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Forums - Nintendo - ( PCWorld ) Why The Wii Needs an HD Visual Upgrade

LordTheNightKnight on 21 November 2009
VGuserXX said:

Individual titles do best when targetted at a specific demographic -- which is the crux of the problem with the Wii.  Who cares that a Wii game costs $5 million to develop, compared to a HD cost of $20 million, when the $20 million investment nets you 9 million unit sales on the two HD titles, and the $5 million nets 1.5 million unit sales on the Wii title, and at a lesser revenue per unit, to boot?  Each dollar spent on the HD consoles, in this example, nets 1.5x as much revenue (actually more like 2.0x, because the of the revenue per unit difference).

"Every dollar spent on successful, demographically targetted games performs better.  Plain and simple."

"EDIT: By the way, the shovelware titles bring the Wii development average way down.  The cost of making games, like the ones Reggie wants, is probably closer to half what the HD version costs."

Even if that's true than games that sell close to the amount of Xbox360 titles are not profitable as the 13$ to make games goes to 26$ and Xbox360 games cost only 10$ more to buy. Moreover no thrid parties on the Xbox 360 or PS3 have sold 9 million copies. Only sequels to established franchises are selling on those systems. Exactly the types of games Nintendo wants on Wii systems. In fact Mario and Sonic at the Olympic games has more sales than All 360 games but 3. Guitar Hero sells more copies on the Wii than on HD systems. A lot of the hard core titles that sell alot are made by Activision selling Call of Duty reshashes and Microsoft with Halo and Gears of War.

 

http://vgchartz.com/worldtotals.php?name=&console=Wii&publisher=&genre=&minSales=0&results=50&sort=Total

http://vgchartz.com/worldtotals.php?name=&console=X360&publisher=&genre=&minSales=0&results=50&sort=Total

9 milllion is NOT the norm for HD games.



A flashy-first game is awesome when it comes out. A great-first game is awesome forever.

Plus, just for the hell of it: Kelly Brook at the 2008 BAFTAs

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CDiablo on 21 November 2009

Third parties know they can half ass games and make money on the system. The are unsure that if they make a good game that they can make money cause no one wants to take the first step. I cant think of any third party games that have put in effort and actually made a good game(games specifacally made for Wii and got 70ish reviews do not count.)



Getting an XBOX One for me is like being in a bad relationship but staying together because we have kids. XBone we have 20000+ achievement points, 2+ years of XBL Gold and 20000+ MS points. I think its best we stay together if only for the MS points.

Nintendo Treehouse is what happens when a publisher is confident and proud of its games and doesn't need to show CGI lies for five minutes.

-Jim Sterling

noname2200 on 21 November 2009
CDiablo said:
Third parties know they can half ass games and make money on the system. The are unsure that if they make a good game that they can make money cause no one wants to take the first step. I cant think of any third party games that have put in effort and actually made a good game(games specifacally made for Wii and got 70ish reviews do not count.)

Little King's Story.

Rune Factory Frontier.

Klonoa.

Pretty much every non-Nintendo game I've purchased this year.

I am death to sales.



VGuserXX on 21 November 2009
Procrastinato said:
VGuserXX said:

Individual titles do best when targetted at a specific demographic -- which is the crux of the problem with the Wii.  Who cares that a Wii game costs $5 million to develop, compared to a HD cost of $20 million, when the $20 million investment nets you 9 million unit sales on the two HD titles, and the $5 million nets 1.5 million unit sales on the Wii title, and at a lesser revenue per unit, to boot?  Each dollar spent on the HD consoles, in this example, nets 1.5x as much revenue (actually more like 2.0x, because the of the revenue per unit difference).

"Every dollar spent on successful, demographically targetted games performs better.  Plain and simple."

"EDIT: By the way, the shovelware titles bring the Wii development average way down.  The cost of making games, like the ones Reggie wants, is probably closer to half what the HD version costs."

Even if that's true than games that sell close to the amount of Xbox360 titles are not profitable as the 13$ to make games goes to 26$ and Xbox360 games cost only 10$ more to buy. Moreover no thrid parties on the Xbox 360 or PS3 have sold 9 million copies. Only sequels to established franchises are selling on those systems. Exactly the types of games Nintendo wants on Wii systems. In fact Mario and Sonic at the Olympic games has more sales than All 360 games but 3. Guitar Hero sells more copies on the Wii than on HD systems. A lot of the hard core titles that sell alot are made by Activision selling Call of Duty reshashes and Microsoft with Halo and Gears of War.

 

http://vgchartz.com/worldtotals.php?name=&console=Wii&publisher=&genre=&minSales=0&results=50&sort=Total

http://vgchartz.com/worldtotals.php?name=&console=X360&publisher=&genre=&minSales=0&results=50&sort=Total

VGuserXX, it took me a sec to realize you were quoting me (the italics), because you cut-and-pasted, rather than used the quote mechanism. =)

In any case, I think you misread my post.  HD development is the cost to develop on BOTH HD platforms, not just one.  $20 million makes both a PS3 AND a 360 version of a game, because those two platforms are so similar.  Thus, "Wii" is one platform, from the 3rd party perspective, and "HD" (meaning both the others) is the "other" platform.  You have to COMBINE the PS3 and 360 SKU sales of a game to get the relative development cost to revenue.

You don't realize that you then have to pay licensing twice because your selling the game on two different systems. Moreover, A company could market a game for Wii and PC and access alot more users using Motion controls like a mouse. Port from Wii to PC would be like porting from PS3 to Xbox360. And even if you do PS3, Xbox 360, PC you have to realise that more PCs can handle Wii graphics than PS3 and 360 graphics. So the Wii/PC games would have a larger audience and install base. So you can market your platform games just like you would on PS3 and Xbox 360 and you don't have less audience to market to as Wii uses a more established audience. DVD format is more established than Blu-ray/HD.



noname2200 on 21 November 2009
VGuserXX said:

You don't realise that you then have to pay licensing twice because your selling the game on two different systems..

I'm 99% sure that that's not the way it actually works.



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VGuserXX on 21 November 2009

Also IMO 480p(Enhanced Definition TV)>1080i HDTV because Progressive Scan is more stable better FPS and clearer  than interlacing and high res:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_scan

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-definition_television

So to me it matters how much detail you use at the resolution and the techniques used to minimize artifacts more than just raw pixels.

 



VGuserXX on 22 November 2009

Resident Evil Darkside looks fine at 480p

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYHOO5ij_OI



Destroyer_of_knights on 22 November 2009
VGuserXX said:

Also IMO 480p(Enhanced Definition TV)>1080i HDTV because Progressive Scan is more stable better FPS and clearer  than interlacing and high res:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_scan

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-definition_television

So to me it matters how much detail you use at the resolution and the techniques used to minimize artifacts more than just raw pixels.

 

1080p > 720p > 480p

1080i is still a higher resolution than 480p, 1080i output mode is only used for old HD CRT tv's that don't support 720p, apart from that all games either run at 720p or are upscaled to 1080p for modern HDtv (LCD/Plasma/LED)

Majority of games on the HD twins are 720p anyways.

for those that cite games like COD:MW2 being 1024x600, just remember that is the internal render resolution, not the output resolution of the console to the TV, that internal resolution gets upscaled to 720p which is what the console outputs to the tv, so for all intents and purposes it's 720p because that's what comes out of the console AV port.

In regards to the game it's self there are graphical compromise's so that gameplay is silky smooth at 60FPS which also means responsive controls, traits that wii users love to tout when graphics/gameplay topics tend to rise, so anyone that complains about COD:MW2 graphics and yet tout the gameplay over graphics motto for wii are just hypocrites in general.



NightDragon83 on 22 November 2009
famousringo said:
Apparently I have not known what it means to hunt collectibles until I have hunted those collectibles in HD.

HD is really moving game design forward.

LOL you said it Ringo!  Obviously the author never played any of Rare's platformers like Donkey Kong 64, Banjo Kazooie, Starfox Adventures, etc... the whole premise of those games was to collect random shit!

Or what about effin' POKEMON for that matter?!?  How the hell were little kids supposed to "collect them all" when the games were displayed on a monochrome screen on an 8-bit system that was 10 years old at the time!

 



On 2/24/13, MB1025 said:
You know I was always wondering why no one ever used the dollar sign for $ony, but then I realized they have no money so it would be pointless.

Smidlee on 22 November 2009
VGuserXX said:
1

You don't realize that you then have to pay licensing twice because your selling the game on two different systems. Moreover, A company could market a game for Wii and PC and access alot more users using Motion controls like a mouse. Port from Wii to PC would be like porting from PS3 to Xbox360. And even if you do PS3, Xbox 360, PC you have to realise that more PCs can handle Wii graphics than PS3 and 360 graphics. So the Wii/PC games would have a larger audience and install base. So you can market your platform games just like you would on PS3 and Xbox 360 and you don't have less audience to market to as Wii uses a more established audience. DVD format is more established than Blu-ray/HD.

Wii GPU is really outdated compared to PC. Most PC  games will not run on resolution lower than 1024X768. Even most

intergated GPU on laptops can outperform Wii GPU. PC gamers are closer to  the monitor where even a game that runs in 800X600 looks awful.