Frog

Truth of it is I think art-direction can do more than raw horsepower/resolution.

I think Metroid Prime is the best example. Six years later, I still think it is the best looking/sounding game on the market. Better than Halo, Resistance, Gears, and it runs at twice the framerate and is 3x as long as any of those games and has more replay value.

There is plenty of horsepower in "2 gamecubes + duct-tape". Honestly, I think MS killed last gen too fast. I had a 360 for 2 years and far prefered the games on Xbox1 to the stuff on 360.

Ninja Gaiden1 > Ninja Gaiden2

Panzer Dragoon Orta is untouched. And to think Sony fanboys actually thought Lair(PS3) would dethrone it!

Phantasy Star Online...still kicks the hell out of every dungeon crawler ever made after it. I still play it to this day and it is far better than PSU...partially do to art-direction. And that is a dreamcast game!

There is a lot of hardcore(and I don't mean GTA or Halo as those are not hardcore at all) potential in this console. I am talking about games for me not games for you(mainstream games).

Shiren the Wanderer 3, Monster Hunter 3, Tenchu 4, Oboro Muramasa Youtouden etc. You will not find much of that if any on PS3/360.

And shovel-ware? I could care less! Any hardcore gamer reads reviews, rents/borrows games and knows what to avoid.

Remember what a piece of junk the DS was? Now look at it! Absolutely pwns the PSP and has an insane number of killer games to go along with the insane number of shovelware titles.

I am actually glad for all the casuals buying Wii. Those Soccer moms saved gaming!!! Because of them and Nintendo's decision to make an "underpowered" console...those hardcore niche games still have a chance. They don't need to sell a lot of copies. They can be coded by small teams. Small teams can still be creative. They don't need to make a mainstream GTA for 100 million.

Otogi on Xbox only sold something like 50k, but that is enough when the budget/team is small enough!

JAKE196

I don't mind the graphics on the Wii at all but it would be nice if the console was just a tad more powerful so it could at least support 720p. Some people have speculated the Wii could do 720p, but the graphics would probably suffer and we can't really afford that.

Also like many people have said, art direction is just as important, MP3 was beautiful imo, but awesome high-res graphics combined with good art direction makes an amazing combination.

To be honest I'm a bit disapointed Nintendo didn't make the console a bit more powerful, and I'm also disapointed in the lack of support by third parties.

The Wii could have been incredible if these conditions were met imo. But it seems the wii is stuck in the rut of averageness overall. I still love most of the first party games on the console though.

Just my thoughts.

sprinter

We have similar tastes in some areas I see. Ninja Gaiden Black kicks ass. Panzer Dragoon Orta is amazing. I had not bought those on the Xbox when I owned one. I wasn't really as deep into gaming then, as I am now. But since Xbox games have gotten dirt cheap I've been buying loads of them for next to nothing, and finding that like you, I'm enjoying many of them as much, or more than the new games. And yes Microsoft definitely killed off the Xbox before it's time. It was a better system than the PS2 and GameCube, and if I recall corrently it's still better than the Wii. The Xbox had a 8 gig hard drive, and had 720p graphics...

I dunno if I'm mainstream or hardcore by your terms... I buy and play popular games, and take that as your mainstream statement... But I dig No More Heroes and Manhunt 2 on the Wii, and can't really see those titles as mainstream... but maybe I am wrong.

But you are also right about the art direction... Metroid Prime is amazing. And I'm looking for forward to getting Okami shortly. But I'll still stick by my original statement. On a 65" HD set, even the very best looking Wii games pale in comparison to even most original Xbox games on the 360. Considering every PC, and the 360/PS3 are all capable of 720p and above, and only the Wii is still left behind at 480p, Nintendo dropped the ball.

I'm betting that even the smallest studios are more than capable of programming a decent game in 720p or above. I'm also willing to bet that the ONLY reason they program a game with 480p graphics, is because the Wii forces them to. I don't think stepping up from 480p to 720p would really increase the costs in any real manner for the programmers. It would give them more room to work. The only cost increase would be for the hardware to run it. If Microsoft could make the Xbox do 720P and price it where it was, there is no reason Nintendo couldn't of made the Wii do 720p as well.

And for those that don't really know about HD, look beyond the numbers. 720p compared to 480p is WAY better image than the math would make you think. 480p to 720p is a MUCH larger jump in image quality than 720p to 1080p is. At least to my eyes. At least on a 40"+ display.

Just my 2 cents.

P.S. I doubt Metroid Prime runs at 120 frames per second...

Frog

I agree with you for the most part.

But Wii is more powerful than Xbox1. 30% more RAM. I think it has a better processor(custom not off the shelf pentium) and GPU. It's just that hardly anyone has used it yet. So obviously it can have a Halo2 quality FPS. The first two years I had my 360...I kept firing up Halo2 and thinking...this is still better than these other games.

And I was referring to the fact that Metroid Prime runs at 2x the frame rate of Halo, Halo2, Halo3, Resistance, and Gears of War. All those games ran at 30fps and all three Metroid Prime games ran at 60fps locked.

COD2 and COD4 also run at 60fps locked.

It's also good that Nintendo stuck with 480p...they should be able to do better physics and get better framerates that resolution with the specs they have.

sprinter

Xbox CPU: 733 MHz Intel Custom Pentium III
Wii CPU: IBM Broadway 729MHz

Xbox GPU: 250 MHz Custom-Designed NV2X
Wii GPU: ATI Hollywood 243MHz

Xbox Memory: Micron 64 MB DDR SDRAM
Wii Memory: 88MB ?

Source:

http://www.xbreporter.com/xbox_syste...ifications.php
http://www.wiisworld.com/wii-specs.html

The Wii specs I was able to find aren't nearly as detailed as what I could locate for the Xbox. But the Wii specs state up to 480p and the Xbox states 1920 x 1080 which is actually 1080p.

Another site, shows it a little differently...

http://www.1up.com/do/blogEntry?publ...69&bId=7683159

XBox System Specs
CPU - 733MHz
System Memory - 64 MB (shared)
Video Memory - Shared with the 64 MB system memory
Graphics Processor - 250-MHz

Nintendo Wii System Specs
CPU - 729MHz
System Memory - 64 MB
Video Memory - 24 MB
Graphics Processor - 243 MHZ

I don't understand why the Wii is limited to 480p. If they could offer 720p with the current hardware, I'd be in heaven. Yes there REALLY is THAT big of difference. I've got a 65" Mitsubishi 1080p DLP set, and 720p looks pretty good, and 480p still looks like shit basically.

I guess I don't equate more RAM as being more powerful. So I'll stand by my original statement about the Xbox being more powerful than the Wii. Not by much, but the Xbox does has a faster CPU, and a faster GPU.

hencam[uk]

You are comparing apples with pears though. The Xbox has an intel pentium chip, and the Wii has a IBM PowerPC RiSC chip - you can't directly compare clock-speeds meaningfully.

Look at this example:



I'm not saying you'd see such a difference between the Wii and the Xbox but you can see that it's possible for it to be more powerful yet clocked slower - in fact that's one of the main features of the IBM chips, low clock speed (so low heat and low power requirements) yet high processing speed.

Now we just need some software to make full use of all that power

Neil

C:/Funeral

Well I am sure there are great graphics for the Wii but what I hate is for my HDTV I have to buy a HD AV cable for the Wii to get higher resolution I am dissapointed how I have to pay another $20.00 for my games to look better.

Frog

Buy a gold-plated Wii component cable off Ebay. I got mine for a total of $7 shipped. There is no excuse not to drop the price of a fast-food meal to get your games to look better.