Hardware What will happen with nintendo (?)

[Guild McCommunist]

The very simple point I was trying to make is this: good hardware doesn't make good games, but good games make hardware great. I never see people judging hardware based on the games available for it, especially at console launches. I see them comparing RAM, resolution, frames per second, etc. I'm sorry, but adding bloom lighting and particle effects at 60frames per second in full 1080p doesn't make a game like Tetris any better. Tetris is fun even on a graphing calculator!

If people want to say a console is better than another based on specs, than shouldn't we be discussing PC as well? And comparing to that? Just a simple point. If we compare available games for WiiU, Xbox One, and PS4 right now, would you not lean toward WiiU? I've got 12 games for WiiU, but I can't think of more than 3 games that I'd want to play on either Xbox One or PS4 right now. Once you take away the Call of Duty and Assassins Creed, you're not left with much......

Not really. A game can be better than the hardware it's on but shit hardware is still shit hardware. All things considered the 3DS is an awful console but it has great games. Graphically it's quite a few notches below the Vita, the 3D is awful looking, the battery life is shit, it doesn't even have a second analog built in. It's incredibly lacking and really underwhelming. But it has some good games. That doesn't make the 3DS good hardware, it makes the 3DS a system with good games on it.

Also the Wii U has been out for a year. The PS4 has been out for two weeks.

The Wii U additionally isn't getting Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes or The Phantom Pain so yeah why would I buy it at all. The XBO and PS4 at least have promising line ups.

 

[ShadowSoldier]

"PSVita has no gaems" joke has long since lost its funny factor.

So has the "WiiU has no gaems" joke but it doesn't stop this site from splooging it all over the place.

 

[Dear Leader]

Not really. A game can be better than the hardware it's on but shit hardware is still shit hardware. All things considered the 3DS is an awful console but it has great games. Graphically it's quite a few notches below the Vita, the 3D is awful looking, the battery life is shit, it doesn't even have a second analog built in. It's incredibly lacking and really underwhelming. But it has some good games. That doesn't make the 3DS good hardware, it makes the 3DS a system with good games on it.

Also the Wii U has been out for a year. The PS4 has been out for two weeks.

The Wii U additionally isn't getting Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes or The Phantom Pain so yeah why would I buy it at all. The XBO and PS4 at least have promising line ups.

The 3DS is okay if you are stilling at desk positioned perfectly in front of it at the right angle and not moving.

So has the "WiiU has no gaems" joke but it doesn't stop this site from splooging it all over the place.

It is joke? I thought it actually have very small library?

 

[Foxi4]

The very simple point I was trying to make is this: good hardware doesn't make good games, but good games make hardware great. I never see people judging hardware based on the games available for it, especially at console launches. I see them comparing RAM, resolution, frames per second, etc. I'm sorry, but adding bloom lighting and particle effects at 60frames per second in full 1080p doesn't make a game like Tetris any better. Tetris is fun even on a graphing calculator!

Nobody's comparing the games because there are no games yet - that's the specific quality of the launch period. The reason why everyone is transfixed on specs is that they are what the developers have to work with, they're the prognosis of what can be developed on a given system. You say that good hardware doesn't make good games and that's entirely correct, but you're forgetting that even the best artist won't paint Mona Lisa on a sheet of toilet roll using a used up pen.

The hardware is the ultimate equalizer - good developers will always develop good games, poor developers will always develop poor games, but it's important to note that good hardware allows good developers to spread their creative wings wheras poor hardware inhibits their creativeness with hardware restrictions. Bad developers are going to be bad regardless of which platform they develop for.

 

[calmwaters]

I raise my objection. Specification matter, but I find text-based games more fun than Tetris. Have you play "Zork"? Very fun. Get's party's official recommendation.

Well sure; I find adventure games more fun than Tetris. Zork? Sounds... fun in some sort of way. I've also been meaning to try the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy game, too. That peaked my interest since I've seen all the TV shows and read all the books... and thus know how looney the author is.

 

[Guild McCommunist]

Well sure; I find adventure games more fun than Tetris. Zork? Sounds... fun in some sort of way. I've also been meaning to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy game, too. That peaked my interest since I've seen all the TV shows and read all the books... and thus know how looney the author is.

You know what can play Zork?

Call of Duty: Black Ops.

Checkmate atheists.

 

[calmwaters]

You know what can play Zork?

Call of Duty: Black Ops.

Checkmate atheists.

Dude, compared with any other franchise, Call of Duty sucks balls. Plus it's not fair to compare a game with a franchise. But if that one game is as great as all the games in said franchise, then that franchise sucks. Eight games that are as fun as one... yeah. Of course one or two of those eight games might have a greater percentage of the votes, but in the end, they are all equally as fun as that one game.

 

[Guild McCommunist]

Dude, compared with any other franchise, Call of Duty sucks balls.

Thanks for that fact-based statement.

I'm sure the rest of your post is full of bundles of worthwhile insight.

 

[Dear Leader]

Everyone say you play Wii U for exclusives, but there's very few actually. Only Nintendo games. The Wii U is a Nintendo box. Don't call me hater or troll, but if you aren't really into Nintendo games, explain why you would buy Wii U? You not gamer. You Nintendo fan.

Don't get me wrong, I like Nintendo games. I don't like their hardware, and I'm not going spend $300 for a few games. The only console game I want to play this point in KH3 and guess what platform it's not coming to? With $300, I can feed myself my starving countrymen.

 

[Foxi4]

Call of Duty sucks balls and everybody hates its guts...

...except it's one of the leading franchises in the industry so clearly some gamers find it entertaining. By some I mean "great majority".

 

[Dear Leader]

Call of Duty sucks balls and everybody hates its guts...

...except it's one of the leading franchises in the industry so clearly some gamers find it entertaining. By some I mean "great majority".

It's going downhill. Everyone excited for BF3, no one cares about Ghosts.

 

[Foxi4]

It's going downhill. Everyone excited for BF3, no one cares about Ghosts.

That's because Ghosts is surprisingly terribad, or at least so I heard. Then again, most players play Call of Duty games for the Multiplayer these days and that formula remains unchanged.

 

[Dear Leader]

That's because Ghosts is surprisingly terribad, or at least so I heard. Then again, most players play Call of Duty games for the Multiplayer these days and that formula remains unchanged.

They claim they use new engine, somehow manages to look worse. Even on the PC version it looks bad. Full of bugs too. Game itself is also terrible.

 

[calmwaters]

That's because Ghosts is surprisingly terribad, or at least so I heard. Then again, most players play Call of Duty games for the Multiplayer these days and that formula remains unchanged.

See what I mean? Some Call of Duty games are more popular than others, but they all turn out to be as fun as Zork. Guild brought it up and I think it's a really good example of this.

 

[grossaffe]

The hardware is the ultimate equalizer - good developers will always develop good games, poor developers will always develop poor games, but it's important to note that good hardware allows good developers to spread their creative wings wheras poor hardware inhibits their creativeness with hardware restrictions. Bad developers are going to be bad regardless of which platform they develop for.

Common sense would indicate that to be true, but it isn't necessarily so. Constraints are said to drive creativity, and so by limiting hardware, you could potentially help to drive the creativity of developers (of course if other consoles have fewer constraints, the developer may instead jump ship to the other console eschewing the possible creativity drive).

You can have hardware limitations changing the priorities of a developer. These days you see a lot of developers allocating their resources towards greater graphics pulling them away from content/world size/length of game, etc.. On a console like the Wii, graphics were hardware-limited rather than funding-limited, so those funds that would've gone towards HD graphics on another console would instead be allocated to the previously mentioned fields. An example I'd put out there is Xenoblade, which created a gigantic world with 100+ hours of gameplay (or as little as 60 hours if you tried to rush through the main story). The graphics were clearly limited by the hardware, and if it had come out on the 360 or PS3 (pretending for a moment that it was not developed by Nintendo) a ton of money would have to be dumped into graphics to get it "up to par" and either the studio would lose a TON of money getting it up to what the hardware can handle, or the game would have to have been MUCH smaller pulling money from the size of the world to reallocate those resources to graphics. The game sold modestly at best compared to so many other games (840k according to VGChartz) but was still considered a success. If you then look at some games on the PS3/360 such as Tomb Raider which was a MUCH smaller game, the developer considered it a disappointement at 3.4 million units sold. When you look at the developers suddenly going bankrupt these days, you can't help but wonder if they'd have made it through if there were constraints on how much money they could throw at graphics.

 

[Psionic Roshambo]

In answer to the main question of "What will happen with Nintendo?"

The Wii-U while not making nearly as much money as the Wii will do well enough to still make a profit for Nintendo.

The 3DS will make amazing profits and probably make more money than the DS did for Nintendo.

They will keep rolling this way until Shigeru Miyamoto dies.... Then is the time I would worry about Nintendo's future... He is to Nintendo what Steve Jobs was to Apple.

When the poor guy dies, Nintendo might still keep on rolling but I am positive they will not to at the same level they have enjoyed in the past.

This ends my fortune telling session, please leave a donation in the basket! Also this post is completely a guess as telling the future is pretty hard and I don't have access to Jedi powers.

 

[Foxi4]

Common sense would indicate that to be true, but it isn't necessarily so. Constraints are said to drive creativity, and so by limiting hardware, you could potentially help to drive the creativity of developers (of course if other consoles have fewer constraints, the developer may instead jump ship to the other console eschewing the possible creativity drive).

That's all nice and dandy, but here's the thing, and this is from an amateur developer's perspective. I have some code, mm-kay? On one platform, it can run as-is without any optimization whatsoever, so that I can move on to the rest of the code of simply focus on making the game "good". On another platform, the code requires optimization, the resources require some form of resampling and all in all, there is a lot of work to be done. I can't focus on making the game good, I'm too busy focusing on making the game work. You partially waste your creative drive on tasks that are not directly related to making the game an enjoyable experience. Even in the planning stage with no existing code yet, all hardware limitations do is... well, limiting you and your options.

This is specifically apparent when you compare multiplatform titles that were available on the Wii as well as the XBox 360 and the PS3. Even in games that are not exactly a showcase of graphical capabilities like Call of Duty, the differences in graphics and mechanics are staggering. This is the prime example of the problem I outlined in motion - the original vision of the developers had to be "castrated" in order to become playable on the platform. Before I'm accused of anti-Nintendo bias, the console versions of Battlefield 3 had the same problems - reduced map sizes for multiplayer, lowered graphics quality, lower maximum number of players etc.

Of course this problem is much less prominent when the game is not multiplatform - in that case you create your build with the one specific platform in mind, but nevertheless you always have the hardware limitations in mind. There is always this one thing that you would like to do but can't for whatever reason, and good hardware developers should minimize such instances by creating hardware relevant to the generation in question as well as approachable SDK's.

 

[ShadowSoldier]

They claim they use new engine, somehow manages to look worse. Even on the PC version it looks bad. Full of bugs too. Game itself is also terrible.

It's not a new engine. It's just modified/tweaked from the Modern Warfare 1 engine

 

[FireGrey]

Nintendo will gain great profits for the Wii U, it has great games and great games on the way that people aren't just going to ignore.
The profits may be small compared to the other systems but they will surely be good.

 

[grossaffe]

That's all nice and dandy, but here's the thing, and this is from an amateur developer's perspectives. I have some code, mm-kay? On one platform, it can run as-is without any optimization whatsoever, so that I can move on to the rest of the code of simply focus on making the game "good". On another platform, the code requires optimization, the resources require some form of resampling and all in all, there is a lot of work to be done. I can't focus on making the game good, I'm too busy focusing on making the game work.

This is specifically apparent when you compare multiplatform titles that were available on the Wii as well as the XBox 360 and the PS3. Even in games that are not exactly a showcase of graphical capabilities like Call of Duty, the difference in graphics and mechanics are staggering. This is the prime example of the problem I outlined in motion - the original vision of the developers had to be "castrated" in order to become playable on the platform. Before I'm accused of anti-Nintendo bias, the console versions of Battlefield 3 had the same problems - reduced map sizes for multiplayer, lowered graphics quality, lower maximum number of players etc.

Of course this problem is much less prominent when the game is not multiplatform - in that case you create your build with the one specific platform in mind, but nevertheless you always have the hardware limitations in mind and there is always this one thing that you would like to do but can't for whatever reason, and good hardware developers should minimize such instances by creating hardware relevant to the generation in question as well as approachable SDK's.

Oh, I'm not arguing with you on that. I wasn't professing that a weaker console is better, but rather the limitations actually can have positive effects to go along with the obvious negatives. Or perhaps on the other end, having a stronger console has it's obvious benefits, but there are also hidden problems that come with it, and maybe it's better for the industry to have different options that are actually different from each other rather than both trying to do the same thing.

It's not a new engine. It's just modified/tweaked from the Modern Warfare 1 engine

But it has Fish AI!