By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close

Forums - Nintendo Discussion - Ubisoft dev: "Wii is a refurbished Gamecube"

darkknightkryta on 24 August 2010
superchunk said:
darkknightkryta said:
joeorc said:

it is a fact that the Wii is quite more robust in it's hardware over the game cube..

and no it's not

(2) game cubes duct taped together..that is lame

the real point is even though the Wii is quite more powerful than the Game cube the developer's are not taking advantage of that extra power. Hell even Nintendo it seem's is in no hurry to push the system. which is ok, that the games are fun anyway. but on the same token at least give it a go and try to pust the envelope with the graphic's on the Wii. it would be kind of nice to see that once in a while.

The Wii is about as powerful as the first X-Box, the problem is that they didn't update the shader technology in the GPU so no matter what Nintendo or anyone for that matter does games won't look better than Gamecube games cause they can't make use of the lighting and normal maps that make 360/PS3 games look as good as they do.  Texture work and lighting will be same in the Wii as it was on the Gamecube best they can do is make bigger levels and use more higher res textures.

wow. You are so wrong. Wii > xbox > gcn > ps2. Numbers don't tell whole story, the CPU, Memory, and GPU are all better than what was in the xbox.

Metroid Prime 3 looks distinctively better than 1 or 2.

SMG1 and 2 looks distinctively better than anything on GCN.

Conduit (as will part 2) does many features that were not capable on GCN.

NSMBWii would not be possible on the GCN. (as two players maybe, not 4 and not with the super guide feature)

There are no games on xbox that couldn't have been done with same exact feature set on Wii. Wii could even do 720p if Nintendo had wanted, they chose not to in order to free up power for the game vs the HD pixels.

I'll use Metroid Prime 3 as my example.  I only played Metroid Prime 3 and I havn't played the others, but I'll use that to prove my point.  Metroid Prime 3 doesn't use any normal maps (I couldn't even tell if it used bump mapping but from what I can tell it doesn't for some reason.).  All the lighting is prebaked with some bloom in there.  The texture work is all medium detailed.  Shadows are prebaked into the scenery.  And what is Conduit doing that isn't can't be done on the GC?  And New Super Mario Brothers Wii couldn't be done on the GC?  Why pretail would that be?  It isn't exactly a big step up from the DS version.  But look what I'm trying to say is that when ATI was making Hollywood they never bothered to update to shader model 2.  So what does that mean?  Even though the Wii can pump out more polygons and use more of the high res textures the GC/PS2/Xbox can use doesn't change the fact that the Wii is stuck using those same textures from last gen, that same lighting from last gen etc.  Like the Wii is more capable yes, but the GPU didn't get the shader upgrade to actually do anything more than the GC can do, and that's where the problem lies.  If they upgraded the shader tech in the Wii then you'd have games on the Wii that look like SSF4 3DS and Resident Evil 3DS, but that's not the case.



Around the Network
LastRambo341 on 24 August 2010

This is silly. The Wii is stronger than the strongest last-gen console, the Xbox, due to the fact that the Wii uses the PowerPC custom processor which is stronger than the Xbox's Pentium 3 processor by 3 times. Also, posting screenshots is meaningless since graphics are supposed to be judged in person.



Vanbierk on 24 August 2010

Keep in mind that just because a Wii game looks better...doesn't mean that it's any more powerful...can also mean that the programming has just moved up a bit, and it Might have been able to have been achieved on the Gamecube had the Gamecube still been the current console.



Just waiting for that PS Vita to come out so I can play some full featured games on the go with that beautiful screen and control scheme...

joeorc on 24 August 2010
superchunk said:
joeorc said:
superchunk said:
darkknightkryta said:
joeorc said:

it is a fact that the Wii is quite more robust in it's hardware over the game cube..

and no it's not

(2) game cubes duct taped together..that is lame

the real point is even though the Wii is quite more powerful than the Game cube the developer's are not taking advantage of that extra power. Hell even Nintendo it seem's is in no hurry to push the system. which is ok, that the games are fun anyway. but on the same token at least give it a go and try to pust the envelope with the graphic's on the Wii. it would be kind of nice to see that once in a while.

The Wii is about as powerful as the first X-Box, the problem is that they didn't update the shader technology in the GPU so no matter what Nintendo or anyone for that matter does games won't look better than Gamecube games cause they can't make use of the lighting and normal maps that make 360/PS3 games look as good as they do.  Texture work and lighting will be same in the Wii as it was on the Gamecube best they can do is make bigger levels and use more higher res textures.

wow. You are so wrong. Wii > xbox > gcn > ps2. Numbers don't tell whole story, the CPU, Memory, and GPU are all better than what was in the xbox.

Metroid Prime 3 looks distinctively better than 1 or 2.

SMG1 and 2 looks distinctively better than anything on GCN.

Conduit (as will part 2) does many features that were not capable on GCN.

NSMBWii would not be possible on the GCN. (as two players maybe, not 4 and not with the super guide feature)

There are no games on xbox that couldn't have been done with same exact feature set on Wii. Wii could even do 720p if Nintendo had wanted, they chose not to in order to free up power for the game vs the HD pixels.

thank you..though the Game cube being more powerful than the PS2 is debatable on what your doing with each machine, in processing power the game cube was if taking just one of the PS2's processors but not both at once. the PS2 also had the faster bus speed. both machines were fantastic no doubt.

That's just the cpu, when you also factor in the better gpu and memory, gcn is still more powerful.

not quite because the ps2 like the ps3 used the gpu in conjunction with the CPU to do graphic's there is more in common with the PS2 and the ps3 than many people realize in how they are designed.

still not quite:

128-bit Emotion Engine CPU

  • 300MHz
  • 6.2 billion floating-point operations per second
  • 2 x Vector Processing Units (Floating Point Multiply Accumulator x 9, Floating Point Divider x 1)
  • 3.2 GBytes/second bus bandwidth
  • 1.8 Watt power consumption maximum

The 128 bit emotion engine is the brains behind the Playstation 2. Much of the early games poor performance can be put down to the fact that no games yet are using the 2 Vector Processing units which speed up calculations considerably.

Graphics Synthesizer

  • 150Mhz
  • 48 GBytes/second DRAM BUS bandwidth
  • 2560 bits bus bandwidth
  • 75 million polygons per second peak rendering rate
  • 16.7 million colours
  • Perspective-Correct Texture Mapping
  • Point, Bilinear, Trilinear and Anisotropic Mip-Mapping
  • Gourard Shading
  • Z-Buffering
  • Hardware Based Fogging
  • Bump Mapping
  • Coloured Light Sourcing
  • Lighting and Shadow Volumes
  • Hardware Based Texture Compression

One of the biggest drawback of this powerful graphics chip is a total lack of anti-ailising which has caused early games to have a jagged look to them. There are other tricks that can be used to avoid this situation but it will take developers time to get it all right.

System RAM

  • Main RAM : 32MB RAMBUS
  • Video RAM : 4MB
  • DVD Cache : TBA

The Playstation 2 includes 32MB RAMBUS RAM. In effect this unified RAM allows developers to determine where the RAM is best utilised. If there is more sound requirements then more RAM can be dedicated to handling the RAM. One major drawback of the Playstation 2 is the limited amount of VRAM which limits the amount of textures the system can have. In fact the Dreamcast games have an edge in this area due to the 8MB VRAM on that system.

now Nintendo's Game cube:

Processor: 128-bit IBM Gekko
CPU Speed: 485 MHz
Players: 4 per System
System Memory: 40MB
Main Memory: 24MB 1T S RAM
A- Memory: 16MB DRAM
Sound: 16bit DSP, 2MB RAM
Sound Support: Dolby, DTS, AC3

Video Memory: 4MB Visual RAM

Display Capability:


6 million to 12 million polygons/second (Display capability assuming actual game with complexity model, texture, etc.)

 
Processor: 128-bit IBM Gekko
CPU Speed: 485 MHz
Players: 4 per System
System Memory: 40MB
Main Memory: 24MB 1T S RAM
A- Memory: 16MB DRAM
Sound: 16bit DSP, 2MB RAM
Sound Support: Dolby, DTS, AC3
Sound: SPU2, 2MB RAM
Sound Support: Dolby, DTS, AC3
Video Memory: 4MB Visual RAM
Media: 8cm Mini-DVD
Disc Size: 1.5 GB
Disc Drive: CAV (Constant Angular V)
System Weight: 2.4 kg (5 lbs. 5 oz.)
Sys. Dimensions: 15 x 11 x 16 cm

Controllers: 4 Controller Ports
Memory Cards: 2 Digicard Ports
Various Input: 2 Serial Ports
Other Input: 1 Parallel Port
TV Connection: 1 Analog AV Output
Premium Output: 1 Digital Output
Expansion: 1 Type III PCMCIA

Official Name: NINTENDO GAMECUBE, Nintendo GameCube
System Main Memory: 24MB Sustainable Latency : 10ns or lower (1T-SRAM)
Power Supply: AC Adapter DC12V x 3.5A
Main Unit Dimensions: 150mm(W) x 110mm(H) x 161mm(D)

Display Capability:


6 million to 12 million polygons/second (Display capability assuming actual game with complexity model, texture, etc.)

Input/Output:


4 Controller Ports; 2 Digicard Slots; 2 High-Speed Serial Ports; 1 High-speed Parallel Port; 1 Analog AV Output; 1 Digital AV Output
Processor
MPU IBM Power PC "Gekko"
Manufacture Process: 0.18 Microns Copper Wire Technology
Clock Frequency: 485 MHz
CPU Capacity: 1125 Dmips (Dhrystone 2.1)
Int. Data Precision: 32bit Integer & 64bit Floating-point
Ext. Bus Bandwidth: 1.3GB/second (Peak)
Internal Cache: L1: Instruction 32KB, Data 32KB (8 way) L2: 256KB (2 way)
System LSI: "Flipper" (Custom ATI/Nintendo)
Manufacture Process: 0.18 microns NEC Embedded DRAM Process
Clock Frequency: 162MHz
Floating Point Ability: 13.0 GFLOPS (Peak) (MPU, Geometry Engine, HW Lighting Total)
Frame Buffer: Approx. 2MB, Sustainable Latency: 6.2ns (1T-SRAM)
Texture Cache: Approx. 1MB Sustainable Latency : 6.2ns (1T-SRAM)
Texture Read Band.: 10.4GB/second (Peak)
Main Mem. Bandwidth: 2.6GB/second (Peak)
Color, Z-Buffer: Each is 24bits

Image Proc. Function:


Fog, Subpixel Anti-aliasing, HW Light x8, Alpha Blending, Virtual Texture Design, Multi-texture Mapping/Bump/Environment Mapping, MIPMAP, Bilinear/Trilinear/Anisotropic Filtering, Real-time Texture Decompression (S3TC), HW 3-line Deflickering filter, etc.

as you can see it's not quite as easy to say one is more powerful than the other since the only area that the game cube has is in the cpu but is hindered by the speed of it's bus.



I AM BOLO

100% lover "nothing else matter's" after that...

ps:

Proud psOne/2/3/p owner.  I survived Aplcalyps3 and all I got was this lousy Signature.

joeorc on 24 August 2010
LastRambo341 said:

This is silly. The Wii is stronger than the strongest last-gen console, the Xbox, due to the fact that the Wii uses the PowerPC custom processor which is stronger than the Xbox's Pentium 3 processor by 3 times. Also, posting screenshots is meaningless since graphics are supposed to be judged in person.

I know...yes it is.The Wii is in every way more powerful than last generation's xbox,ps2,game cube why is this even an argument!



I AM BOLO

100% lover "nothing else matter's" after that...

ps:

Proud psOne/2/3/p owner.  I survived Aplcalyps3 and all I got was this lousy Signature.

Around the Network
serav on 24 August 2010
darkknightkryta said:
superchunk said:
darkknightkryta said:
joeorc said:

it is a fact that the Wii is quite more robust in it's hardware over the game cube..

and no it's not

(2) game cubes duct taped together..that is lame

the real point is even though the Wii is quite more powerful than the Game cube the developer's are not taking advantage of that extra power. Hell even Nintendo it seem's is in no hurry to push the system. which is ok, that the games are fun anyway. but on the same token at least give it a go and try to pust the envelope with the graphic's on the Wii. it would be kind of nice to see that once in a while.

The Wii is about as powerful as the first X-Box, the problem is that they didn't update the shader technology in the GPU so no matter what Nintendo or anyone for that matter does games won't look better than Gamecube games cause they can't make use of the lighting and normal maps that make 360/PS3 games look as good as they do.  Texture work and lighting will be same in the Wii as it was on the Gamecube best they can do is make bigger levels and use more higher res textures.

wow. You are so wrong. Wii > xbox > gcn > ps2. Numbers don't tell whole story, the CPU, Memory, and GPU are all better than what was in the xbox.

Metroid Prime 3 looks distinctively better than 1 or 2.

SMG1 and 2 looks distinctively better than anything on GCN.

Conduit (as will part 2) does many features that were not capable on GCN.

NSMBWii would not be possible on the GCN. (as two players maybe, not 4 and not with the super guide feature)

There are no games on xbox that couldn't have been done with same exact feature set on Wii. Wii could even do 720p if Nintendo had wanted, they chose not to in order to free up power for the game vs the HD pixels.

I'll use Metroid Prime 3 as my example.  I only played Metroid Prime 3 and I havn't played the others, but I'll use that to prove my point.  Metroid Prime 3 doesn't use any normal maps (I couldn't even tell if it used bump mapping but from what I can tell it doesn't for some reason.).  All the lighting is prebaked with some bloom in there.  The texture work is all medium detailed.  Shadows are prebaked into the scenery.  And what is Conduit doing that isn't can't be done on the GC?  And New Super Mario Brothers Wii couldn't be done on the GC?  Why pretail would that be?  It isn't exactly a big step up from the DS version.  But look what I'm trying to say is that when ATI was making Hollywood they never bothered to update to shader model 2.  So what does that mean?  Even though the Wii can pump out more polygons and use more of the high res textures the GC/PS2/Xbox can use doesn't change the fact that the Wii is stuck using those same textures from last gen, that same lighting from last gen etc.  Like the Wii is more capable yes, but the GPU didn't get the shader upgrade to actually do anything more than the GC can do, and that's where the problem lies.  If they upgraded the shader tech in the Wii then you'd have games on the Wii that look like SSF4 3DS and Resident Evil 3DS, but that's not the case.

jump i saw from metroid prime 2-3, was as big i seen on uncharted 1-2.

i dont agree,



.jayderyu on 24 August 2010

This topic that has boiled down to Wii vs Last gen never ceases to amaze me to the level of ignorance. Too many people think that power is all in the numbers. Well while those numbers are heplful they don't tell the real story. If I have 2000 cars trying to get across a 2 lane bridge. The other side is only processing 2 lanes of traffic even though the terminals can process 3000 cars.

The XBOX had great numbers, but was bottlenecked all over the place. The GC had superior architecture that the CPU could easily and has outperformed the Xbox CPU. Just because it was well designed.

The end result is that around 22 million /sec polygons were done successful on the GC in a game. While the XBox was at 14 million /sec. That's a significant amount of RAW crunch the GC was outdoing on XBox.

Where XBox was king. This is an area were MS is just smarter due to experience. Nintendo chose their pixel technology the TEV. A Wicked piece of processing that can do amazing effects. The downfall. It's a pain in the ass. Developers last and current gen still consider it a pain in the ass. They consider it enough of a pain in the ass to make baseless claims that Wii CANT do X Ability. If Nintendo isn't smart enough to drop the TEV behind then they can suffer. Better Tech does not mean people will use it. MS on the other hand built up on standard PC DX Shaders technology(sorry dark, but it's not ATI shader tech that the problem). DX Shaders were much more supports. There's online documentation and help ALL over the place. DX Shaders are easier to work with.

So why do a majority of XBoX games look better.

1. Lack of consumer base on the GC
2. Memory means more objects & texture
3. TEV could do same texture processing effects faster, but most developers didn't want to bother. And still don't.
4. Most people can't tell processing effects from hardware capability.
5. The community support because of it's PC background just made making XBox games easier. Even though the NGC api was written to be super easy. Community support goes ALONG way. Even on inferior technology.

Anyways. The Wii power isn't just as simple as double. Doubling the chip doesn't just mean double power. hardware technology uses curves not linear progression. I agree with another poster. Which I think is far more relevant to the power of the Wii. It's ashame that developers think in terms of power. Rather in terms gameplay and the people that play them.

I've posted my 2 cents. This is at 6 pages as of writing this. This means that productive discussion isn't in effect, but instead the pattern of "I believe what I want" is ruling.



Squilliam: On Vgcharts its a commonly accepted practice to twist the bounds of plausibility in order to support your argument or agenda so I think its pretty cool that this gives me the precedent to say whatever I damn well please.

*Sound Of Rain on 24 August 2010

Graphics: Wii>GameCube

Controls: Wii>GameCube

Games: Wii>GameCube

Sales: Wii>GameCube

If Wii is just an updated GameCube then Nintendo is doing one heck of a job...anyway the Wii will still have support in 2013 as T.H.Q has already said that they they have games for UDraw planned for 2011,2012, and 2013. A new console might be out but Wii has support planned up to that point.



Metallicube on 24 August 2010

Fine, it's a refurbished Gamecube, but it's apparently a refurbished Gamecube that 73 million people want.

Makes me laugh how these tech whores get their panties in a bunch that such an underpowered console is kicking the taints of the "amazing" powerful HD consoles.



darkknightkryta on 24 August 2010
serav said:
darkknightkryta said:
superchunk said:
darkknightkryta said:
joeorc said:

it is a fact that the Wii is quite more robust in it's hardware over the game cube..

and no it's not

(2) game cubes duct taped together..that is lame

the real point is even though the Wii is quite more powerful than the Game cube the developer's are not taking advantage of that extra power. Hell even Nintendo it seem's is in no hurry to push the system. which is ok, that the games are fun anyway. but on the same token at least give it a go and try to pust the envelope with the graphic's on the Wii. it would be kind of nice to see that once in a while.

The Wii is about as powerful as the first X-Box, the problem is that they didn't update the shader technology in the GPU so no matter what Nintendo or anyone for that matter does games won't look better than Gamecube games cause they can't make use of the lighting and normal maps that make 360/PS3 games look as good as they do.  Texture work and lighting will be same in the Wii as it was on the Gamecube best they can do is make bigger levels and use more higher res textures.

wow. You are so wrong. Wii > xbox > gcn > ps2. Numbers don't tell whole story, the CPU, Memory, and GPU are all better than what was in the xbox.

Metroid Prime 3 looks distinctively better than 1 or 2.

SMG1 and 2 looks distinctively better than anything on GCN.

Conduit (as will part 2) does many features that were not capable on GCN.

NSMBWii would not be possible on the GCN. (as two players maybe, not 4 and not with the super guide feature)

There are no games on xbox that couldn't have been done with same exact feature set on Wii. Wii could even do 720p if Nintendo had wanted, they chose not to in order to free up power for the game vs the HD pixels.

I'll use Metroid Prime 3 as my example.  I only played Metroid Prime 3 and I havn't played the others, but I'll use that to prove my point.  Metroid Prime 3 doesn't use any normal maps (I couldn't even tell if it used bump mapping but from what I can tell it doesn't for some reason.).  All the lighting is prebaked with some bloom in there.  The texture work is all medium detailed.  Shadows are prebaked into the scenery.  And what is Conduit doing that isn't can't be done on the GC?  And New Super Mario Brothers Wii couldn't be done on the GC?  Why pretail would that be?  It isn't exactly a big step up from the DS version.  But look what I'm trying to say is that when ATI was making Hollywood they never bothered to update to shader model 2.  So what does that mean?  Even though the Wii can pump out more polygons and use more of the high res textures the GC/PS2/Xbox can use doesn't change the fact that the Wii is stuck using those same textures from last gen, that same lighting from last gen etc.  Like the Wii is more capable yes, but the GPU didn't get the shader upgrade to actually do anything more than the GC can do, and that's where the problem lies.  If they upgraded the shader tech in the Wii then you'd have games on the Wii that look like SSF4 3DS and Resident Evil 3DS, but that's not the case.

jump i saw from metroid prime 2-3, was as big i seen on uncharted 1-2.

i dont agree,


I never played the first two (yet anyways have the trilogy sitting at home collecting dust until I finish off a few other games), I'm just looking at Metroid Prime 3 compared to what I played last gen on my PS2 and there's one thing they all have in common: lighting sucks, textures suck and polygon count sucks.  2 of those 3 could have been solved if ATI updated the shader units in the Hollywood, that isn't the case.  Texture work isn't better in Prime 3 compared to last gen, or lighting, or shadows, or post processing.  That's why the Wii is stuck with games looking as they are they are; hell Nintendo said at that E3 when they announced Wii Music that they were making games with good graphics but they weren't ready.  Past E3 I'm assuming they showed off those games since they announced Zelda.  And what do we have?  I can argue Twilight Princess looks better than Skyward Swords (I'm not even talking about art direction here).  Metroid: Other M looks better than most of what they showed (But does it look better than Ninja Gaiden: Black?) but even then its lighting isn't any better than Prime 3, there's more detailed textures, but there isn't any textures that can't be done on the GC, and Samus' character model looks better but even then I'm sure if Team Ninja had GC dev kits to make Other M she'd look the same.  The only thing from Nintendo that impressed me on a technical level was Kirby, I still can't figure out how they're doing it.