killr0y

This goes back to the days of the C64, where demoscene hackers would out-do each other by cramming as much music and hardware tricks into their 64k demo as they could.

Out of all that, these coders utilized every bit of every CPU cycle to produce graphics & sound that vastly exceeded the dreams of even the very hardware designers that built the chips.

What happened? 16MB RAM & 650MB CD-ROMS, that's what happened! When game musicians no longer needed to use the sound chip to synthesize instruments to make sound because they could just dump REAL music to a .wav file to play in the game, designers started getting lazy and filled up megs upon megs of space just for music tracks.

Back in the day, people actually drew the graphics & sprites PIXEL by PIXEL. You wouldn't believe how much work was put in to hand drawing ever last dot on the screen (granted there weren't nearly as many dots on the screen back then!). Utilizing tiny color pallets (16 colors to choose from on the C64), these guys hand-dithered the colors to produce the illusion of more colors than available...

Of course, if people designed games the same way that they did back then, it would take 10 years to produce a game (and oh what a game it would be!).

Still, the raw horsepower of todays consoles can be put to better use IF the tools are there to make it easier. I believe this is what XNA is the begining of. Right now XNA gets people's feet in the door of game programming. As XNA matures over the next few years, and adds more tools to its reportoir, we should start seeing a resemblance of the golden era of game coding.

Actually, you can get a used '95 5.0 Mustang GT for about $5k. For another $10k, you can drop in a roots blower, cobra heads & intake, coil-over suspension, new exhaust, wheels, and a rollbar. When you're done embarassing the Porches down in Sebring, you too can laugh at Gran Turismo (and this $19k joke of an arcade system)

LOL, only the PS3 could make the horrible PS2 jaggies look even WORSE!

"Next Gen doesn't start until we say so." - Ken Kutaragi, Chairman Sony Computer Entertainment.

Fuzz, speaking of trying "too" hard.. Perhaps you should have tried a little harder in school with grammar.

Don't know what to tell you, dude... Maybe get another TV? I've got two HDTV's that support 1080p and both have had top-notch visuals w/ VGA since day one of the 1080p update. Also, the author of this article is obviously being inflammatory when he suggests that this is Microsoft's 2nd attempt to get 1080p corrected. This patch was Microsoft's FIRST patch to correct 1080p. In fact, they came straight out and said it would correct SOME issues. Its nice that they were willing to release a patch to fix one of the most popular 1080p TV's (the Sony) without making those owners wait until all the other buggy TV sets have been tweaked.. But that would mean you'd have to compliment MS, which you'd never be able to swallow your pride and do once in a while.

To all those concerned that I should sell my Wii.. Obviously you didn't read my first post.. and for the guy who wants to buy it because I don't deserve it... well have at it: Item number: 290054726278.

Like I said, I don't hate it and I'm not telling people that they shouldn't buy it. My complaints are that the graphics are weak, the gameplay gets stale after about an hour and that's my opinion. If you don't like my opinion, I'm okay with that. Just know that I love Nintendo. I've owned every Ninty console since the NES with the exception of the DS (yeah, that includes Virtual Boy which is actually my favorite).

I'm just disappointed w/ the Wii and if I can get a couple hundred more for it, then its not worth keeping. I'm sure that I will pick one up again when the price drops and some games worth playing come out for it, but for now, I'll play Ocarina of Time again on my N64 to tide me over (aside from Gears of War, Rainbow 6, & Viva Pinata on my 360).

The Wii was fun up until the point I realized how gimmicky the controller really is. It doesn't translate your hand movements into a virtual experience. It converts a very specific movement into a button press. When you figure this out, it pretty much loses all of its magic. Then you are left with games that have substandard graphics with a gimmicky control scheme.

I won't deny that the first hour or so playin Wii sports was fun, but once you realize that the Wii is only interpreting approximations of very specific movements, you're left with a $250 Gamecube with a novel input device.

$250 isn't enough to justify something that you pull out the 5 or 6 times a year you have a family gathering at your house.

Come on fanboys, just give it up. Stop attacking James at least. If your Wii is such a life altering experience, go have fun with it and stop trying to prove to Joystiq readers that your Wii purchase was worth it. I for one don't care for it but I'm not going to tell people not to go out and buy one.

Please, no more stories about the Wii.. I have one and I'm already about to put it up on ebay.

Its US for now, my Canadian friend. But fret not, Microsoft is working diligently on getting distribution rights for the digital content in Canada and Europe as soon as they can.