Nintendo Shares Up, But Do Devs 'Get' the Wii? 157
kukyfrope writes "Nintendo shares have jumped over six percent since the Wii's unveiling at E3 last week." Despite both Peter Moore and Phil Harrison recommending you should get a Wii, the future of Nintendo and the Wii aren't assured. Next Generation reports that third party developers may not really 'get' the ambitious console.
Re:Good Point (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The problem is vastly different capabilities (Score:4, Informative)
The Wii really isn't much less powerful then either the PS3 or the XBox 360, and in some ways (single thread performance) is more powerful. What the Wii's weakness is, is that the Wii contains a fixed pipeline on it's GPU; for those people that don't know what this means, the Wii does not support Programable Pixel/Vertex shaders.
If you look at the Red-Steel screens you'll see what I'm talking about; the geometry in the image will be as high as anything on the PS3/XBox 360, the Textures are as high resolution as anything on the PS3/XBox 360 and the Particle effects are as nice as anything on the PS3/XBox 360. When you compare screens you'll notice what is lacking is Normal Maps, and Material effects. Nintendo didn't include shader support because it costs a lot of money to produce Normal Maps and BRDFs (or other material functions).
Games will not be hard to port to the Wii, but they will never look as good as they do on the XBox 360 or PS3.
Re:Good Point (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:The problem is vastly different capabilities (Score:5, Informative)
1. Texture memory - Yes, the Revolution has less memory overall, (estimates about final numbers are between 96-128MB. HOWEVER (!) this memory is all 1T SRAM, i.e. it's really fucking fast, and the system is using a UMA, plus each of the individual components have reasonably big on-die caches, so the Revolution has a very decent, SPEEDY (Faster than DDR2, and RAMBUS), memory sub-system.
2. Information indicates that the revolution's main CPU is a faster clocked version of the chip in the Gamecube, which is a slightly customized POWERPC G3 chip. On the other hand, the cores of the Cell, and the Xbox 360 are known to be the same design and are in many ways extremely cut down, to such an extent they they are less capable than the initial 1993 PowerPC cores. The Revolution's G3 has a MUCH higher IPC than the CPUs in the competition. As a result a more accurate comparison would be to say that it probably around 1/2 as powerful as one such core.
3. Given the Gamecube GPU's proven graphical prowess, and that it is known that the Revolution's GPU is a faster version of that chip, YES, there will be power to spare on AA, especially at 480p. Also, you seem to be confused, Jaggies get worse as you INCREASE resolution. So all things being equal, at 720p a scene will look more jaggy than at 480p.
That lower resolution also means that requirements are lower across the board. One can simply look at GC titles like "Resident Evil 4" and the release screen for Twilight Princess, plus the knowledge that the Revolution has headroom to improve on that, and rest confidently that the revolution will look just fine
Re:The problem is vastly different capabilities (Score:2, Informative)
Nintendo's approach with the design of the Wii was to produce a (reasonably) powerful system based on conventional technology. The result was that the CPU is very similar to the Gekko (the Gamecube's processor) in that it is a modified Single Core Power PC processor with excellent single thread performance; by being single core it is cheaper, smaller and produces far less heat than the XBox 360's or PS3's processors. Ultimately in theoritical floating point performance it doesn't stack well against either of those processors, but neither the XBox 360 nor the PS3 can reach their theoritical performance.
By dropping the Shaders from the GPU Nintendo has saved a remarkable ammount of money on the system; most (modern) GPUs have far more transistors dedicated to programmable hardware than for the rest of the processor; consider that the XBox 360 has 48 programmable pipelines on its GPU.
The Wii doesn't have a hard-drive but instead has a 512MB flash card built into the system; while 512 MB of flash memory may still have a decent price tag associated with it whey you're buying them by the Million they're reasonably inexpensive.
The Wii doesn't have a High Definition DVD player (or any DVD player for that matter) so they save a ton on both licencing and on the Hardware costs. Even the Wii's controller is not that expensive, the chips that are used in the Wii's controller are used in a lot of devices (including laptop hard-drives so that the hard-drive knows whether it has been dropped).
Ultimately, with the XBox 360 and PS3 you're spending extra money on brand new technology, that is theoritically great but has not been proven.
Re:The problem is vastly different capabilities (Score:3, Informative)
The 360 (and PS3) is also using a PowerPC architecture chip, but architecture does not inherently impact IPC. Your entire point makes no sense. Unless you can give us some actual benchmarks, it's easier to simply assume they have the same IPC. In any event, it has 1/6 of the power according to your calculations, so I don't see your problem.
Jaggies get _better_ with resolution increases. Start Quake3, and then try running it at 640x480 and then 1600x1200, no AA. If you think there's fewer jaggies at 640x480, you need to get your eyes checked.
-Erwos
Re:Good Point (Score:2, Informative)
Obviously not. It was a standalone unit released in Japan in 2003. SNES-style graphics(like DQ7, the DQ series has never really put a huge emphasis on graphics or FMV), retelling of DQ1(basically, Dragon Warrior 1 here in the US) and you used a sword peripheral. Sold like crazy. One of my friends has a copy, it's a hell of a lot of fun actually, but I can't read japanese.
And canon, in FF? Comeon. While Crystal Chronicles is more in the vein of Seiken Densetsu(which started as FF: Adventure here on the Gameboy) than a traditional hit buttons til the FMV/dialog starts gameplay of the main series, it's still beefier than Mystic Quest was and has as much claim to the FF title as FFXII with it's cinematic gameplay/departion from the formula or FFXI, the mmo. It actually has the most in common with FFXI, because both emphasize multiplayer(and use similar races). The difference being that FF:CC plays like an MMO where you're in the room with your friends and can hit/yell at them. It's a mini-mmo, and all of it's depth comes from player interaction, not underlying mechanics. Heck of a lot of fun if you can get 4 people together with GBAs, some beer and a big screen.
There is no canon in FF. About the only thing linking the games together at this point is a guy named Cid, and I'm not even sure if FFXI had him, and the title. Prior to FF4, crystals of power were a common theme, which made a comeback in FFV, only to fade away for a while.
All we know about the new FF:CC and FFXIII is from some limited(probably pre-rendered) trailers. FFXIII could turn out to be in the vein of FFXII, which would make FFX(or X-2) the last "proper" title in the series(although imo, you have to go back further to get the good stuff). I saw more of the classic series in the FF:CC trailer though than I did in the FFXIII one, however. XIII seems to be going hyper-far into the VII vein of sci-fi fantasy, whereas CC looked more traditional, with airships and what not, more like 9 or pre-7.
And as to Square-Enix putting the main-series games solely on the Playstation. DQ9 hasn't been shown yet, but here's a little tidbit for you. I still remember FFVII being shown on Project Reality, aka the N64, and we all saw how *that* turned out. Square can and will jump ship in a freakin' heartbeat. So remember that before you lay down 3DO-level money with no main-series title out yet. That'd probably hurt more than the $199 the N64 cost if those titles don't stay on the PS3.
The people who buy FF:CC2 and the DQ sword game on Wii are going to be the people who only have a Wii and have no other choice if they want a taste of those series.
The people who buy a Wii at launch will be the people that want to play new installments of DQ and FF this year(as they're *launch* titles). The people who pickup a PS3 at launch are the people who won't be playing a new FF or DQ on their system for quite a bit past that, if ever(REMEMBER THE N64!).