Nintendo Abandoned the Core? The Myth Exposed

[swaaye]

4. GFX indeed will always be lesser/bad compared to x360/ps3/pc. Than again this is what everyone knew when buying a wii. Secondly, if the wii is 2 or 3x GC, than 2x RE4 gfx shouldnt be that hard so its not like a game has to be eye hurting ugly on the wii. It wont be as pretty as other games but it can still look good in its own right. Third, the wii isnt about games centerd on gfx. Wii games should look good enough not to be disturbing (and its quite capable of that I think) and the focus should be on the actuall game. This means that you cant just do lets say a CoD on wii the same way as you would do it on x360. You need to center games around its strenghts and that is what devs fail to do.

I think the reason the graphics haven't improved a lot over Cube even with more under the hood is that it has so little RAM. It only has a fraction of the RAM of the other consoles. So even though its graphics hardware is saved a lot of work due to only pushing about a quarter of the pixels of 720p, it can't use assets of the same caliber that we see on PCs and the other consoles. Not to say that a couple of the first party games don't look pretty good, but you can see that the texturing in Metroid Prime 3 is rather low resolution for example (reminiscent of Halo 2). Same with that rather ugly SW:TFU port (yikes).

I'm saying that I'm displeased with how the best games on the machine look. But I think companies don't see it as being worth the effort to try to customize their games for the Wii when they can get much better results with a big audience they know will appreciate it on the other platforms. And since the PC, PS3 and 360 are really similar in their capabilities, devs can share assets more easily I think and get more value from their effort. With some Wii games looking almost like N64 games with a resolution bump, I think that's the argument being made for Wii dev.

 

[RudeCurve]

When MS lowered the price of the X360 to $200, it immediatly made the Wii look even less attractive for single console households.

 

[ninzel]

I think the non-popularity of this thread and the non-talk about Wii in the forums here is proof of Wii's death for most, frankly.

For most,or for most on this board? Looking at at the huge sales of certain Wii software , contrasted with the dismissal of them by most of us on this board I would say that we are out of touch with the average Wii owner but that doesn't neccesarily mean the death of the Wii altogether. I think it would be arrogant to think the we on this board represent the entire gaming community.I'm not going to say we are out of touch with the entire gaming community either or that we are a small minority,that's not what I'm saying. But we certainly don't get the Wii,but that doesn't mean it isn't or can't be completely relevant to another segment of gamers.
I think we are to stuck in the past thinking where gaming is this partisan competition where if one succeeds another must fail.

 

[ninzel]

When MS lowered the price of the X360 to $200, it immediatly made the Wii look even less attractive for single console households.

Proof? According to Amazon the Wii was the big seller on black Friday in the US and the Wii continues to outsell the 360 even at price parity.
Was there a survey done regarding Wii appeal after the 360 price cut that I missed?

 

[RudeCurve]

Proof? According to Amazon the Wii was the big seller on black Friday in the US and the Wii continues to outsell the 360 even at price parity.
Was there a survey done regarding Wii appeal after the 360 price cut that I missed?

The proof is just from my personal experience, X360 is just more attractive to potential buyers like me than a Wii. When X360 was more expensive people on the fence who were price conscious saw Wii as a more affordable console, not anymore. Of course if a little kid wants a Wii that's what they'll get, but kids don't care about price since it's not their money.

 

[swaaye]

For most,or for most on this board?

Yeah that's me generalizing. I meant for most on this board. Gamers looking for a stronger lineup of quality titles and at least a good selection for the usual genres. I'm convinced that the people madly buying Wiis are looking for something besides a solid library. I suppose they could be all impulse buyers running on fad-energy and didn't bother to check out Wii's not-so-fabulous selection of titles. A lot of the people I know that are after one aren't really big on games in general or even necessarily understand the concept of a "game library". A blank slate kind of audience that actually may not be interested in the usual game genres anyway.

I think this is why there isn't a big push by game companies to go after the growing Wii audience. They aren't sure what to make and whether anything will actually sell well. And add onto that the fact that PS3/360/PC development is more interoperable than quality, specialized WiiCube development. And also that Nintendo apparently isn't all that interested in pushing Wii to 3rd party software makers. It looks like Wii is strangely risky.