Wii Less powerful than the Original Xbox?

[Zoglog]

http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/levelup/archive/2007/05/08/geek-out-xbox-uber-boss-robbie-bach-takes-a-shot-at-nintendo-s-underpowered-wii-does-he-manage-to-score-a-bulls-eye-or-just-shoot-himself-in-the-foot.aspx

Xbox Uber-Boss Robbie Bach Takes a Shot At Nintendo's 'Underpowered' Wii. Does He Manage to Score a Bulls-Eye, or Is He Just Shooting Blanks?

[Chris in Cali]

Hell, it seems less powerful than the Gamecube to me at times.

[botticus]

Go ahead and skip to the end of the article unless you actually understand all that crap:


That assessment dovetailed with what we heard from our first source. "Almost all the shader effects on PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 can be reproduced on the Wii by re-implementing them with the fixed function hardware of the Wii's GPU. Most games just port the effect over. A few teams have gone as far as making a shader-to-Wii conversion tool. It reads the shader code and generates the fixed function code necessary to achieve the same result. Keep in mind that the Wii's GPU is not as fast or feature rich as the Xbox 360 or PS3, but that doesn't mean you can't get very close results."

Why, by the way, did Nintendo opt for a fixed-function graphics chip instead of a programmable GPU, like the PS3 or Xbox 360? "It's all about cost," our first source told us. "Fixed function circuitry is a lot cheaper to make." Those cost savings have not only resulted in a console that is cheaper than its competitors, but also much more profitable for Nintendo. And we know full well how much Nintendo loves its profits (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16720747/site/newsweek/).

Our final verdict on the charges leveled at the Wii? While Bach's statement that the Wii is graphically underpowered compared to the first Xbox wasn't quite a bulls-eye, it's so darned close to the mark--technically speaking--that we've got to compliment him on his aim. The question, then, is how much will developers be able to squeeze out of the less-flexible Wii hardware? But if the Wii keeps selling like ice on a hot summer day, it's unlikely that Nintendo will lose too much sleep over the power disparity.

[Zoglog]

Go ahead and skip to the end of the article unless you actually understand all that crap:

The article was pretty dumbed down and simple to understand actually....
It's from Ngai on newsweek for god's sake..

[Reality's Fringe]

I was wondering why it took so long for this to be posted here.
There's a huge thing in the beyond3d forums by a bunch of tech nerds who came to the conclusion that this is essentially bullshit, but I doubt anyone wants to wade through 15 pages of technical specs on a forum.


But if you do. http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=38689


Enjoy.

[botticus]

The article was pretty dumbed down and simple to understand actually....
It's from Ngai on newsweek for god's sake..Yeah, it's actually less technical than I recall it being at 7am, my bad. :D Weird that they don't really compare it to the Xbox, just the Cube and then PS3/360.

[Graystone]

Back before it came out Nintendo said its it 1.5 times more powerful then the gamecube.

[jkam]

As time goes by I realize that power in terms of consoles means a whole lot of jack shit. I mean if you can have a game like Resident Evil 4 on the Gamecube then I don't need more than that graphically to at least be satisfied. The problem is shitty art direction and or coding. I mean for fuck sake we have games that are coming out on the 360 and PS3 that don't look a hell of a lot better then their XBOX and PS2 counterparts. I think art style also goes a long way...Okami is a good example. Games like that tend to hold up over time as opposed to a realistic looking game like say Resident Evil 1 (psone) compared now to Gears of War (360). God of War II looks pretty damn good for a console that is less powerful than the XBOX. Although the Wii can't pull off Gears of War...it is definitely more capable than the shoddy shit that has been put out and in the end, that's what really matters. Blame the developers not the console.

[Puffa469]

Its been said that the Wii is 1.5x more powerful than the Gamecube.

RE4 for the Cube, imo, was the best looking game of the last gen, on any system.

A game that looks 50% better than RE4 on the Wii is plenty good enough for me.

[daroga]

If power meant anything, the DS and the PS2 would have failed, and the Xbox and PSP would be ruling their respective markets. We see that that's not really the case.

Frankly, I don't give a crap about what's under the hood. What irritates me is the laziness developers approach the games with since it's "so underpowered."

[Scrubking]

If power meant anything, the DS and the PS2 would have failed, and the Xbox and PSP would be ruling their respective markets. We see that that's not really the case.

Frankly, I don't give a crap about what's under the hood. What irritates me is the laziness developers approach the games with since it's "so underpowered."

+1

[-Never4ever-]

Blame the developers not the console.

And that's it, arguement over.

Whenever someone points out how ugly a shoddy port like Far Cry on Wii looks, I simply point out Gundam on PS3 & THAW on 360. End of discussion.

[Allnatural]

We've been down this road before...

http://cheapassgamer.com/forums/showthread.php?t=120191

[dpatel]

I honestly don't care about the power of the system, but what angers me is they want to charge us next-gen prices, when all we get is last gen hardware.

Make the Wii as weak as you want, but price yourselves accordingly.

[Backlash]

Didn't Will Wright call the Wii "two Gamecube's taped together" or something like that? Basically due to its power (or lack thereof) and architecture.

[daroga]

Didn't Will Wright call the Wii "two Gamecube's taped together" or something like that? Basically due to its power (or lack thereof) and architecture.That was one of his underlings working on Spore... and he was convinced to apologize and take it back the next day. Someone at EA didn't like that being said by their company ;)

[YoshiFan1]

I honestly don't care about the power of the system, but what angers me is they want to charge us next-gen prices, when all we get is last gen hardware.

Make the Wii as weak as you want, but price yourselves accordingly.

I agree and I think had the 360 been $299 premium and the PS3 was $299 - $399, the Wii would have been $200 or less but Nintendo figured they could get more than $200 since $250 is still a lot less than $399 or $599

[yukine]

This breaking news was touched on about a year or two ago.

[Puffa469]

Frankly, I don't give a crap about what's under the hood. What irritates me is the laziness developers approach the games with since it's "so underpowered."

QFT.

It pisses me off that were hardly gonna see any third party 3D action/adventure type games on the Wii. Any games of that type are gonna be developed for the 360/ps3, and the Wii is gonna continue to get minigame collections and kids stuff. Were never gonna see a God Of War, or Tom Clancy type game developed for the Wii.

[jer7583]

How long is it going to take people to accept the fact that yes, the Wii is a GameCube. Yes, we're okay with that. Yes, we can play games that are running on near 7 year old hardware. Yes, developers are being lazy and giving Wii the shaft despite it being on track to outsell both next gen systems.

That said Nintendo should be thanking Sony on their hands and knees that the PS2 is still popular and still getting titles they can get ports from, becuase if not for those, the Wii lineup would go from a trickle to bone dry. It's going to be interesting to see what happens once those go away. They could pull a DS and have some good things come along, or it could be a disaster. Nobody knows yet.

The biggest difference between Wii/Xbox 1 is that Xbox 1 had all kinds of fancy techniques built into it's video card, like normal mapping and pixel shaders that made it so games like splinter cell, doom 3, and riddick could look the way they do. The hard drive helped with games like morrowind and Far Cry as well. That's the real difference, and if those things hadn't been there, Xbox games wouldn't have been far from PS2, just with a bit more geometry/detail.

[daroga]

QFT.

It pisses me off that were hardly gonna see any third party 3D action/adventure type games on the Wii. Any games of that type are gonna be developed for the 360/ps3, and the Wii is gonna continue to get minigame collections and kids stuff. Were never gonna see a God Of War, or Tom Clancy type game developed for the Wii.I'm thinking that as the Wii market share grows and inigame collections don't sell like they did when the console was brand new, you'll see other games come along. I'm very interested to see what that Soul Calibur game for the Wii is going to look / be like.

[js1]

QFT.

It pisses me off that were hardly gonna see any third party 3D action/adventure type games on the Wii. Any games of that type are gonna be developed for the 360/ps3, and the Wii is gonna continue to get minigame collections and kids stuff. Were never gonna see a God Of War, or Tom Clancy type game developed for the Wii.

Well tecmo did announce a new rygar game for wii. If it's anything like the ps2 version , the wii will have a god of war type game to call their own.

[guyver2077]

hence why wii is a last generation (current gen) system graphically

fuck nintendo and their 480p

[Weedy649]

I read something in the Wii Mailbag the other day that is relevant to this topic...

Weak in Review

I really don't like the way you guys review the Wii games. Particularly the graphics area. You guys never fail to mention that the Wii graphics fall short of the PS3/360 games. Well duh! There is noticeable power difference between the consoles and you don't have to continue to compare them, wasting both your valuable time and the time of the reader. It seems as though Wii games continue to get bad scores because you guys can't get over the fact that the graphics on the Wii aren't HD and don't look as good as the 360 or PS3.
You guys run a good site but you seem incredibly biased towards games with stunning visuals.

-Zaxo

Valid point - not interested.

Seriously though, I think people that write in these emails (such as yourself) don't get the message quite right. Yes the visuals are less than 360 and PS3, and yes we comment on them since they are the other two competing systems, but take a look at what else we're constantly comparing the visuals to. In most of our reviews you'll get a mention of PS2, PSP, or GameCube. Now two of those are last-generation systems, and one of them is a current-gen portable. Obviously the Wii - which does have comparable power to Xbox, or around "double a GameCube" - can do better than what we're seeing.

We may mention PS3 and 360, but most of the time it's because they are multi-console games. Such is the case with Spider-Man 3 today; the comparison should be made, as it's for all three new systems. You're seeing poor graphics scores though not because they can't compete with 360/PS3, but because most Wii games are getting trumped by first generation GameCube games.

There's the issue. It isn't that Wii's graphics aren't good enough for us. It's that developers are too lazy to use what they have. Wii is stronger than PS2, PSP, and GameCube, and until games start to look better, they'll continue to get the scores they earn. Period.

We aren't biased towards visuals. We're biased towards quality.

--Bozon

Id have to agree, many people let the bad graphics slide because they didnt buy the wii for its graphics...but developers really need to step their game up(no pun intended lol)

btw Puffa Tom Clancy Splinter Cell is on the wii

[ArthurDigbySellers]

That said Nintendo should be thanking Sony on their hands and knees that the PS2 is still popular and still getting titles they can get ports from, becuase if not for those, the Wii lineup would go from a trickle to bone dry. It's going to be interesting to see what happens once those go away. They could pull a DS and have some good things come along, or it could be a disaster. Nobody knows yet.

There will still be PSP games to port for quite some time ;)

[Backlash]

That said Nintendo should be thanking Sony on their hands and knees that the PS2 is still popular and still getting titles they can get ports from, becuase if not for those, the Wii lineup would go from a trickle to bone dry. It's going to be interesting to see what happens once those go away. They could pull a DS and have some good things come along, or it could be a disaster. Nobody knows yet.


I'd love to see some DS ports to the Wii (or better yet, the GCN for games that don't need the touch screen/motion detection). I don't really need a portable device, and I generally prefer to play on a big screen (for both me and for "spectator" ability, which is tough on the DS).

[dpatel]

I agree and I think had the 360 been $299 premium and the PS3 was $299 - $399, the Wii would have been $200 or less but Nintendo figured they could get more than $200 since $250 is still a lot less than $399 or $599

Definitely. I'm not saying it was wrong on their part. It was a logical business move, I just don't agree with it. But, they knew it would sell at the $250 price point, so why not sell it at that. If I were them, I would've done the same thing. But it doesn't really make it any better. The PS3 had a lot to do with it, I'm sure. Even at $250 (more expensive than the N64 and GCN, which had MUCH better hardware for their time), it still looks like a steal next to the PS3. And with the Elite coming out too, it looks like Sony just opened the doors to a much more expensive gen. Had the PS3 really sold poorly initially, we wouldn't see MS and Ninty capitalizing on consumer's willingness to spend more this gen, than last.

[jer7583]

There will still be PSP games to port for quite some time ;)

No, it works the other way around. The PSP and the Wii are both feeding off of PS2 development, it's just that Wii has a much better excuse, being new and so unexpectedly popular. The PSP just has no clue what it should be or how to create a niche for itself.

and the Wii's lack of 480p's is NOT going to halt it's one way track to world domination this gen. With these announcements of 3rd party Wii exclusives finally falling into place, I think Nintendo's really got a solid foothold on this gen, if they can keep things going. Expect the next few weeks to be filled with new annoucements. Soul Calibur and Rygar are just the beginning.