Wii: What Happens When the Novelty Wears Off?

[KruzeS]

ckmlb said:
Better graphics on Metroid I think would help its sales actually I think in NA, if that and Zelda looked like PS3/360 games it would be amazing.

Problem is, contrary to popular opinion, better graphics are not just about the pixel count, especially when you're sitting 1-2.5m away from your display, as is common in console gaming. Computer graphics still have a hard time tricking a human into thinking they're the real thing even at SDTV resolutions, so resolution clearly isn't everything.

This software engineering tradeoff will be patent even on such amazing hardware as the 360's or PS3's. Compared to 480i60/576i50, 720p60 is 5.33 times the pixels/second, and 1080i60 6 times. That means you could do roughly 5 times more fragment/pixel shader work if you decided to support only SDTV, or 2.5 times more for EDTV. More realistically since we're talking HD consoles, 1080p has 2.25 times the pixels in 720p, which means half the per pixel work on the same hardware. That's why you won't see that many 1080p games, unless they ditch anti-aliasing for those resolutions.