Dave Perry: Wii won't last, gamers want prettier games

What's ironic in his statement, is that people are picking up the Wii for the very same reason he gives that people would drop it... The reason why people are picking up the Wii and the DS is because there are games on those systems NOBODY HAS SEEN BEFORE.

Hell, even Microsoft admits that Halo looks like pure crap.

http://www.gamesforwindows.com/en-US/AboutGFW/Pages/DirectX10.aspx

They use a screenshot from Halo (alongside a render of the art assets they use in Crysis), to show somehow that DirectX 9 is dated (that a new revision of a graphics API magically gives developers access to prettier skin shaders and modelling tools). Of course, this a completely stupid claim (Halo is the equivalent of the Quake in terms of facial detail), but that's beyond the point...

Rayman is a fantastic looking game on the Wii, and so is Wii Sports. They both keep within the limits of the system. They look sharp because the artists planned ahead instead of creating highly detailed media then rushing to "optimize" it all after realizing that it runs terribly.
And by Optimize, I don't mean 'rethink the art direction to fit simpler graphics hardware with style', I mean 'quickly shrink every texture to half its size, run the meshes through an automatic mesh simplifier, lower the draw distance and add fog, fog, fog!'

I believe before you suddenly dismiss that statement you should think about it. He didn't say Halo 2 or 3, he said Halo. At the time that Halo came out, everyone said that it was a mistake, because first person have rarely been done right on a console. Halo was groundbreaking for it's time and singlehandedly made the Xbox, the FPSBox it became.

Edit: "be capable of better expressing..."

ff6 made me cry

i REALLY doubd that any ps3 game (even the ff ones) will as beautiful and as expressive like those little sprites with text

it is all a matter of point of view =P

Have you seen how expressive Wind Waker Link is? And Super Paper Mario made me cry.

I actually somewhat agree with this point, but it needs to be elaborated on. I think it's important to note that in terms of sheer scope and scale the PS3 and 360 are simply capable of much more ambitious things. Forget about graphics for a second, what about how the console physically simulates the world? I doubt the Wii is capable of simulating physics the way the 360 and PS3 can.

One other thing too - I have a descent AV system (not overkill) and I'm pissed off to no end that the Wii lacks optical out AND it lacks dolby 5.1 support. What the hell is with the Pro Logic II crap? I mean, seriously. That stuff was behind the times when GCN launched against the Xbox. So chalk that up too - the 360 and PS3 are capable of sounding far superior.

Lastly graphics - they make a difference. Artisic direction is the above all trumph card, but Gears of War isn't remotely possible on the Wii. The world that is created could not be communicated to the player properly with that lower end graphics hardware.

Another poster stated earlier on the FF6 made him cry, even though it's just simple sprites with text. He's totally right, FF6 is a very emotional experience dispite the very dated graphics. Thing is, back then graphics were so bad that a lot of work was left to your imagination. Nowadays nothing is left to imagine so the onus is on the content developer to engage us. One other thing too - FF6 had one of the best stories ever and that in my mind is the trump card that trumps all other features. Dreamfall gameplay wise wasn't very good. I loved every waking second of it because of it's amazing characters, voice acting and story.

So true, so very true.

You must ask yourself:
"Does the gameplay match the graphics in terms of the effort and time put into developing it?"

Graphics isn't everything. The point of playing a game is to have fun and enjoy it. They are a supplement, not complement to them.

A Wii system may not have all the bells and whistles, but give it a push in the right direction, and the put effort into the artistic direction and creativity, then the game will look good regardless how many polygons the system is outputting.

For example, Mario Galaxy looks impressive as it is. It is both creatively and imaginatively designed. And, the majority of the games coming out of Nintendo and a few third party developers follow that same paradigm, to put gameplay ahead of graphics, to get the most of out of the system through artistic direction and creativity.

Not quite true. No matter how much processing power (or lack thereoff) the Wii has, it's not going to be able to display HD, and thus will always suffer from lower potential resolutions. In terms of graphics, unless you're using pixel graphics, the resolution will always play a factor on how pretty the game can be, and in this case, the Wii is on the losing end.

Having said that, unless you've a HD capable TV, You won't be able to bet the maximum possible resolution anyway.

Very true!

--
http://free-wii-nintendo.blogspot.com/

I AGREE. but wii games are mad garbage, yes its still selling. So it looks like your wrong. And if it was about the games, then the 360 would win hands down this holiday season. Even if wii does hit 16 million by 2008, the 360 will be at 20 million by then, especially after halo3, so no way wii is taking first. I also predict a steady decline in wii sales come janurary 2008 (after holiday) And by holiday 2008, will anybody be asking for a wii?

Are you crazy? Halo 3 will be big, don't get me wrong. But it can't compete with MP3, Galaxy, and Brawl. The Wii is already about to overtake the 360 in overall sales. Then come January, Nintendo hits us with Mario Kart online? The Wii will be selling out through March at easy. 360 will not keep up, even with it's precious overhyped Halo.

halo 3 cant compete with MP 3? where have you been. halo 3 has already sold more pre-orders then mp 1 and 2 combined sold.

How the hell does the preorders MP1 and 2 apply to the preorders of MP3?

Hey guyz 1m us1n fanb0i l0gicz!!11 Teh prorderez of Brawl r h1gh3r dan dat of teh halo 1'z preorderz, so obviouzlee da w11 iz da w1nn4r.

"Who is this idiot..."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Perry

Dude, know your gaming icons!

Geez!

Oh, wait.... No, he is an idiot. My mistake, carry on.

Err...I'm a hardcore gamer and I bought the system and its games.

But as other people have said, people have been predicting the slow-down of Wii sales for quite some time now...and...looks like we're still rolling.

I understand and agree that there are weaknesses involved with the Wii, but I'm willing to look past them because I enjoy using it (which SHOULD be all that matters...we've become graphics whores, people! ...but I digress).

I'm also tired of people calling the control system a gimmick (and everyone who does it thinks they've constructed the final argument on the matter...LAWL Wii = gimmick FTW), because I think the controls for Madden 07 for the Wii made that game. Can we agree the series had grown rather stale? The motion controls are EXACTLY what the next generation of Madden needed.

It's only a GIMMICK if the DEVELOPERS ALLOW it to be, folks. There are ways to integrate the motion control into a game, some people just haven't figured them out yet.

Anyway, getting back to the original article, I'm sorry, but I can't really remember David Perry doing anything interesting besides Earthworm Jim.

Um... sour grapes?

Virtual Boy failed because it was only half finished when released, not because it was a gimmick. Look up some wikipedia on Virtual Boy. Hardware development resources were pulled halfway through the project to concentrate on N64 hardware.

Given more time, Vboy could have been workable. As it stood, it should never have been released.

Oops, and I forgot to say that people will be tired of Mario, Metroid, and Zelda eventually. Most other Wii games are only fun when you're drunk.

Yeah just like people are tired of War Simulator 8, or howabout Race Driving 10? No no, what about Sci-Fi Epic Post-Apocalyptic Future FPS 6?

...i still play mario and zelda ..

and by that i mean mario3, super mario world, mario 64, ocarina of time, wind waker, minish cap ....

and not forget that when those come out .. things like resident evil and final fantasy will come out =D

The PS2's online service was horrible too, let's not kid ourselves. Dreamcast and Xbox both owned it in terms of user experience.

Unlike Wii, both PSX and PS2 were the most powerful home consoles at the time of their launch. this was one of the main reasons both consoles were able to survive long-term and sell 100 million plus units each.

Wii launched in 2006, yet has the hardware of a 4 year old glorified GameCube.

but both were quickly overtaken by their competitors in terms of power... however their large lead in installed users meant that the other consoles couldn't overtake them.. even if they were more powerful.

The Wii is fast approaching the biggest installed userbase... if it gets there its gonna be hardto overtake.

I want to add this. Alot of the people buying Wii's are high schoolers with alot of expendable income. My friends who have Wii's are mostly planning to ask their parents for the 360 and Halo 3 come Christmas time, or to buy it themselves after the price drop. The Wii isn't really that big of a deal; it's just like,"Oooh I don't have a console yet, but I have this cash burning a whole in my pocket. ima get a Wii." The Wii is a glorified ornament to them. In my opinion, the 360 train won't start thundering down the tracks until the price drop, and the release of Halo 3.

Actually look at the sales numbers and you see very few Wii games. 360 dominates the game sales charts because the their rediculously high attachment rate, somthing on the order of 7+ per console. The Wii is scraping by with an attach of 1.8. The reason why is because grandma and soccer mom are buying the system for Wiisports. They may never buy another game except for some crap party game in a year or so. That does not make a successful system. It almost guarantees that the Wii while an initial success will eventually go the way of the Gamecube. Bigtime 3rd party games don't get to play on systems with low attach rates. The developer is better off spending 100k on a party game than 5 mil on a AAA title when they know that the party game will sell better with the soccer mom crowd.

Or rather, BE a prophet. I'm not a prophet.

N64 was a damn fine system, as was PSX. i actually respected Nintendo back then.