Player1x3 said:
Viper1 said:
Most PS3 launch games were either built on the PS3 or ported over the already next gen X360. Wii U ports are coming over from last generation consoles. Again, if the assets are the same, it won't look better. PS3 also had the advantage of a huge jump in resolution over last generation consoles. That won't be nearly as noticable even going from 720p to 1080p. The jump from 480 to 720 was huge. The jump from 720 to 1080 is not (visually speaking that is). The other factor is that the PS3 was touted as the most powerful console ever and developers were tasked to prove it graphically. So every game was pushed. On Wii U, the focus is far more on the GamePad (which also has a screen with 410k extra pixels).
The main thing to consider is are the assets. If developers are using the exact same asset (and they usually will because it's much cheaper than creating a whole new set of art assets), you will not see a marked improvement in graphic quality. Think about a game being rendered on a very high end graphics card on the PC and the same game rendered on a middle ground card. The former will give you much better frame rates but the game will essentially look exactly the same because the art assets are exactly the same. Even a low end card can look the same...just run like shit.
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You make a good point with 720p/1080p decreasing the visual jump but that shouldn't stop us from seeing the graphical and technical advance on the console. But let's say you're right about the ports. That still doesn't explain why none of the exclusives look better than this gen games. Or are the assets same there as well? Surely, the asset argument doesn't work on exclusive games And PS3 was a complete bitch to develop for in the beginning so lots of developers had insane issues with it in the beginning and couldn't get the wished results with it. That's not the case with Wii U, so there's no reasons why exclusives dont look noticeably better than this gen, except for having only minimal updated over this gen.
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Look at the two sentences I bolded. If a developer isn't using art assets of greater detail than the last generation consoles, then it won't look any better.
You have to consider the expense of art assets. They actually make up the bulk of development costs these days. It used to be program coding. Though a game with a brand new game engine can still evenly split the costs. But let's look at how many launch games are coming out and how many units each developer expects ot sell of their game at launch. Even exclusive games. Do you expect many of them to sell in the high single digit millions? Not likely. Developers know this too. Not just because it's a new console with a brand new install base starting at 0 but because there are so many games coming out that gamers' budgets will be spread very thin. That means it's not a good idea to invest heavily in the art assets given the return on investment won't likely cover such an expensive direction. Look, 50 games before next March 31st and Nintendo expects to sell 24 million games. That averages to about 480,000 per game over that time period (naturally some will sell much more and others much less). That means it is not economically feasible yet to push the art yet. If just 20 games were coming out in that time period, it might be more worth the effort. This is actually one of those rare occasions were you can actually have too many games coming at one time.
And, as I already noted, devs are pushign the GamePad rather than graphics. What is the selling point of the console? The GamePad. What was the selling point of the PS3? Graphics.
