Fils-Aime Describes Developer “Resource Shiftâ€￾ To Wii

[Teasy]

An exclusive GTA could sell well on Wii, and they could use assets from the PS2 episodes, just cleaning up the engine a bit. Controls could be using the Wiimote+nunchuk when on foot (Wiimote aiming, nunchuk movement), and turning the Wiimote sideways when driving (letting the nunchuk on your knees). Using the Wiimote for special moves with baseball bats is bound to be an absolute hit with Yak Thompson.

I'd say the best way to do it is constanly using Wiimote+Nunchuck. As you say Wiimote aiming and nunchuck movement, and when driving use the Wiimote+Nunchuck to steer (this way you don't have to change what your holding in between modes). When you switch to hand to hand the Wiimote+nunchuck would then turn into fists, allowing actual hand to hand combat (similar to Wii Boxing). Of course weapons such as baseball bats could also be used. You could even have a gun in your Wiimote hand and a bat in your nunchuck hand at the same time (still able to move around using the stick on the nunchuck).

Most of these ideas are already used in The Godfather Blackhand Edition, and apparently they work very well.

To play devil's advocate, 250 K is nowhere near Nintendo's main retail Wii game in Zelda. And, IIRC, the #2 - #10 list of software was fairly similar between the Wii and PS3. I wonder if I'm remembering correctly.

Ask yourself how much, on average, you think those PS3 games cost to make compared to the Wii games..

 

[fearsomepirate]

No, no, please, no reusing PS2 assets! I think the Wii could improve the graphics of a GTA game a lot. I suppose because of how large and open the world is, they have to stretch the textures pretty thin in sandbox games. So on the PS2, so you see lots of rather low-res 4-bit textures with no detail-adding decals pasted on top, and it really hurts the visual quality. Since S3TC compresses a 24-bit texture to the same size as a 4-bit texture, you'd get much, much better coloring. With the vertex compression inherited from Gamecube, you'd potentially get better geometry meshes as well. With 88 MB, Cube's superior data compression, and possibly some snazzy postprocessing effects, you could get a game that looks much prettier than any of the GTA titles on PS2, even if not the quality of Saints' Row or GTA4.

 

[Natoma]

No, no, please, no reusing PS2 assets! I think the Wii could improve the graphics of a GTA game a lot. I suppose because of how large and open the world is, they have to stretch the textures pretty thin in sandbox games. So on the PS2, so you see lots of rather low-res 4-bit textures with no detail-adding decals pasted on top, and it really hurts the visual quality. Since S3TC compresses a 24-bit texture to the same size as a 4-bit texture, you'd get much, much better coloring. With the vertex compression inherited from Gamecube, you'd potentially get better geometry meshes as well. With 88 MB, Cube's superior data compression, and possibly some snazzy postprocessing effects, you could get a game that looks much prettier than any of the GTA titles on PS2, even if not the quality of Saints' Row or GTA4.

Finally, someone says it. While PS2 assets would certainly help in getting developers to port to the Wii and introduce more games to help build the base, the last thing we need is validation of the trite and completely false assumption that the Wii can't do visuals better than the PS2 or GC or Xbox.

As pretty as Zelda was, probably the best looking game on the Wii to date, it still is a Cube game (only 27% of the memory resources compared to Wii), designed for only 1.5GB of storage (only 1/3rd the storage resources of the Wii). And that's not even mentioning clock speeds or anything else.

The Wii is so much more powerful than people on this forum have been giving it credit for. No, it's not a PS3 or 360. But it's a hell of a lot better than PS2 or GC or XBox.

Where's Factor 5 when you need them.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Where's Factor 5 when you need them.

If their Wii efforts are to be as good as their PS3 efforts, I'm not sure Wii is missing much

 

[Natoma]

If their Wii efforts are to be as good as their PS3 efforts, I'm not sure Wii is missing much

we just need purty graphics, even if it comes with vacuous gameplay. Just to show proof of concept.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

we just need purty graphics.

That's what their GC efforts provided. But I'm referencing their PS3 effort, Lair. Rather than lead the way, Factor 5 are behind the curve on good-looking, well implemented graphics.

The most perplexing thing is Nintendo's efforts. They haven't really pushed the boat out on the graphics department yet.

 

[fearsomepirate]

The most perplexing thing is Nintendo's efforts. They haven't really pushed the boat out on the graphics department yet.

Well, so far, they've pretty much just put out a coupla Gamecube ports (Fire Emblem and Zelda), Pokemon, Wario Ware, and Wii Sports/Play. But what we've seen of the new Pokemon title actually looks really good (it's already out in Japan), and the new Mario Galaxy clip is head and shoulders above any of the launch titles.

 

[Corwin_B]

The most perplexing thing is Nintendo's efforts. They haven't really pushed the boat out on the graphics department yet.

With perhaps the exceptions of DQSwords (extremely clean graphics), and Oorinpa (normal mapping on Wii ?), Mario Galaxy is by far the most impressive Wii title to date, and one of the first titles that really look like they couldn't be done on Cube (at an acceptable framerate). This one really made me say "WOW" (like Iwata promised).

 

[Capeta]

Wow, you guys honestly expect a GTA game on Wii to LOOK good???

 

[tongue_of_colicab]

Well I guess that depends on when you find something goodlooking. If suddenly x360/ps3 are the only consoles capable of good gfx than no the wii version wont look good, neither will any wii game.

 

[Capeta]

Well my point was that the GTA games were never good looking to begin with so expecting it to look good let a lone look good on Wii requires a paradigm shift in thinking.

 

[fearsomepirate]

Well my point was that the GTA games were never good looking to begin with so expecting it to look good let a lone look good on Wii requires a paradigm shift in thinking.

Did you not read my reasoning why GTA games on PS2 looked so bad and why they could look markedly better on Wii, or do you have some significant reason to disagree with me?

 

[Natoma]

Here's the full Q&A: http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_5470771

I found this part most interesting

Q Conversely, you guys had a dip in U.S. sales of the DS in January. Sales of Sony's rival PSP handheld nearly caught up with you. What's the story there?

A Availability. All availability.
Based on worldwide production numbers, the Americas ran out of stock of Nintendo DS essentially on the 25th of December. And we were not back in stock until sometime the second week in January. So, effectively three weeks the consumer could not get their hands on a Nintendo DS. So what happened? They bought our competitor. And they bought Game Boy Advance. Now that we're back in stock, let's see what the February data says.

Looks like that was borne out in the NPD numbers as Fils-Aime predicted.

Nintendo DS 238,869
PlayStation Portable 210,719
Game Boy Advance 179,482

Nintendo DS 485,000
PlayStation Portable 176,000
Game Boy Advance 136,000

It's just shocking that the DS is still supply limited after all this time. Absolutely shocking.

 

[TheChefO]

No, no, please, no reusing PS2 assets!

The best thing about deving for Wii in this gen is downgrading ps3/xb360 content to fit Wii is a lot easier than attempting to "upgrade/upscale" graphics. Some things will be tough like complex detailed models etc, but overall, Wii will get squeezed the most out of this gen. Similar to ps2 last gen...

IMO

 

[tongue_of_colicab]

It's just shocking that the DS is still supply limited after all this time. Absolutely shocking.

Well not really if you look at the insane numbers nintendo needs to produce. They sell something like 600 - 800.000 a month in Japan, around 450.000 a month in the US and probably somewhere in between for europe. Wich is kinda strange though, because nintendo said they upped to production to 2.5million some time ago but if you count the numbers it doesnt seem like they actually sell 2.5million a month so how can they run out of stock? what I've heard of it every week there are still lines for every DS shipment in Japan. Anyway, still some big numbers not the less, if they keep going like this they'll sure beat the ps2, and alot faster than the ps2 did too.

 

[fearsomepirate]

I think the shocking thing is that the demand is so huge that you can produce around 2 million in a month and still not have enough.

Nintendo DS launched late 04/early 05, so it's been out just over 2 years. According to VG charts, it's approaching 40 million units sold. Given that sales didn't really blast off until Nintendogs, selling over 2m per month seems quite plausible.