24 replies to this topic

[Deadly Virus]

Really? I thought Skyward Sword had really impressive graphics actually. It's certainly not something that could have been pulled off properly on last-gen consoles. The art style in particular really makes it stand out.

[BanjoKazooie]

ok im going to try and not make this too long.the original Wii has been said to be two gamecubes ducktaped together. one developer said before launch it was like a souped up xbox. all in all i feel developers(even nintendo) didnt take advantage of that extra power. if it was closer in power to last gen consoles why not just update those engines to make the games better looking and IMO you wouldnt have to spend 20 million(like what the average games in HD era cost to make) to make it work. i also dont think it would take anything over a 10 man team to get it done. so here are my 3 missed opportunity for developers to show off the original Wii's power.

1. Rockstar and GTA. we all know the gamecube didnt get any GTA game which was unacceptable IMO. now what if Rockstar would have taken the GTA engine used for ps2 and xbox and redone it to take advantage of what the Wii had to offer. we all know the gamecube was more powerful than ps2 so there is no question the wii is. why not get a 10 man team redo the engine to take advantage of the extra power of the wii. that wouldnt cost anything close to 100 million it took them to develop GTA 4. maybe 10 percent of that max. then you release it along with the HD versions and there you go nintendo gamers finally have GTA(a better looking version than what they got last gen) on the Wii and they could have shown yes its not HD but it can do a lot better than what last gen did.

2. Capcom and Resident evil. yes Wii got two resident evil games(3 if you count the wii port of resident evil 4) that were IMO disappointing. Wii got two "ON RAILS" resident evil games.how hard would it have been for Capcom to take that resident evil 4 engine and update it to take advantage of the Wii's increase power over the gamecube? this was the most disappointing to me as i loved resident evil 4. seriously IMO it was maybe the best overall game of last gen and the best looking. i remember putting the disc in and my jaw dropping at the graphics. the disappointing question for me is what could they have achieved with the extra Wii power? we will never know

3. yes the mighty nintendo and their beloved(for good reason) zelda. we all know that zelda twilight princess was developed for gamecube and the wii version just added motion controls. the game was still visually pleasing to the eye. it had a darker tone and artstyle than most zelda games. so i was one of those people just foaming at the mouth for the first zelda game built from the ground up for the Wii. i was (foolishly) expecting nintendo to use the twilight princess engine and just update the graphics to take advantage of the Wii's power. now a lot of people defended skyward swords graphics and im not saying it was a bad looking game but it was just (from a visual standpoint) disappointing to me. i felt they could have done more and gave us twilight princess version 2.0 (from a graphics standpoint).

so sorry if that was a long read but those are my 3 missed opportunity from developers to really show the Wii had more under the hood than the average gamer believed. what do you guys think?

If skyward sword had TP graphics it just wouldn't have been the same. The graphics were
Designed to fit the games tone and storyline, which worked out beautiful.

[Mignaga]

The problem here, is that updating these engines would cost more than what they would get back. The people who would buy something like Grand Theft Auto on Wii are very few and far between. Plus M rated games (Resident Evil, GTA) just don't sell on Wii because most hardcore gamers would rather play a better looking HD version of something than a scaled down crappy Wii port.

[storabajskorven]

I would have chosen the Wii versions of Resident Evil just for being able to use the wiimote. I have liked a few fps:s on PC, using a mouse (The Half-Lives and Bioshock at least) and I never liked them on console until I played Metroid Prime trilogy. I know there must be more people like me, who loves the combination of couch+TV (i.e. console gaming) and a decent controller (i.e. keyboard+mouse OR wiimote+nunchuk). The controllers are more important than the screen resolution.

On topic, yes, it's strange that developers didn't invest in the Wii, because I'm sure a lot of people would have chosen Wii over other consoles if there were decent ports available of the most popular games. Which there weren't. Especially since there are so many Wiis around.

[Mignaga]

Sorry but resident evil 4 wii edition still selled 1 million copies. Also the chronicle series did as well. Also that 10 million dollar was the extreme high side. It wouldn't have cost that much to just use the wii extra power to make the games look better. Also I disagree gta wii edition would have sold a million easy. The gta name is golden a million would have been the bare minimum.

Resident Evil 4 did well, because it is one of the best games of all time. The Chronicles Series didn't have the same fate. They did ok but still not fantastic. You have to look beyond Resident Evil though. Games like Mad World, No More Heroes (1st one did ok), Dead Space Extraction, Man Hunt 2, Silent Hill, and House of the Dead Overkill all didn't do so well.

[Mignaga]

Yeah but as a developers or publisher you have to bring the content. i can name dozen of HD games that didnt sell well on ps360. but you have to put forth the effort to make sure the product is there for the customer. yes Wii wasnt HD but thats no excuse it wouldnt have cost them much(we know this for a fact as wii development cost was a tenth of HD games) so they could have had better effort on Wii.

When more that 75% of a certain kind of game bomb on a specific console, it is pretty much the biggest red flag you can get to not bring a game of that kind to the platform. Plus the HD games that you bring up are either because they sucked, or were risky to make in the first place. And on top of all of that it is way more expensive than you think, in terms of the amount of time it costs to downgrade and the money you have to spend to do it, to downgrade an engine to a level that the Wii can handle. You can even look it up, a Crytek employee said they would have loved to support the Wii but they couldn't do to the fact that 1. It wasn't powerful enough, and it would be tough to port the engine, and 2. that they were afraid that the kinds of games that they make wouldn't sell.

[Mignaga]

did you not read my post. i was trying to argue they could have upgraded engines from last gen(since wii is closer in power to those consoles) and make exclusives for the wii and would have come out cheaper. believe me its not going to cost a tenth of the 100 million rockstar spend to make GTA4 for the HD consoles.

I read your post. What I am saying is that they would not break even by modifying engines. Did you read mine?

[Robotic Sunshine Commander]

wii was better than 360 and ps3 anyway so who cares the content is generally more fun and polished on wii , and the graphics arent half bad its just missing shaders

[Auzzie Wingman]

The masses didn't take the Wii seriously. There's your answer.

Developers knew where their money was going to be mostly made, and that was on the Xbox 360 and the PS3.

As for the Wii itself, sure it outsold the competitors. That doesn't mean everyone of those owners were going to make their big game purchases on it. More or less, people wanted the Wii because it had Wii Sports, and because of that, the Wii means nothing to those developers who didn't get anything within that process.

The Wii needed more power. I understand that it wasn't given HD because not everyone had a HD ready TV back then, but it caught on quick, and that decision may have essentially been the downfall for Nintendo with regards to 3rd party support. I guarantee you my brain tumour that developers weren't going to sacrifice the quality of their hard work just to get it on to the Wii.

In some cases, I like to call the Wii version the superior version. With regards to FPS games, the Wii Remote + Nunchuk is my preferred choice. However, so little developers actually went that direction, which is a shame. The Wii didn't even get Modern Warfare 2.

Basically put, developers had a hard time justifying doing things for the Wii because of its low power. Nintendo created a system for them, and them alone. Some companies chose to deal with it, some decided to ignore. It may have net a lot of cash for them, but at the same time, have a lot of pressure on them.

I don't actually have a brain tumour.

EDIT: That's not to say developers didn't try to do things for the Wii. I just don't feel like recalling things like what Treyarch did with Call of Duty, or what High Voltage did with the Conduit 2.

Edited by Auzzie Wingman, 14 August 2012 - 08:44 PM.

[storabajskorven]

Resident Evil 4 did well, because it is one of the best games of all time. The Chronicles Series didn't have the same fate. They did ok but still not fantastic. You have to look beyond Resident Evil though. Games like Mad World, No More Heroes (1st one did ok), Dead Space Extraction, Man Hunt 2, Silent Hill, and House of the Dead Overkill all didn't do so well.

Of those games, only No More Heroes and Dead Space Extraction were really good. And No More Heroes is not a game for anyone, it's very "arty", plus, as you said, it actually sold decently. As for Dead Space Extraction, I'm not sure that type of "on-rails" shooters sell well on any system (but I might be wrong). My point is, I don't think the Wii itself is to blame for the bad sales.

[Auzzie Wingman]

On rail shooters are great at arcades though. The many hours I've spent on Time Crisis 2 ^^,

[neverwinteru]

bleh or nintendo could have just...you know... made a more powerful machine.

[Auzzie Wingman]

Oh right, forgot to mention something that's actually super important whether you care or not. The online.

The online was a pooper. Count on it to have been a massive deterrent to a lot of devs. The Friend Codes, the restrictions, just the online experience in general was a big fat pooper.

As I said before, some people chose to deal with it, but a lot of others chose not to waste their time. Xbox 360 came out 2-ish years earlier with a stronger online infrastructure. Nintendo chose to ignore that as an online they had to beat, and it hurt them.