Here, we vastly disagree. Doom 3 without bump mapping isn't "damn near similar" to Quake 3, it ain't even close. The whole point of the Doom 3 engine is dynamic lighting on everything, whereas in Quake 3, everything is lightmapped. Also, the Wii has less rendering horsepower, but it needs less rendering horsepower. You only need 1/3 of the fillrate to render in 480p compared to 720p. So you really could just reduce the texture resolution, shorten some shader code, and do a little less physics on the CPU. Like I said, this wouldn't give great results, but some ports are going to be made that way. (And yes, as HappySquirrel said, the `cube, and therefore the Wii, can do bump mapping just fine. In fact, it has a rather powerful fixed-function pipeline, you just can't go all shader-happy on it.)

Thanks to Entroper for getting us back on track.

Well graphically the real time lighting/light mapping thing... I dont feel makes too big of a diffrence. I just always liked the Way the Doom3 engine used bump-mapping. I'm not saying the Wii cant do that. But one effect I'm quite sure it can NOT do is HDR. (correct me please. I do not know, but I do NOT think it can) HDR functions almost like a AA+light filter. It uses crazy ammounts of power, and when used right, makes a game look VASTLY better. A game like... FarCry... I will use as an example. I played it for a few months, and I always felt the entire game... world was flat... shallow... simple. And then I turned on HDR. And the world came to life. A cave was dark inside... you couldnt see anything... you then go into the cave, and over a few seconds, gain the ability to see within the cave... but you look out the cave entrance... and you see blinding white! I dont feel that is where it is most imporant but still. It's a beautiful effect. And my point is, HDR is only one of the new rendering things that will come over the next 6 years. Infact HDR is like 2 years old. Possibly 3? My point is, when a new rendering thing comes out. The PS3/360 will be able to emulate... or possibly even perform it nativly. The Wii is behind current-gen in hardware. The Wii is like a Top of the Line GeForce4. That is giving it double the power of the original x-box. (alot more than it actually has) The Graphics chips in the PS3/360 are streamlined GeForce7 and the ATi version of it. After the streamlining. They are more similar to a GeForce8. 4 generations ahead of the Wii. GeForce4 (entry level bump-mapping and VERY early shaders) (the wii has a little less power, but has some modern perks programmed in) GeForce5 (about 75% faster, than the GeForce4, and 'modern' BumpMapping, and early shaders) GeForce6 (about 75% faster, than the GeForce5, and 'modern' shaders.) GeForce7 (about 100% faster, than the GeForce6... no changes) GeForce8 (about 125% faster, than GeForce7, and next gen shader methods that are still not used) The 360/PS3 are basically GeForce7 speed, with GeForce8 shader methods. (the 360 is ATi I know, but ATi has yet to release their next gen chip yet, so the only card that it can be compared to is NV) The Wii, as I said, is a GeForce3/4 card that has GeForce5 features. (so far nothing on the Wii has shown GeForce4 abilitys, so dont think I'm bashing that power system. That is me giveing the 'reason of the doubt'. To down-build a game that much, you need to go from useing HDR, and **** next gen rendering tech, to using... AA, and the other assorted stuff. Chances are they would have to rebuild the textures, re-make the levels, and rebuild the graphics engine. Basically the only thing they get to salvage is parts of the engine, story, and textures. The levels would need to be rebuilt. (or be put through a MASSIVE program that would cost a fortuine to build to 'downsample' the maps. As long as there are more PS3+360 than Wii. More money will be there for the 360/PS3 side than the Wii side.

Just wanna say RE: film vs digital.... yes technically film has better pixel information, but Kwaad is right about the quality level of something being output from digital, digital will look better 9 times / 10. Why? you are sitting in a room, projecting colour onto a WHITE or SILVER screen... simply put, the black's cannot be black like they can on a digital television, the colours also take a hit because of this... projected images suffer drastically from this. ALSO although Quinten is saying that film has such an extra pixel depth... when you look at a digital projection theatre you have to consider the pixels per inch... So we have 2400 pixels high over a 10m high screen that's 400 inches high so that's 6 pixels an inch. Then you have 1080 pixels high over 32 inches high (roughly) so that's almost 34 pixels an inch. Honestly it's all about DPI and I know what I would rather watch. I also have a 720p projector at home, have had one for the last couple of years, and honestly it isn't everything it's been cracked up to be. Put a bit of light in the room and the picture quality goes out the arse. There is no dispute that film has a higher image quality, but honestly... you can't present it to the full ability of it's quality. Sorry to go off topic but the personal insults against Kwaad made me think that it was worthy of some rebuttal. On topic... I don't agree with these calculations as I believe the logic is flawed... it's just stupid to try and argue that the Wii is more expensive for development is just completely ridiculous. You get people pro both sides of the argument painting both sides of the picture as positively as possible. Saying that PS3 is cheapest because Xbox360 is absorbing all of the cost of development is just completely arse... at the moment though they are bringing most games together on 360 and porting (mostly pretty shonky) over too PS3. I also think that comparing Wii sales directly to PS3 sales is also a flawed logic as they don't DIRECTLY compete for the others users... But as it is the Wii is still selling more copies of games that are technically far inferior to the PS3 versions... I don't know how you can skew that one way or the other... + the exclusive Wii titles have all sold much higher than the other platforms... The best way to work this out would be to look at total 3rd party software sales between both and then see what the difference is... but even then that's a flawed logic because the Wii user group is so broad.

Again your logic is flawed... because as you say, just because a developer is making a game for 360 does not mean they will port it to Ps3, if the game isn't good enough then it wont sell well enough to justify the cost of porting it over to the PS3, and unfortunately because of the architecture of the PS3 it makes it more difficult to port over than it was in the xbox, ps2, gcn days... many xbox and gcn games suffered BADLY because the developers always started on the least powerful system and ported it over. Unfortunately I think that you're argument about the Wii vs PS3 and 360 graphics card generations are complete moot. The Wii is definately WAY underpowered when compared to the PS3 and 360, however the PS3 and 360 don't look fantastic unless you play them how they are meant to be played... on a HD TV. Kwaad, have you played Motorstorm on an SD tv??? It doesn't look such leaps and bounds ahead of Excite Truck... it looks better no doubt but not next gen better... however put Motorstorm on a HD TV and the truth appears... it looks SO MUCH better than anything on Wii, and always will... Wii will never do what the PS3 can do. No if's no buts. Firstly, I don't think the Gefore4 - 8 card information you gave is accurate... you should really go from DirectX 7 - 9. Sorry but 360 aint gonna do many DX10 techniques (Microsoft would have been SO much better off waiting for this technology unfortunately for them). And PS3 doesn't really use a DirectX type architecture but a good developer will likely be able to take advantage of some of the DX10 techniques. HDR lighting stands for High Dynamic Range... it simulates how the eye see's light in real time... and excellent new technology added with DirectX 9. No the Wii can't do HDR, but it has it's own style of fixed lighting abilities on board. HDR is brilliant and is one of the reasons so many 360 games look the way they do... a lot of it comes down to HDR lighting, the way it splashes light around the viewing field and onto different objects is completely changed and therefore looks more realistic... however to take advantage of this (which I find pretty cheap) so many games are being designed with low suns and light sources to bump up the effect of the HDR lighting... it doesn't have as much effect in the middle of the day because most of everything is saturated in more light, but when you have light bouncing and big shadows HDR really comes into play. Farcry is a great example, that game looks SUPREME with HDR lighting enabled. Half Life 2 takes a massive step up also. The Wii again is using very old technology... not much extra pixel or depth information than on GC however the massive upgrade to texture memory and pipelines does help it's graphics look much better. But honestly the style of game that you're going to see on the Wii isn't going to be those hugely pretty games that you'll see on the PS3. What it does is makes the 360 and the PS3 more irrelevant. If the Wii is so far ahead and most developers want to develop for it they will need to come up with new ideas to sell games... giving buyers something that they can only get on the Wii - basically the Waggle... but consumers can choose between which console they want that has the good graphics, PS3 vs 360 which technically halving their total audience if they end up having the same games, which is the direction it is looking to be taking (like last gen for Xbox and GCN, apart from Nintendo Microsoft games, most games were on both and looked pretty similar on both). A good analogy that I once read RE this console was is this. If you only read one part of my post please read the below - The Xbox 360 and the PS3 are massive warships, both do things similarly, both are massive, with huge armour, lots of power and MASSIVE guns... they are above the water shooting it out for everything above the water and vying for the same place on the water. They are both too huge to sink, but they are both holding each other back from capitalising upon the other. While the Wii on the other hand, with it's sneaky and different way of doing things, is like a submarine. It might not be as powerful, but it's got a different type of weapon and it can cause FAR more damage with one hit than a big gun on the armoured outside hull of the big ships has. It is sneaking off under the water where the other two massive warships can't really see it. The big ships can only take pot shots in the water on where they think it is, while also having to worry about the other big ship that is shooting it's big guns directly at them. This is double edge for Wii because it isn't really competing for the same slab of water, but instead of fighting for all the top water (the hardcore gamers) the Wii is sailing off underneath the water and has access to a WHOLE lot more water (more of the market because of it's general appeal). It's like the 360 and PS3 are fighting for a flat 2D playing field, while Wii is in the same place but in the 3rd dimension. There's a whole lot more depth to the 3rd dimension.

I just wanna say. I dont mean the PS3 port will cost 500,000$. I mean it will up the cost 500,000$ beyond original cost. if it was made for PS3 for 10million. They could port it to 360 for 500,000$. What I am saying is. You simply cant port a game from PS3/360 to Wii. You need to build a whole new game. For the finances number What I mean is... the added profit from 360/PS3 per sale. (did you see what someone said? Retail outlets buy some of the 60$ games for 55$... From the publisher. Give a 10$ royalty to Sony. That leaves publisher with 45$. a 50$ game would be more like 45$ give a 7$ royalty... your down to 38$. still 7$/less per unit sold. When you add in the cost to package, market ETC. Your looking at 10$ between both Wii/PS3 That drops Wii down to 28$ with PS3 still at 35$ People gripe about a 60$ game. I seriously think it's kinda cheap. I'd be happy paying 70$ for games this gen. (at least the big budget ones) Why? Becuase I bought WarioWare... I paid 50$ for that game. It was a sub 1million$ game. I bought Motorstorm for 45$ used. (new it would have been 60) The game is so much more powerful, so much prittier... so much worth the money. When I buy a game that cost 30million to make for 60$... it dont bother me in the least bit. When I buy a game that costs less than 1million to make, and I pay 50$ I'm feeling RIPPED OFF. For the same price (game dollar for development) I would pay 1500$ for the game. Seriously. High dollar games are REALLY cheap. I dont mind buying them when they first come out. The only games I felt was worth more than 40$ for the Wii was, Zelda... and Rayman. If anyone says WarioWare is worth 50$ go to another thread, becuase I will NOT take what you say seriously. Normally 1-2 million dollar games sell for 30-40$ today. (EG: RAMPAGE Wii) Well You wanna follow DX... GeForce3 (DX7) GeForce4 (DX8) GeForce5 (DX9.0) GeForce6 (DX9.0b) GeForce7 (DX9.0c) GeForce8 (DX10) The Wii is GeForce3 power, with GeForce4 features. EDIT: In refrence to the movies. I am talking TOTAL detail. Not PPI (pixels per inch) I always thought the new digital theaters were just a cheap way to supply media to the movie theaters. When I watched my first movie on a digital projector. (refrence movie theater, NOT home theater) I was amazed. The clarity, the crispness. It is the diffrence from going from a old out of focus CRT, to a new LCD. The text in 300. The 'bronze hammered' text. When I saw it at the theater... it looked blurry, and not detailed. It looked lackluster, and dissapointing. (flim theater) On my 1080p LCD, it looked hammered, it looked fresh, it looked new... it looked RAW... Unfinished. I'm trying to con my wife into watching the same movie at the digital theater. (I just wanna watch it again... damn good movie) But my 1080p trailer of 300 has more detail, than the movie I saw at the theater. I am not saying the film they used to record it wasn't perfect. But what I saw... was far from what my TV displayed. (the diffrence is like the diffrence from 720p to 1080p... I'm serioulsy amazed at how much of a diffrence there is)

My question is if graphics is so important why is DS beating the PSP for the moment, and honestly if any think that it will change for the comoning month you need to explain a lot. I stand with my point. Wii wont crash as long as the big N and 3rd parties does fun games. I think that PS2 will outsell xbox360 and PS3 this year too. Graphics is important but the fun factor is even more important. When it come down to price, I am pretty sure that PS3 might be at 400 USD 2009. Wii could to day be at 200, so 150 USD wont be any problem. Their is still a large difference. NOTE: I think that xbox360 will continue to sell well in USA, but that Wii sells in Japan will be enough to let Wii surpass Xbox360 WW.

Nice gradual evolution. We have now moved from "the wii doesn't have 3rd party support" to "the wii doesn't have the same support that 360 & ps3 together get". All this in 5 months.

That's easy. Look at the size of the displays. No matter what you do you simply won't get absorbed so easily into the game as in front of a big TV and no traffic sounds around you. Sure, fun is more important, but I think there lies a bit of the problem of the Wii. It's most important factor is the new control system, but the problem with it is: The fun that you get out of this control decreases over time. Our brain simply learns the movements and after some time simply takes the control form the higher functions. When you drive your car and you must stop suddenly. you don't think about that you have to raise your foot put it on the brake and press real hard, because your body has already done that, before you even get to the point, that you must raise your foot. Once you have the controls of the game on automatic the control no longer is fun in itself. Because fun is always connected to learning and to achieve a difficult task. Games are only fun, because, they are for our body a save way to train new capabilities or facts, that might be usefull in our life. While the concept of the new controls is easier to grasp than the simple button pushing, so offers easier access to casual players, after some point it looses appeal and it willbe difficult for new games to regenerate this appeal. Then you no longer care if you have to push a button or raise your arm. And than the different capabilities come into play. This doesn't even have to be pure graphics, but the additional power gives the developers more possibilities. Graphics are only the most obvious point. This does not necessarily raise the fun. Nobody cares about physical details in reality, so nobody really cares if the physical effects are based on reality, or if they are simulated. Who wants to know if in reality this would kill the driver? It is something new and exciting... that you have never done before. The additional horse power simply gives the designers more tools to distinguish their product from the competitors. There is always the problem that you must add something new. This can't be done in the beginning, because your designers must first get a good foothold on the new platforms. And most of these things alone don't even get the consumer tospend more bucks, but overall you get something new. At the moment everybody rushes to the bright new horizon, but there will be a backlash. Well nice, but there were already ten games of this style, so why should I buy it? When it come down to price, I am pretty sure that PS3 might be at 400 USD 2009. Wii could to day be at 200, so 150 USD wont be any problem. Their is still a large difference. NOTE: I think that xbox360 will continue to sell well in USA, but that Wii sells in Japan will be enough to let Wii surpass Xbox360 WW. [/quote]

Does it matter if it takes 2 years to get bored on the new controll method? I mean under that two years word from other will cause more players to test the new controll these people will in turn cause more player to test and so on. Even if the userbase start to change during the years Wii will probarbly keep selling. The factor that it easy to use is actualy important, I was shocked when I heard one old friend of mine who hasn't played since NES time speaking about how easy it was to play and that it was fun again. That person thought that the snes controll was to difficult. On that as long as you get more games in new genrés or in your favorit genré why should you replace you consol for a heafty price tag? I really don't think I understand this, do you mean that Wii just have follow up games or what? Nintendo already has their new part the easy to use conroller which gives something new. As the consol matures the control will be used better in the same way that graphics will improve on the PS3 and xbox360. You seam to think that just because of that the Wii has worse graphics and is living on their conroll method the will get a flash back. Well I honestly don't understand why? People that don't play today, is not doing it because they think that the graphics is ugly, they are not playing because they can't find a reason. If Wii can take this customars as Nintendo tries it wont matter if PS3 and xbox360 is more powerfull.