Nintendo: next gen is about “improving gaming experience” “wonderful graphics won’t help”

[Sal.Paradise]

richardhutnik said:

Andrespetmonkey said:
Because improving how a largely VISUAL medium looks won't improve the experience.

I mean I see his point, gameplay and "innovation" (that word is tossed around way too lightly in this industry) comes first, but when a game looks amazing it improves the experience immensely. It's a big part of the experience and it's what turned a lot of core gamers away from the Wii.

The amount of return you get from updating graphics is getting less and less.  I would ask now, based on what you see with graphics today, are the games unplayable?    I bet one can go back in 10 years and look at 3D stuff today, and find a number of games that would still be playable.  I contrast that with 3D stuff on the original Playstation and a number of them fall VERY short of desirable now.

This is exactly what I would have said 10 years ago though. People forget about the march of progress so easily. I remember seeing old usenet posts about diminishing returns in the early Dreamcast era - how much further could we possibly improve graphics from upcoming 128 bit beasts! How can we expect developers to create games on PS2/GC/Xbox hardware, it's too powerful and complex!

It's the same spiel every generation, difference is now Nintendo have a weaker machine to sell, so they'll be saying it too, not just forum posters.