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Forums - Gaming - About the "eigth gen is only a prettier seventh gen" argument

ICStats on 27 May 2014
Intrinsic said:
spemanig said:
Honestly, we shouldn't have to give it time. By April of the Wii's second year, it already had LoZ: Twilight Princess, Super Mario Galaxy, Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, Mario Kart Wii, and Super Smash Bros. Brawl. By april of the Wii U's second year, it had Wonderful 101, Super Mario 3D World, Pikmin 3, and Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze. Compared to the Wii, that's absolutely pitiful.

Hello nintendo, we told you HD games weren't easy to make.........

Obviously you knew that right? HD games are more resouce and time heavy?Especially when making new engines for new platforms?

I really don't get it though, do some people even know what they are talking about. Look at nintendo. As a company the only thing they is make games. thats all they do. Thats where they get tehir money from. Take every single wiiU game released and announced for the past and next 18 months respectively...... no get this, if nintendo could release every single on of those games on wiiU launch day they would have done just that. Cause games sell consoles. They know that more than you could ever know that. Unfortunately, in the world they live in... which is very different from yours, rainbow shitting unicorns dont just spit out games. 

Well put.  However they have also given the impression of being behind the times.  It's the only thing they do, and they still do it like it was ~10 years ago.

If you look at what western industry have been doing for the past decade, they have really worked to better their techniques, and participated in open forums for learning and teaching the latest methods at GDC and the like, and the most talented teams teach back.  I remember checking sessions at GDC this year, you could find 10s of sessions presented by Sony, Microsoft, Google, and most major publishers and middleware companies.  Yet from Nintendo basically nothing.  It gives a picture that Nintendo is too siloed from the game industry.

Reports from developers about the Wii U poor tooling and devkits, and Nintendo not knowing how online worked on PS/Xbox lead to a similar conclusion of disconnect.



My 8th gen collection

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Norris2k on 27 May 2014
Intrinsic said:
NightDragon83 said:

See: "law of diminishing returns". So far the 8th gen represents the smallest inter-generational leap in terms of graphics, hardware and gameplay features that we've seen.

8-16 bit went from a handful of colors, tiny sprites and just two buttons to mega sprites, hundreds of colors, mode 7, and 6 buttons.

16-32/64 bit went from improved 2D graphics to fully realized 3D graphics and CD quality sound, more buttons, and 360 degree analog control.

You conveninetly skipped a generation to validate your point?

We had the 8bit generation (NES: Super mario world, duck hunt, metal gear) then we had the 16bit gen (SNES: contra 3, final fight, street fighter 2, mortal kombat)

If you look at the above mentioned generations, while inroads were made into mode 7, it was still all 2d gaming. just with better sound, sprites and more colours on screen. 

The jump from PS3/360 to PS4/XBO is exactly the same thing with the jump from the 8bit era to the 16bit era with the differences being more in the details and how much more of those details and to what level they can be rendered than a complete generational shift in game design. If you really wanna get into it, we can actually go even further gack all the way to the commodore, amstrad, amiga...etc and you will see that in the past 30yrs of gaming there has been only two evolutionary shifts. 2D to 3D and then 3D to 3D HD. 

Every generation also brings in something extra, like the example you made about more buttons and online gaming, last gen brought it motion gaming (which in truth was just carried over from the PS2 gen) and a more expansive network. This gen so far has just built on all those tings and at least with the PS4 wil be bringing streaming gaming in PSnow (which in truth is just built on something that existed in the previous gen too) and VR. And of course we have mobile app supported stuff.

Personally, i think gamers today just whine, bitch and complain more than ever to the point where they write a lot of stuff that actually aren't based on any facts. Actually, they go as far as twist the actual facts to paint the exact kinda picture they want for what reason I have no idea.... maybe its cool or something.

And if we really went into detail especially on the hardware side of things, you will see how much rea;ly gets added on....

It's hard to argue about a feeling. Technically speaking, you are right, from 8 bits to 16 bits it's just about bigger sprite and all. But in term of impact, for me it made wierd and simplistic graphics become shiny, beautiful and artistic. I, and I think most of my generation, was impressed by that. PS360 graphics are not wierd and simplistics, the step can't be compared.



Intrinsic on 27 May 2014
ICStats said:

Well put.  However they have also given the impression of being behind the times.  It's the only thing they do, and they still do it like it was ~10 years ago.

If you look at what western industry have been doing for the past decade, they have really worked to better their techniques, and participated in open forums for learning and teaching the latest methods at GDC and the like, and the most talented teams teach back.  I remember checking sessions at GDC this year, you could find 10s of sessions presented by Sony, Microsoft, Google, and most major publishers and middleware companies.  Yet from Nintendo basically nothing.  It gives a picture that Nintendo is too siloed from the game industry.

Reports from developers about the Wii U poor tooling and devkits, and Nintendo not knowing how online worked on PS/Xbox lead to a similar conclusion of disconnect.

I completely agree with you. Nintendo is definitely behind the times, I mean they only made a HD console 6yrs late right? But how stuck in their bubble nintendo is isn't what this thread is about. They are just having to deal with what sony and MS and every third party dev under the sun had to deal with last gen now. Look at the bolded part, doesn't that sound exactly like PS3 circa 2006/7?

That aside though, ppl need to understand that Hd game development is a lot of work. A LOOOOOOT of work. Especially at the start of the generation.



Norris2k on 27 May 2014
Intrinsic said:
ICStats said:

Well put.  However they have also given the impression of being behind the times.  It's the only thing they do, and they still do it like it was ~10 years ago.

If you look at what western industry have been doing for the past decade, they have really worked to better their techniques, and participated in open forums for learning and teaching the latest methods at GDC and the like, and the most talented teams teach back.  I remember checking sessions at GDC this year, you could find 10s of sessions presented by Sony, Microsoft, Google, and most major publishers and middleware companies.  Yet from Nintendo basically nothing.  It gives a picture that Nintendo is too siloed from the game industry.

Reports from developers about the Wii U poor tooling and devkits, and Nintendo not knowing how online worked on PS/Xbox lead to a similar conclusion of disconnect.

I completely agree with you. Nintendo is definitely behind the times, I mean they only made a HD console 6yrs late right? But how stuck in their bubble nintendo is isn't what this thread is about. They are just having to deal with what sony and MS and every third party dev under the sun had to deal with last gen now. Look at the bolded part, doesn't that sound exactly like PS3 circa 2006/7?

That aside though, ppl need to understand that Hd game development is a lot of work. A LOOOOOOT of work. Especially at the start of the generation.

About being in a bubble, I would add their hiring process in Japan. They dont take resume online, hand writing only, and there is a japanese test and a strong focus on language skill that I think would take out about any foreigner (and some talented japanese).



GProgrammer on 27 May 2014
NightDragon83 said:

32/64 - 128 bit saw even more advanced 3D graphics, improved storage mediums, and for the first time fully realized online gameplay on 3 out of the 4 major consoles of the gen.
128 bit

We've never seen 128bit



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Intrinsic on 27 May 2014
Norris2k said:

It's hard to argue about a feeling. Technically speaking, you are right, from 8 bits to 16 bits it's just about bigger sprite and all. But in term of impact, for me it made wierd and simplistic graphics become shiny, beautiful and artistic. I, and I think most of my generation, was impressed by that. PS360 graphics are not wierd and simplistics, the step can't be compared.

I know what you mean, I felt it too. But for some strange reason, I felt every shift just as much. Maybe thats cause I am an artist or I look at things differently, either way, this brings us to the same point. These are "feelings" we are talking about. And if we are gonna go by that, then no one should really say anything as everyone perceives things differently. 

Technically speaking though, everything I am saying can be factually explained and analysed. I sure as hell remember how it felt the first day i saw contra 3 on the  SNES game when i was a kid which was the first snes game I saw. Then again, I was a kid... maybe i was more easily impressed? But that 8-16bit shift is basically exactly what is going on here now with the PS3/360 to PS4/XBO. I think another reason the shift seems more muted this gen than ever before is because of all that cross gen stuff going on. But we can't even blame them for that either, the cost of HD development is so high that publishers can't just ignore the 160ml strong install base of the PS3/360 right now.



burninmylight on 27 May 2014
JWeinCom said:

As for the SNES, that's an awfully cherry picked example. Could the NES handle Mario World? I'm not sure. There were a lot of levels and they were a lot longer than the NES games had. But, lets say that it could. Could the NES do Pilot Wings? Could it do F-Zero? Nope.


Miyamoto himself said that he wanted Mario to have a ride all the way back in SMB1 ( Yoshi), but they couldn't quite pull it off with the hardware. I'd imagine they could have figured something out by SMB3, but you get the picture.

Also, to anyone arguing 16-bit games could be done on NES: go look up Mode 7 and Super FX chip. That's more than graphics, and you ain't pulling that off on NES hardware.



PigPen on 27 May 2014

It is a shitty generation, and not because of Nintendo either. The much over hyped PS4 is not the next gen I know most of you where looking for. While they're much better consoles then last gen I'm underwhelmed. Watch Dogs run throughout a whole city and you won't find one kid. Call Of Duty just look like a blown up version of last gen. I'm not that much impressed. One thing I can say about Nintendo though, you're going to get a variety of games despite its sells.



kekrot on 27 May 2014
Intrinsic said:
Haters gonna hate.....

That aside, most gamers unfortunately won't know or at least accept that the theory of diminishing returns really does apply to games and we are getting to that limit. The geometry/LOD part of games is all but maxed out now and so is texture quality. What is really gonna push the envelope this gen will be lightning, reflections, material accuracy and if we are lucky AI. Next gen it will be all of this dialed up to 11 and running at 4k.

At that point, it will become less about the hardware and more about the developers making the games. Graphics isn't an infinite criteria, at some point, you would actually need apps or special equipment (ie. your eyes wouldn't be able to detect them) to detect what the differences are between games on platforms. But as usual, when you know that one game runs at 62fps@4k and another runs at 60fps@4k you will suddenly be able to "feel" that difference.


You said it... If people weren't told that a game on one platform perform marginally better than the same game on another platform, we would have peace. Or then people would start making stuff up (but people do that now too).



Yep.

Hynad on 27 May 2014
PigPen said:
It is a shitty generation, and not because of Nintendo either. The much over hyped PS4 is not the next gen I know most of you where looking for. While they're much better consoles then last gen I'm underwhelmed. Watch Dogs run throughout a whole city and you won't find one kid. Call Of Duty just look like a blown up version of last gen. I'm not that much impressed. One thing I can say about Nintendo though, you're going to get a variety of games despite its sells.


With all the third parties and first party teams on board for the PS4 and XBO, you'd be crazy to think there won't be an even bigger variety of games on those, AND with much better visuals. Your digs against the PS4 have grown old with the second comment you made about that in the forums. Knock it off.