By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close
Legendary_W on 01 January 2014
Edit Thread
Scoobes said:
Legendary_W said:
Locknuts said:
I think we've finally reach a point where more TFLOPS does not mean better games or even the potential for better games necessarily. When I see gameplay mechanics which are simply not possible without the power of the PS4 or X1 then I'll change my mind. Until then I'll continue to think the Wii U, when used properly, can deliver an experience at least as good as anything available on PS4 or X1.


Allow me to share something I've read on the internet some time ago while investigating about how powerful the Wii U actually is:

 

"Alright this has been pissing me off about people. I myself have gone through 4 years of college in the pursuit of becoming a game developer (looking at Crystal Dynamics), and the first thing they tell you in college: on today's modern systems anything is possible. Anything, so long as you program it right. Nowadays people think more power will allow us to do more, but that is completely wrong. In fact, it's backwards thinking. All more power has allowed game developers to do, is become lazy programmers.

As consumer, power should mean shit to you. You don't have to deal with system limitations, developers do. When these professional developers make their games, if they wrote more efficient code, there would be absolutely no need to make 3 different versions of the same game. Instead, they write these high end combiners and render unneeded stuff for the more "powerful" systems simply because they can get away with it. Then they make the Wii/Wii U versions not as good looking simply because they are too lazy to fix up their mistake of inefficient code.

Don't ever let the power of a system deter you from buying it, because no matter how powerful a system is, you as a consumer do not deal with the limitations. If a Wii U and PS4 were the same price, then yeah, bad deal for you. But it's not, it's at a reduce cost and the specs aren't too different. Buy a system for the games YOU want, not because a game developer said the system is weak because that assimply isn't true."

 

As far as my knowledge goes I think most, if not everything, he is saying is true. I saved it because I found it quite interesting and decided to share it with a friend that knows more on the subject than I do.

It'd be interesting to see if their viewpoint changes once they start working at a developer with tight deadlines and little time to get things coded as efficiently as they would like.

Whilst they're likely right that most modern systems are capable of doing what you want if you code it right (personally I think it's too early in the gen to say for certain as some devs may be able to leverage the extra power for new features not yet experienced), the more time spent getting your code to work is less time spent on introducing new features. That has a direct impact on consumers.

Yeah, I guess you're probably right. Still, PS360 had amazingly well-looking games such as TLOU and GTA V that proved how good a game can look and be as long as it's properly optimized. I know they are exceptions because TLOU was a major exclusive and it was made by a great and respected dev team and so did GTA V with a $265.000.000 budget,  but major games from Nintendo also are exceptions as most of the time they end up being outstanding games (Otherwise they wouldn't still be relevant nowadays) and with that thought in mind I don't really worry about graphics very much, since they will almost certainly look much more than acceptable, but that's just my opinion based on logical assumptions. Maybe when the all-new Zelda for Wii U comes out we will see how actually good a game can look on Wii U (Assuming it has a realist graphics).