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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.'"
The wii's motion sensing capability is so novel, it really makes the graphics not matter.
Graphics are not the only thing that makes a game console new and improved, there are many more factors.
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
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.
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
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
Exactly! I'll admit that the $$$ boxes like PS3 and Xbox 360 have some pretty graphics, PCs are still better. I already have a DVD player, a stereo system and a computer. Why would I want to buy a PS or Xbox? What can they offer that I can't already do?
On the other hand... the Wii DOES have something to offer, yet its not the graphics powerhouse that its 'competitors' are. Oh and as a little bonus, Wii is cheaper by about 50%.
Sony and Microsoft have to be really pissed about it. They must be like, buuuuuut.... uh.... our graphics are better. And... uh... our controllers vibrate! Does that count as motion control?
What I find really interesting is that almost *every* feature now used on game controllers was first introduced by Nintendo. Their base design for the NES is still used today: D-pad on the left, buttons on the right, start/select in the middle. Then came the SNES adding shoulder buttons and two more buttons on the right in the diamond configuration - which is still pretty much exactly the configuration used by everyone but Nintendo.
So looking back I guess the Wii controller shouldn't be a surprise - it's exactly what Nintendo has been doing ever since the Famicom's inception: innovation in controller design.
Also interesting is that the Gamecube was their only system that didn't include anything really new on the controller (analog shoulder buttons was about it) and was also their least-successful system.
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
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?!"