Slashdot Mirror
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."
I hope I'm wrong, but I hear serious Nintendo fans vastly overestimating the hardware capabilities of the successor to the Wii. They're hoping for hardware that will rival next gen offerings from Sony and Microsoft despite the fact that Nintendo has shown it doesn't want to compete in that high-end console space anymore. I hope I'm wrong though. With all Nintendo's success in the last generation perhaps they can come out with a Wii successor that has beefy hardware.
Part of the hardcore faithful who believed in Apple long before it was cool again to do so
It's a serious embarrassment to have a modern gaming console still outputting SD video quality.
If by "embarrassment", you mean "top selling console that never had to be sold at a loss" and "massive profit", then yes they should be embarrassed. I would like to be embarrassed like that too.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
And we are also tired of:
Are Linux users lemmings collectively jumping off of the cliff of reliable, well-engineered commercial software? -- Matt Welsh
We look forward to your upcoming Wii successor as well as it's innovative new online services. Sincerely, PSN Hackers
They are aware. They just don't give a damn.
No one can release an update this buggy and not do a thing for so long otherwise. I love comments of massive depth where clicking on the reply textbox will simply expand the above comment and defocus the reply text box. Yes great feature that one.
And tell me again why the "Working" symbol flashes up for 3 seconds when I ctrl-F4 the page away!
One of the things I have liked about the Wii is getting the games, and feeling like I have purchased a complete game. No "online passes", no resale penalties, not constantly feeling like I have to purchase additional DLC for the game to be complete. The simplicity of the Wii is what got me back into gaming, and the aforementioned aspects of the "Digital Market Place" being so integrated into the gaming experience, or at least how publishers exploit it, is what's driving me away.
To me, a true HD Wii with a modern GPU, decent raw processing power, and higher capacity media for games would be perfect.
A controller pan? Is there going to be Kitchen Hero game?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Nintendo got away with it on the Gamecube, and then again on the WIi. They got away with it because Xbox was still very new, and the PC technology wasn't vastly outpacing console gaming. Now we are in another era, and it's time for the consoles to move the bar. If console hardware design isn't vastly superior to PC design, the console gaming will eventually become a thing of the past as Xbox will probably lead the way of combining the features of the PC into the features of a console.
The solution would be a modular design with upgradability in the core components. 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.
I would buy a Wii 2, but Wii 2 has to be able to do things my PC can't do. The PS3 proves that pricepoint does matter in the short term but PS3 is also successful in the long term so it's not just price. It's mainly about the games. Nintendo wont be able to get by with another fancy controller, they are going to have to change the technology.
I think one way would be to go back to cartridges. SSD now has enough space on it to surpass DVDs in all areas. Another would be to have extremely powerful GPU, and a lot of ram. Finally they need to get the internet right. Built in WiFi would be helpful.
Analog for the win, because it doesn't have lag.
They didn't get away with anything on the GameCube. It was a highly competent system that blew the PS2 out of the water and nearly matched the X-Box with processing power. It was a fantastic system that came out at a weird time and just never gained traction. Had Reggie been at the helm when the GameCube launched, we might have seen a different outcome.
Why should console game hardware be vastly superior to PC design? Your TV only does 1080p at best, with the majority of HDTV's out there being 720p. Granted, newer consoles need to allow for higher resolution textures, but when we have videocards pushing 3 monitors at a time these days, we certainly don't need anything that powerful. Not only that, I don't want to have to pay for anything that expensive.
The Wii 2 has to be able to do things your PC can't? The Wii already does that. I don't see your PC using anything like the Wiimote for input. That's the difference. Also, I'm thinking you're going to have a hard time playing a FPS in your lay-z-boy with a PC.
And a modular design would be absurd for a console. You'd end up fragmenting the console user base with too many configurations. Then you'd end up with the inefficiency of PC games, where software vendors have to take a massive array of different configurations into account. The beauty of console games are that you can highly optimize them for a specific hardware set, thereby letting you get away with less powerful hardware. If you look at Nintendo's past, it's riddled with add-ons, ram upgrades, etc. that never caught on. That's because console games want to take the console out of the box and never have to touch it. Once you make the investment, that's it for the lifetime of the console.
Wise men say, "Forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza."