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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - My theory on the wiis power.

HappySqurriel on 19 February 2008
highwaystar101 said:
If people wanted good games with 3D graphics then they would have stuck with the N64... but unfortunatley people want good graphics, which does not add to gameplay

It depends on what you mean by "good graphics" ...

In many ways, the jump from the N64 to the Dreamcast/PS2/Gamecube/XBox was a major improvement that gamers in general were looking for; characters became far more expressive due to skeletal and facial animation, environments became far more densely populated and really started to resemble real world environments, and (in general) the richness of the game experience was greatly improved.

You can't make the same claims about the jump from the XBox to the XBox 360, because even the best games (Halo, Bioshock) are remarkably similar to games that were released nearly a decade ago; the XBox could support very similar gameplay and environment richness at the expense of the advanced shaders.



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bdbdbd on 19 February 2008
celine said:
bdbdbd said:
 
As you can see, it was in the N64 era. Maybe i should have been more specific with "N64", since i was meaning Yamauchi apparently saw the industry and Nintendos position in it. Isn't it funny how history repeates itself, Sony has done the excact same thing as Nintendo. Anyway, in general 3rd party relations, were pretty much fixed, when GC was launched, just look at it's good support at start, and what's more important, is they were fixed while Yamauchi was still the CEO. If we look at Nintendos direction and what Yamauchi said couple of years ago, you can see that he had went into himself and rethink things. The biggest difference i see between Yamauchi and Iwata is, that Yamauchi saw 3rd parties as competition, while Iwata sees them partners.

 I think the biggest difference between Yamauchi and Iwata is that the former based his judgement on instinct and insight the latter on his understanding and vision of gaming market.

One is self-made man that build a billionarire empire starting from a little hanafuda company the other is the only CEO of bigger gaming company that was a programmer and lived gaming from inside  the "software maker" environment. 


You need to remember that Nintendo started as a 3rd party developer in todays games industry. Now, i'm not saying that Iwata wouldn't have that vision, but so far he has been going by Yamauchis vision at Nintendo. Of course, Iwata chose how to go by that vision.

Ei Kiinasti.

Eikä Japanisti.

Vaan pannaan jalalla koreasti.

 

Nintendo games sell only on Nintendo system.

adge on 19 February 2008
HappySqurriel said:
highwaystar101 said:
If people wanted good games with 3D graphics then they would have stuck with the N64... but unfortunatley people want good graphics, which does not add to gameplay

It depends on what you mean by "good graphics" ...

In many ways, the jump from the N64 to the Dreamcast/PS2/Gamecube/XBox was a major improvement that gamers in general were looking for; characters became far more expressive due to skeletal and facial animation, environments became far more densely populated and really started to resemble real world environments, and (in general) the richness of the game experience was greatly improved.

You can't make the same claims about the jump from the XBox to the XBox 360, because even the best games (Halo, Bioshock) are remarkably similar to games that were released nearly a decade ago; the XBox could support very similar gameplay and environment richness at the expense of the advanced shaders.


You are 100% correct, when I was young (8-bit era) and wanted to play games with my parents they'd say "which one am I" or "where do I go" the abstraction from green chunky blob to red chunky blob was a barrier they found hard to overcome.

With the previous generation 3D environments became understandable by the brain, it's obvious what was tree, river and tank...  The only problem was control, hand either of my parents a standard controller and they'd cause the character to spin in a circle gazing at the floor.

Wii put that bit into place, now they can play tennis and know which character they are (thanks again to the Mii) and control what that character is doing... Now they are having fun and participating on a level playing field.

 



Dno on 19 February 2008
HappySqurriel said:

Realistically ...

Nintendo choose the hardware for the Wii with a focus on selling every unit at a profit, reusing their tools and technology for game development, and keeping game development costs down because they were heavily worried about the Wii being unsuccessful and/or third parties not supporting the system; if you're going to remain profitable on a system which only sells 10 Million units you don't really want to lose money upfront or have massive development costs.

When they decided to go forward with the Wii (rather than a more conventional system) they probably took the Gamecube's hardware and made whatever changes which would give them the most "bang for the buck" ... increasing the cache size on the Gekko or doubling the number of pixel pipelines on the Flipper (while increasing the clock speed) would put the system close to the limits of what SD can display without moving into the expensive material effects (from advanced pixel shaders).

 

One important question is whether graphics beyond what the Wii can produce actually matters?

I'm personally of the belief that videogames are a lot like comic books and cartoons in that making something look more realistic does not necessarily make it look better; quite often a simple line-drawing is far more interesting than a photograph, and can convey far more style and emotion than a movie.


i agree. rachet looks awesome much better then mario and none look like a movie.... If you are comparing HD consoles to a movie its a little different in all genres are on ps3 but still look better which makes the game a lot better because it looks real. 



celine on 19 February 2008
bdbdbd said:
celine said:
bdbdbd said:
 
As you can see, it was in the N64 era. Maybe i should have been more specific with "N64", since i was meaning Yamauchi apparently saw the industry and Nintendos position in it. Isn't it funny how history repeates itself, Sony has done the excact same thing as Nintendo. Anyway, in general 3rd party relations, were pretty much fixed, when GC was launched, just look at it's good support at start, and what's more important, is they were fixed while Yamauchi was still the CEO. If we look at Nintendos direction and what Yamauchi said couple of years ago, you can see that he had went into himself and rethink things. The biggest difference i see between Yamauchi and Iwata is, that Yamauchi saw 3rd parties as competition, while Iwata sees them partners.

I think the biggest difference between Yamauchi and Iwata is that the former based his judgement on instinct and insight the latter on his understanding and vision of gaming market.

One is self-made man that build a billionarire empire starting from a little hanafuda company the other is the only CEO of bigger gaming company that was a programmer and lived gaming from inside the "software maker" environment.


 

You need to remember that Nintendo started as a 3rd party developer in todays games industry. Now, i'm not saying that Iwata wouldn't have that vision, but so far he has been going by Yamauchis vision at Nintendo. Of course, Iwata chose how to go by that vision.

I remember it

I know that Nintendo was deeply plasmated ( I hope this verb exist ) by Yamauchi strong will ( hell see my avatar ) but when you read Iwata's speech before Wii's launch you understand that that guy know exactly what he and Nintendo were doing.

Iwata's attitude to discuss to the public it's vision and how this vision plasmated their product it's entirely brand-new.

EDIT : Oh and I agree with Happy about graphic ... 



 “In the entertainment business, there are only heaven and hell, and nothing in between and as soon as our customers bore of our products, we will crash.”  Hiroshi Yamauchi

TAG:  Like a Yamauchi pimp slap delivered by Il Maelstrom; serving it up with style.

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sc94597 on 19 February 2008
Username2324 said:
sc94597 said:
Username2324 said:
sc94597 said:
Username2324 said:
 

The Wii's specs are only about 50% better than the Gamecubes, so I don't see how this could be true, and you can't say 30-50% of the power is lost because of the High Resolutions (what about registering the motion, and sending audio to the controller for the Wii? That takes power too), that's part of making a beautiful game, so that statement is false as well. I would also like to know where you got your "efficient" part at, everyone knows its up to the developers code, not exactly the hardware, so again, that statement is false. "wii games to look better than PS3 and 360" again completely false, compare multiplatform games, the low resolution and weak power of the Wii becomes extremely noticeable.

People are mad at Wii 3rd part developers because they can't code for the Wii, it's because they have lowsy game ideas. The Wii's potential as already been reached, due to Nintendo not using any new technology. Your comparison of the 3 consoles is very flawed.


Yep cause the wii mote uses as much power as high res and high res textures./sarcasm Efficiency is greatly determined by the hardwares architecture and how many bottlenecks are in that hardware not just how well a dev could produce something. Its like comparing a lower clocked 2ghz cor 2duo ot a 3.6ghz pentium 4 which is better. The more efficient one because it does twice+ of its power in the same time the other processor does one. The only significant multiplatform was CoD 3 and that was a launch game. Who ever said the wii was pushed to its limits. When the wii is running games at 30fps then I will say it is pushed to its limits.


I'm not quite sure I understand your comparison... Your comparing a 2.0Ghz COre 2 Duo to a 3.6Ghz P4, and your saying the P4 is faster? That is not the case, so if that's your comparison you are wrong and your post becomes irrelavent. Or are you comparing the two and saying the Core 2 Duo is faster? If that's the case your still doing a poor comparison, if anything the Core 2 would represent the PS3 and the P4 the Wii, in which case the P4 has many more bottlenecks and the Core 2 is far more efficient. And yes it is up to the developers, because they can take these "bottlenecks" and work around them, put them to their advantage,

You obviously have a poor understanding of CPU's and development, and it shows is your original post how you go from x more powerful to x more powerful.

I mean if you honestly think that any game would look better on the Wii rather than the 360 or PS3 then you are living in a false reality. You don't seem to realize that a fair comparison would be on identical screens, so if the screens were both low-res the PS3/360 would look better, or if they were both HD the PS3/360 would look better.

PS3/360 games will always look better whether there in HD or not. End of thread.


I saide the core 2 duo is better. The cell as far as I know has alot more bottlenecks than any other cpu and is extremely hard to design for. Also why would you say a cell is a core 2 duo when it is only has 1 core while a core 2 duo has 2. That was just to show you that being more efficient allows more power per unit of time. I'm talking about alot of the early games the wii could look better I know it won't look better than up to date games. Not all bottlenecks could be developed around. Thats why having less bottlenecks is better because you can't develope around it. I'm not saying the wii is more powerful I'm just trying to make out where it is graphically. I never said they won't look better in sd. I'm just saying that in sd they would look even better than in hd because the devs could use more of that power put in hd for other more important things. You think that i'm trying to say the wii is better but I'm just trying to say that the other consoles aren't going to produce games 8-10 times more graphically powered because of the reasons I stated. /Thread not ended.

You lack of knowledge is proved then Cell has 8 cores, and without that extra resolution you only have so many pixels to work with, so again, there is no way in hell that SD would look better than HD, AGAIN, thread ended.

 


Actually a core and an spe are different. The cell has one core and 8 spe. So don't get those mixed up. I said the ps3 and 360 would have support for better visuals in sd than in hd. I didn't say sd was better than hd I said that the games would look better in sd because the devs don't have to 1 spend there time in hd and 2 waste power on hd just for high resolutions and high res textures that most people don't notice but instead they could add things like blur effects,better phyisics, better AI, more polygons, more vertexes and etc. This still doesn't diminish the fact that the wii has less bottle necks than the ps3 and this could also be said at a less extent for the 360. 



Ryudo on 19 February 2008

I remember Yamauchi saying in a NP when he was asked how he felt about the Gamecube going against the compeition(which at that time was Dreamcast,Xbox and PS2) and He said he saw no competition for the Gamecube except the GBA.
That is when I lost it with him and was hoping he would leave.(well maybe he was right seeing how Cube sucked not in hardware but failed in the market even Iwata admitted that if Wii didn't sell better than Gamecube they would be a failure)

Then after seeing that brit special on Nintendo how he treated family and would not even talk to them or visit unless is was 100% business related it made me loath him more.



Naraku_Diabolos on 19 February 2008

Oh yeah, don't forget the Wii2/WiiHD when it's released. I wonder what the presentation will look with just regular Wii games. I bet it will/would look better when upscaled.

Oh, and Username2324, the OP was right about Wii games looking better on SDs than HDs. I have a flat-screen SD I got for Christmas in 2006 for college and it has component input. Mind you, when the component input cable and Wii are hooked up to it, the picture is clear, but everything IS blended it. It's not crystal clear and sharp, but clear. I don't have the fuzzy resolution (lines would look as if moving around like fuzz) like I would with the regular cables, but the lines are not jagged and stiff; they are blended into the background. At this moment, I now have my Wii hooked up to my HDTV in my basement with component input being used. Yes, the details look like shit and it does have jagged lines, but the textures (detail is when you look at texture from a distance, which is REALLY blurry and blocky) on objects looks smooth. The colors are vibrant, but are nothing compared to PS3 or X360 because they are better. Once the upgraded Wii hits the market in the next few years, it maybe more or slightly more powerful than the PS3 in terms of graphics, but probably not much with processing speed. The Cell was a gamble: it's hard for developers to utilize, but it does get the job done when used correctly. The only things PS3 has going for it right now are the Cell and Blu-Ray drive, and that's a major plus. Wii has the remote to utilize and manipulate 3D space. The X360 has good online support which drives the system (but has current faulty hardware), so they all have their own unique qualities.



Username2324 on 22 February 2008


 


Actually a core and an spe are different. The cell has one core and 8 spe. So don't get those mixed up. I said the ps3 and 360 would have support for better visuals in sd than in hd. I didn't say sd was better than hd I said that the games would look better in sd because the devs don't have to 1 spend there time in hd and 2 waste power on hd just for high resolutions and high res textures that most people don't notice but instead they could add things like blur effects,better phyisics, better AI, more polygons, more vertexes and etc. This still doesn't diminish the fact that the wii has less bottle necks than the ps3 and this could also be said at a less extent for the 360.


 It's considered a 8 core processor, while the SPEs may not be full fledged cores, they can handle a variety of tasks, and when you have 7 SPEs and 1 Core you get mutli-core performance.

 Here's what you need to understand. SD = 480p = 640x480 (just 307,200 pixels) . Understand? Now with that resolution you only have so much room to put stuff, therefore, you get to a point where you can't put anymore details in. Mmk? That's why there has been a switch from SD to HD. (720p = 921,600 3x the detail, 1080p = 2,073,600 more than 6x the detail)

So essentailly, games in SD look as good as they are going to for the PS3 and 360, that is why they go into HD resolutions, so they look even better. END OF THREAD. 

@Naraku_Diabolos
Of course WII games look better in SD then WII games in HD, because the WII cannot do HD.



disolitude on 22 February 2008
Username2324 said:


 


Actually a core and an spe are different. The cell has one core and 8 spe. So don't get those mixed up. I said the ps3 and 360 would have support for better visuals in sd than in hd. I didn't say sd was better than hd I said that the games would look better in sd because the devs don't have to 1 spend there time in hd and 2 waste power on hd just for high resolutions and high res textures that most people don't notice but instead they could add things like blur effects,better phyisics, better AI, more polygons, more vertexes and etc. This still doesn't diminish the fact that the wii has less bottle necks than the ps3 and this could also be said at a less extent for the 360.


It's considered a 8 core processor, while the SPEs may not be full fledged cores, they can handle a variety of tasks, and when you have 7 SPEs and 1 Core you get mutli-core performance.

Here's what you need to understand. SD = 480p = 640x480 (just 307,200 pixels) . Understand? Now with that resolution you only have so much room to put stuff, therefore, you get to a point where you can't put anymore details in. Mmk? That's why there has been a switch from SD to HD. (720p = 921,600 3x the detail, 1080p = 2,073,600 more than 6x the detail)

So essentailly, games in SD look as good as they are going to for the PS3 and 360, that is why they go into HD resolutions, so they look even better. END OF THREAD.

@Naraku_Diabolos
Of course WII games look better in SD then WII games in HD, because the WII cannot do HD.


You both are right actually. While textures and lighting and shading etc. will never look better in SD over HD, an Xbox 360 and PS3 game may be able to throw 30 enemies at you at the same time rather than only 10 if they did not have to render everything in such high resolution. You may be able to get 4 playes split screen in gears of war if the game was only 480p. So there are possibilities for a game to run better and hence "look better" if using only SD.