That's like saying that a movie studio should forget using any CGI or special affects and that will always lead to better films. It's absolute rubbish. Developers know that they can make a shite mini-game collection like Carnival Games and make a wad of cash. Little investment, huge return, but it's to the detriment of Wii owners. The fact that the Wii has tons of games with horrible graphics AND awful gameplay proves you wrong anyway.

horriblebastard said: I personally think the Wii's less-than-stellar graphical capabilities are a plus. It means that developers can't rely on "wow"-ing the player with top-of-the-line visuals and thus hide the often lackluster gameplay behind impressive graphics. That's like saying that a movie studio should forget using any CGI or special affects and that will always lead to better films. It's absolute rubbish. Developers know that they can make a shite mini-game collection like Carnival Games and make a wad of cash. Little investment, huge return, but it's to the detriment of Wii owners. The fact that the Wii has tons of games with horrible graphics AND awful gameplay proves you wrong anyway.

 

No, because movies aren't interactive entertainment, whereas videogames rely more on controls than graphics.

Anyways not every movie has TEH EXPLOSIONZ EFFEX or CGI, you should watch a more diverse range of movies... Most of the Academy awards nominees weren't nominated for the special effects.

You just want to find an excuse to make the Wii success insignificant and apology for your system's poor performance this gen. Get over it, now.

RolStoppable said: fkusumot said: One of the key weaknesses of the Wii, as opined by many, is its graphical capabilities. I believe this may be true. Setting aside the issue of gameplay vs. graphics I believe that if the Wii is graphically underpowered this is having an effect on the sale of games for the system. Why? Because I believe it's easier to sell a game with new graphics than it is to make a unique game offering created by talented people. The graphic capabilities of the Wii have probably not been fully tapped but they are most likely fairly close to being fully realized. On an even more important note the graphics that the mainstream game buying public is demanding seem to have been satisfied on many fronts. Without the lure of new graphics, or indeed, even the need to produce them, the developer is faced with the dilemma of having to rely on the creation of engaging gameplay and talented execution. For these reasons I believe the Wii presents a challenge to developers that only the first and foremost of developers will be able to tackle successfully in a way that is popularly and critically pleasing. It looks like a weakness, but it isn't. I have to admit that you did your best to present the positive effects as negative. On purpose. If graphics can't be the selling point, the game has to rely on its idea for engaging gameplay. Which means that during development more time is spent on making the game fun instead of making it look as pretty as possible. Logically this should result in more unique and entertaining games and that is good. It's similar to the SNES, 2D graphics had hit the point where they were considered to be good enough by most people and it became really hard for developers to sell their games based on graphics. So it mostly became a battle of talent and ideas in order to create a hit game. The result was that the SNES is seen as one of the best systems ever made due to its diverse game library. The DS is in a similar situation, 2D games are big on the Nintendo handheld, but they can't sell based on their graphics. So once again developers have to think of unique concepts to make their games sell instead of maxing out graphics. Additionally the DS offers new input methods like the touchscreen and the microphone, giving developers the oppurtunity to think up games that weren't possible to be made before. The result? People are already comparing the DS to the SNES. So what's going to happen to the Wii, if 3D graphics have hit the point where they are considered to be good enough by most people and the controller allows for new gameplay ideas to be realized? I think we have some very interesting years ahead of us.

I agree. Graphics is a lame argument. Think about Tetris.

 

Commercially, the Wii has no flaws. Anything that can sell out constantly for a year and a half, all the while selling upwards of thirty million units at a price of $250 each, is as future proof as an iPod.

Graphically, the Wii is just fine. The problem lies in not enough developers utilizing the TEV, whereby the Wii can produce most of the special graphical features that the PS360 can. (Just look at Super Mario Galaxy, which looks at least as good as any launch 360 game.) In the future, though, expect developers to squeeze every ounce of juice that they can out of our little white rectangle, just like developers wrung the humble PS2 for all it was worth.

Bringing absolutes into a relative discussion is kind of short-sighted, and barely above "reducto ad absurdium". My point is simply this: almost without fail, the games of a generation with the absolute most impressive visuals have terrible gameplay. This being largely because so much of the budget is expended on graphical polish, and so little on tweaking and perfecting the gameplay engine.

I know a lot of gamers don't understand the full implications of it, but video games have budgets. You go into developing a game with an understanding that the expenses for making the game are a debt that the game has to be able to repay in sales. Meaning that the budget cannot exceed how much the game can practically be expected to rake in. And so you assign priority of focus to fit within the budget of your game, giving highest priority to the features that will sell your product. For a very long time now, developers have been giving graphics top priority, spending most of the budget on them, and all other aspects have suffered as a result.

The drive to improve graphics at the expense of all else is a plague upon the industry, and encourages companies to think that, as long as they just upgrade the visuals a bit with each new game, they can keep selling forever. EA has pushed this to extremes with their sports games, which lately have just been nothing BUT visual upgrades of last year's version with slightly updated rosters. There is zero creativity involved in this. There is no talent necessary. You just have to be able to make more and bigger to succeed when graphics are the primary focus.

When graphics cannot be improved any further, however, those developers who relied on graphics to hide their lack of talent suddenly have to contend with the fact that they can't just slap on another visual filter or add another 200 polygons to the player models. And that's when the developers worth their salt shine, and the ones who can't actually build a gameplay engine falter. And good riddance to them, I say, because the primary job of a video game is to entertain. If you cannot produce a solid and compelling gameplay engine (especially in an environment where that's your key means of differentiation), then you shouldn't be making games at all.

But I own a Wii as well. Are you that childish and simple that you really think that's why I'm posting in this thread?

Why are you boycotting Ubisoft and Square Enix BTW? Is it because Ubisoft is bringing out shovelware and minigames, while Square Enix isn't giving Wii owners anything more than cut down versions of games?

If you read reviews or actually sit down and play some games on a system other than the Wii, you would know that there are many games that have great graphics, great gameplay and great online features. The Wii's best games will only ever have 1 of those things, but if that's enough for you, more power to ya.

@horriblebastard: I have played many of those games you are talking about, but they feel like the same games I've played last gen only with better graphics.

You came inside this thread to trash the Wii, obviously, saying Wii collects dusts or that attracts 4 year old and grannies only is exactly proving my point.

If you dont like your Wii just sell it, Im sure you will regret it.

Looks like you havent played enough Wii games to judge the system like that ...

I see what you wanted to do here Frank, and I think it's a great idea. I hope you succeed in mission ^_^

To comment a bit on the topic, I think that's not the weakness of the Wii, they're the developers like trestres said.

I didn't mention any games by name, unless you are talking about Mario Kart Wii, Brawl etc. in which case you're absolutely right. They are nothing more than rehashes of franchises established long ago. I guess it's OK when Nintendo do that though right? ;)


I came in here to give my opinion on it. You're only upset because you have some weird unhealthy emotional attachment to it, but that's OK, you're far from alone in that respect. I believe "fanboy" is the term they use for people like you. My Wii does collect dust. And I said the Wii is played by everyone from 4 year olds to old grannies - are you saying that's not the case?


Haha. One of the reasons I'm disappointed with it is because I've played LOADS of games on it and I hate having to play 30 games to find one that's half way decent. Sure, I can rely on first party titles - or at least I could, but since Mario Kart Wii was released the well has dried up.

BTW, in the E3 thread, what made you say this?......

Don't fancy Wii Music or Animal Crossing then? Unlucky, cos that's all there is! Oh yeah, there's Wii Sports Resort where you can chop logs or toss a frisbee for a dog to fetch. Hours of fun. ;)

The wii graphics capabilities is one of many weakness it has, and this becomes more apparent when people start to play their wii's on HD tv's.

another of it's weaknesses was the fact it wasn't 1:1 motion from the beginning. Now nintnedo will most likely splinter it's market by making games which require the motion plus (wii sports resort being one of them. history has proven that splintering the market with devices that affect gameplay has never worked, so the question to be asked then is, will nintnedo pull it off, or will its dumb arrogant move hurt it, I suppose only time will tell.

the last weakness I will mention is online, as time goes on online becomes more important for games, but nintnedo's online is all but broken for the casual audience, it's convoluted system will just scare the very people it has aimed the wii at. Now Nintendo will eventually improve it's online, but for the present it's taking baby steps if any on the online front, so again only time will tell where nintendo goes for online.