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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - Why does it matter if Wii U games dont look as good as others?

I don't care too much about graphics, as long as they are "good enough", and Wii U graphics quality is fine enough for me.
My only concern is about how CPU power and RAM size (and speed) could influence gameplay, should they force to split large levels of multiplats games in smaller parts to be able to manage them, but lightweight OS and less RAM used by GPU should help about this, and we still have to see any of these worst cases.
This said, I'm not particularly attracted by Wii U, but surely this has nothing to do with graphics.



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TGS, Third Grade Shooter: brand new genre invented by Kevin Butler exclusively for Natal WiiToo Kinect. PEW! PEW-PEW-PEW! 
 


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SubiyaCryolite said:
curl-6 said:
SubiyaCryolite said:

A quick look at Metacritic shows that for all Wii releases, the number of games rated 80+ ends half way down the first page. On the 360 side, the page ends at 84 and goes on on the next page. PS3 ends at 87 on the 1st page and ends at 84 on the SECOND page. You guys must really live in alternate dimension or something. 

Nope, we just don't need reviewers to tell us what to think. :)


Now its reviews dont matter right? lol. One or two sites can be biased either way but the metascore is pretty spot on regardless. No one has had problems brining up Knacks, Shadow Fall or 3D Worlds metascore until now huh?

I've never brought up Knack, Shadow Fall, or 3D World's Metascores to bolster a claim about their quality. Reviews are just opinions. I can form my own, thanks.



If graphics mattered, N64 would have demolished PS1; GameCube & Xbox would've trounced PS2; PSP would have eaten DS alive; Wii would've been destroyed by PS360, and Vita would rule supreme over 3DS. Also, Nintendo would never have released another handheld after the original GameBoy.



Nintendo Network ID: Cheebee   3DS Code: 2320 - 6113 - 9046

 

Cheebee said:
If graphics mattered, N64 would have demolished PS1; GameCube & Xbox would've trounced PS2; PSP would have eaten DS alive; Wii would've been destroyed by PS360, and Vita would rule supreme over 3DS. Also, Nintendo would never have released another handheld after the original GameBoy.


And PS4 would have..oh wait!



Cheebee said:
If graphics mattered, N64 would have demolished PS1; GameCube & Xbox would've trounced PS2; PSP would have eaten DS alive; Wii would've been destroyed by PS360, and Vita would rule supreme over 3DS. Also, Nintendo would never have released another handheld after the original GameBoy.

 

PS1 often beat N64 for graphics easily. Not only did the N64 often render at a lower resolution, it had limited storage on cartridge and finally the PS1 supported high quality RGB output where as the N64 was composite or s-video. As for ps2 it had some fine graphics. Don't forget it had a version of Gran Turismo at 1920x1080i resolution. It also had 32bit colour not 24bit like Gamecube. I think the rules change on handhelds because superior graphics often come at the expense of battery life.



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bonzobanana said:

As for ps2 it had some fine graphics. Don't forget it had a version of Gran Turismo at 1920x1080i resolution. It also had 32bit colour not 24bit like Gamecube. I think the rules change on handhelds because superior graphics often come at the expense of battery life.

It did have some fine looking games, but its shading capabilities were archaic compared to the competition. Rogue Squadron 2 and Halo 1, launch titles for Xbox and Gamecube, pulled off a host of effects that PS2 simply could not handle. Real world polygon count was inferior on PS2 also, as was texturing due its lack of hardware texture decompression.

Tons of GCN/Xbox games were well out of PS2's league technically; Rogue Squadron 1 & 2, Halo 1 & 2, Conker, Starfox Adventures, Doom 3, Riddick...



Kane1389 said:
Cheebee said:
If graphics mattered, N64 would have demolished PS1; GameCube & Xbox would've trounced PS2; PSP would have eaten DS alive; Wii would've been destroyed by PS360, and Vita would rule supreme over 3DS. Also, Nintendo would never have released another handheld after the original GameBoy.


And PS4 would have..oh wait!

Would have...? Oh wait!



Nintendo Network ID: Cheebee   3DS Code: 2320 - 6113 - 9046

 

curl-6 said:
SubiyaCryolite said:
curl-6 said:
SubiyaCryolite said:

A quick look at Metacritic shows that for all Wii releases, the number of games rated 80+ ends half way down the first page. On the 360 side, the page ends at 84 and goes on on the next page. PS3 ends at 87 on the 1st page and ends at 84 on the SECOND page. You guys must really live in alternate dimension or something. 

Nope, we just don't need reviewers to tell us what to think. :)


Now its reviews dont matter right? lol. One or two sites can be biased either way but the metascore is pretty spot on regardless. No one has had problems brining up Knacks, Shadow Fall or 3D Worlds metascore until now huh?

I've never brought up Knack, Shadow Fall, or 3D World's Metascores to bolster a claim about their quality. Reviews are just opinions. I can form my own, thanks.


As can others, on Metacritic XD



I predict that the Wii U will sell a total of 18 million units in its lifetime. 

The NX will be a 900p machine

SubiyaCryolite said:
curl-6 said:

I've never brought up Knack, Shadow Fall, or 3D World's Metascores to bolster a claim about their quality. Reviews are just opinions. I can form my own, thanks.


As can others, on Metacritic XD

Yes, and I don't need my opinion validated by the opinions of others.



JoeTheBro 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.


Compared to the PS4, the Wii U is not that great  It's a much stronger system than people give it credit for, but so are the other two next gen systems. In time if the PS4 dominates, there is going to be a huge golf between the systems' graphics.

 

Luckily for Nintendo in this day and age graphics scale really well. Having worse resolution, worse models, worse animations, worse textures, worse framerate, etc. are much better than missing entire aspects of the game. That's assuming the Wii U gets a port of course. One thing that is really going to be a problem with the Wii U is dynamic lighting. With 7th gen games lots of lighting was done in production. This saved a lot of system resources but took a lot of time to make. Every item needed to be remade depending on its lighting situation for example. With PS4 and XBONE, many devs are switching to a real time solution. This means they only have to make one neutral colored item and the game engine does the rest. It looks better but more importantly is much cheaper.

Sadly the Wii U just doesn't have the power to do this and have great graphics. A port of a PS4 game will either need to be rebuilt costing millions of dollars, or else it will have to be scaled back beyond acceptable values. 1080p on PS4 verse 480p on Wii U with a worse framerate. Maybe I'm taking that analogy a bit far, but you get the point. I'm a dev so even though I post crazy things, I'm still less crazy than a random gamer.

 

On the thread subject, graphically there isn't much that in an ideal situation the wii u couldn't do. However games are more than graphics. AI, gameplay based distruction, and online elements are just not going to compare to the competition.

If you're working in MIddleware to begin with that isnt how it works.

 

Come on Joe.

Really? Dynamic lighting?

And do you forget where the PS4 is? Jeez lol.