMS were directly addressable and you streamed in what you needed.
IIRC you could blit right from the cart into the video memory, no copy in RAM
Let's compare Daikatana and M.U.L.E...
I assume I don't have to finish writing this, do I? What matters is whether it's fun to play a game. Not whether it bombards you with enough graphics that you don't even notice how much the gameplay stinks. Actually, I'd rather get a Wii than a 360 after reading this, knowing that a game really has to be GOOD on the Wii to get good ratings rather than just flashing the tester with enough eye candy to get good grades.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
and the 360 dominates my and my wife's gaming schedule,
No wonder western culture is dying.
The Playstation was graphically inferior to the N64, yet it was the best selling console to date.
As a Sega fanboy, I just want to add that you forgot the Saturn from this period. It furthers the point in that it was superior to the PlayStation but didn't do so well (heh).
What I've really thought is interesting is the parallels between that generation and the current generation. Sega's Saturn was similar in many ways to the PS3. Back then Sony won out with a cheaper console because of a few small advantages.. Yet now they have the super-expensive system with poor market penetration. How did they not realize during the design phase that this was a _great_ risk?
Sony could make a commercial touting the PS3's processing power and state it has 7 CPU's that really make it fly, unlike the Wii. They would be right, and they could throw the Wii out a window to prove their statement. But you wouldn't see the Wii hit the ground, because there would be Wii buyers rushing to try and catch it.
Lets see if his complaints about the X-Box apply to the Xbox360:
1. Piss-poor design. - Yep, just think "red ring of death"
2. The games suck. - Yep, there are already better games for the Wii, which has been out a shorter period of time.
3. The controller is almost as big as my nuts. - No, they did fix the controller, but it still sucks in comparison with the wiimote.
4. People who own the Xbox don't play video games.
The average Xbox owner attends Microsoft SQL Server release parties, reads books on database theory and hates games like Super Mario because they're too old for "kiddie" games since everyone knows that it's graphics, not game play that makes a great game. I mean, why play a game that's actually fun when you can waste hours watching rendered, uninteractive intros instead? Ask the typical Xbox owner what other video games or consoles he likes and you'll draw a blank stare. The reason they bought an Xbox was because it's by Microsoft and they're blindly devoted to the company, not because of the games.
Yep....
5. No Soul. - Obviously, this is Microsoft, they never had a soul, nor will they ever. That's just how evil operates.
6. Shitty philosophy. - Diddo. Again, this is Microsoft we're talking about here...
7. Too expensive. - Yep, Although its cheaper than the PS3, it still costs to much.
Maybe Microsoft should consider its own flaws before point out those of others. How does the saying go?
Before worrying about the splinter in another's eye, you should deal with the plank in your own.
"Now I'm seriously serious!" - Serious Sam
I am constantly surprised at how clueless the xbox and sony execs seem to be in making comments like these...
I have a 3 year old computer that is faster (both graphically and processor-wise) than both the xbox 360 and PS3. It is also worth less than the $600 sony is charging for PS3's, and does a whole lot more than gaming.
Saying "my console is faster" is an irritatingly stupid argument, because ALL consoles are slow compared to the gaming technology available in the market.
The Wii is beating the socks off of the xbox and PS3 because it is a more fun system. People don't buy gaming consoles so that they can say "my rig does more megaflops." That's what computers are for. Instead, people buy gaming consoles to play fun games. Whether Nintendo's games look prettier, the Wii controler makes games amazingly fun, which is what people want and expect. In fact, since I got my Wii, I have totally quit playing all the games I used to play on the computer (which again, has better graphics than both the PS3 and the xbox 360) because I am having so much fun playing Wii.
In sum: Nintendo knows and understand what console games want, Sony and MS are still clueless and making lame excuses.
The Wii is also much kinder to the environment as articles have shown http://www.hardcoreware.net/reviews/review-356-2.h tm
The thing can practically be powered by an energetic hamster in a spinning wheel. At a time when the world is hopefully trying not to destroy the planet
so we can actually carry on playing games. I find myself wanting to buy a Wii over an Xbox360 or PS3 simply because it is the responsible thing to do.
I know many people on here probably don't think about that too much, I'm as sucked in by the thought of a 50" lcd tv as the next geek. Though I don't want
to live in a smog filled, flooded, hurricane battered future. So I'm still going to get a big tv and game console I'm just going to factor in how much power
they use. And offset the energy they use in other ways, recycling, getting a hybrid car etc.
I think if we all made slightly more thoughtful choices when making our purchases we could still have what we want and make the world a better place for us
all to live in.
It would be great if all products displayed openly how much power a device needed. The Wii should proudly display that it takes much less power than an XBox360/PS3,
I really feel we can make a difference I already see how as people increasingly buy healthier food choices companies rally to promote healthy foods to consumers. If
we buy green products companies will tailor their products to be greener i.e. buy more hybrids, more hybrids get made its that simple. If we buy devices that consume
less power it becomes a marketing factor and becomes important to large companies bottom lines.
Nintendo discovered your 5 things learned back in the mid-eighties when they single-handedly resurrected the video game industry.
The point about sound is I think a really good one. I only got an amp with multiple inputs in January/Febuary or so, so I'd not had my console hooked up to surround, but wow did my 360 sound better hooked up to 5.1 surround! GRAW 2 in particular made excellent use of it.
Even though I've got a fairly cheap sound sytem (a decent Denon amp - last years model or so, but does up to 6.1 - with some Pioneer brand floor standing speakers, that came as part of a Pinoneer home cinema kit (read: DVD / DIVX player that I re-cabled), having surround was a big leap for me in GRAW and Crackdown. I live in London, and I couldn't tell the difference between police cars and street noise outside (birds, people, etc) and in GRAW/Crackdown. It's just eerie!
Oddly, I've got surround speakers on my PC (and an excellent set of very cheap multi-speaker surround headphones - that outshine some really expensive virtual surround ones I've got not in terms of quality, but in terms of really being able to hear where sounds are coming from - totally feels like cheating in online FPS games!) but I didn't think of how good it might be on the console.
I like the way Wii Sports uses the speaker on the Wii remote, it's like a poor mans surround in a way. I hope developers make note.
As if being a version ahead makes ANY system more superior. Versioning seems to be more about branding these days. What are they going to do with the XBox3...name it the XBox4? When will these guys get that it's about innovation, and that efficiency is the new horsepower? Vista's bazillion lines of code hasn't made my word processor any faster.
And is it just me, or do the executives at Microsoft more frequently than not fall back on Robbie Bach's particular flavor of sour grapes. They can sure dish it out, but they really can't take it.
--
Franklin Brauner
If the wii games had the graphics of the 8-bit NES, Id still love it
Reality is Nintendo is going after NON gamers
Believe it or not, but that was M$FT's strategy as well, and they failed miserably at it. The core objective of the XBox360 from the earliest phases of development was to get "mom" playing the Xbox. Their entire strategy was based on winning over the gatekeeper of the living room, the mother. Guess what, guys? Making it white didn't do it.
--
Franklin Brauner
Too bad controller latency haunts the Wii, and will for the system's existence. I'm keeping my eye on the PS3 / 360 release of Time Crisis 4, which will come with a gun that presumably works for all displays. If there's any kind of gameplay which really highlights controller latency - as any of the several reflex-heavy aim-&-fire minigames on the Wii make painfully apparent - it's the gun-type gameplay. So Namco will have little choice but to use aiming technology that doesn't exhibit the crippling flaw inherent in the Wii's remote.
Granted, for the Wii's target audience of young children and their parents, controller latency is less of a concern. Actual gamers do notice these things, though.
The hand of Nintendo marketing is obvious there. They want to know who had their Wii bought for them, and who bought it themselves. They want to know their market. And fair enough: what else is the Everybody Votes Channel for but market research disguised as a game?
The results were interesting. Without checking on the Wii (because it's downstairs and off), it was about 55-45 in favour of 'No'. Most Wii gamers bought their own, but not by a wide margin.
Even more interesting - and big news for Nintendo marketing - was the gender breakdown. Of those whose Miis were male, the divide was nearly even. Of those whose Miis were femals, the divide was more like 60-40. In other words: adult women are buying Wii for themselves. Or the SOs of gamers who bought Wii are playing and voting. That's one monster breakthrough.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
My girlfriend is a huge Nintendo fan, she got me into the Cube, DS, and the Wii. Before that it was the PC and PS1, eventually the Xbox for me - now I have *everythng* minus the PS3 & Xbox 360. (ie these comments don't come from a "fanboy"of any particular manufacturer) But here is the bottom line.. The Wii DOES NOT play DVDs or is it BluRay... it is fun (even old folks like it) and it is CHEAPER with out all the extras.. I watch DVDs on my DVD player.. not my Xbox. Wii hits a different demographic for sure, one that may have been overlooked by the other consoles by the look of the sales figures. Why is everyone so mad about that? Are they afraid that if the PS3 doesn't sell for a million bucks they'll never see another GTA? Every console has its niche... Nintendo just found theirs.
but at least use the damn thing right i mean,game cube was horribly limitated by the ram and could not even use half of its triangle pushing power,because if you used more than 200.000 triangles per scene (counting the index/vertex stuff of course),you would eat too much ram and make the game look like a N64 stuff in texturing level now wii have that 88 mb of ram,that allow it to have a 1 million of triangles scene easily now do something really low poly for the Wii its just plain stupid,you re not saving much ram,the Wii will chew on the higher polycount the same way and it just will make it look uglier
Still, i'm glad you gave the question a shot.
Yes, arse, graphics really matter, with "all else being equal." Which is why everyone flocks to the Xbox 360 and PS3 when all else is equal amongst all the consoles. Remember, "all else" is anything I can come up with (and more!), so that includes well, once sony and microsoft get past possible patent issues, i don't think it's a stretch to say all of the consoles will have wiimote-like controllers in the future. (i think i read sometime back that the wiimote was covered by various patents?) once that happens, we'll have the situation that everyone had envisioned for the latest round of console wars, before nintendo messed everything up with their damned wiimote! i'm surprised that nobody here is talking about such a possible future. it almost looks like.. yep, you guessed it: wii fanboii central! what if microsoft and sony were to develop a wiimote clone? If Microsoft and Sony did that, it'd be a great idea, judging from the excitement the wii version has created. is anyone wondering aloud what their favorite xbox or playstation games would be like with a wiimote-like controller? nope, not a peep.if you think that i'm biased, i'd have to admit that i do have a definite anti-sony and anti-microsoft bias. in fact, my latest entrepreneur of the year award definitely goes to nintendo (the riaa tried to lobby for legislation naming them the winner of the award, but they ran into veto problems). but, i'm the kind of person that likes to have his cake AND eat it. so, instead of patting myself on the back for buying a wii, i'll just keep on asking interesting and silly questions.
Out of curiosity, is your sig quote from WKRP? I remember something about a Thanksgiving stunt gone horribly awry involving a helicopter and turkeys...
Boundless Expansion, Self-Transformation, Dynamic Optimism, Intelligent Technology, Spontaneous Order- BEST DO IT SO!
The GC's main controller innovation IMHO was a first party wireless controller (3rd party ones notoriously sucked in my experience). If that's not influential, both the 360 and PS3 have come to the same conclusion independently.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
I get so sick of reading these Wii-bashing articles. The only complaints they ever present are "wahhh graphics" or "wahhh processing power." The moron in this article even complains about Wii not being able to play DVDs. COME ON! Who doesn't have a freakin' DVD player by now? Obviously, people like this haven't sat down and considered why Nintendo is doing so well... I guess they are just too caught up in trying to downplay Nintendo's success. Psssst, idiots. Graphics don't make a game fun.
God, just reading this first excerpt makes me ill.
Soooo... basically he comes out and says it's a nice product for a very SPECIFIC audience? For a system that's supposed to have universal appeal? Mmmmk. Then he contradicts himself by saying the product "is actually not a great product." Mmmmk. And what entails his reasoning? Graphics, processing, and lack of DVD-playing capability... oh, and "a lot of down-line components." Lawl!
Hey, Robbie! Keep fighting your fight, bro. One day you'll wonder why your market share slowly reduced itself to zero. Until then, enjoy your imaginary high horse.
I think everyone went into the Wii expecting games to look as good as or better than Resident Evil 4. I think we all forgot that developer effort and talent is what makes a game beautiful, not hardware alone.
wii proves that more consumers care about fun-factor than great graphics
Most developers (and others who enter the game industry) are hardcore gamers. Iwata's first speech "Heart of the Gamer" criticized this by asking "Are we just making games for ourselves?" The Oliver Twins have said the same thing that you must make games for more than yourself.
But a more important factor is that the game industry is so intertwined with the Hollywood business model is that they believe the cinematic experience is IDENTICAL to the gaming experience. It, of course, isn't. So the PS3 (or 360) being a more cinematic console that hooks up to huge HD tv sets and surround sounds, they see it as the next step to gaming (since it is updating its cinema).
Wii is not about cinema. They looked at Wii Sports and went, "OMG! What IS this? A tech demo!? Haha, what a horrible console!" And they keep dogging the Wii only through the prism of cinema. "The Wii does not do HD!" "The Wii does not have HDMI!" "The Wii does not fully integrate with home theaters!" Since they believe cinema gaming is ALL GAMING, they say, "LOL, Wii is teh fad." They actually believe the trends in cinema (such as HD tv sets) are the same as trends in gaming.
It wasn't too long ago that arcade gaming was seen as the standard of all gaming. All the consoles tried to be like arcade machines. And before that, Dungeons and Dragons, boards games, and books, were seen as the standard of gaming. The point is that gaming doesn't "evolve" to a higher and higher ponit. It has cycles and changes to something else. All entertainment is novelty. After a decade, it changes.
As the Wii's success continues, many of these developers are saying, "Screw this! I am just going to work in the movie studios!" They cannot imagine gaming NOT being cinematic. As for someone who hates games that try to be like movies and game designers who think they are Speilbergs, this is the best thing that has happened to the gaming industry since the introduction of the NES.
Not that it ever was fun but this is getting ridiculously boring. Microsoft has a new article or press release or conference where all they do is blast the more succesfull product from another company every damn week.
Ballmer talks smack about Google's business plan even though they keep growing earnings and revenue at faster clip than MS. He then comes out and blasts Google's hiring and calls their company bloated even though Google makes more money per employee than Microsoft.
Bill Gates comes out and talks smack about the iPod and how the Zune is soooo much better and how the Zune is going to eat the iPod's lunch. Then Gates coems out and talks smack about OS X and its security flaws and how much better Vista's security is. The iPhone is announced and the Bill and Ballmer come out and start spreading nonsense about how the IPhone is going to suck because everything else out there already is so much better and how no one in business and in enterprise is going to want one.
And now the Wii is more popular than the 360 and they come out and talk crap about teh Wii's graphics when from day 1 Nintendo said the point of the console was not the graphics but the revolutionary new controller. MS looks alike a company that has no direction or leadership and all it is doing is reacting to whatever their competitors do. it is pathetic.
It has been shown on many occasions over the years that most developers dont actually figure out how to do the best with a system until at least a year after it has been out (sometimes it seems they dont get it until the end of the systems life).
Well I've wrestled with reality for thirty five years doctor, and I'm happy to say I finally won out over it.
Graphics are good for WOW, but when it comes to the game itself really doesn't play a big roll for me.
If a game has good game play and Story behind it, then it is fun. Graphics are supposed to add to that, not be the game.
Most of the devs in this generation of games seem to have forgotten that.
Scott Carr
I believe one of the Nintendo execs mentioned that the traditional review system dont lend themselves to reviewing new gameplay type games found on DS's and Wii's well.
A lot of Wii games that got lukewarm reviews have the converse effect in reality : my wife who is 37 is a regular for Wii Sports (bowling), Wii Play (Find Mii drives her nuts in trying to reach the higher levels) and Cooking Mama (she doesnt like Rayman because she sucks at timing in swinging the cow).
On the DS front, she currently loves Quickspot (DS), Cooking Mama (but of course), Cake Mania. Occasionally some of the quirkier titles like Elite Beat Agents get a big score but they dont happpen often.
Now, on paper it looks like none of these titles have substantial depth in gameplay, much less longevity. Dont even get started on the graphics. Some of these games score a measly 60% but as far as personal enjoyment goes, we'd certainly rate it higher for sheer entertainment and fun value.
So how do you find a more representative rating system where (sometimes), depth, length, graphics have little bearing on your actual enjoyment (and constant return to) of the title?
Nintendo is making 25% margin on every unit sold. Sony and MS are losing over $150 on every unit sold. If Sony and MS weren't protected from anti-dumping laws by this Justice Dept, they would have to sell their systems for at least $150 more. Their pricing is not temporary like a loss leader sale. Nintendo is the only one who attempts to follow the law, where Sony and MS steal IP and use it until they are stopped by an injunction. Nintendo always makes money on their products. Nintendo thought they might have a winner and needed to use chips in high present supply in order to fill the demand. 60% of HDTV owners have no idea how to get HD display from their TVs. Nintendo knew of these statistics and knew that most consumers would not be able to see any difference between the wii and the others. That's why until the wii and PS3 came out, 360s in video game stores were displayed in 480i. Not only do you need a HD display, converter and cables that all will pass the HD signal, but you also need a HD source that will not get converted. Just using a blue-ray or HDDVD drive does not mean that the source disk is encoded to display HD or you're just getting 480 up converted. Nintendo's poll of developers discovered that few were capable of producing full HD versions of projects. Developers want to decrease their project development time and Nintendo worked toward that. Now that the wii is selling so well, most of the major developers have announced that they will shift a major portion of their projects over to developing for the wii.