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Nintendo Businesses The Almighty Buck Games

Nintendo Completely Sat Out the Video Game Graphics Wars. It's Winning Anyway. (sherwood.news) 70

Posted by msmash from the being-different dept.
Manny Fidel, reporting for Sherwood News: When you're immersed in a game like "Cyberpunk 2077," it's easy to get lost in its realism. As you run around the crowded streets of Night City, you notice the reflections of the city lights and neon signs in the puddles when it rains. Even the complexion and texture of a character's skin are enamoring. At full power, the game, created by CD Projekt Red, is a graphical marvel. It's also a symbol of a decades-long arms race between the biggest video game companies to make things look as real as possible. And then there are Nintendo games.

Take 2022's "Pokemon Scarlet" and "Pokemon Violet" on the Nintendo Switch. Despite being the latest releases in a legendary franchise, in terms of its graphics they could've easily been published 15 years ago. It's a perfect example of how, sometimes to the frustration of gamers, Nintendo seemingly refuses to step into the present day. None of its flagship games really compete with the rest of the industry's optical experiences. The graphics of games like "Red Dead Redemption 2," "Starfield," and "The Last of Us: Part II" are decades ahead of Nintendo.

But here's the thing: Nintendo doesn't have to catch up, nor does it want to. "Pokemon Scarlet" and "Pokemon Violet" sold 10 million copies during their launch weekend alone. According to IGN, Nintendo is responsible for three of the top five bestselling video game consoles of all time. Its characters -- Mario and Luigi, Link and Zelda, Pikachu and Ash -- have defined and are constantly redefining the industry. Nintendo is a money machine. It's been raking in more than $10 billion in revenue (more than 1.6 trillion yen) annually for the past several years, and its profits have grown sharply, topping out at about $3.3 billion in the fiscal year ended March 2024. For comparison, in its latest fiscal year, Sony's gaming division generated $29.1 billion of revenue and an operating profit of nearly $2 billion. Nintendo posted $11.4 billion of revenue and an operating profit of $3.6 billion.
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Nintendo Completely Sat Out the Video Game Graphics Wars. It's Winning Anyway. More

Nintendo Completely Sat Out the Video Game Graphics Wars. It's Winning Anyway.

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  • "The graphics of games like "Red Dead Redemption 2," "Starfield," and "The Last of Us: Part II" are decades ahead of Nintendo."

    • Re:Starfield? (Score:4, Informative)

      by DamnOregonian ( 963763 ) on Wednesday August 14, 2024 @12:35PM (#64705476)
      They're referring to graphics.
      Starfield was a pretty shit game, really... but it is pretty (if you've got the hardware for it)

      • If by pretty you mean pretty shitty, the game looks about 10 years old.

        • My recommendation for you is to purchase a machine you can put the settings past Medium on.
          4K Ultra with HDR on an OLED is fucking stunning.

          I will grant you that the faces are pretty comically dated.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mjwx ( 966435 )

        They're referring to graphics.
        Starfield was a pretty shit game, really... but it is pretty (if you've got the hardware for it)

        I keep wanting to buy Starfield, but then I read the reviews and think, not at bloody £41.

        However I've been saying for years now, graphics don't matter.

        You can make a game with eyebleedingly good graphics but if it's terrible to play it won't sell. Mass Effect Andromeda was the best example of this. Absolutely jaw dropping graphics for the time, gameplay was like nails down a blackboard. I could even have managed to see past the terribly dull characters, contrived story, fanfic level of writing

        • 100%. I did buy Starfield, with a pretty good idea that it was going to suck.
          I don't regret the purchase really, just the price it was purchased at.
          For $20, I think that'd be alright.
          But the $50 or so I spent? Na- it wasn't worth that.

          • I used my one free MS Gamepass trial to play it for free for 30 days. Haven't felt the need to play it again, but maybe I will in a few years when it's cheaper and (hopefully) has had some good updates.

            It's pretty good, but No Man's Sky is better at the space exploration, and Borderlands is better at story/combat parts, both of which predate it.

            • I beat the first play through, didn't go through the portal at the end to start NG+, and haven't really touched it since.
              I do occasionally load it up just to go explore a moon and shoot some stuff up.... then I'm done with it again.
              The whole thing felt like a little-bit-prettier (more... realistic?...feeling?) NMS, but without any of its good gameplay.
              The loading screens really are an annoyance. Not that they last a long time, but it takes away from the game not being able to land on planets, or slowboat
    • While graphics can and often DO make up a big part of a game....

      I think it still boils down to game play...how FUN is it?

      Hell, to this day, one of my favorite games is the arcade version of Robotron 2084!!?!?

      I can still work myself into a bad case of tennis elbow and rip the knobs off....

      The graphics and sound are primitive, the game is OLD.

      But it is fun.

      And, whenever I go to arcade expos....I see little kids loving to play it still.

      Hell, when I have friends over with kids, we often set them up on my

    • Starfield is the perfect example of what they are talking about: a game where all the resources when to the graphics engine so you end up with something that looks great but is not much fun to play. Games that have great gameplay can get away with poor graphics because everyone is having too much fun to notice the graphics, just look at vanilla Minecraft. The reverse is much harder to pull off, you need astounding graphics so people don't notice the lack of gameplay and those graphics will age fast which li

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by dbialac ( 320955 )
      It's not about the graphics, it's about the game play. I still play PS2 games on a PS3 console with emulation. When my PS4 died because of a lightning strike to an electrical pole (yes, it was plugged into a proper filter), I never bothered to replace it. The one game I had for the PS4 that I played in any regular kind of basis was GTA V, which worked just as well on the PS3. The graphics were a bit sharper on the PS4, but as I don't play multiplayer, the game play was essentially the same. I also find the

  • It's the gameplay, stupid (Score:5, Insightful)

    by DrWho42 ( 558107 ) on Wednesday August 14, 2024 @12:16PM (#64705436) Homepage
    For me, graphics got "good enough" with the Dreamcast. Each generation prior to that was a quantum leap improvement over the last, but once you have decent trilinear filtering you're on the long tail part of the curve and each improvement becomes much hard for a smaller incremental improvement.

    But there's a thing that can kill enjoyment of a game with the absolute best graphics, and that's crappy gameplay. Poor storytelling, bad controls, annoying mechanics. And Nintendo really understands this and puts lots of effort into the gameplay, which is why the churn out amazing games, even if they don't have the best graphics in the industry.

    • but once you have decent trilinear filtering you're on the long tail part of the curve and each improvement becomes much hard for a smaller incremental improvement.

      i like the sentiment but i think youre forgetting what dreamcast graphics actually looked like

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Pascoea ( 968200 )
        I will agree with the sentiment that stellar graphics don't mean anything when the gameplay and/or story is garbage, but I respectfully disagree with the "Dreamcast was good enough" stance. Hell, even comparing Fallout 3 on the XBox360 to Fallout 4 on a XBox One X is night and day. I still find myself enamored by the Red Dead 2 world.

        • I feel like my "good enough" point was ps3 but I get what he's saying prior to dreamcast half of your brain was dedicated to suppressing the knowledge that your game looked like shit.
          I can still tell the difference between a ps3 game and a new game on my gaming PC but the incremental changes are really hard to tell apart, like the difference between ps4 and ps5 is so small. My only traditional console at the moment is a WiiU and the graphics on that are ok when they wanna be and as good as they need to be

          • Agreed on PS4 vs PS5 - but the biggest difference that's night and day is the loading times. Playing Spiderman 2 and being able to instant load anywhere in the city vs. the first 2 on PS4 is fantastic, but I couldn't point out anything specific in the graphics other than that the city is that much bigger. But even the "first" Spiderman 2 from back in 2004 (?) had a full city to explore and was an excellent game even on PS2. Obviously the city has "more" but I can't actually say they've improved on the co

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Touvan ( 868256 )

      Yeah, I still play old games from that era - including remastered ones, all the time. They are still fun, and a simple shader treatment is all they need to make them "modern enough". Think of like Battlezone: Combat Commander, The Soul Calibur series (didn't get a remaster yet), even ps3/360 era stuff, like Darksiders, or the various Nintendo resurrections like Metroid Prime. These games looked amazing in their day, and with some simple shader updates, they look and more importantly, play amazingly today. T

      • Yeah, I still play old games from that era - including remastered ones, all the time. They are still fun, and a simple shader treatment is all they need to make them "modern enough". Think of like Battlezone: Combat Commander, The Soul Calibur series (didn't get a remaster yet), even ps3/360 era stuff, like Darksiders, or the various Nintendo resurrections like Metroid Prime. These games looked amazing in their day, and with some simple shader updates, they look and more importantly, play amazingly today. The race for graphics is cool and all, but great graphics doesn't make a fun game. And Switch isn't lacking in that department - Mario Odyssey and the Zelda games look amazing, even on PC. (I do wish Nintendo would hurry up and release something capable of HDR though - from my couch, I can't tell the difference between upscaled 720p, 1080p and 4k - but I can tell the difference between HDR and SDR.)

        I think that's the one area where the graphics are important, resolution.

        If you're seeing obvious pixels or other artifacts at full resolution (which increases as monitors improve) then the game looks cheap and it detracts from the experience. But if it looks nice and smooth at full resolution then the game looks fine.

        Nintendo goes for a cartooney style of animation and that means they look great at very high resolutions even with fairly uniform textures [reddit.com]. Nintendo can do that because their target audience o

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Calydor ( 739835 )

      Personally I feel that even for PC, the graphics of 2010+ are Good Enough. Anything since then has just been extra details and more polygons, but if you make a game with even a slightly cartoony vibe to the graphics there's simply no real difference unless players are determined to meticulously investigate every single frame.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

        A lot of people agree with you, considering that LoL, CS:GO, World of Tanks, Warframe etc are massive games to this day.

    • For me the sweet spot for graphics was was the PS2 or GC. Although I do remember seeing Sega Virtua Tennis on the DC when it came out and I thought that graphics couldn't get any better than this.
      • Those are all rose-tinted glasses. I recently (well, recently-ish. The last 5 years are a blur) replayed through some PS2 classics (like Final Fantasy X etc.)... The graphics may have been better on a CRT, but on today's screens it just looks... ok. It's playable. It doesn't really distract from the game because I didn't expect great graphics, but I mean... give me 2010 graphics on the same game and it would have been better. Give me 2024 graphics and maybe it'd be even better!

        Graphics do make a game more

    • For me, graphics got "good enough" with the Dreamcast.

      graphics affect gameplay.
      ocarina of time couldnt be done on the SNES; breath of the wild couldnt be done on the N64; seamless large worlds couldnt be done on the dreamcast; softbody/fluid physics couldnt be done on the ps2; so on and so forth.

      gameplay is king, but we still have a loooooong way to go with graphics.

    • Not just gameplay but also the type of game. Some games are meant to be immersive, and good graphics help a lot. And there's still room for improvement. Nintendo games offer a very different experience. One that sadly isn't for me.

    • For me, graphics got "good enough" with the Dreamcast.

      That is highly dependent on what you're trying to achieve. If you're immersing yourself in the imaginary or the abstract then yes graphics were good enough back then... well almost, I'd appreciate less pixelation. But if you're immersing yourself in a hyper-real world then graphics were far from "good enough".

      Graphics are an enabler for realism. It's a concept disconnected from the other factors such as gameplay and story telling. You can make a good story and good gameplay with realistic graphics too.

      Yes I

  • Maybe they know something obvious (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Wednesday August 14, 2024 @12:18PM (#64705440)

    that everybody seems to be forgetting: a good game isn't necessarily one with impressive graphics. Just like a good movie isn't necessarily one with impressive special effect: if you need convincing, watch any Marvel movie.

    WIth that in mind, I mostly play SNES and Amiga games: they're great games and they provide me with great entertainment despite being utterly outclassed technically.

    • that everybody seems to be forgetting: a good game isn't necessarily one with impressive graphics.

      Hack, Rogue, etc ... Spent a lot of time navigating the dungeon while waiting for projects to compile/run on the VAX-11/785 (4.3BSD) in the wee hours of the night/morning at university -- way back, yes, I'm old. :-)

      I'm scared to think how hungry my dog is now...

    • You're definitely not wrong, but there's also value in "great special effects", and "great graphics".
      A good game/movie they do not make, but sometimes they're a merit all their own.

      • What I meant was great technical achievements make a great game or movie - or anything - even better, but shite stays shite: as the saying goes, you can't polish a turd.

        • And that was my point- you most definitely can polish a turd ;)
          I can think of several shit games, and several more VR "things" that aren't fun, but are just visually spectacular. They are very polished turds. And they have value- even if it isn't their gameplay.

    • Just like a good movie isn't necessarily one with impressive special effect: if you need convincing, watch any Marvel movie.

      Funny you should mention that. One of the biggest gripes of Marvel movies is the poor visual effects of the modern churned out quickly films. Movie goers who otherwise love comic book stories complain frequently about it being very jarring to suddenly see rubbish VFX in high budget movies. And while you were saying that I just checked what the biggest block busters were: A film with cutting edge 3D graphics, followed by a Marvel film, followed by the sequel to cutting edge graphics film, followed by Titanic

    • a good game isn't necessarily one with impressive graphics

      I don't disagree, but with that sentiment in mind, why release new systems at all if the old one can still play "fun games"?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mjwx ( 966435 )

      that everybody seems to be forgetting: a good game isn't necessarily one with impressive graphics. Just like a good movie isn't necessarily one with impressive special effect: if you need convincing, watch any Marvel movie.

      WIth that in mind, I mostly play SNES and Amiga games: they're great games and they provide me with great entertainment despite being utterly outclassed technically.

      This, and it's ultimately why Sony and Microsoft will fail by trying to create PC-like consoles. Nintendo continued to make consoles that behaved like and were priced like... erm... actual consoles. Simple, easy, casual and cheap fun. Sure the graphics weren't that good but lets face it, the Xbox/PS graphics have always played second fiddle to a mid range gaming PC that over the course of 2 years, costs less (because you don't need to pay for PSN/XBL subs, oh and cheaper games).

      This is why the last conso

  • Duhh (Score:4, Insightful)

    by mhkohne ( 3854 ) on Wednesday August 14, 2024 @12:22PM (#64705446) Homepage

    Nintendo does perfectly serviceable graphics with great gameplay. Keeps costs under control and let's them concentrate on the important bit: gameplay.

    • Bravo Nintendo! It's rare that corporations focus on the usefulness of their product instead of entering buzzword and benchmark wars with competitors. Investors like hearing the buzzwords, so I can see the temptation. But it's nice to see a focus on polishing what you already have paying off for a company.

    • The OP seems to think that if it's not styled with photo-realistic physically based rendered materials, it's crappy graphics. BOTW and TOTK and SSBB have some super clever graphics tricks to produce a highly complex environment, but because it's toon styled it's easy to overlook the little touches if all you like are PBR games. Witcher3 runs fine, albeit the 720p is a challenge for some game ports to fit, for UI and for finer details. Now, the Pokemon games, that's a fair cop: the graphics are amateurish a

    • Nintendo does perfectly serviceable graphics with great gameplay. Keeps costs under control and let's them concentrate on the important bit: gameplay.

      This is why I left PC gaming. Whoop de doo, a $400 card means less aliasing. WEEE!!!!!

  • Graphics, including character movement, are not impressive on even the best games anyways. Once you get used to movie level or cut scene level graphics, playing any game still feels like the same to me, like a toy, whether it's nintendo's graphics or PS5 or on an RTX 4090.

    • Well, except that the cut scenes and movie level SFX from 20 years ago are done in realtime on today's $300 console. And most cut scenes are done in-engine as well, often using the same mocap setups as movies are using. So that's kind of a moving target. Would 20-30 years younger you find the current top of the line graphics equivalent to the warcraft cutscenes from the 90s or more impressive?

  • Style and polish (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ZERO1ZERO ( 948669 ) on Wednesday August 14, 2024 @12:40PM (#64705494)
    Nintendos gfx usually have a strong style and identity. The strive for photorealism is a thing but almost no games have it. Even the cyberpunk yeah it looks good (for a game) but its still miles away from real. Just watch it for 30 seconds and it looks computer trying to be real. Nintendo go for a style that is honest design. Its not pretending to be something it isnâ(TM)t. This honesty is philosophical in nature and flows into the game worlds as well. Rarely do you have bullshit in the way of actually playing the game. By bullshit i mean either basically cgi cutscene in game movies that ask you to press a button every 5 mins or just pointless grinding

  • Nintendo makes games fun (Score:4, Insightful)

    by memory_register ( 6248354 ) on Wednesday August 14, 2024 @12:41PM (#64705498)
    Plain and simple. A fun game with excellent challenge and control, mixed with good storytelling, beats any visual feast with clunky fundamentals.

    To use a sports analogy, I would rather watch Steph Curry play then the Harlem Globetrotters. The Globetrotters are fun once in a while as a spectacle, but Curry is a real player whose fundamentals make him amazing to watch every time.

    • The insecure teenage boys wanting to play pretend never controlled Nintendo's decision making. No bragging about hardware stats or realistic female rendering or adolescent emotional violence simulation... Also, being full of creatives, Nintendo has not even thought of people without any imagination who can't handle cartoons and must have total realism.

      They don't loose sight on game design and do not need to compensate by lesser distractions; which is often popular tech distractions for nerds simply because

  • I am easily overwhelmed by the graphics of high end games these days. I stop to look around and appreciate the view. I take a look at the intricate details People added. Usually I am not able to as I am "wasted" before everything sinks in. Guess I should try Nintendo games.

  • Back when MS and Sony were both taking huge losses on every Xbox and PS console sold, Nintendo basically took their GameCube hardware, gave it more RAM and Wiimotes, offered it at a fraction of the price of the competition, sold it at a profit, and they couldn't keep shelves stocked they were so popular.

    They've swung and missed a bunch of times (Virtual Boy will always live in infamy, and they whiffed on the Wii U) but I've learned to always give them the benefit of the doubt.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Lehk228 ( 705449 )
      the only thing wrong with the WiiU was the name nobody understood that it was a new console, because the name just made it sound like an attachment for a wii

  • Unintended benefit (Score:3)

    by DrMrLordX ( 559371 ) on Wednesday August 14, 2024 @01:27PM (#64705696)

    Nintendo cuts corners on hardware to avoid selling a console as a loss leader. Sometimes this pays benefits, such as with the Switch. In previous generations (e.g. GameCube), poor hardware/graphics has bitten them in the ass.

    • Kinda--they still made a profit on it, even though sales weren't great. That's what happens when you don't sell at a loss; you can still make mistakes and recover from them. It's a solid business plan.

      Over the arc of time, it's hard to claim that the decision has bitten them in the ass, even if they've often not been the most popular of the console makers.

      (And FWIW, I loved my Gamecube. Lots of great games.)

    • The Gamecube was hindered by limited storage, but you can't accuse it of lacking in graphical power.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Dwedit ( 232252 )

      Where is this myth coming from? The Gamecube was not underpowered at the time of its release in late 2001. Games on Gamecube looked very similar to and ran at about the same performance as PS2 and XBOX games.

      This is on contrast to the Wii, which *was* underpowered at the time of its release. It was literally an overclocked Gamecube with more RAM and a secondary ARM chip (to run an OS) added. You can even run Gamecube games in Wii Mode using a homebrew program called Nintendon't, it's that compatible.

      • https://www.reddit.com/r/ninte... [reddit.com]

        Imma just drop this here. Also Xbox had the best overall graphics capabilities of its generation. PS2 had the advantage of launching a year earlier with better third party support than GameCube. Anything else I add will be redundant to to the above link.

  • The Very Platonic Essence of a Bouncing Cherry (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Pseudonymous Powers ( 4097097 ) on Wednesday August 14, 2024 @01:37PM (#64705752)
    One angle I've not seen discussed here today is that, even within any given level of graphics "capability", there is a wide range of visual quality between contemporary games that depends on how skilled and thoughtful the games' artists and designers are or aren't. For example, arcade games like Pac-Man and Joust are still attractive, even though the graphics are primitive. Games with graphics technology three decades more advanced frequently look far uglier.

  • Who really cares about graphics? (Score:3)

    by Murdoch5 ( 1563847 ) on Wednesday August 14, 2024 @01:52PM (#64705816) Homepage
    The NES / SNES have some of the best games of all time. I still play Mario Party on the Game Cube and Switch. The N64 has Mario Party, Golden Eye, and other absolute winners. Graphics are cool, and when they're really impressive, well, it's really impressive, but game play matters 100x then graphics do. If your buddy shows up with Golden Eye, and a N64, you're not going to be excited and have a legendary gaming session?

  • Photorealistic graphics are style, not game (Score:3)

    by localroger ( 258128 ) on Wednesday August 14, 2024 @02:20PM (#64705964) Homepage
    Modern consoles are trapped in this vision that a game must take place in a photorealistic virtual reality as close as possible to the real world in every sensory impression. Which is stupid. Insanely popular computer games ruled for years using completely abstract graphics and set in simplified abstract worlds that had nothing to do with real life. When the first first-person shooters came out they were stunning by comparison but they were also a novelty, and even then they rendered worlds that were much more like cartoons than real life. Nowadays even a game like chess would be rendered on a naturalistic landscape with game pieces that are animated like little dolls that actually walk and fight when they conflict. People have played games for thousands of years without the help of any computers at all. Those who think it's about the rendering and animation are missing a very large point.

  • Pokemon always had subpar graphics compared to other games on the same hardware, as this pic [i.redd.it] shows.

  • "According to IGN, Nintendo is responsible for three of the top five bestselling video game consoles of all time. Its characters "

    "It's been raking in more than $10 billion in revenue (more than 1.6 trillion yen) annually for the past several years, and its profits have grown sharply, topping out at about $3.3 billion in the fiscal year ended March 2024."

    But the problem is the graphics???? Really Manny, take your head out of your ass. This is why gamers need regular swirlies...

  • deathmatch or monkeyball? (Score:3)

    by toxonix ( 1793960 ) on Wednesday August 14, 2024 @04:28PM (#64706454)

    It comes down to fun. Being engulfed in deep, realistic worlds is fun when you're alone, but when there are other people around it's a different story. I used to hang out with some friends and we'd play 1:1 deathmatch games for like 15 minutes before everyone got bored. We'd switch to Mario Kart or Monkey Ball and play for hours. I had a girlfriend who liked to play deathmatch games (Unreal, etc) but most of the women I know would rather play party games than stuff that just requires twitch abilities or following along with some epic world building story game. The people who play D&D might like that stuff, but most people are not that invested in paying attention. Mario Kart, Tetris, Mario Party, Monkey Ball are more fun with mixed doubles. If the ladies aren't having fun, nobody is.

  • RDR2 (Score:2)

    by jmke ( 776334 )
    why is RDR2 in that list of "graphics" games, its main draw imho is it immersion, which only party comes from the graphics, the interactions with the game world is what it really brings to unseen heights from a realism point of view. From small interactions with wild animals, to full on epic adventures with other AI players in the game. Yes graphics help with the immersion, but it's not a shiny turd like Starfield...

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