Thursday, August 17, 2006

Wii to have "dramatically" improved graphics over Gamecube?



During George Harrison's Camp Hyrule Q&A very recently he talked about how Zelda would only use the Wii controller for the Wii version and GC controllers for the GC version.

He went on to answer a question about the graphics of the Wii that I found interesting:

VIDGAMEPLAYA: Hello, Mr. Harrison! I live in an area where most kids play shoot em up games, and buy consoles based on graphics. I was wondering how you might plan to advertise to this group of consumers?

NOA_GEORGE_HARRISON: First, the Wii will be able to deliver dramatically improved graphics over the GameCube. But, if all the player is concerned about is graphics, we may not win them over. Our best chance is to show them the sheer fun of our games.

Link

So the President himself knows that the Wii is going to look a lot better than Gamecube. These launch games for the Wii must not be a big sign of what it can really do then, because only a few of them look marginally better than Gamecube. I guess we should really think of these as "launch" games then and not 3rd or 4th generation software for the Wii. Its easy for people to see these games and say "thats it?" but this is only the beginning of it all and the controller really is the most important part to get a handle on for the Wii. The graphics will be there, but the control needs to be there now to show that the Wii really will change how we play these games in the future.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

"Its easy for people to see these games and say "thats it?" but this is only the beginning of it all and the controller really is the most important part to get a handle on for the Wii."

You got that right. People always judge the graphical performance of a console by the launch titles. It's obvious that third-party developers like Ubi-Soft didn't have as much time as Nintendo did because they received the dev kits a month prior before E3, which means we're not going to be seeing graphical updates any time this year on the Wii.

If people are going to validate their opinions by looking at the launch titles, then I'm going to say that the PlayStation 3 looks no better than the Xbox 360, because seriously, from their pre-E3 press conference, I just didn't see any games that look better than what Xbox 360 has.

Metaldave said...

Good point anonymous. When are you going to tell me your name? I know you are same guy who has posted here before.

Third parties are going to see what they can do with the controller first and worry about the graphic power of the Wii second. It looks like a developer can make a game look as good as Gamecube in only about a day on the Wii, which means they can focus on the controller a lot quicker.

That doesn't mean thats all there is to the Wii's power though-quick dev time.

Nintendo let developers know rough specs to go by right? However, Nintendo has been researching how to get more with less power for the Wii's GPU and CPU for years. So, it makes me think that numbers don't mean much. Developers can go by those numbers, but until they get finished hardware they really won't know the true secrets behind those numbers that Nintendo gave them. Nintendo knows and thats why Mario Galaxy looks so good.

Make sense?

Anonymous said...

Ok, metaldave.

Here's the username I'm going to post with in the comments section from now on, to keep the mystery at bay.

Metaldave said...

Thanks, mystery solved.

Welcome Biohazard. You have a certain way you write comments so I knew it was you.

Anonymous said...

Also, speaking of launch titles, lets take take a look at one of PS3's launch titles, F.E.A.R.

http://media.ps3.ign.com/media/848/848829/imgs_1.html

My god! The game has never looked so bland!

Metaldave said...

I already have the PC version, which will always be better than a console version with old style controls. I like F.E.A.R but its nothing too special, the A.I. is probably the best thing about it.

The PS3 version or Xbox360 version gets a big "meh" from me.