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Forums - Nintendo - Iwata not convinced that PS4 and next Xbox will offer a true graphical leap

McDaniel-77 on 15 June 2012

It turned out, that Nintendo was right!

There is no graphical leap between Wii and PS360, where you could tell: "Wow! That looks unbelieveable good compared to the best the others offer!"

If you compare the best of Wii with the best of PS360, you ultimately find out, that Wii games have a better framerate with constant 60 fps, at the same time the best looking (on screen shots) PS360 games run with a struggling 30 fps and far away from true 1080p.

Nintendo is right with Wii U and PS420, because even if the PS420 will have 10x more horse power than Wii U, you won't get better than 60 fps, what Wii U already delivers. OK, you could push 1080p with 60 fps while Wii U just can hold up with 720p. The problem is, you'll need 2.25-times more power for 1080p than 720p. The visual gap is so small, it's just a waste. Wii U will cost 300-400 bucks, if PS420 will push the same visuals as Wii U, just in 1080p instead of 720p, you'll have to pay 500-600 bucks!

OK, I'm fine with that, because I own a powerful PC (Ivy Bridge K-CPU, soon GTX 670, 16 GB RAM etc..), I can run 60 fps in 1080p with FSAA enabled and everything maxed out.

When I look at the latest Unreal Engine Demo, I have to say, that this doesn't "wow!" me, because it just looks a tiny bit better than what Crysis did 2007 and 2008 with Crysis Warhead. We have 2012 and there is no game out there, which could make Crysis looking like an old school game.

McDaniel-77

 



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Alby_da_Wolf on 16 June 2012

Max resolution could be the same (or they could offer also a higher one not available on most common TVs), but being able to display it at higher frame rates could make a noticeable difference.
And 3D fans will have it at 1080p too.



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Monges79 on 16 June 2012

Apparently he hasn't watched the Unreal Engine 4 videos, where Epic has made it simpler to develop games then last gen. I'm sure for the blockbuster titles, it will take a lot of work. But, just like in previous generations, the developers will catch up. And the Sony exec. is right. Nintendo is in a generation of their own. I think that they should embrace that. They are always trying to differentiate themselves from their competition, so why not just say it?



Khuutra on 16 June 2012
zero129 said:

I Don't know, im pretty sure i remember them saying the PS3/360 wouldn't be too much of a huge leap over Wii and look how that turned out..

Nothing of the kind was ever said. The 360 came out a year before the Wii did; Hell, it came out before the Wii was even formally announced. At the time, Nintendo framed the Wii as being cleverly leveraged but matured tech, which was a perfectly valid way of describing it.



Naum on 16 June 2012

I don't think so either... seriously if studio after studio closes beacuse of expensive games in this "gen" just imagine the costs of new games if the graphic "leap" is as big as the last one...



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creampie on 16 June 2012

yeah they made HD games and went bankrupt...



Plezbo on 16 June 2012

This is why you are seeing the real emergence of indie games on consoles, smaller studios can't put out full fledged games any more, hell, THQ would probably be shuttered if not for Saints Row The Third. I think what you will see is some REALLY over the top games in MAJOR franchises from first parties, and then less graphically intense games from smaller studios who cant risk spending $100 million on a budget.



Aielyn on 16 June 2012

zero129 said:

Also that more developers would make games for the Wii then the 360/PS3, as Development on the HD consoles would cost too much.

That was when people thought that developers were intelligent, and would do what was necessary to ensure solvency.

Instead, many of them decided to forgo business intelligence in favour of their grand visions, and it resulted in studio collapse in many cases. Other studios are currently in dire straits, for the same reason.



Lostplanet22 on 18 June 2012
Aielyn said:
Lostplanet22 said:
flagstaad said:
He makes sense about more money needed to take advantage of the more powerful systems, if many studios are struggling now because they need to sell many copies of their games, what will happen if developing to take advantage of the new consoles become even more expensive?

Always the same shit,  this kind of stuff was already said about the first Ps ONe.  'Their will not be many devs embracing the idea of making games in 3D because it will be a huge risk that will cost many to go bankrupt'  only a few laters and the majority of the devs was only making their games in 3D'.. Every generation the same shit and sadly this generation it reached a new height....Please dig in the old threads I am sure you will find some threads about how their will be not many games for PS3/X360 because of the high cost and how everyone will end up making games for the Wii only >_>...

You've missed the point.

It's not that developers will only make games for the lower-power platform. It's that developers will feel they have to develop for the higher-power platform (if it's a significant jump), and it'll drive them out of business.

Don't think it's true? Look at all of the studio closures in the last 6 years. And it'll get worse as the number of units necessary to break even on "AAA" titles increases. And the result will be fourfold:

1. A lot of studios will end up going out of business as they try to deliver a title that sells well enough to make a reasonable profit given the expense of development.

2. Far fewer new IPs will be developed, as the risk of a game not being popular enough to at least come close to making a profit will mean that only the most successful publishers and developers will be able to take the risk.

3. The number of safe, low-cost titles (in other words, the sort of family-friendly titles that so many gamers mock) will skyrocket, as companies scramble to establish some sort of cash cow that will sustain them.

4. The big AAA titles will start to look more and more alike as developers become more risk-averse and stick more tightly to proven approaches.

Note that all of these have been in evidence in this generation, already. Lots of studio closures, a glut of sequels, too much focus on "teh casualz", as so many like to put it, and heaps of brown-and-grey FPSes, have been the biggest complaints about this generation. Now picture all four problems being amplified by a factor of 10.

Of course, the big risk if Sony and MS go for much more modest increases is that they'll end up with consoles not particularly more powerful than the Wii U. Why is this a big risk? Because if there isn't a significant reason (like a significant jump in graphical capability) to develop for the other systems first, the default will be to develop for the least powerful system, and port up. They do this because then they can be sure that the quality of the game on the "lowest" platform will be good enough. It was seen with the PS2, which was generally the primary development target even for games that were certainly multiplatform and even early in the generation. If you develop for a stronger platform first, you're forced to then do extra work to get it working on a weaker one, whereas developing for the weaker target first will result in the stronger version being relatively trivial.

This will work against Nintendo in the meantime, as 360/PS3/WiiU development will almost certainly use 360 as the primary development target, and the Wii U will only get alterations to make it use the Upad. Of course, this would be why Nintendo is so willing to fund third-party development of games that make innovative use of the Upad - it ensures differentiation, and titles targetted at Wii U will likely look better than those that are targetted at 360 and ported up.

It does put Sony and MS in a fine balancing act situation, though. Too powerful, and it'll play havoc with the industry. Not powerful enough, and it'll pretty much guarantee the Wii U dominating, short of some major innovation. And I don't doubt that this was precisely why Nintendo chose to release their system now (rather than either earlier or later), to make the financially best configuration sit just a moderate distance above the PS3 and 360, so that Sony and MS are stuck with that balancing act.


And again this is the same stuff we hear almost every generation...   

At the start of the PS One/Saturn generation many devs believed they could only make profit if they take a huge risk.  Guess what happaned?  Many went bankrupt but also many got saved thanks to merging..  The PS one generation ended up with games that started to look the same (many platformers and JRPG's and kart racing ) and many sequels...(FF, Crash Bandicoot, Spyro, Tomb Raider, Duke Nukem, Gex, Resident Evil and many more)..  To many casual and shovelware games..  also what you are talking about is an global problem and what you call in the USA  'Wallmart' syndrome?   Big companie that has so much financial/size power that smaller companies/stores need to take risks to survive..While big ones will hardly invest in stuff that will give them a little more profit;..

But lucky smaller game companies have a chance in the game industry thanks to Xbla/PSN etc.. (Notch with his minecraft made even more money last quarter than MS/nintendo and Sony combined).



 

endimion on 18 June 2012
wfz said:
What are you all babbling about? Rising costs? Developers having issues? That's just Nintendo fanboy talk. Developers haven't been having a hard time at all. We definitely haven't been seeing numerous reports of studios shutting down, people getting laid off, or entire companies going under.

It's all a myth. http://www.kotaku.com.au/2012/01/every-game-studio-thats-closed-down-since-2006/

Derrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrp.


yeah but that's false information at best... as said in one of their comment the number of start ups in that same time would be even longer....bthe VG industry is anything but in trouble it's the fastest and most profitable sector of the entertainement industry... 

and like people said you don't have to max out the graphics.... and beside that just new engines would help improve at a minor cost increase... and third no ody forces you to use current means of publishing and distribution.... cut the middle man and release online... it be better for the dev and MS isall for it.... WiiU will be crushed... if it's not power wise it will be with everything else PS4 and 720 will have to offer... that i have no doubt about.... now it doesn't mean 

wiiU will sell less... but it's almost a given that WiiU won't be close to par with sony's and ms  platform