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What Developers Want From the Wii's Successor
donniebaseball23 writes "Wii 2 rumors are flying in advance of Nintendo's official reveal at E3 in June, but what would game developers like to see in a Wii successor? 'Without a doubt, my first request would be for an improved digital marketplace more along the lines of XBLA and PSN,' said one developer. 'We'd love more processing power, which is essential, and a better GPU as well,' said another."
A related article asks whether a high-powered new console really fits with Nintendo's strategy: "Nintendo is undoubtedly building its new system around a chipset it can buy for cheap and develop for with ease, and it'll be the system's peripheral capabilities (literally peripheral, if rumors of its fancy controller pan out) that catch people's attention — that the company will bank on using as the hook for consumers."
Simply put, if Wii 2 isn't at least a generation ahead of the PS3 and Xbox360, it will not be able to compete. The expectations of gamers now are photorealistic PC quality 3d graphics. The majority of console owners own PCs too, it's just a different world now.
Absolute tosh. The *VAST* majority of game development, and an ever increasing amount of sales is now done on the iPhone. You might demand PC quality graphics for gaming, but there are millions and millions of other people who are more than happy with angry birds. Apple has won the console wars, and the landscape of game development has changed radically as a result. As a game developer, the only thing I ask is that the next round of consoles appreciate that it's the iPhone they are up against, and not each other. If they get it wrong this time around, I predict the death knell of games consoles within 5 years.