Graphics still matter to a lot of people, and better graphics is a large incentive to get people to upgrade. It's actually a no brainer as it marks a new generation and along with it a whole new set of experiences. The market doesn't depend solely on graphics of course, most of it is on the games. The games matter first and foremost, and with being able to experience favorite gaming franchises on machines with better graphics doesn't mean the experience will be better in a gameplay sense, but for many it will make their gaming experience more enjoyable, not for all. I think it's premature to discount the impact better graphics and more powerful machines has on the market. These companies want to dominate the living room, and MS is poised to do it as well as Sony. Nintendo's market may not be the core gamers and more a "wider" audience but then again Sony and MS can cater to that crowd as well. How many Wii users already upgraded to PS360 for better graphics?
What, no thread about the official Wii U release date and prices?
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Why do you think that? It assumes that the purchasing habits of Wii owners are representative of the HD console owners, and if Wii owners don't want to upgrade, PS360 owners won't. We all agree that Wii owners don't represent the core gamer who have been upgrading every gen, so what's the connection between Wii -> Wii U and XB360 > XB3?
No. The console market shrinking due to Wii customers leaving doesn't mean the entire console market has gone sour. The stationary console market is that tens of millions wanting to play core games on their TV, and they aren't going away. There's another lot of peeps who just want to play games, who once bought a NES but now use their phone, and there's another lot who want to play for entertainment and who a new experience might have appeal, who bought Wii Sports and Singstar and Kinect, etc., but they don't represent the backbone of the industry. If they all left, there'd still be a large number of people wanting to play core games on their TV. Thus I don't think Wii U is in any way representative, as it's not the next platform choice for this core and doesn't represent how they'll respond to new consoles. I do think consoles will start to fade as they are replaced by other devices, but not next-gen.
And this goes both ways. Wii U could sell the fastest of any console, but that wouldn't show the core console industry is on a massive rise and PS4 and XB3 will similarly sell well. Like Wii, Wuu is outside the loop doing it's own thing. Maybe. Maybe actually it'll offer the most amazing core game experience and the core will switch, forgoing a graphical upgrade for a controller one. But I seriously doubt that!
Yup, and what I have tried to do is estimate the number of people for whom graphics quality was the main attractor this generation. My estimate was somewhere between 15-30 million. Note - this generation. None of us can put a hard number on how many will fall into this category for the next generation of devices, but it stands to reason that it will be fewer, both because the benefits grow ever smaller at typical viewing distances, and because diminishing returns lies in the nature of asymptotically approaching anything, in this case "realism".
To me that paints a disturbing picture for the new MS/Sony consoles. They already provide gaming, media streaming, Blu-Ray playback, and so on. Shifty Geezer asserted above that all the current HD twin users are chomping at the bit to play their favorite franchises with better graphics, and pay the price of a new console to do so.
I don't think that's necessarily the case.
That's where the WiiU comes in, and it is interesting because the situation so neatly parallels the situation with portables and the introduction of the 3DS and the PSVita. And we know how that worked out - the 3DS launching first, and after skimming the fanboi cream stopped dead in its tracks until the great price drop, after which it has enjoyed reasonable but lackluster sales. The PSVita, launching just under a year later, with excellent technical specs and from a gadget point of view, good value for the hardware on offer, bombed completely, to the point that publishers cancel even their announced games. That platform, for all its excellence and reasonable value, is dead. (I think it would be a good idea for the people who enjoy discussing the future of console gaming to show that they observe and learn something from what's in front of their noses. Makes the whole exercise a bit more satisfying.)
Like the 3DS, the WiiU brings a lot to the table to previous Nintendo owners, and just like the 3DS it provides a novelty hook, and good/the best graphics around at the time of introduction. So if the WiiU fails to attract consumers, what does that indicate about the chances of PS4/720, when the strongest card they have to play is better graphics?
Now, the mobile console market and the stationary don't follow quite the same rules, but then again, there is no reason to assume that the same general mechanisms don't apply at least to some extent. That's why I say that the fans of graphics performance have every reason to hope that the WiiU does reasonably well, because if it doesn't, it indicates that the public just isn't particularly interested in stationary console gaming and the upcoming generation from MS and Sony will have a hard time attracting customers beyond the hardest core. There's just not that many of those around, and lower total revenue will have repercussions throughout the eco-system.
So where 80 million ish upgraded from NES to SNES and SNES to PS1 and PS1 to PS2, only 15-30 million upgraded to PS360 and the rest just happened to buy a console anyway? I don't understand your reasoning here.
We are very far from hitting a graphical ceiling. The diminishing returns issue has been partially solved by a very long generation. The advance in visuals over a five year old console wouldn't have been as pronounced as they are likely to be now. The core gamers are presently wrestling with poor framerates, tearing, and low IQ, and the wow factor of next-gen visuals will get the core gamers to upgrade once again.
But why? You're saying that suddenly buying habits have changed and 80 million core gamers aren't interested in buying a new console like they have every previous gen. What has changed?
The portable platform is a different market with different requirements. Gamegear and Lynx show graphics aren't the be all and end all, long before Vita's market failure against 3DS. Zero parallels can be drawn between the portable games market and the stationary living-room console.
Do you not believe that Wii consumers are a different bunch to PS360? If you think they represent the same demographics with the same interests and same buying habits, then there's nothing that can be said to change your position - I see them as very different audiences, with PS360 owners being those same generational upgraders and Wii consumers being independent gamers who bought on a novel experience and will follow experiences. That Wii owners may not want want to upgrade wouldn't show anything about how PS360 owners wanting to upgrade.
I present a history of consoles that shows every gen, there's a solid core audience who want better tech. I'm not seeing any counter to that; only an assumption that Wii owner's buying habits will mirror PS360 owner's buying habits. You need only see the list of top selling titles to see they are different audiences. Wii is full of fun, family, coop, lighthearted titles, with cartoony graphics, who's experience isn't going to be made better with better visuals, but will quite possibly be made worse on Wii U by having a different controller.
I've heard this "diminishing returns" canard repeated a number of times on this board, and SERIOUSLY... It ought to be obvious to anyone actually looking, that as far as we've come, we've still got AT LEAST as far to go as we've come already when it comes to graphics realism. Longer, probably, considering pretty much every technique we use in current realtime 3D rendering, and most offline rendering, are either (simple) approximations, or outright fakery.
We're quite far from achieving comprehensive, actual realism that don't require massaging or corner cases to look good, especially with realtime graphics. Offline rendering obviously is closer, since it can throw orders of magnitude more calculations at the problem, but even so we're not there, and many seemingly simple things are difficult to achieve, and/or very manual work-intensive.
Diminishing returns doesn't mean less room for improvement, but the amount of effort needed to achieve a degree of improvement increases exponentially, so that for a given effort, the returns decrease. To get to the next degree of very obvious improvement over last gen will need a larger increase in power than previous generations needed to get their marked improvements. With a static 5 year cycle and Moore's Law in effect, the same level of hardware increase will mean less benefits.
A lot depends on what the hardware is in PS4 and XB3, but I expect a marked improvement over this gen. At the very least, COD will run in HD and look like the best current-gen graphics with good IQ and 60 fps, which COd players will love. Gears or its replacement will look much closer to its PR materials. GT will look nigh photorealistic instead of a mix of great cars and last-gen backgrounds. Borderlands won't be constantly tearing at low framerates and no AA. It'll be enough to interest the core gamers, a large enough step up that they won't look at next-gen and scratch their head and say, "I don't see the difference so I won't buy one."
I think the problem with appreciating new generations of consoles before they arrive is that we all get too used to the compromises of the present to imagine what games would be like without those compromises. When we can get graphics like the present without the developers having to massage every last microsecond we can produce good visual art without forcing the developers to crawl over every detail so whilst it may cost more money to fill out the highest realm of performance and visual effects the lower bound also rises for developers with more modest budgets. Perhaps we'll get to the point where it is difficult for a game to be exceptional but easy to be adequate, essentially leveling the playing field between the expensive high budget productions and low budget niche titles? A game like XCOM fits the bill given that it looks cheap but it doesn't look terrible.
That thought has popped into my head recently as well.
Look at Halo 4 and how expensive it is. Now, why?
Because you have a limited box, and you're trying to differentiate by squeezing every last ounce out of that limited box, with 300 people.
What if the box was a lot less limited? Would the need to spend so much to differentiate go away as well, at some point?
Probably kind of OT.
Whats adequate? Whats was adequate ten years ago isn't adequate today and whats adequate today won't be within 3 years when the new console come out and they've released their 2nd generation of titles on the new consoles.
Producing good visual arts is an ever moving bar that will forever remain hard to reach. Its the reason we had decades of consoles capable of 60 fps, no screen tearing or whatever gets your knickers in twist, but there have been games that rarely do so. The day a 60 million dollar development budgets gets you no more than a 1 million dollar development budget is the day you see you'll see level playing fields.
If graphics matter so much then we need to figure out how the Wii managed to sell as well as much as it did, without the caveat that people who bought the Wii weren't enamored with console graphics.
I don't know how many Wii users upgraded to the PS360 simply for graphics. But do you think its as many as those that "side" graded to the wii from last generation.
Why is this argument being repeated? There's more than one reason to buy a product. You don't buy a TV just because it's big, or cheap. You don't buy a car jsut because it's fast, or it's spacious. Consoles cover entertainment, and there are many ways to be entertained, and many features that may make a console attractive to a consumer. Wii didn't need graphics to sell as it offered an alternative interface. That selling point is not going to sell Wii to those who like AAA games with AAA graphics. For these gamers, the latest tech upgraded every 5+ years is the main reason to buy a console.
I'd have thought this would be accepted as common sense by this point. Sonic even says it isn't all about the graphics.
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Well, actually I'd say Minecraft has 'good graphics' or at least it has visuals that are 'impressive', in the sense that while they may not be complex and rely on a voxel aesthetic (like a 3D version of all the 8 bit retro titles), but this is more than made up by the size and dynamic nature of the worlds and the complex physics and logic supported by the engine. (people have built Turing complete computers in Minecraft).
It definitely couldn't be done on something like the Wii.
I also think the naysayers are missing another point - It's not just that powerful consoles merely enable better graphics, but also richer experiences thanks to better (and more) AI, more complex physics, more realistic simulations, bigger and more seamless gameworlds etc.
It definitely couldn't be done on something like the Wii.
I also think the naysayers are missing another point - It's not just that powerful consoles merely enable better graphics, but also richer experiences thanks to better (and more) AI, more complex physics, more realistic simulations, bigger and more seamless gameworlds etc.
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Wasn't this the original promise of the Wii? Then carrying on the promise of the Wii U? That the performance would be adequate and that the game development costs wouldn't increase substantially because Nintendo promised a relatively solid performer (in their eyes) without any substantial performance gotchas which crater performance without good explanation? Now that they have a machine with relatively closer performance to the 360 but with a little over twice the RAM available to games it ought to be relatively easy to get good performance without blowing the budget.
It is a moving bar but haven't we learnt from the PC that when the developers aren't pushing the boundaries too hard the cost of development can be lower than when targeting consoles simply because they can use better technology instead of better tricks and convoluted methods of doing things.
Looking back at what were once expensive titles with relatively big teams of developers can now be put out with only a few people. Consider for instance XCOM on the Xbox 360 and compare that to the effort required to get first generation graphics off the ground, a smaller team in that instance is significantly outperforming a larger team because they have access to Unreal Engine and tools which makes the development process a lot faster.
It's not that expensive because it take 300 people to eek out performance from a closed box, it's expensive because producing quality assets costs a lot of money.
Of those 300 people the vast majority have nothing to do with eeking anything out, they are just producing content, whether it's game code, art assets or gameplay assets.
At some point the target box is largely irrelevant.
IMO more powerful hardware is nice for those people wanting to put hollywood into a console, but not for players at all.
I don't want to go back to the MegaCD and early CD games with cinematics interleaved with QTE to allow you to continue.
Some people want massive battles and so on and so forth, I won't say it's not nice for some tales, but not all tales need to be about that, and games don't even need to be tales to begin with...
(And even when they are they don't need to be imitating movies.)
Just like not all games need to try to have photorealistic graphics either, there are other ways to display graphics and some might better fit what you are trying to depict.
Does anyone find that Borderlands is diminished by its art style ? The Journey ? Minecraft ? Okami ?
Although I think the problem is more with game companies themselves than hardware, they know how to sell pictures, they don't know how to sell games after all this time...
(So they'll push for improved gfx which they know how to market, rather than innovative gameplay, and they'll find excuses not to go for artistic style too, because they aren't good at selling that either...)
But I'm drifting from the topic anyway.
I don't want to go back to the MegaCD and early CD games with cinematics interleaved with QTE to allow you to continue.
Some people want massive battles and so on and so forth, I won't say it's not nice for some tales, but not all tales need to be about that, and games don't even need to be tales to begin with...
(And even when they are they don't need to be imitating movies.)
Just like not all games need to try to have photorealistic graphics either, there are other ways to display graphics and some might better fit what you are trying to depict.
Does anyone find that Borderlands is diminished by its art style ? The Journey ? Minecraft ? Okami ?
Although I think the problem is more with game companies themselves than hardware, they know how to sell pictures, they don't know how to sell games after all this time...
(So they'll push for improved gfx which they know how to market, rather than innovative gameplay, and they'll find excuses not to go for artistic style too, because they aren't good at selling that either...)
But I'm drifting from the topic anyway.
I wouldnt like games to be infested with cut scenes and QTE's as the norm but more powerful hardware can help in the immersion during gameplay too.
Hollywood quality can be applied to epic large scale battles too. Imagine playing a star wars game were there are swarms of ships flying around and destroying each other or a massive ground battle.
Thats awesomeness right there
Remember the Killzone 2005 trailer? Lets forget about the scripted events and lets think about the amount of stuff that can happen on screen at any given time with explosions and events that occur almost randomly (shoot a ship thats coming at you and it could crash on you and surrounding environment causing environmental destruction and deformation. Shoot it at a different moment and it could crash on an enemy instead)
Gamers ask for realism or visual fidelity. This is why Battlefield 3 was praised. In terms of art, God of War 3's and Uncharted's visuals are not photorealistic, they are artistic and more power helped.
Games like Okami, Minecraft and Journey were not diminished by their art but if we check these games they are often miss hits (Okami, Viewtiful Joe), are at lower price points or sold online (Journey, Minecraft). They are obviously marketed differently.
Unfortunately there are many original very artistic titles that people dont give them a chance because they dont satisfy the conventional expectations.
I have friends for example that dont give a chance to a title just by a first glimpse and I can get mocked just by trying to describe it. Even if it's not their style they could have at least recognized the originality and work of these titles. But no. For them they shouldnt have existed. They are shit and childish they think.
I will sound like a snob but I believe that the majority of consumers and I mean the general public, gets dumber and dumber as time passes, we see this in music and movies too. There are movies that are works of art that are praised in reviews but fail in box office. In music we dont see the talented singers and performers we were getting decades ago. Now they sell images and idols than quality music. When I was a kid I was a Michael Jackson fan. Now youngsters love Justin Bieber. Going further back, people loved Jim Morison or Jimmy Hendrix. Going further back it was Frank Sinatra. There is this diminishing in the appreciation of art and perception of quality
Its people that value games as an art form that will give proper recognition to those games that emphasize more on art and simplicity
Next-gen == more power, to be used however the devs choose. If they choose to spend it on visuals, that means the market wants better visuals, and if the market wants better visuals then a console offering better visuals will appeal to them, whereas a console that doesn't won't. Of course, there are multiple reasons to buy a console and not just pretty graphics, which is where different companies can approach the market with different strategies in the hopes their strategy pays off. The common strategy is to follow the market, which has meant chasing those gamers who like more power, but an alternative can pay off as Wii did, or not as Virtual Boy didn't.
This is a concern for Wii U in that it's not offering more power, so it can't do more than the other consoles in terms of game content. It can only offer an alternative interface. If Nintendo had gone large with their specs, they could attract both the novel interface customers and the next-gen power customers. I guess with large expense on previous devices that haven't paid off, whereas their recent super successful devices have been cheap, they prefer caution in their hardware investments. (?)
This is a concern for Wii U in that it's not offering more power, so it can't do more than the other consoles in terms of game content. It can only offer an alternative interface. If Nintendo had gone large with their specs, they could attract both the novel interface customers and the next-gen power customers. I guess with large expense on previous devices that haven't paid off, whereas their recent super successful devices have been cheap, they prefer caution in their hardware investments. (?)
The quality of music is determined by the emotional response of the person or persons listening to it. So there is no way you can claim that the music Frank Sinatra performed is higher quality than the music Justin Bieber performs.
It sounds like you try to make the claim that Journey is more "art" than something like CoD:MW3. Is that just based on the visual style of those games or do you take into account the game mechanics and other aspects as well?
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