The Wii is stronger than the GameCube right? (Right.)

So if the Gamecube could handle this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VG0ZicLI40g&feature=related

(Go about 2:00 into the video)

and this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dl_YHaQTrPI (Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess:Scaring People of Town)

I think the Wii can handle several more. Maybe Dead Rising: Chop Till You Drop shows the limit, although I hope not. The NPCs obviously aren't important, but for the sake of argument......

Yeah it could but programers are too lazy to push hardware to limit at least by now.

we still havnt seen how many zombies wil be in the finished version of the game. we were supposed to get an updated version at TGS but that didnt happen

Let's wait. When the game goes gold, we'll get an idea of what that game pushes. Until then, what's the point, other than working ourselves up over schrodinger's cat?

"Schrodinger's cat"? What's that?

As to the topic, the Wii can probably handle crowds decently well, albeit nowhere near the scale of a Dead Rising. If the NPCs don't have to actually do anything, the number probably goes up to the several hundred. If there's a need for them to have some sort of rudimentary intelligence, a la Dead Rising, then it appears that around a hundred is the current limit.

Still, like in Kingdom Hearts II developers will probably have to take advantage of several tricks to create massive crowds of characters. You don't need all 1,000 characters to actually be onscreen at once; having some stay in the background, and spawning them in when their turn is up is one technique that would help a lot, even if it is "cheating."

Well there was Ikusagami on the PS2 which touted 65,535 enemies at once.  Also one of the Hitman games had a level with tons of people.  So yeah I am sure the Wii can handle a lot.

I could go into a long speil but I think this will do fine:

THEY'RE DIFFERENT GAMES DOING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT THINGS.  NOT EVERY GAME IS THE SAME.

Did I say they had anything in common? I just showed 2 GC games with a noticable NPC presence. I don't see what you are getting at.

It was a concept used to poke fun at quantum physics, until it turned out it actually worked on the quantum level, even if not on the level of a living creature.

But in this context, it means we don't know what something will be like until it's finished. When we see the release of Dead Rising Wii, we'll know exactly what it does, and whether to sigh with relief or break out the torches and pitchforks.

BTW, twesterm, what do you think of Atari picking up Ghostbusters? Or do you have a thread dealing with that?

All those have are morons running around like idiots, in the first one people run through cars! I assume that Dead Rising will have the enemies moving in different patterns, chosing different ways to jump down on you, etc. That's a lot harder. You cannot really compare it this way, because they're very different games.

Or would you be happy with 100 zombies, but with a catch - they can run through palms, walls, cars and whatever. They also have no real goal, and do not try to do something clever to catch you.

Edit: Looks like I was beaten to it.