flame shield up!!!111

I think "The Conduit" has better graphics than anything seen on XBOX and comparable to "Metroid Prime 3". However, "Super Mario Galaxy" and "Super Smash Brothers Brawl" have much better looking characters and backgrounds with higher frame rate than "The Conduit". I agree the Wii cannot display realistic graphics, but neither can PS3 or XBOX 360. Currently PC games are the closest to realistic graphics available.

nowadays it's not a question of easy or hard anymore since the tech has been there for awhile, it's more a matter of effort, and most importantly, time and budget.

The GC, Xbox and PS2 were all in the same league but Xbox and GC were much closer to each other, nothing like the difference between 360/PS3 and Wii.

Xbox had more memory, and a faster CPU with a modern GPU. The GC had a more efficient CPU, less memory and an outdated GPU design.

Xbox had unified Memory (just like 360) and GC's memory was divided. People say that GC had a better memory setup, but that's only because of the 3 MB of 1T-SRAM. This is like using the 360's 10 MB of eDRAM, and saying that all the memory is this fast.


It's this simple, GC could do any effect that XBox could but it was done in software while Xbox had everything built in to the hardware. To those of you that know about PC gaming, look at how slow games are when rendered in software as apposed to using 3D acceleration to do it with hardware. Factor 5 said this because they were towing the line. The only reason they had such high poly counts is because they weren't using real shaders and they were faking effects. GC also lacked built-in anti-aliasing so they would use a pseudo softening technique that required less processing, but would blur textures and the entire scene but it helped "fur" and water effects look better.


Overall the Xbox had more muscle but it was more about brute strength and using real 3D effects. The GC was very efficient and used tricks and techniques to fake the effects. So while the graphics could look as good or sometimes better, the Xbox did actually have more processing power.

The Wii is a souped up GC design, no ifs ands or buts. While this design was more than adequate in 2001, there have been many advances in modern graphics that you simply can't replicate with a setup that was already outdated the first time around.

And another thing since GC and Wii are so similar, you can't say that devs can't figure out the tech (this isn't PS3). There is nothing new to learn with the hardware, devs have been using this setup for nearly 10 years. It's about as good as it's going to get. The 360 is actually a lot more of a true GC successor than the Wii is in terms of hardware.

The real reasons for MS picking Ati/IBM are all legal reasons. IBM is the only chip manufacturer that would let MS own the design, and nVidia/MS had problems involving lawsuits last gen.

PearlJam, most of you post is true though your second to last paragraph isn't.

Most developers barely even touched the TEV during the Gamecube years which means they haven't had "nearly 10 years" of experience with it. Now with the Wii and its enhanced TEV we still have a learning curve and that's even if the developers intend to utilize it.

This is where Nintendo has such the upper hand over 3rd parties in that they've been using the TEV for that "nearly 10 years" period you mentioned. Most 3rd party developers are not familiar with writing code that converts DirectX programmable shaders into fixed function TEV shaders.

Wii vs Original Xbox....why does it matter?

The Wii isn't about graphics, but all about gameplay via it's new control scheme...in any case the xbox was never pushed to its limits because it simply wasn't on the market long enough for devs to really program to the metal.

Uh, I do hope you understand that GC doesn't work like like a PC(Xbox was a cheap PC) and that you are basing your definition of "real 3D effects"(wtf...) based on PC terms which is actually the wrong thing to say since they are just different techniques to achieve the same look, you are pretty much comparing Dolby TrueHD to DTS-HD and saying one is better than the other which is ridiculous. Western devs were just retarded with the TEV and there are now more people who are better with it as we can see from a lot of the upcoming Wii games and they look much better than what the Xbox had to offer, that's pretty much the point of this thread from the start. It won't go anywhere close to 360 or PS3 graphically of course because it is an updated Cube but Wii>Xbox<=>GCN is not even a real debate.

If most developers hadn't touched the TEV as you say GC games wouldn't have come anywhere near Xbox quality, which a lot of them certainly did. They have still had about 10 years to use it any way you slice it, maybe it just isn't as effective and efficient as you think it is. The PS2 had 2 vector units but devs mostly only used 1, not because they didn't know how but because it didin't worlk out like Sony intended. Extra programming to use both didn't give you 2x the performance it was closer to 1.5x if that, but it killed the vram. Using the TEV in the GC and Wii limits other resources and strains the CPU and Memory. Thats' what happens when your effects aren't hard wired and you have to program everything yourself.

dahuman, maybe "real 3D" isn' the right term but it certainly did use texturing over actual light sources and geometry more than the Xbox did. And GC was very similar to a PC, it did use an IBM chip, Ati GPU and PC-like memory. It was a different setup but it was familiar, it wasn't completely new like the PS2 or in some ways the PS3.

Anyone who just compares raw number specs side to side for comparison does not get that numbers don't tell the true story.

Xbox was a PC disguied as a console,even it's controller ports were USB just custom with a different shape.

Cube had lower number specs but had far more efficient hardware. Wii number specs say it's on par with Xbox but it's chipset is based on cubes but more powerful. Wii can easily out perform anything from last gen systems.

Numbers are overrated.

Just a simple example. My PC uses an older Pentium D 930 3GHz chip but even the first gen core 2 duo at even 2.4 GHz would run circle around my chip...even though a Pentium D also uses 2 cores. the C2D is a much more efficient chip.

Efficiency>raw numbers