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Nintendo Shares Up, But Do Devs 'Get' the Wii?
Posted by
Zonk
on Mon May 15, 2006 05:49 PM
from the no-one-recognizes-a-revolution dept.
from the no-one-recognizes-a-revolution dept.
kukyfrope writes "Nintendo shares have jumped over six percent since the Wii's unveiling at E3 last week." Despite both Peter Moore and Phil Harrison recommending you should get a Wii, the future of Nintendo and the Wii aren't assured. Next Generation reports that third party developers may not really 'get' the ambitious console.
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Microsoft Sides With Nintendo Against Sony 495 comments
rafemonkey writes "Looks like Microsoft loves the Wii. The Washington Post has an article in which VP Peter Moore says that since the PS3 is so expensive, gamers might as well get an Xbox 360 and a Wii for the cost of one Sony console." From the article: "Microsoft predicted on Tuesday it will have 10 million Xbox 360 consoles in the market before Sony launches the PS3. The high-end Xbox 360 sells for $399, but it does not include a built-in high-definition DVD video player that comes with Sony's PS3. Sony plans to sell a premium PS3 model for $599 when it debuts in North America on November 17, and Nintendo has not yet disclosed pricing for Wii." On that last note there is much speculation that Nintendo is aiming for a $249 price point. Sony's Kaz Hirai has in turn responded that the PlayStation 3 is priced for consumers, who are getting a lot for their money.
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Good Point (Score:3, Interesting)
Nintendo will have a ton of great games (good for them, they usually have a few, things are looking great here) but while EA made out like a bandit on the 360 launch (Madden, Fight Night, Burnout, whatever) there is just Nintendo here.
Of course, if they could get Super Smash Brothers out at launch (instead of a few months later as I think they said) then they could really cream the competition.
A $200 system (just a guess) with a new Mario, Super Smash Brothers, Zelda, Metroid, Wario Ware, and a few other titles at launch. What gamer could possibly resist that?
Re:Good Point (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Good Point (Score:5, Funny)
The ones who are too mature, and need violence/sex all the time, that's who...
Parent
Re:Good Point (Score:5, Informative)
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Parent
Re:Good Point (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Good Point (Score:3, Insightful)
They Will, Eventually (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:They Will, Eventually (Score:3, Interesting)
It took them a while to "get" the DS. (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem is vastly different capabilities (Score:5, Interesting)
Now I'm not a graphics guru and could be wrong, but to my understanding, this greatly eases the art pipeline-- for example textures and polygon counts could be the same size.
The problem with the Wii is that it is not in the same class as the Xbox360 and PS3.
Many people don't realize that for a given game, as much as 3/4 of the manpower goes into art and *not* code. Most developers leverage existing game engines. A friend of mine is on a project where they have ~ 40 artists and ~ 10 coders.
Re:The problem is vastly different capabilities (Score:5, Insightful)
So if Wii is cheaper to develop for and has innovative features which get people excited about gaming again, it may mean that developers will be more amenable to the idea of developing for it. After all, nobody seems to mind that the DS doesn't have the same horsepower that the PSP does -- if they likewise don't care that the Wii doesn't have the same horsepower as its competitors, then developing for it is going to look very attractive.
Speaking only for myself, I don't really give a rat's ass that the Wii isn't as powerful as the competition. Sure, high-def support would have been nice, but saving $350 by getting a Wii instead of a PS3 is damned nice too. And as a jaded adult with a wife and kid who has very little time for gaming anymore, it's been really hard to get excited about games lately. Sure, I bought a GameCube and a PS2 and (eventually) an XBox, but I don't remember being really excited about any of them. The Wii, on the other hand, has me positively giddy with anticipation. I'll get a PS3 and an XBox360 after a few price drops when I have nothing better to do with my time and money. I'll get a Wii at midnight on launch day.
Parent
Re:The problem is vastly different capabilities (Score:4, Informative)
The Wii really isn't much less powerful then either the PS3 or the XBox 360, and in some ways (single thread performance) is more powerful. What the Wii's weakness is, is that the Wii contains a fixed pipeline on it's GPU; for those people that don't know what this means, the Wii does not support Programable Pixel/Vertex shaders.
If you look at the Red-Steel screens you'll see what I'm talking about; the geometry in the image will be as high as anything on the PS3/XBox 360, the Textures are as high resolution as anything on the PS3/XBox 360 and the Particle effects are as nice as anything on the PS3/XBox 360. When you compare screens you'll notice what is lacking is Normal Maps, and Material effects. Nintendo didn't include shader support because it costs a lot of money to produce Normal Maps and BRDFs (or other material functions).
Games will not be hard to port to the Wii, but they will never look as good as they do on the XBox 360 or PS3.
Parent
Re:The problem is vastly different capabilities (Score:4, Interesting)
This is, at best, wishful thinking. The Wii has very little in the way of texture memory - if they do what they did to the rest of the system, about a meg and a half, but let's assume it's really 10mb. The 360 has 512mb of shared RAM - presumably, more than 64mb of this could be dedicated to textures. The CPU is running at 729mhz last I checked, which is 1/3 of _one_ of the 360's cores - good luck trying to generate the same geometry. Even if you could, the comparatively low resolution (480p) is going to make it look like a jaggy mess - and there's not exactly much power to spare for fancy AA.
There is some serious delusion on the part of some Nintendo fans on how well this system is really going to be able to compete in the graphics department. I personally don't think it matters - Nintendo has obviously staked the system on the controller and Virtual Console, not the graphics. Whether that's a mistake or not, we shall see...
-Erwos
Parent
Re:The problem is vastly different capabilities (Score:5, Informative)
1. Texture memory - Yes, the Revolution has less memory overall, (estimates about final numbers are between 96-128MB. HOWEVER (!) this memory is all 1T SRAM, i.e. it's really fucking fast, and the system is using a UMA, plus each of the individual components have reasonably big on-die caches, so the Revolution has a very decent, SPEEDY (Faster than DDR2, and RAMBUS), memory sub-system.
2. Information indicates that the revolution's main CPU is a faster clocked version of the chip in the Gamecube, which is a slightly customized POWERPC G3 chip. On the other hand, the cores of the Cell, and the Xbox 360 are known to be the same design and are in many ways extremely cut down, to such an extent they they are less capable than the initial 1993 PowerPC cores. The Revolution's G3 has a MUCH higher IPC than the CPUs in the competition. As a result a more accurate comparison would be to say that it probably around 1/2 as powerful as one such core.
3. Given the Gamecube GPU's proven graphical prowess, and that it is known that the Revolution's GPU is a faster version of that chip, YES, there will be power to spare on AA, especially at 480p. Also, you seem to be confused, Jaggies get worse as you INCREASE resolution. So all things being equal, at 720p a scene will look more jaggy than at 480p.
That lower resolution also means that requirements are lower across the board. One can simply look at GC titles like "Resident Evil 4" and the release screen for Twilight Princess, plus the knowledge that the Revolution has headroom to improve on that, and rest confidently that the revolution will look just fine
Parent
Re:The problem is vastly different capabilities (Score:3, Informative)
The 360 (and PS3) is also using a PowerPC architecture chip, but architecture does not inherently impact IPC. Your entire point makes no sense. Unless you can give us some actual benchmarks, it's easier to simply assume they have the same IPC. In any event, it has 1/6 of the power according to your calculations, so I don't see your problem.
Jaggies get _better_ with resolution increa
Re:The problem is vastly different capabilities (Score:5, Insightful)
There is some serious delusion on behalf of the PS3/Xbox360 fans in that graphics are the game.
Parent
Lack of Developer Support? (Score:5, Insightful)
There are lots of games [1up.com] coming out for the Wii.
And just because big third parties aren't frothing at the mouth doesn't mean anything. I'm FAR more interested in titles like Sadness. These less-known developers are going to take risks that you won't see any big third party developer take.
Smash Brothers (Score:4, Interesting)
It will take time to gain momentum (Score:5, Insightful)
Aside from that issue, another more insidious problem is that people tend to hold grudges, and Nintendo has alienated many developers over the years. It took most of 2 console cycles for Square to do anything with Nintendo after Yamauchi said that Squares RPG games suck. And Nintendo also managed to drive away Silicon Knights shortly after the Metal gear port was done. There are many more companies that just dont much care for having to work for Nintendo.
The last issue is that even once the console starts to take off, most 3rd party games (except probably for those done by Sega) are just not going to feel as good to play as most of the Nintendo titles will. While the SDK is cheap, its going to take a while for the designers to get their head around the sort of things that are possible. WarioWare: Smooth Moves will be the best demo title for the sort of things someone can try with this console, and Metroid will point the way for FPS games. But beyond that, its going to take a while before 3rd parties come up with the sort of Original titles that will truly sell the system.
Its like playing a Texas Hold-em poker game, and your starting hand is 7 Jack, when your opponents have pocket aces and pocket kings. You will win once the flop comes down as 7, Jack, Jack, but its going to be a while before everyone else at the table watching the game realizes it.
END COMMUNICATION
Spinning a way out of E3 (Score:5, Interesting)
The huge splash Nintendo made at E3 has spin masters frantically running for cover. They're trying to downplay the Wii as good enough only as a secondary console. But even they feel the former Revolution is going to be a coup.
As for third-party developers, I'm planning to buy a Wii on launch day and at least 4 games (Metroid, Mario, Zelda and Red Steel, maybe Wii Sports). That's enough quality gaming right here to prevent me from actually seeing the light of day for the next few months, and I'm not even counting the countless classics on the Virtual Console.
The Wii is not suffering from a lack of titles. Actually, it already has too many strong launch titles to even let me try an unknown third-party game. Out of my 4/5 launch titles, only one is from a third party. The publishers that missed the boat have only themselves to blame.
Re:Ask the right question. (Score:3, Interesting)
Especially since Microsoft's devkit costs around $50,000 - $100,000 (last I read) and the PS3 devkit is something like $16 million.
Re:Ask the right question. (Score:3, Interesting)
Exaggerating a Little? (Score:3, Interesting)
"THQ president and CEO Brian Farrell spoke about developing for the Nintendo Wii, touching on a number of topics including THQ's first reactions to its Wii games..."
"...[The Wii] wasn't a whole new programming environment," Farrell said. "So we had a lot of tools and tech that work in that environment. So those costs--and again, I hate these broad generalizations--but they could be as little as a third of the high-end n
Re:Exaggerating a Little? (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes I got a question. (Score:4, Interesting)
I see it a lot nowadays mostly as an indicator someone doesn't agree with something. That doesn't mean it is FUD. Anymore then someone having a different opinion is a troll or someone having an argument is flaming.
Nintendo consistently builds better products? WHAAAAHAAA. Yeah right. That is why Sony took them for a ride with the PS1. Sorry but no. Nintendo screwed up badly in the past and had to pay the price. But then you mention apple. So I get my own word that lost all meaning to rebutt your fud.
FANBOY.
Parent