Nintendo Wii Fanboy

All I can say is; don't count on it.

This rumor is sure to be false.

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I don't see why this would be a false rumor. Nobody actually knows what the Wii is capable of, graphics-wise...keep in mind the only specs that have been 'leaked' are specs for the Gekko chip, which is commonly available on various wikis, and is part of the GAMECUBE. I can't imagine 5+ years of working with ATI resulting in anything that isn't amazing.

Besides which, Nintendo is quite strict with their NDAs...all we have to go on is a few developers saying their devkits are 'roughly twice as powerful as a Gamecube' and 'the Wii will be so much more than people think'.

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I think the Wii is much more capable than what most people think simply because it's easy to develop for, but I don't think Nintendo will all of a sudden reveal it has a Quad Core CPU with 2 gigs of RAM and a Quad Geforce SLI setup. Sure, technology has changed alot since the Gamecube, but you can only fit so much tech into a console the size of 3 DVD cases.

For now, I think the visuals on Super Mario Galaxy are amazing and that's good enough for me. Obviously games will look better over time as developers get better with the hardware, but don't expect a miracle.

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to be honest who cares about the wiis graphic capabilities... the remote is the perfect size... and tbh im just pleased they managed to feature in a rumble.. cos that'l really touch my buttons...

love you all
x

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"we can hardly believe that Nintendo would purposefully make trailers for other titles such as Metroid Prime 3: Corruption and Super Mario Galaxy look worse than they actually are."

That's not what the rumor means. The idea is that Nintendo has been using under developed dev kits (which was confirmed because many of the games were running on GC-era hardware). Thus the games are pushing the limits only of early hardware. When the real hardware is released, they'll be plenty more power to up the visuals.

I give this a 90% of being true. Why else would Nintendo hold out until a month before launch to give us pricing information and show us any wealth of media? They've been very stingey about giving out screens and videos. Also, we've known for weeks that developers are just now getting final hardware dev kits.

I'm sure 1st party titles will look much better at launch than we've seen, and some early 3rd party titles may get a visual boost.

Think about it, the only complaint about the Wii is its lack of visual power. When Nintendo shows that the Wii can do almost what the 360 can, for several hundred less and with a new controller, everyone will say "wow" like Iwata wants us to.

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Hey, I have "inside sources" at Nintendo, too!

Only I've never actually seen or been spoken to by any of them, I have to put X to my bedroom window with masking tape to conjur them up, and sometimes they tell me to set things on fire.

but otherwise...

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I'm going to go out on a limb here and say not to worry much about this rumor.

Remember Nintendo's showing at E3? They basically ruled the show even WITH lesser hardware. Considering that, one might almost say that inflating the cost of their hardware with improved graphics might be a bad move from their perspective.

Remember that Nintendo has also confirmed that their system won't support very-hi-def output. On a normal television, you probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference much further beyond Gamecube level anyway. That's what Nintendo has claimed for some time (remember, at the beginning of the Gamecube generation, they as much as said that they didn't think graphics could drive console interest much further, and would be looking at other features for the generation after).

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I'm in agreement that this seems AWFULLY late in the game to be "surprising" us with a more powerful graphics engine, especially since Nintendo's mantra from the beginning has been Gameplay, not graphics.

Would be fun if true, but this seems like wishful thinking.

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The only thing they better be lying to us about is this no online shit for the launch/launch window 3rd party titles. That really pissed me off and I can only hope they were just covering their ass incase things didn't resolve with 3rd party and online capabilities. Farcry for the Wii = amazing, Farcry without online on the Wii = dead Nintendo execs and the head of mario at the foot of Shiggy's bed.

It's ok to be an angry Nintendo fan, I'm sick of waiting so long and being on edge all this time to learn the online support will be sub-par. You have the right to be pissed off about empty promises and over exagerations. Nintendo prays off the loyalty of their fans just as much as Sony does, albit in a less evil way but they still use us. They get free advertisment and an amry of mindless loyal fans who would probably be happy and able to see the good in a dog turd wrapped in a ribbon.

Now that my rant is over I consider myself a Nintendo fanboy of a more extreme variety. I've been patient, I've suffered through the name change, the lack of information, clunky controls on demos, and the reginator. I really do hope Nintendo pulls out all the stops soon and amazes me, hopefully enough to make me forget the suffering as a fanboy I've been through since the Revolution was first named. I have high hopes for them, and I know Nintendo can do it. They have the technology, the resources, the great minds, the name brand, and an army of loyal fans across the globe but... are they willing to take such a great risk just to give back to the gaming community?

Anticrawl

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http://blogs.ign.com/matt-ign

What we've seen from Red Steel isn't what we'll see at launch. Kind of supports this theory, doesn't it?

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Nice write up Anticrawl (you should get a star even if it *was* a rant).

"I can't imagine 5+ years of working with ATI resulting in anything that isn't amazing."

Yeah, I don't believe that working with the company, who's making the graphics chip, for 5 years won't result in anything amazing.


I'm not ready to believe this, but if any company of the big three *were* to do this, it'd be Nintendo without a doubt.

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It does seem pretty far-fetched that they would wait so long to reveal something like this to us, and after emphasizing gameplay some more...

..but this is why I'm beginning to believe it:

a) Other "insiders" from forums and blogs have claimed that the Wii developing kits (or something like that) have amazing technology to take a photograph and convert it into a 3D environment, and that the Wii has some kind of amazing power to take those graphics and render 100% accurate graphics and physics. Ok, that seems REALLY far fetched, but...

b) It's Nintendo, they can pull off a lot of things.

We'll just have to wait and see.

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I think people need to put gfx to the side, and forget about the mind blowing gfx that we see all around us in almost every major title. Its not what makes a game it never was. GFX is there just to grab us, it has been turned into a marketing tool over the years and just cant hold up anymore.

Also i still have faith that this is Nintendo's Revolution.

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After thinking about this I would say that it is possible, even probable, Satoru, said "when you see our graphics you will say wow", that guy from ATI said, what you are currently seeing is only th tip of the iceberg. If that blog is reliable than, this will be very close to being ture. Oh yeah also Disaster day of crisis is supposed to have realistic graphics so that also points to this. also gameplay over graphics does not mean shit graphics good gameplay, it only means that the gameplay is better than the graphics, so based on the funness of the Wii, I would have to say that the graphics can be from Xbox to PS3.

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I think it sounds ok to me.

Who cares if theyre witholding information?

While i like the idea of the Wii being "for entertainment" I certainly wouldnt want to turn away big impressive numbers - especially if it is NOT at the cost of talent.

I mean, the GCN was better at displaying graphics than the Xbox anyways - but some people will still look down at the Wii for having lower numbers.

But again, the more power, the better. But if its nothing amazing, it doesnt matter - so long as the graphics are reasonable, and the fun is high : )

-Red

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@DocGonzo

But Nintendo suddenly upping the hardware power isn't going to make the games look any better, that would require serious work on the part of the developers and artists.

The only thing I think is even remotely likely is that Nintendo will announce that Wii games can optionally support 720p. I remember there being a bunch of Mario Galaxy screenshots on Gamespot that were 1280x720, although I can't find them now.

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Personally, I would like to see much better graphics, I'm not very concerned about the visual quality, even though it is nice to have eye candy, but more about what can be done to enhance the experience: particle effects, lighting, AI, physics, and the number of characters on screen. i've actually mentioned before that i felt nintendo was doing this, it would make sense since they want developers to focus foremost on gameplay and not graphics. 2x more powerful than gamecube isn't that expensive, hardware this powerful could easily sell for 100 bucks, even hardware the size of the wii, gamecube was rather small too mind you and is five year old technology. so something like 5x isn't out of the question, hopefully this is the case, i, for one wouldn't mind this at all. but i'll take this as the rumor that it is.

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I doubt it. It probably isn't anything special. This is just a rumor remember...

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I wouldn't put it past Nintendo to show us the Wii's real graphics capabilities so late into production. Does anybody remember the Super FX chip? The chip of glory that made LylatWars 3D or the SNES? Maybe Nintendo will pump up the graphics when the Wii is already launched. Maybe HD or maybe a bit less powerful that HD. I'll admit its far fetched but with all the gameplay greatness in the Wii, no amount of graphics could out shine it. Incredible Gameplay,Great Graphics. Amazing Nintendo Slogan Number 2!

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@ Zelos

You make a good point; I'm perfectly on board with Nintendo's "Gameplay, not graphics" mindset. But really...think of how the Wiimote has changed your perspective on what games -can- do. I have a sneaky suspicion that the graphics chipset in the Wii will be way more powerful than everybody seems to think it is - definitely not a four-core PCIE solution, of course, but it'll be a perfectly decent chipset numbers-wise. But what I'm thinking is that its a NEW way of processing graphics; something akin to a PhysX card in a PC (which allows the CPU to hand-off the physics calculations to a subprocessor, in games that allow it). In short, a new way to render visuals, that can do it better and easier (and I mean easier as in less hardware requirements for the same effect, as well as easier to program the code for)

Think back to the Atari era. Computers at the time were very simple, a basic word processor that didn't even have lowercase letters or any form of storage other than a printer was too expensive for the average individual. But the Atari could be had for cheap, and could do any number of games; computers couldn't do that. Nowadays, computers are the norm; everybody and his brother knows what a megahurtz is, and that more gigs is better. But what the hell is the point of being so all-encompassingly powerful when all you need is a simpler, different way of doing things?

I always used to cringe when I would see the last-gen spec comparisons. They made me want to cry, because a Gamecube or a PS2 CANNOT be compared to an Xbox simply by comparing their chip speeds; a Gamecube and a PS2 are NOT COMPUTERS. Do you measure your digital watch power in Pentiums? No, because they are different machines. All MHz means is how many times per second a chip can put out a signal; everything else in the machine needs to be up to that speed as well, or else there is wasted power. Your computer right now, almost guaranteed, is wasting speed somewhere on the motherboard; your processor might be capable of going faster, but it can't because your RAM needs to be a faster speed. Or your video card could be giving you twice the framerate, if it could buffer texture data from your hard drive fast enough to keep up with it.

This is where I think Nintendo has always been the best - making sure their hardware is as perfect as it can be, not making sure it has the most megahurtz. That way a developer can be given the final specs for the system, and they will know right away that they can do this part of what they want, and they can do that part of what they want, and that everything in the system will work together just the way it should; they don't need to worry about compressing textures to fit it through the video bandwidth so its there when the geometry needs to paint it on a shape, for example.

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I wonder why they don't confirm or deny about that themselves.

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Nintendo NEVER comments on rumors. There is no way they will change things at the last minute, BUT, I would be happy to be wrong.

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Let's not forget that a lot of developers this past E3 were rushed into making quick demos of games. That doesn't disclude the Wii lineup. Red Steel was rushed, and only recently have they been tweaking the visuals and gameplay mechanics.

Take a look at screenshots for RayMan Raving Rabbids in the latest Nintendo Power. They have some pretty impressive visuals packed in there.

"The tip of the iceberg" was probably said because developers were rushed this past E3. Now that it's over, they have had plenty of time since then until September 14 to tweak graphics on the Wii. The only reason there could be a drastic upgrade in graphics is because the developers weren't given enough time to develop visuals as high as the Wii can push right now.

I wouldn't think developers or Nintendo would make seperate, low-quality demos for E3 just to have to make upgraded demos/showings for September 14th.

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I think nintendo will do what nintendo wants to do weather it is worth waiting for i guess we will see when it is released. I think that the grapics and screen shots of the new zelda game are awsome and they were only supposed to be for the gamecube so i can not wait to get my hands on the wii and the new zelda

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The idea that development kits may not be fully powered until recently is actually a viable idea. It wouldn't make sense for Nintendo to order all it's developers and dev kit owners to make lesser versions of their games (Which still costs money) than go all ubar pwned ATI powerhouse afterwards for a simple marketing trick.

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all of you saying that the games we saw at e3 are prolly what we will see at launch graphics wise are forgetting one thing, the games at e3 were running on modified gamecubes. they were not the final dev kits that devs have now. also the cube could easily render graphics at or better then the xbox could but not many devs took advantage of this and the cube was seen as #2 in graphics. so if the wii is 2x as powerfull as tje cube it could have beautifull graphics. as for size take off everything but the processor and it is smaller then the wii. so in the space that the wii houses it could be even more powerfull then the 2x speculated by most people.

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Well, I wouldn't put it past Nintendo to do something like that...

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Remember Nintendo said that the graphics seen on the game trailers for the Wii were just the tip of the ICEBURG!

I think the Wii will be just as good as XBox 360 in graphic terms. Remember the gamecube 5:1 Ratio for compressing graphics? (Correct?) Leaves me to wonder what else this system can do.

Now if the HMD rumor was true it would be awesome, but doesn't matter to me, except for it would be nice having glasses that could let you view a 42" projection and surround sound headphones built-in.

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