Wii never maxed out?

[Mr Puggsly]

lilbroex said:

Mr Puggsly said:

lilbroex said:

tonymarraffa said:
Amazing!!! It's sad though I also think that the Dreamcast, Xbox, and the Saturn wern't maxed out either.

The Dreamcast was maxed out with Shenmue

The Saturn was technically also maxed out with Shenmue as far as its polygonated games were

The Xbox was maxed with Ninja Gaiden Black, Riddick, Half-Life 2 and Doom 3

 

We don't know if those consoles maxed out on those games mentioned. We just know those were some of the most visually impressive games on the platforms.

Dreamcast inparticular was discontinued around 2002 so I don't think we ever saw its true potential. Its not like we saw PS2's true potential in 2002.

That may possibly be true with other consoles but not with the Dreamcast. Yu Suzuki had the devs do things that had never been done before in gaming ever with Shenmue. Some of those things were not even thought to be technically possible for the system like the stretching and bending of the phone cord in Shenmue 2 that was used only once.

Yu Suzuki made them get as much out of the system towards his intended ideal design as they could. Not all could be done, but they pushed it as close as they could.

Doom3 and Half-life 2 had to be reuilt slightly for the Xbox because it was not strong enough to handle the straight versions of the games. They reoptimzed the games to get them on the Xbox 1 as accurately as they possibly could. Lighting, shadows, normal mapping and physics on a level that was never seen on a console before were implemented. You tell that Doom 3 hit the max of the Xbox 1 by the frame rate.

Regardless of what Yu Suzuki said, that was 2002. As time goes on Developers often find new technices to get more out of hardware. The best looking PS2 games were released around 2005-2007. There were claims PS3 and 360 peaked years ago, yet the bar keeps getting raised. So saying the Dreamcast was maxed out in its short life is wrong in my opinion.

Frame rate is no real indication of a console hitting its full potential. For example, Mass Effect 1 on the 360 has a terrible frame rate and even gets choppy. Yet Mass Effect 2 has improved visuals and a smooth frame rate. Same story with Call of Duty 2 and its successors or Oblivion and Skyrim. Many assumed the poor performance was due to the limited capabilities of the hardware, but that was clearly wrong.