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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.'"
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?
"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.
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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.
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
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?
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
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.
Why do people keep saying "in another year or two, when the novelty of the motion detector has worn off"? This statement just doesn't make any sense to me at all. That is like saying "well, in a year or two when 0-60 in 4 seconds of your sports car wears off", it isn't going to. It isn't just a gimmick. It is a true advancement in the way interact with games. Sure, there are going to be games that implement motion control in crappy ways. The key is that there are going to be amazing games as well that simply aren't possible with a standard controller.
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Case in point: when you watch old movies, you sometimes think to yourself "those are computer graphics", and they're still better-looking than today's consoles (and yes I'm talking about the Xbox360 and PS3 in this case, or even the most expensive consumer-grade 3D card). So if your brain can make the difference between real things and 3D things in movies that took months to render, imagine how long it will be until 500$ consoles can do it in real-time.
Nintendo are smart to stay away from that "photorealistic 3D graphics" race. The finish line is still decades away.
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?!"
What do you think SIXAXIS is, if not an attempt to steal Wii's thunder with a motion sensitive controller?
But you know what? It actually isn't that easy to throw something together like the Wiimote, to write the software libraries so developers can make the most use of the input, to tune those first-party games so that the controller feels as natural as possible.
Sony chose to spend their development time integrating the Cell while Nintendo decided to spend their development time on the controller. That was the bed Sony made, and now they must lie in it. They had your idea, to try to hack something together quick-like to try to "stillborn" the wii, and the best they could do was acceleration detection only in a two-handed controller, which is only used to good effect in games like Flow.
So how well did this strategy work for Sony? How many Wii sales do you think were lost? Is it clear that the Wiimote is an integral part of the console, while it is the SIXAXIS that is the gimmick? And do you really think that rushing off to make a full-fledged wiimote ripoff so it's ready by the end of the year would have even the slightest chance of making the Wii "stillborn" when it's already sold several times more than the PS3 and is likely to be even further ahead by christmas 07?
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