StarcraftManiac said: Wii - Super smash bros is gonna be big. Will outsell the Cube version, eventually. WiiFit will sell out during its first 2-3 months and in the holiday season. So will the Wii (at some point in the Spring-Summer it will be available, Christmas 08 is same as this one but with bigger stock). Mario Kart will (aah, look at SSB:B) = outsell Cubeversion = bigger than 6 million. Nintendo Wii will have 33 million sold by end of 2008. Massive Wii support (More GOOD Wii 3th party games).

Come on.  I kinda understand people underestimating Wii.  But don't contradict your own predictions!

 if wii is selling out in winter/spring and then in fall/holiday, then it by end of year selling everything they made....1.8mil*12+18.5 now is over 40 MILLION....so how do u predict 33 million?  especially when u say smash/wiifit/mario kart/3rd parties will all do well

 don't say wii will sell out most of the year and then predict under 40million sales...does not compute

It's not like consoles last generation couldn't handle massive amounts of 3D characters on screen. Well, okay, the PS2 couldn't, but the GameCube was specficially designed to be able to render a large number of 3D characters on-screen and not lag. I remember they did a demo called Mario 128, where there were 128 Marios running around tossing stuff around, throwing each other around, etc., while terrain modifications were run on the surface they were on. Didn't even tax the system.

The point is, being able to do more of the same is nothing new or innovative. It doesn't have the same impact as jumping from 16 to 256+ colors, nor as big a jump as tile-based to bitmapped, nor as big as 2D to 3D. And more to the point, with so much on screen, resolution matters even less. You're not going to be stopping to look at any one object on screen unless it's the player character or your current opponent, because there's so much on screen at once that focusing on small and unimportant details will likely get you a lost life or a game over.

@ Shams

To quote your claims:



You seem to distinguish between console (home console) and handheld (handheld console) yourself as well. Did the success of the Gameboy Color hurt the PSX? Did the Gameboy Advance hurt Playstation 2 sales or help GameCube sales in any significant way? Did the success of the Playstation 2 or the Gameboy marginalize the PC gaming market?

@ Sky Render

Games have become far more complex than that, in Super Stardust HD you have many thousands of moving object colliding with each other changing their movements paths, super high paced attacks and explosions, believe me this game couldn't be done on the Wii even with a significant graphics detail downgrade.

Many modern effects takes lots of processing power. Uncharted for example has very impressive water effects, varied animations which are slighty different each time. In Ratched and Clank: Tools of Destruction there are huge hordes of near Pixar quality enemies on screen at once without dropping frames, there's so much more with regard to game complexity the Wii can't handle well enough compared to higher specced systems other than just output resolution or lighting effects, think about advanced AI, huge overwhelming areas to explore like in Oblivion, etc, etc.

I don't really recall any HD games I have played being particularly fun to me. Oh certainly, they have impressive visuals, but... Well, Oblivion quite frankly bored me with its dated gameplay. What little I tried of Motorstorm didn't impress me either; it just struck me as yet another racing game with an annoying "vehicle can fall apart" feature that made it unnecessarily harder. In fact, the only even remotely impressive high-resolution game I've seen (if it even counts as one) is Portal. Mostly because of its gameplay merits, not its visual ones.

To put it another way: impressive visuals are nothing but what they are. If the game isn't fun, for me at least, I don't care if it does look pretty. I won't be replaying it, or likely even finishing it.  Saying that a game is good because the graphics are impressive is like saying that you're a good artist because you use the best paints money can buy.  The former is not implied by the latter in either case.

@ Sky Render

I played over 120+ hours! One example why I like the game:

I created quite a bit of havoc in one of the cities, I wouldn't recommend this as you need the guards to protect the cities from Oblivion gates, but this is what happened.

I made quite a few friends which will help me if attacked. I summoned my own Deadroth at my command, but used him as target practice to improve my bow skills, but the Deadroth will get angry entually if attacked and so starts to attack me and the guards came to my aid to battle the Deadroth, but others nearby (members of the fighters and mages guild) thought the guards were just suddenly attacking my creature and started to battle with the guards, it was nice watching this battle unfold from the rooftops at a safe distance, more and more guards came and more and more mages guild, assassins and fighter guild members joined in on the battle, eventually leaving a dozen city guards and many others dead! Oh well, I searched all the bodies and sold off all their armour and other possessions and earned quite a bit of gold! Wow! 8-)



I love the game, IMO it's quite unique for a racer with its great leaps of faith and multiple track routes, this game is also really fun to play online!



Better graphics and sound can add to the gaming experience similar to a sci-fi or fantasy movie with good special effects or one with really bad special effects. But what I have been talking about regards game complexity in general.



True if games were like static paintings, but modern games are far more complex, they are like virtual worlds with water, wind, sun, character interactions, environment interactions, etc, etc.

You clearly missed my point. What does it matter if the visuals are life-like and impressive if the game itself is boring or appeals only to a very small subset of the gaming population? And more importantly, why put in such an excessive effort to make a visually impressive game if a less visually impressive game with solid gameplay mechanics can sell better and cost far less to produce?

@ Sky Render

But that's not the case, the games I mentioned offer solid gameplay and the game complexity including graphics add to the user experience! I assure you a lot of time and effort has been spend on God of War 2 and Mario Galaxy to pump up the graphics as much as possible on their target platforms and this adds greatly to the gaming experience.

I think you are both missing the point a bit actually. Consider this:

"We do want games to become more and more visually impressive but we also want them to become more and more intuitively interactive. "

And in that one statement I have just made there lies the key to this generation. Think about the technological path of both graphics and interactivity. Now ask yourself the question which one of these has been focused on almost to the complete exclusion of the other. Which one of these is pushing the limits of technology and which one of these could greatly benefit from new changes and could easily be coupled with existing technology to make leaps and bounds improvements?

The answers should be fairly obvious and if they are then you are probably the sort of person that understands why the Wii is successfull even if you don't like it for those reasons (or at all). This whole generation can be boiled down to these basic principles. The PS3 and 360 were pushing the graphical envelope and the result is that their technology is ahead of the "cost effective curve".

This is of course why Nintendo's decision to focus on the underdeveloped area of interactivity has been so successful. Because not only are they on the correct side of the "cost effect curve" but they are also showing major and tangible improvements. Again some may not agree but the sales say that most people do agree.

In any case both of these are important aspects to pushed and it is not a bad thing that Sony and MS want to push the graphical envelope. It is however a bad thing that the pushed themselves beyond the curve to achieve it. I look forward to when consoles are pushing the envelope on interactivity and graphics together because that will truly be an amazing generation, I can only hope it will have neural interfaces as well.

For you, yes, they are fun. You fit into the niche of gamers that those games were intended to sell to. But what of other gamers, the kinds who don't want that kind of game? Keep in mind, you're only one gamer amongst a multitude. You do not represent the whole, or even the majority; nobody does and nobody can. What you find fun, others may not.