A year on

[elkatas]

Lower dev costs is right but lets remember that devs are humans, and whilst making money is clearly the priority for the company i'd wager most developers want to be working with the latest technology.

Certainly. But it isn't the developers who decide which platform titles go. It is those who actually run the show (a.k.a. share owners). Business is business.

[fishbowlhead]

I think the wii is plenty powerfull enough, its a soupoed up gamecube afterall. Seeing as the gamecube wasnt push at all really, itle give the technology time to shine instead of being forgotten and discarded.

And lets face it its not about power, its about,
1; art direction.
2; developer tallent.

Id hasten a bet that a team ico game running on a snes would look better than anything someone like epic or id could make on the most expensive tech you could provide them with.

And as Ady pointed out, the ps2 was the weakest in terms of specs last gen, but it never stopped devs like insomniac and naughty dog creating huge beautifull seamless worlds with no load times, frame rate problems or other technical problems did it.


I think alot of people need to forget about all this graphics bollocks, and just concentrate on playing some games for once.

[Ajay1986]

But thats the point i was making, how many of the talented third party developers are going to be happy making Wii games rather then utilising the latest technology to make there ideas come to life.

[Ady]

[PS2 development]
We all know that was Market share.

Which is precisely the case with the Wii. Yet instead of making games, devs are making excuses.

Thanks for proving my point so well.

But thats the point i was making, how many of the talented third party developers are going to be happy making Wii games rather then utilising the latest technology to make there ideas come to life.

By your logic, programmers in the 8-bit days would've exclusively made games for the Commodore 64 and Amstrad whilst ignoring the graphically primitive Spectrum, in spite of that machine's popularity (in this country at least). And we all know that didn't happen...

[Brats]

Certainly. But it isn't the developers who decide which platform titles go. It is those who actually run the show (a.k.a. share owners). Business is business.

But pissing of your staff by forcing them to work on a platform they don't want to is bad business.

Besides, a lot of developers are privately owned, where the shareholders are the staff.

[elkatas]

But pissing of your staff by forcing them to work on a platform they don't want to is bad business.

But having bankcrupt due ideologial reasons is even worse.

[Phar]

I think graphical powers only one side of it, although the remote is obviously it's strongest selling point with loads of potential it's also very limited in regards to more traditional gaming, I can imagine a lot of developers really just wanting to create the type of games that stick to just a standard joypad without feeling any pressure to incorporate any motion sensing gimmickry into their games, but if they do they'll probably find their games being overlooked.

I still think it's early days to be too critical though, the big devs can't really go on ignoring the wii for too long, especialy with the potential amount of systems that'll be sold in it's lifetime.

[elkatas]

I think graphical powers only one side of it, although the remote is obviously it's strongest selling point with loads of potential it's also very limited in regards to more traditional gaming....

How so? This argument falls ot its face, because Wiimote has more buttons than Dreamcast controller had, and only four less than current traditional controllers have (and this counts thumb buttons, that are rarely even used). Pointer works as a second stick in FPSs, and second stick isn't really required in any other genres. Simple waggle can also replicate more mundane, button wasting actions, like reloading. Number of buttons aren't limit if you are creative, but the problem is that most of the developers don't see tree from the forest. This happens even to 1st party developers.

For example, let's take Metroid Prime 3. When playing the game, you quickly notice that game doesn't use d-pad's left, right, and up buttons for anything. Interestingly enough, you get three different visors in the game, they are accessed by - button, and by pointing for desired visor. This works very well indeed, but I have wondered why visors weren't put to d-pad. They would have been faster to access, and wouldn't have distracted flow of the game for beginners. And after - button was freed, it would have been very easy to put beam changing to it. But somewhere developers simply tried too much.

[Brats]

But having bankcrupt due ideologial reasons is even worse.

Possibly, but it's not easy to change those idealogical reasons. You can't just take a group of programmers who love what they do and love working on high end platforms and tell them that they must work on the Wii because that's where the bucks are. Unless they are a bunch of hacks, in which case their game is likely to be lousy anyway and who wants those games?

The problem is that the decent game designers are mavericks - artists even - and they will work on the platform they want to work on. Some will relish the thought of developing for the Wii, but I'd venture many will be tempted by higher processing power.

AFAIK that seems to be the case. Suda 51 and Matsuura might be intrigued by the Wii and a few high profile developers have expressed curiosity, but which other high profile development teams have said they are taking the Wii seriously? EA said they are putting some of their top teams on it, but are they really?

[Dogg Thang]

The problem is that the decent game designers are mavericks

I suspect it could be more a case that the very top game designers are mavericks and the rest are trying to pay the bills.

[Team Andromeda]

Which is precisely the case with the Wii. Yet instead of making games, devs are making excuses.

Thanks for proving my point so well.



By your logic, programmers in the 8-bit days would've exclusively made games for the Commodore 64 and Amstrad whilst ignoring the graphically primitive Spectrum, in spite of that machine's popularity (in this country at least). And we all know that didn't happen...

The PS2 was utterly dominate in software and hardware sales , with a massive share in the market, that?s not quite the case with the wii. Software sales on the 360 still are very strong more so in the biggest gaming market in the world

Also in polygons terms the PS2 was at least able to keep up with the Cube and X-Box , the Wii is miles off the PS3 and 360 Top performance .
The X-Box only had double the Ram of the PS2, the 360 has like 5 times the amount of Ram, it can emulate X-Box in software for crying out loud , The Wii is not even close to the 360 or PS3 performance .

So its not quite the same

think alot of people need to forget about all this graphics bollocks, and just concentrate on playing some games for once.

I think people here know a good game when they play one. Sure graphics or sound doesn't make a game , but nor does waving one arms about.
You can have the best graphics even seen a game , but with out gameplay it wouldn't count for nothing , but you can have the best controler and the best controls in a game , but without gameplay its just as e qually meaningless .
How about cutting the bullsh8t, and have a grown up debate with out calling people graphics whores that somehow don?t know anything about games, it's almost insulting .

You don?t need award winning CGI or music scores in a film, All you need it?s a decent script, story and actors , but if you can combine them all , then the experience is that much better


What is so wrong with wanting the best graphics and gameplay. I'm pretty sure RE 4 could be done onthe N64, but the experience wouldn?t be half as good

[Brats]

I suspect it could be more a case that the very top game designers are mavericks and the rest are trying to pay the bills.

So are you saying that most of the top developers will miss out the Wii?

Can you think of many really solid, high quality games or series that are made by developers who are 'just paying the bills'? Aren't they the guys who churn out the yearly franchises or work on ports?

[Dogg Thang]

I don't know the devs of each sold, high quality game but, yes, people have to pay bills and in any industry only the absolute top employees would have a company put potential financial gain aside in favour of their desires. Even then, they'd want to have a damn good reason.

But the 'just' you added to the misquotation changes the tone of what I wrote. Not sure if you did that deliberately or not but most of us who love what they do and strive for the best (as I do) still have to pay the bills. Your added 'just' removes that.

[Ady]

The PS2 was utterly dominate in software and hardware sales , with a massive share in the market, that’s not quite the case with the wii. Software sales on the 360 still are very strong more so in the biggest gaming market in the world

Also in polygons terms the PS2 was at least able to keep up with the Cube and X-Box , the Wii is miles off the PS3 and 360 Top performance .
The X-Box only had double the Ram of the PS2, the 360 has like 5 times the amount of Ram, it can emulate X-Box in software for crying out loud , The Wii is not even close to the 360 or PS3 performance .

So its not quite the same

But the PS2 was only dominant in the software sales because the development community made games for it! How can this dominance be expected to happen any other way?

I also don't buy your argument that raw grunt power has to be absolutely top tier for developers to be at all interested in a platform. If that was the case, why doesn't everyone just stick with the PC and be done with it? And if its all about artistry, then why is it most of this power is just being used to render the same dull brown and grey environs in slightly higher resolutions?

Related to the above point, for all this talk of the Wii's apparent graphical ineptitude, I can't recall many 3rd party titles that have even attempted to test what the machine is capable of, which makes the graphics excuse even more feeble. You can't criticise the performance of a machine you've barely even tried to push.

To reiterate then, a lot of these graphically sophisticated games on other platforms that are being spoken of here are barely more than visual updates of previous-gen games, many of which are still mired in previous-gen mechanics that fail to really push gaming itself forward (which is something the Wii can never be accused of even if the attempts don't always work). For instance, beyond making everything look as though it was wrapped in cellophane, I didn't think Halo 3 looked much different from the previous games (it certainly didn't play any differently, that's for sure...).

And am I the only one who thinks Valve could've made a mindblowing Wii Half Life 2 conversion by combining the games environmental physics with the tactility offered by the controller? (And don't tell me the Wii couldn't handle the game - if the XBox could, then the Wii definitely could have done.)

[EvilBoris]

Stuff Half Life 2, Psy-Ops 2 on the Wii!