About the EGM Rumor

[BigTac]

http://www.joystiq.com/entry/1234000240070302/

 

GameCube rendition of Link in Twilight PrincessThe January 2006 issue of EGM features some more ammunition in the ongoing console flame war with reports that early Nintendo Revolution graphics are “barely better than those on GameCube.â€

 

From the Rumor Mill [all bolded text is Q’s]: “Visually impaired

 

The Q hates being the bearer of bad news, but it comes with the territory (at least that’s what the rumormonger handbook says). During a recent powwow with a few well-known gamemakers, some discussed their hands-on time with early Revolution development kits. OK, here it goes: According to those fellas, the graphics that Nintendo’s next-gen system can produce are barely better than those on GameCube. Hey, sounds a lot like Xbox-Xbox 360.â€

 

That last line is a good reminder that we saw similar visual issues with 360 games early in development as well, and quite a few of those titles turned out decently in the end (for launch titles). Of course, if you’re working with graphics hardware only 2-3 times more powerful than the GameCube’s, don’t expect a miracle in the graphics capabilities, especially with alpha or beta SDKs. The Revolution may get hyped to kingdom come, but there’s a reason why screenshots aren’t being released to the public until next year. Temper your launch expectations, and we should all rest a little easier… till E3 rolls around, that is.

 

 

Let me just tell you guys this "barely better than Gamecube" is wrong. I asked someone at Ubisoft about this and they basically laughed. He did tell me just like Nintendo has said that it won't be as powerful as 360/PS3 but assured me that the Revolution will hold it's ground. The developer(s) that EGM got there info from obviously doesn't yet have final kits or they just gave out late info from months ago. This info in running on the upgraded GC dev kits in which Nintendo have been referring to when they talk about developers starting on GC kits then moving to Revolution kits later on. Nintendo are in the process sending out the final kits now some have had the final kits for longer then others of course. There might be more info on Dec.2 from Miyamoto or even some others but not anything major. But Nintendo do there best starting in Jan 06 to keep the hype until E3.

 

This statement right here disproves this rumor right away, From 1up developers interview.

Geremy Mustard (Chair): The Revolution will be much more powerful than the GameCube. I think people will be surprised at how many games will continue to be made across all three consoles.

[MunKy]

There would be no way Rev could survive if it was barely moremore powerful than GC. GFX are a big part of the equation and if casual gamers who see nothing but GFX look at an "outdated" machine they will go for 360/PS3. It will be same as GC/xbox comparison. Similar results with more efficiency.

[Hellfire]

I was thinking about that statement too. Great to have you here Big Tac

[pedrocasilva]

Gamecube had storage problems with 1,8 GB discs against the regular 4,7 GB and dual layered 8,5 GB on XBOX (featuring S3TC, like those on gamecube).

 

Also the RAM available wasn't much, just like in every console this generation.

 

A Gamecube with more RAM could display crisp textures, and more storage could provide just that, just those two things alone would make the graphics several times better.

 

As for the rest... Xbox pushed 15 million poligons per second at 30 frames per second with some effects applied; Gamecube pushed easily 15 million poligons at 60 frames per second with all effects applied on the consoles launch with rogue squadron II and pushed 21-30 million with all the effects available at 60 frames per second in rogue squadron III, with that said, it could push somewhere as much as 40-60 million with all effects applied at 30 frames per second. bare in mind that gamecube did 8 textures per pass and 8 light sources in realtime where the xbox did only half of that and we have a pretty good system.

 

A RE4 with crisper textures requires more storage space for them and also more available RAM... wait! isn't that Resident Evil 5?

 

A new graphics card will surely have, at least 8 to 16 rendering pipes, and as of the CPU... the one in Xbox 360 is like... equal to a celeron 1,7... as a celeron 1,7 is based on a pentium 4, netburst architecture, it doesn't even double the performance of the original 733 MHz one in Xbox (1 GHz P3 beated the sh*t out of a 1,4 Pentum IV) add less cache for it to being equal to a celeron, and a 5% cache miss and you have a powerful chip... NOT.

 

Xbox chip had to be at 933 MHz to beat the geccko in GC at 485 MHz, so... even the Xbox 360 doesn't put the GC one to shame (nor it puts the original Xbox one, for that matter). The GPU does, but again... what was needed more? more GPU adding to the already good graphics, or more CPU giving it the ability to process more AI, physics and other code?

 

We know nintendo is not going to stick with the same CPU, in my opinion, revolution doesnt even need to be more powerful graphics wise; what I want is a good CPU capable of doing lots of Physic, AI amongst other things, that seem to fail in the other next generation consoles.

 

the graphics in this gen were already photorealistic, more poligons here and there will not result in a diference from NES to SNES, nor PSone to PS2, simplifing the CPU's for graphics is all we are seying, PS3 and X360; Cell and Xenon respectively being simplified PowerPC's simplified to achieve those clock speeds, turning them beyond recoinaisance in terms of running complex code, with AI and Physics, ranging from barely there to awful, how can we say these consoles are powerful? they are underpowered next to a 2 year old computer in terms of CPU performance, meaning they cant keep up in physics or AI on the high option from some current games, leave alone the ones from 5 years from here on.

[Shino]

Well xbox 360 graphics are “barely better than those on GameCube.â€, so I'm not worried.

[BigTac]

Also I just want to let you know that Nintendo could have showed specs at TGS or game trailers now if they wanted. I'm saying this because I have heard people say that the reason they haven't showed any footage or screens is because they can't. As far as the E3 06 unvieling I am certain that we know the final name before then, along with the shell. And for the silly people who say 360 graphics are comparible to GC you are joking.

 

don't be suprised to see a new Pilotwings for the Revolution. Will it be at E3? I don't think so but I heard that Nintendo will bring it back.

[pedrocasilva]

Also I just want to let you know that Nintendo could have showed specs at TGS or game trailers now if they wanted. I'm saying this because I have heard people say that the reason they haven't showed any footage or screens is because they can't. As far as the E3 06 unvieling I am certain that we know the final name before then, along with the shell. And for the silly people who say 360 graphics are comparible to GC you are joking.

 

don't be suprised to see a new Pilotwings for the Revolution. Will it be at E3? I don't think so but I heard that Nintendo will bring it back.

Xbox 360 graphics are comparable to the pinnacle of this generation graphics...

Visually, PGR3 is set up to look absolutely gorgeous when in 720p or 1080i. It's still pretty in 480p, but it looks more like an Xbox game to be honest. The high-def setting makes a world of difference.

Source: http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/667/667076p3.html

 

Even the biased guys over at IGN think so... as I said above the diference is not that great, appart from high definition.

We saw DOOM 3 running on XBOX, so what renders Quake 4 impossible on XBOX then? DOOM 3 was running with less animation frames in XBOX said this so does Quake IV in X360, aswell as lots of slowdown in areas towards the latter half of the game. I wouldn't say comparable though, more like "not a big leap".

 

As for the pilotwings tidbits, do you know if it's being done by Factor 5?

[Innovance]

^^^^Thats not exactly true what they are saying, the graphics are still the same at 480p. They just changed the image size without an appropriate resolution shift.

 

They need to change their distance from the Tv or at least try running the game on an actual appropriate sized SDTV as opposed to just changing the resolution on hdtv. This is a comparison i dont think we've seen anywhere yet.

[Kav]

Xbox 360 graphics are comparable to the pinnacle of this generation graphics...

 

With some games this is true, but the capability of the graphics on the 360 aren't comparable to the current gen consoles. Look at Gears of War, that looks awesome, easily better than any current gen game! Idon't think current gen could push graphics to that extent.

[pedrocasilva]

With some games this is true, but the capability of the graphics on the 360 aren't comparable to the current gen consoles. Look at Gears of War, that looks awesome, easily better than any current gen game! I don't think current gen could push graphics to that extent.

Of course it can't, but it's not like it renders this generation graphics ugly.

This next generation is not about poligons anymore, it's more about texture rendering, Unreal Engine 3 running on Gears Of War is really Bump mapping intensive, DOOM 3 without the textures and loads of bump-mapping can be considered downright ugly, blocky and achieavable on a Dreamcast, on xbox they needed to use the extra poligon trick to pull out more than 4 textures per pass, 2 of those being solely bump mapping. it could be done directly and without hit on the cube, if it had more RAM and more Storage on-disc, because cube has double the textures per pass, as well as simultaneous lights without hit.

 

My point is, it's just not that big leap anymore, the tecnology you see in next gen is possible in this gen a certain extent, sure it's being implemented freshly on a loose platform, what this gen needs is pipelines, 16 pipes rendering two textures per pipe is already 32 textures per pass and it needs RAM space to store those, still... the graphics are comparable direcly to this generation ones, that is if you leave out paralax bump mapping advanced lightning (in most cases) and HD, compared to last generation... the biggest leap between thi generation and the next we'll see, is that PS2 didn't support any of those, it rendered two textures per pass, two light sources, bump mapping, texture compression all by software and with hit, we could go on.

[Retro_Link]

Well IMO, I much prefer Resi 4's graphics to those of Perfect Dark Zero;

 

So if the Rev upped the GC's to Resi 5 graphics (which it must be able to do), I'd be more than happy!

[DCK]

If the graphics were only barely better than on Cube, it would launch at €99...

 

I don't think Nintendo could do that.

 

I doubt the gap Rev <> PS3 will be bigger than PS2 <> Xbox nowadays.

[Pit-Jr]

quick comparison of Xbox to 360. Not exactly earth-shattering.

 

To be fair, these are all quick and dirty ports. Point being if the graphics are 'barely better' on Rev, its the developers fault for being lazy