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TheShape31 on 22 September 2012
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HappySqurriel said:
TheShape31 said:

'Which one is showing that it is suffering from a lack of processing power?'

Suffer?  No 2D games in the last 2 generations have suffered for a lack of graphical prowess.  But honestly they could always look better in some way, and it would actually be nice to have a native 1080p NSMBU game.  What you're essentially arguing is that games never need to look better.  And people have made that same argument every generation.  'Diminishing returns', 'the human eye can't see any better', etc.  I have no doubt that there will be many great-looking games on Wii U.  But when the other two consoles come out and there is a marked difference in graphical quality and immersiveness, there will be new things to appreciate.  There are always new things to appreciate from the newest round of more powerful consoles.  And I'm not trying to say that the next PS or Xbox will have better games than Wii U, but technical advances yield new gameplay experiences.

Your moot argument about graphics never having to get better is only being used to overshadow the fact that Wii U games don't look any better than PS3 and X360 games.  And within the next year or so, they could look slightly better, too.  But there's no plateau that gaming will hit where everything just stops.  There will be 4KTVs, and with those advancements in technology will come immersive games we can't imagine.  All of those advancements matter. 

For the moment, all of those 2.5D games will satisfy us.  But in 2-3 those games will inevitably look behind the times, just as the games for Wii did.  And once again, it will be Nintendo's older graphics and unique controller vs. Sony and MIcrosoft's more powerful systems.  Every kind of game can look better, and every 6 years or so we're reminded that those screenshots we used to oggle (*hint*) now don't look so great.

"Your moot argument about graphics never having to get better is only being used to overshadow the fact that Wii U games don't look any better than PS3 and X360 games"

No, I'm just arguing against the economics of most studios pushing graphics beyond what the HD consoles can already do ...

By number there are far more games released to systems like the DS or 3DS than there are for high end devices because the average developer can produce a game for such a low budget that it becomes challenging to "fail". As an example, there is a local developer who has been very successful with DS games because they produced games using 3 to 5 developers in about 9 months; and they needed (on average) about 50,000 sales to be profitable.

In contrast, high end current HD console games are reported to have development teams of 100 (or more) people working for 3 (or more) years and they need millions of sales simply to break even. The average developer will never approach that budget because they could never see the sales to justify that budget; so they will never have the resources necessary to push these systems.

Will Call of Duty look awsome? Probably, but expect many smaller FPS games to survive by not pushing graphics in a similar way

"I'm just arguing against the economics of most studios pushing graphics beyond what the HD consoles can already do"

I honestly think that development teams and publishers can be much more responsible then they have been.  More and more the budgets and team sizes have gone through the roof.  But more reasonable budgets and team sizes can still push things forward on the visual front.  Maybe there won't be big named voice-actors and things like that, but someone like me doesn't care about those kinds of unnecessary expendatures.  Budgets could get cut in half and essentially promote the same product with essentially the same quality.  And that would actually help to keep creative focus, and more games could be completed in the way they were meant to.  My point is that you don't have to add a couple hundred more people every gen to make games more visually appealing.

There will be less and less of those types of teams, as companies keep having to close shop for not making their money back.  But there will always be companies that can still afford to do things on a Hollywood budget, and those games are always better off with more powerful hardware.  And for the time being, all of them are quite frankly stuck having to use the same tech for the past 7 years.  [I don't believe] The Wii U isn't going to afford them the opportunity to make significant, game-changing visual enhancements.  Gameplay, most certainly will be pushed into new areas due to the Game Pad.  But to the point of this thread, developers are always looking to use more power, regardless of their team size.  And visually things are stagnant.  That's not to say that the 2D and 2.5D games on Wii U don't look great.  They certianly do.  But if ZombiU looked any better than PS360, I would be touting the Wii U as being a graphical next-gen machine.  But it doesn't.