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KingOfHyrule

I'll go against logic with this one

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The specs were not given out because they knew they would be rideculed in front of the other 2 consoles.

 

That is a simple fact.

That is why he didn't want to release the specs. The press would have had a field day.

The Wii is ridiculed anyway, by ignorant people incapable of making comparisons between consoles beyond merely the system specifications.

 

The fact is, everyone is well aware (or at least should be by now) that the Wii isn't that powerful a console when compared with either Xbox 360 or PS3.

 

Maybe if Nintendo had lied and said the Wii is the most powerful next-gen system, you'd have a point.

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Wii released in PAL regions on the 7th and 8th December Respectively. It is now the 18th January 2007. Not even 50 days yet into release. The systems currently in the "experimentation" phase whereby developers are releasing these mediocre games as a basis for determining if the user base is sufficient. Why pump heaps of resources into an unproven format? It makes no business sense. Remember, Nintendo has a seriously damaged reputation when it comes to third party relations and this is Nintendos way of slowly healing the wounds if you like. Be thankful we're getting any games at all. Providing demand remains strong for Wii accross the board and people buy sufficient amount of these "experimentation games", quality will naturally follow. Be patient, it will be at least another 9 to 12 months or so before we start seeing a significant leap in game quality. If we don't see any such significant improvement by 2008, then there is legitimate cause for concern, for now though, its unfounded.

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solitanze, I partly agree and disagree with that. I agree that it's still early days and we can't project what we have onto the future and say future is set. We have to be patient, as you say. With such a drastic change of interface (wii remote), each company will need to accumulate experience developping games for Wii. This includes framework for programming.

Be thankful we're getting any games at all.

That's where I disagree a bit. I'm certainly thankful for certain devs of key launch titles (like red steel), who obviously worked hard with Nintendo to bring the game to Wii, but most others are money grabbers who want their share of profit that comes associated with a console launch. Particularly given the hype building up before the launch.

 

One notable previous example of this was Tiger Woods golf on DS. EA just couldn't resist releasing that for DS launch. They rushed it and it was badly done but scored well enough to grab their share of the pie, as it benefits them to have a recognized brand on the shelf as early as possible.

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Those of you who are scared of the continuous stream of last gen ports have to remember this:

 

- No developer will produce PS2, Xbox or GameCube games from this time on

- The Wii is immensely more popular than the PSP.

 

Games that look 'last gen' will be designed for the Wii from now on. They can use the additional shaders and memory of the Wii now. This should fix problems like bland textures such as in Twilight Princess.

 

The port trend is only due to the late release of Wii devkits. All Wii games except Red Steel were designed on a GameCube devkit most of the way so little effort was put in. That's over now though.

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Their have been very few system launches that have not been filled with ports of previous gen games with identical, or barely improved graphics from the last gen.

 

Look at the 360 launch - Did King Kong really look any better than the Xbox version? Quake 4 much better than Doom 3 on Xbox? Gun better than the Xbox version? No, not at all. Infact on an SD TV the difference wasn't even noticeable. Not to mention that the 360 is hugely more powerful than the Xbox. Even the games that followed - Far Cry, Tomb Raider etc. didn't look much better and its only recently we've seen games that take full advantage of the hardware launching.

 

Now the Wii is only twice as powerful as gamecube, a console that saw a lot of gorgeous games but we will never see leaps in graphics quality of the size that ultimately there will be between Xbox and Xbox 360 games. However how anyone can look at games like Mario Galaxy and not notice the huge difference between that and Sunshine is beyond me.

 

None of the games released so far have exactly been graphical powerhouses but in the cases of Wii Play, Wii Sports and Wario Ware I can't see much room for improvement, the graphical style suits what the game is and there's nothing much that could be done save for totally changing the style of the game. Yes, there have been a good few lazy ports so far that don't look as good as a lot of Gamecube games but that is an inevitably early in a systems life, I have no doubts that as time goes by we'll see much more impressive Wii games and right now frankly the graphics in games like Zelda are perfectly adequate.

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However how anyone can look at games like Mario Galaxy and not notice the huge difference between that and Sunshine is beyond me.

 

I dont see this huge difference your speaking of, then again ive never played it.

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I dont see this huge difference your speaking of, then again ive never played it.

 

Nor have I but if you watch both games in motion or even look at screenshots the difference is very clear.

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Can't see a huge difference between Galaxy and Sunshine either but I have to admit Galaxy does look very nice.

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However how anyone can look at games like Mario Galaxy and not notice the huge difference between that and Sunshine is beyond me.

 

Yea, the difference in quality of the graphics is ace. It's the difference in the quality of, say, Resident Evil 4 and "realistic" PS3/360 titles that I can't see...

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Well yeah, and as yet it isn't there but in all honesty the Wii doesn't have the power to push games that look like Gears, Lost Planet etc. at us and if it did it would have cost a lot more. I'm personally happy with games that look like Resident Evil 4 on a system thats much cheaper. I still think Resi 4 still looks gorgeous, in spite of owning some of the best looking 360 games.

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However how anyone can look at games like Mario Galaxy and not notice the huge difference between that and Sunshine is beyond me.
I'm sorry, but that's fanboyish. Saying you there's not much difference between Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness and the 360 Tomb Raider, but there is a major gap between Sunshine and Galaxy... Come on, get real.

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...As far as I know the specs were released. It was around double of whatever the GC had.

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Can't see a huge difference between Galaxy and Sunshine either but I have to admit Galaxy does look very nice.

 

You just hit a new low there fella, congratulations.

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...As far as I know the specs were released. It was around double of whatever the GC had.

 

Do you mean those ones that IGN posted aaages ago?

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Yeah, I think he does.

 

The specs released by IGN were probably correct after all.

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Matt posted on IGN Mail:

 

"To really be blunt, it is basically an overclocked GameCube with more RAM. If you don't want to hear that, I'm sorry, bit it's the truth."

 

It proves my point and it's said by a man who knows what to talk about and what he's talking about. here you, go, souped up GameCube. That's why it's not cube-shaped, it has bein souped 'up'! Haha! Almost funny.

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Matt posted on IGN Mail:

 

"To really be blunt, it is basically an overclocked GameCube with more RAM. If you don't want to hear that, I'm sorry, bit it's the truth."

 

It proves my point and it's said by a man who knows what to talk about and what he's talking about. here you, go, souped up GameCube. That's why it's not cube-shaped, it has bein souped 'up'! Haha! Almost funny.

For all of you desperate to know the Wii's specs - to masturbate over or whatever you'd like to do if you ever got your hands on this life-changing knowledge - the same thing happens regularly in the world of PC hardware, with little or no criticism. And I'm not talking about user-end overclocking, many newly released hardware components have been faster or more efficient iterations of existing hardware designs.

 

But even so, this still poses questions for those of you with a fetish for specifications: by how much is the Wii an overclocked Gamecube, and by how much has its memory increased?

 

If it is true that the Wii is an overclocked Gamecube - I'm not treating what Matt Casamassina has to say as gospel, although I'm inclined to believe it rather than not based on what I've seen of the Wii so far - then I really don't mind. It's most likely the very reason backwards compatability (something I deem important) works so well on the Wii, where as it's rubbish on the 360 and from some reports isn't that great on the PS3 either.

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I'm sorry, but that's fanboyish. Saying you there's not much difference between Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness and the 360 Tomb Raider, but there is a major gap between Sunshine and Galaxy... Come on, get real.

 

Fanboyish? Please, I'm not a twelve year old kid who gets my kicks off arguing with people on forum. I haven't got the need, the time or the desire to be fanboyish. I own a Wii, a 360 and a PS2 and have enjoyed a mix of games across each system, I have no platform preference whatsoever.

 

Let me ask you this? When did I mention Angel of Darkness, there's a major difference between that old PS2 title and Legends on the 360. But between Legends on the Xbox and on the 360? Its at a better resolution and some of the textures are enhanced, thats the only real difference and yes, I have played both version. Gun and King Kong are exactly the same. Its the same difference as displayed with the PC versions, a slight enhancement but nothing huge.

 

Sunshine was a game which was at times very rough around the edges, that of course didn't spoil my enjoyment of it. It was a fantastic game that was very beautiful in places but it also looked quite rough at times.

 

mario03.jpg

 

09.jpg

 

The difference stounds out a lot better in motion but compare two similar boss battles and you can see the difference. Galaxy looks a step up from Sunshine in much the same way that games such as Gears of War look a step up from Xbox games like Brute Force. (I think that was the Xbox's Gears style game anyway that was supposed to be the next big thing and flopped)

 

At the end of the day when it boils down to it I think at this stage its a bit petty for graphics to be such a big issue. We've reached a stage where great graphics can be achieved easily and whilst you get developers that can't be arsed (Step forward Ubi Soft) and that isn't on, the majority of games at current Wii/Xbox/Cube/PS2 level can still be beautiful enough to create immersive, impressive worlds. The game that has immersed me most in the last 2 years was Fahrenheit for PS2, a much uglier game than anything on my 360 yet I adored that and was utterly gripped, something I can't say for a single title on my 360 inspite of its vastly superior graphics.

 

I can still play it now, having experienced games that look like Gears of War etc. and still be just as immersed. With Wii we're not paying the price for the hardware, we're paying the price for the new control system with its refined last gen hardware. With 360/PS3 we're paying the price for the hardwore, the control system is merely a refined version of the last gen control scheme.

 

Wii could of course have been a 360 crippling HD beast of a machine yet it would have lost its small, slick design and lost its accessible price tag. That would have been a much greater shame than having graphics that are still fantastic for the most part.

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(copy and paste)

 

revoeyes.blogspot.com/2007/01/ps3-cell-processor-less-than-2-times-as.html

 

Just thought I'd post this since I chanced upon it. Apparently PS3's cell processor isn't exactly all that "uber".

 

They also have a full spec list for the Wii. Interesting stuff if you can understand it I guess, I sure can't.

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OK Jay, fair enough, it wasn't fanboyish, but it's exaggerated. You're either overestimating Galaxy (which in fact looks great, sure) or underestimating Sunshine.

 

To get this over with, let me post this. These are the specs we can take for granted:

CPU: 729 MHz IBM G3-level, comparable to the 485 MHz Gekko in the Cube. Possible improvements in floating-point calculation are rumoured, the onboard cache has been confirmed to be 'doubled'.

 

GPU: 249 MHz ATI Flipper (Cube: 162 MHz) upgrade, sound processor included. IGN seems to say that the texture cache has tripled.

 

Memory: It has 24 MB of superfast 1T-SRAM with 16 MB slowass RAM like the Cube, but it has been expanded with 64 MB of extra 1T-SRAM.

 

All in all, it's basically an overclocked GameCube as it uses the GameCube components at a 50% faster clock speed. However there are somethings we should note.

 

The GameCube, especially during the end of its lifetime, suffered pretty badly from lack of useful memory. Only the fast 24 MB could be used for most jobs. It resulted in bland textures in many games (eg Twilight Princess) because the quality needed to be downscaled for the textures to fit in the memory. The lack of memory also meant that a lot of high-quality games were difficult to port. The Wii however, has more than 3 times the useful memory the Cube has, so problems like that should be resolved. The larger texture cache in the GPU suggests that it has become relatively quicker in handling textures, so one of the biggest Cube graphics problems should be over.

 

Also, the shaders (or the parts of the GPU that do the shading, at least) were not sufficient anymore for the next generation of games. A patent Nintendo filed way after Cube launch, Mario Galaxy and some effects in Red Steel seem to suggest that the shading capabilities of the Wii have improved tremendously over GameCube, however. And that's important really, because 80% of what makes next gen graphics is shading.

 

All in all, strictly speaking the Wii is an overclocked GameCube. That doesn't mean it will stick in last-gen quality. Zelda shows nothing of the Wii's potential, Mario Galaxy is a far better indication. I expect the Wii can handle Half-Life 2 level graphics quite easily, and there's nothing wrong with that.

 

(copy and paste)

 

revoeyes.blogspot.com/2007/01/ps3-cell-processor-less-than-2-times-as.html

 

Just thought I'd post this since I chanced upon it. Apparently PS3's cell processor isn't exactly all that "uber".

 

They also have a full spec list for the Wii. Interesting stuff if you can understand it I guess, I sure can't.

Somehow I think that was a biased benchmarks. If you test the Wii CPU and PS3 CPU on the same things, the gap may look small because the strength of the PS3 CPU lies in other areas. Though it's not as powerful as the spec sheet suggests, it blows the Wii CPU away.

 

The GPU is what really matters for the graphics though.

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Matt posted on IGN Mail:

 

"To really be blunt, it is basically an overclocked GameCube with more RAM. If you don't want to hear that, I'm sorry, bit it's the truth."

 

It proves my point and it's said by a man who knows what to talk about and what he's talking about. here you, go, souped up GameCube. That's why it's not cube-shaped, it has bein souped 'up'! Haha! Almost funny.

 

Just what we all thought. It's shame no one bar Nintendo has really even bothered to make a decnt looking game. Well, maybe Red Steel, but you can read one review which says the graphics are great and another that says they're total crap. Very confusing!

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Just what we all thought. It's shame no one bar Nintendo has really even bothered to make a decnt looking game. Well, maybe Red Steel, but you can read one review which says the graphics are great and another that says they're total crap. Very confusing!

No one could. Pretty much every developer was stuck on Cube devkits until summer. Red Steel got priority on a devkit but it still remaine a GameCube game most of the way. Better games are coming, I'm sure.

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Just what we all thought. It's shame no one bar Nintendo has really even bothered to make a decnt looking game. Well, maybe Red Steel, but you can read one review which says the graphics are great and another that says they're total crap. Very confusing!

 

Thats because the game is a mixed bag. Both the good and bad. Nothing outstanding, but there are some environments in the game that are greater than GC STANDARD visuals.

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Maybe if Nintendo had lied and said the Wii is the most powerful next-gen system, you'd have a point.

 

"When you see the graphics, you will say wow"

Iwata is like a used car sales man desperately trying to sell an old banger. The Wii can't compete with the other two power-wise, everyone knows that except Nintendo, who'll just keep lying and lying and lying.

Some things never change.

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"When you see the graphics, you will say wow"

Iwata is like a used car sales man desperately trying to sell an old banger. The Wii can't compete with the other two power-wise, everyone knows that except Nintendo, who'll just keep lying and lying and lying.

Some things never change.

 

Used car salesman , lol that is post of the day!

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