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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.
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?
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.
Well the worst thing about his complaints is, the new Prince of Persia wasn't a good a very good game. Elika's AI may have been complicated, but it wasn't reflected in the end-product by her doing anything very cool. The "open-world" concept of the game was pretty weak-- getting from point A to point B was linear, but you were just given the option of whether you wanted to go from point A to point B, or from point A to point C.
Prince of Persia: Sands of Time was a better game, and it was linear. The girl sidekick from that game was just as good as Elika. It didn't require particularly high-end hardware.
Indeed, when I read "complicated AI", my games dev Spider Sense translates it as "Uses more clock cycles to produces unpredictable emergent behaviour that defeats the level designers' attempts to stop the AI killing itself or humping the scenery in new retarded ways each time you play."
"AI" is for research projects. If you want an enjoyable game, simple finite state machines FTW every time. It's all about the testability.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Your frame of reference is obviously that of a "normal video game player." You are not the Wii's target market, and thus you feel understandably disenfranchised. I just cannot manage to see how appealing to the "mainstream market" ie normal, everyday people, reflects a failure in development. I also think that you drastically underestimate the number of shitty games for the PS2. There were close to 2500 games made for that console, and if you think the average quality was that great, then you have never been in a gamestop bargain bin.
In writing this comment, I am aware of the fact that there are not as many top-quality wii games as I would have hoped or expected at this stage of development. However, I think that the games designed specifically for the wii are fantastic, and I blame the deficit partially on poor ports and the cost barriers involved when companies decide to develop a title. After all, if you were a developer, would it appear to be more cost effective to program for joysticks and buttons than a novel motion-capture interface? Of course, because the title can be sold to PS3 and Xbox and PC users alike, and your staff likely has more experience in programing for these interfaces.