Nintendo Wii Fanboy

The truth is that the Wii IS underpowered for the kind of garbage games that a lot of developers put out now. Most games are more style than substance now.

I'm sure everyone has seen gameplay footage of Gears of War. That game is a joke. Sure it looks nice, but it looks about as much fun as watching paint dry. You move from cover to cover shooting at enemies, again and again and again and again. Oh, sometimes you get to use a chainsaw on guys (which would get old after the first few times), but then you move to cover and shoot at them again. Oh, and if you need proof of style over substance, they actually put a feature in the game where you literally press a button to watch an in-game cinematic of sorts. You actually have to interupt the gameplay by pressing a button to watch a cinematic, woopee.

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While this is a little dissappointing, it's far from surprising. Many developers making games for Wii have opened completely new studios to do so. The largest reasoning behind this is so that the studio can come up with innovative ways to use the remote. But part of this is also because the Wii can't handle as much as the 360 and PS3.

What's interesting is that, while developing for the Wii should be a lot cheaper than on either of the other consoles, opening new studios isn't.

At least as it stands now, the Wii deserves, and demands, its own thought process. While the other two consoles are interchangable for all but a few exclusive titles (look at how many "exclusive" PS3 games have now been announced for the 360), Wii stands alone. This can be a positive or a negative. If Wii is a success, third party developers will be willing to put the money in because the possible returns will be great. Wii will then get a ton of new games that will only be played (at least to their full extent) on the Wii.

However, if Wii fails to attract third parties, it will be like the GameCube, a system worth buying for Nintendo's games, but far from the market leader. Third party support makes all the difference.

Do I think the Wii's lesser level of tech power will keep some games from hitting shelves with a Wii logo? Yes. But I feel that there will be an equal or greater number of third party games that will come out for Wii that won't be available elsewhere. Give a little, take a little. Lose Haze, gain Sadness (or Raving Rabbids, or Red Steel, etc).

If the Wii explodes like it is set up to, there will be much more gained than lost.

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I had already assumed that a lot of cross-platform games wouldn't be available due to this exact reason. It's therefore *essential* that the Wii gets a lot of A+ exclusive titles.

It's a very different beast than the mainstream PS3 and 360. It's gotta hold up on it's own without relying on cross platform titles.

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The one good thing about the quote is this line: "If we could, we would."

That means they would definitely port the game to the Wii if the power were available. Of course, most fans of the Wii couldn't give two flying craps about multi-system ports anyway, so all in all it's no loss.

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What I don't understand is that even though the Wii is underpowered, that doesn't mean they can't loosen up the graphics and then port it to the Wii.

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nooooooooo i want my timesplittlers 9 on my wii!!! FTW, really does anyone care about this team anymore? maybe they need to have a system that's underpowered because since the 64 they havent really made anything good anyway.

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I think the worst aspect of this is that it's predominantly the companies specialising in FPS games that are proclaiming the Wii unworkable.

FPS games are probably the popular genre most in need of a new console control mechanics, but all the devs are up their own graphical butts. This mostly comes down to the genre's PC roots, and graphical expectation plays some part, but really they have little excuse. This is the console space. ALL console owners should be treated as if they have some intelligence and with some respect. Hardcore gamers care about the gameplay, and light users can't tell there's complex physics when they see them. It's only a very small middle groulnd of 'posers' that refuse to buy games if they fufill a list of the latest technical features. I don't expect they'll do anything that significantly influences the ACTUAL GAMEPELAY that couldn't be done on a 700 MHz chip.

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My theory is this:

Developers need some limitations. Limitation is what spurs real creativity.

Take Star Wars (new ones) vs Lord of the Rings. Lucas had all the money in the world at his disposal to make Star Wars Eps 1-3. And guess what, they blew. LOTR was FAR lower budgeted, therefore they had to be EXTRA creative to make the movie better.

This happens in all sorts of other areas too. Ever wonder why musicians tend to start sucking with they reach the top? No limits = less creativity (in general)

So with the graphical limitations of the Wii, I really believe we're going to see far more creativity.

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Of course you can't port a high profile PS3 game to the Wii and expect that the Wii can do it all. Of course not! That's just a stupid comment. It's like porting After Burner 2 arcade version to Sega Master System. It just doesn't have the power to do everything the PS3 or XBOX 360 version can do.

But on the other hand the reversed scenario is also impossible. You can't port a Wii game to PS3 and expect it to maintain the same game play quality. This is nothing to worry about. If you want main stream high profile francises go buy a 360 or a PS3 or a PC or whatever, then you won't miss out those kind of games.

Nintendo Wii is all about games designed specifically for the Wii. Game development costs will be DRAMATICALLY lower because of that, and the lack of super realistic graphics/physics capabilities etc. It's all about unique game play. If a developer house starts thinking that "the Wii is underpowered, so we can't make our super realistic game for it", then it's clearly not their platform. But look at what Capcom did with Resident Evil 4 on GameCube.. Wii is after stronger than the GameCube. If you really want to do a phat game on Wii, it's possible. I have no doubt.

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CLEARLY A PRO SONY ANTI NINTENDO RANT BASED ON THE IDEA SONY WILL BEAT ALL AND GENERAL PUBLIC WONT BACK WII IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH WII ITS A 3RD PARTY LOOKING FOR EXCUSES NOT TO INOVATE ITS MARK RAIN WOT EVER THE FAT TWATS NAME IS ALL OVER AGAIN BLATANT ANTI INOVATION LETS MAKE SHALLOW GAMES RANT BY A DEVELOPER FAST LOOSING CREDIT TS 2 WAS GREAT TS 3 WAS A RUSHED EA PUBLISHED JOKE

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The Wii can use the graphics engine of the Xbox/PS2 versions of big multi-platform games now, but in the future, those versions will not be made. This undoes the plus of the Wii that it has low devopment costs; creating an entirely new engine for one platform is much more expensive than creating an higher-end engine that can be ported.

The engine, the basics of the Xbox360/PS3 will just be to heavy to be downgraded and ported to the Wii, thus resulting in higher development costs for the Wii. Sad, but true.

I apologize for my bad English.

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This is a poor headline. It implies the Timesplitter developers are expressing distaste for Nintendo's low cost, moderate performance approach, when in fact they merely stated that the Wii won't be able to handle the graphics they have planned for the PS3, which has been obvious for a long time now.

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Obviously the wii is underpowered, look at video and screenshots of it from E3. Most of the games look like higher-end gamecube games (RE4, MP2). If developers put a lot of work into them (along with the small improvements that will be made to the hardware by the time of launch), they could get a game to look almost like a pretty nice looking 360 game, but everybody, especially Nintendo, has stressed that the wii makes the graphical sacrafice for new ways to play games.

Madden 07 on the Wii looks like shit compared to the 360 and PS3 versions shown at e3, but the wii version is the only one that allows for hand movements causing things to happen in the game. If these controls turn out to be revolutionary and more fun than pressing buttons, than making the choice between improved looks or fun, new, and improved ways to play easy.

The wii makes the sacrafice of power for cheap development costs as well as market prices, and its the only console that offers fully-fledged motion controlling (the ps3 controller's motion sensing is really just a pathetically tacked on feature that wont get anywhere near the amount of support as the wii's motion control).

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* Tush: "Developers need some limitations. Limitation is what spurs real creativity."

No, that would be experience and competition. There are a lot of hand-held games that completely suck, and that's about as limited as you can get next to playing games on a wristwatch.

The real problem is that everyone is going for mass-market appeal. Too many suits, too many programmers, not enough designers, not enough risk-takers.

Wii, in general, is a pretty mixed bag as far as its priorities are concerned, but the lack of performance is deinitely an issue. Good developers make good games, and good developers with good hardware make better games.

Instead of polygons, think of vocabulary. Any author has the potential to write a good book. However, writers with excellent vocabularies and a deep understanding of language structure will write more interesting stories. There is something to be said about craftsmanship.

Would a Pixar movie be as good if the producers took the easy way out? Would a house be as good if it had bare walls instead of wallpaper and family photos in nice frames?

Nintendo wants to make a lot of profit on hardware. That's all there is to it.

* Andreas: "You can't port a Wii game to PS3 and expect it to maintain the same game play quality."

I think you're underestimating the capability of the dual analog design. Gamecube developers often ignored or horribly misused the "C" stick, so it doesn't surprise me that people loyal to Nintendo think that Wii games would be unplayable or at least less enjoyable on a traditional gamepad. I find it very, very difficult to play 3rd-person-view games on Gamecube because I can never move the camera around, and the camera is always automatically tracking objects that are closest to me. It's very annoying. Dumbing-down controls is not the answer.

Really, analog gamepads haven't changed much over the years. That's a testament to the flexibility of the design. I wish Nintendo had been a bit more practical about the Wiimote, but then, people can always be forced to buy a second controller, or maybe a third, or possibly...

Hmm. Maybe that's why the console itself is so small. So you'll have room next to your TV for all the other controllers. I find it strange that the Wiimote is supposed to be so revolutionary, but you'll need seperate controllers to play different kinds of games. That's not a very thoughtful, flexible design. Meanwhile, how many Wii games can be played just fine on a gamepad, plus all the games made over the last 30 years?

The Wiimote will be more practical when holographics are being used in every household. But, that has usability issues as well -- not to mention the ability to induce vomiting. :)

* Fred-Eric: "The Wii can use the graphics engine of the Xbox/PS2 versions of big multi-platform games now, but in the future, those versions will not be made. This undoes the plus of the Wii that it has low devopment costs; creating an entirely new engine for one platform is much more expensive than creating an higher-end engine that can be ported."

My thoughts exactly. The development costs depend on the power of your tools, allowing you to focus on what you're doing, rather than how to do it. A system with a lot less power, and fewer, highly proprietary tools, requires more work and optimization to come close to the performance of the competition. The only way dev costs will be lower is if developers lower their standards. Hence, the enormous buzz over XBox Live and Virtual Console. Gee, why are we buying brand new machines just to play 16-bit games and sequels to last-gen titles?

Nintendo is not immune to the probelms faced by other console companies, no matter what kind of controller they have. Less power just stifles talented developers who KNOW how to handle lots of power.

To be fair, though, the 360 and PS3 are too powerful. I would prefer cool and reliable to trillions of spaceships on screen at one time. Sony and Microsoft are above the reasonable performance threshhold. Nintendo, however, is pretty well below it, to the point where it really cannot justify its existence next to a much cheaper Gamecube. Asside from the controller, there is no point to it.

Virtual Console will be a major feature, and you have to pay for the broadband adapter? Come on. I wouldn't be surprised if more people have HDTV than have wireless Ethernet compatible with the Wii. Yet, "not enough people have HDTV."

Excuses, excuses...

* Disposable Hero: "the ps3 controller's motion sensing is really just a pathetically tacked on feature that wont get anywhere near the amount of support as the wii's motion control"

Funny, many Wii games are using the controller with the steering-wheel paradigm. The PS3 controller will offer the same functionality. Really, the use of the Wiimote as a pointing device is the biggest difference between the controllers. Also, this isn't something you can tack on. Sony has been working on the motion sensor for a while.

Removing the vibration function because of their unwillingness to settle a legal issue in a timely manner... now that's rash.

The major difference is that Nintendo is using motion sensors as a primary form of control, to superceed traditional, proven controls. That's a very dangerous thing to do, especially if large dead zone issue frequently popping up in many Wii games remains a problem (this is a natural side effect of a free-form controller with no point of reference. Get used to it). Sony is using motion sensors as an accessory control, which is a more practical approach, although one that doesn't get as much media attention.

If one of these console companies would let gamers reconfigure the controllers to allow any button to be remapped to any function, independent of the actual games, that would really make things better, and allow all sorts of new possibilites. It's amazing how little people recognize the genius of DirectInput -- even Linux and Mac people.

Still, Sony is just sitting on their butts. I believe a regular gamepad is very functional, but Sony is not proving it. If they are waiting for the right moment to make a "big splash", that is a major marketting mistake.

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