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Does the Wii Provide A "Watered-Down" Game Experience?
CNet is running a story inspired by comments from Ubisoft's Ben Mattes about how the Wii affects game development. When asked why there was no Wii version of Prince of Persia, Mattes said, "The reality is that from a technical standpoint, the Wii cannot do what we wanted the game to do. The AI of Elika was highly advanced and required a lot of processing power; the world size and dynamic loading, the draw distance, the number of polygons in the characters... If we had done a Wii version, it would have been toned down, probably linear; it wouldn't have been an open-world game, and so it would have been a very different experience." The article goes on to look at a number of Wii games that are stripped-down versions of their Xbox 360 or PS3 counterparts. Of course, part of the Wii's drawing power is that it's much simpler than the other systems, and has brought casual gaming to millions more people than it would have otherwise. The question remains, as Kotaku points out, whether the Wii's audience will persist after the other systems match its casual-gaming capabilities.
provide a watered down computing experience?
Wii's are fun.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
If you design a game for a machine with 360 specs, it doesn't run very well on the Wii without redesign.
In other news, Mattes tried running Wii Sports on the 360, but it provided a "Watered down" experience.
There is nothing at all wrong with working within the constraints of a system and eeking out the absolute best you can from 'inferior' hardware.
Infact, having limited headroom forces innovative and new methods of doing what was taken for granted before.
The liqbase UI I am creating for the nokia handhelds makes use of these principles as well :)
it simply does the best it can within the low headroom of the available hardware.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMXp0Dg_UaY
liqbase
The AI of Elika was highly advanced and required a lot of processing power; the world size and dynamic loading, the draw distance, the number of polygons in the characters... If we had done a Wii version, it would have been toned down, probably linear; it wouldn't have been an open-world game, and so it would have been a very different experience."
Then the platform is not your target. The Wii isn't about pushing the latest fast hardware to its very limits, just so you can push a ridiculous amount of polygons per second onto the screen. It is about making games that are fun... and you can CERTAINLY do that within the confines of just about any machine. Remember the IBM XT? NES? Gameboy? Some of the best games I ever played had nothing but text, running on a 10mhz processor.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
The Wii isn't designed for these kinds of games.
That's what the X-Box 360, PS3, and PC are for. The Wii is for people who want to play games they can quickly pick up and put down.
D13 H4rD G4M3RZ are NOT the target audience.
(Score -1: Obvious)
Of course it provides a 'watered down' experience - when the games in question are ports of the PS3 or the Xbox 360. The hardware and capabilities of the machine cannot compare, so the developers have to shoehorn the equivalent game into the Wii's specs and in the process, trim it down. If you look at individual titles made for the Wii (not ports of other console's games) then no, I really don't think the experience is watered down. Games are games, and people (should) be playing them for the enjoyment and competition. Maybe we should ask the question about some other consoles games that rely so much on graphics that the point of the game is lost and the entertainment factor is lost. Is this a watered down games experience?
I think that the Wii provides a different gaming experience. It can be summarized thusly:
My mother owns a wii. My father owns a wii. My sister owns a wii. My brother owns a Wii. My cousin owns a Wii. My 3 years old nephew uses a Wii. My grandparents have played on a Wii. Nursing homes have Wiis.
None of those people have PS3s or XBox.
Call it watered down, call it casual gaming, call it whatever. It appeals to the masses in a way that the other gaming systems don't.
We emerge from our mother's womb an unformatted diskette; our culture formats us. - Douglas Coupland
It goes without saying that a lazy port of a title to a system with insufficient power to run the original, with chunks cut out to make it fit, will be a piece of shit. It's as true now as when they unveiled Duke 3D for the Game.Com. That tells us absolutely F-all about the remaining 90% of Wii software that wasn't pumped out as a high-return bond by investor-fellating cash-mongers.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
The Wii doesn't provide a "watered-down" game experience.
The developers who port a game to the Wii as an after-thought provide a "watered-down" game experience.
I say don't drink and drive, you might spill your drink. Before you get behind the wheel just stop and think.
I am one of those that doesn't give two shits how many polygons does the animation have. I find shooters to be utterly boring. Finally, since Ubisoft put their mitts on Heroes of Might and Magic, they (IMHO) devastated the game, which used to be fun - now it's just a big 3D graphic masturbation (I hate when I can't rotate the view in any way, to see what is the path a creature can walk on).
If the typical Wii user is like me, Ubisoft should keep the hell out of it. Ubisoft wouldn't know a fun game if it hit them in the collective head.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
The Wii itself is not the problem. It's technical specs are not the problem. The problem is the people making games for it and their overall lackluster approach to the whole process. Nintendo and their marketing are to blame for this.
When they ported Resident Evil 4 to the Wii with new controls, they managed to make it look worse than the original Gamecube version which could be run from the very same console. This is typical of the kind of shoddy workmanship that is put into most Wii games. Games like Mario Galaxy and Metroid show what the Wii is capable of if effort is put in, but most developers aren't willing to go to such lengths.
It's not just graphics. The overall quality of Wii games is consistently lower than the average for PS2, DS and Gamecube titles. Games are short, rely too much on motion control, lack additional content and generally fall far below the value for money mark. Universally, developers have decided that Wii owners are 4-10 year olds and soccer moms who will spend $60 and 60 minutes on a game before becoming bored. The way you have to flail your arms about to play some titles, I can't say I really blame them.
As an experiment, the Wii has both hugely succeeded and epically failed. Yes, it has succeeded in selling game consoles to a massively wider mainstream market. But it has also succeeded in proving that in any industry, the mainstream market does not desire quality. The mainstream wants crud. They spend huge amounts on sugary gop and if you serve them up sirloin they'll complain because they prefer the slop.
The doom of the Wii has been sealed by its user base and existing game library. It doesn't matter if the next Zelda game surpasses the Ocarina of Time or if the definitive FPS of our time is a Wii exclusive. Most existing Wii owners do not want "Triple A" titles or anything close to it. They want Cooking Mama and Wii Fit and Mario Kart, because that's want Nintendo has told them they want, and that's what they got and thats all they'll ever want now.
So, no developer is really going to spend the effort making a quality Wii title. They're going to make crud. As times passed, this became a self fulfilling prophecy to the point that normal video game players stopped buying Wii's or sold them. The fate of Madworld, poor as it was, is indicative of this trend. It's now a vicious circle which the Wii, and probably Nintendo, have no hope of ever escaping.
The Wii could have been a success story. Ultimately, graphics don't count for a awful lot when it comes to quality titles, and the breadth and depth of titles on the PS2 prove what can be done with limited hardware. Alas, the Wii did not take this route. Instead of providing affordable quality, it has provided cheap, and you got what you paid for.
It didn't have to be like this. The Wii could have been the next PS2. But it isn't. Instead it's the next MySpace.
May the Maths Be with you!
The Jak and Daxter games on the PS2 used dynamic loading, and the PS2 hardware was clearly inferior to the Wii in every respect.
And check out the reviews of GTA Chinatown Wars for DS, Rockstar clearly put the effort in to think about what the DS could do best, and build the game around that.
Then again, the Prince of Persia team have a history of crappy ports. Their last Wii title was a horrible port with a frame rate that dropped through the floor during the final battle, even though it was derived from the PS2 game.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak