Iwata - "...I don’t think we’ll present [3D graphics] as one of the key features of our consoles but will probably stick with 3D as one of the minor elements of our consoles in the future. "
A lot of people will take that title out of context.
"There’s definitely the chance for not only graphics, but also other features that our competitor’s consoles don’t have. But I think it will become increasingly difficult from now on to compete over graphics. This is because that no matter how much we increase the number of polygons we can display and improve the shading it will become increasingly difficult to tell the difference. "
He's basically saying that eventually we'll hit a graphical wall.
Im surprised by one of iwatas statement where he said that with the Wii they wanted people to play video games more but it did the opposite. Most people who owns a Wii barely plays it and I see the Wii u going the same way with weak tech, gimmick controller, shovelware which results in people playing it less
The statement of "most people who owns a wii barely play it" is a bit of an extreme view of things.
You may be seeing it that way from a games appeal pov. Meaning that simply because the wii does not have games that appeal to you or those similar to you, that is a simplification and generalization of gamers overall. Not true.
There is such a diverse amount of games from retail to digital dist that the scope of games and the appeal of those games are difficult to really get a total of.
It is easy to dismiss a platform that does not appeal to a certain demographic (core audience) and proclaim it a failure when if you saw it from the overall perspective the tables are quite different.
Millions of people who bought the wii play the wii and the various games available for it. From the big name 1st party titles to the small independent titles I can guarantee you that every game released for the wii since launch has been played by someone and has found some appeal to them.
Now as to the main topic. Shok summed it up righ on the money with his statement. We will at some point hit that graphical limit where you just cant get any more noticeable fidelity out of the onscreen presentation. When that happens we will see a shift from the obvious to the not so obvious.
Meaning more and more finer detail will emerge in place of that fidelity to actually compliment the presentation overall. Things like reflection and smoke and particle effects will be the points to look for instead of the scale and number of polygons that make up the main character.
Essentially...realistic graphics will become the norm and then how do you improve on something that looks more real than real? The next change in gaming will be about how we play more than what we play.
i will give you the hardware side. We knew there would be a saturation point to where everyone who wanted a wii will have gotten one.
Yet how do you track the sale of digital software when the only place you can get it is right from nintendo? that same question can be applied to both MS and sony as well.
retail sales are down but that isnt to say digital sales are equally down. That represents a convenience that retail just cant offer. being able to buy a title and download it is the way things are going.
I will give benefit of the doubt to the fact that there could be millions of wii users who dont have their system connected to the internet. No surprise there are millions of 360/ps3 users in the same situation. Yet to the millions of users who do....there does not seem to be a standard way of tracking those sales of software. All we can rely on is the information provided by nintendo, sony and ms.
Not extreme at all. Be honest and do a self evaluation of friends and people you know and how many of them consistently or occasionally for that matter still play with their wii. I know many people with wii's including myself and most of them no longer use it other than the occasional smash bros get together. In regards to the people I know thats the only game that makes the wii somewhat relevant.
" But you shouldn’t be expecting Call of Duty-like games to be offered from Nintendo. For that type of game my belief is that, if there are companies out there who can do this very well, then instead of us try to do it this, or to compete with them, it would be better to have them do it on our platforms, so to invite them and to support them to offer this kind of entertainment on our platform. "
So they want the 3rd party do the dirty work instead of themselves. They don't wanna risk it.
What the Heck? Metroid Prime screams NO WAY! Come on Nintendo. Metroid is the perfect Nintendo FPS even if its second party.
Why let the 3rd party do the dirty work? What is going on with Ninty?
Iwata keeps on spitting BS left & right! Are they playing Blanka nuts?
until we get FF movie level graphics we wont hit a wall. Hell look at hollywood movies with cg. We arent near that level so no we still have a ways to go.
Nintendo wants to change people perception because they know they arent gonna match MS and sony. Just like when people get all artistic over pure visuals.
@jetlian "Nintendo wants to change people perception because they know they arent gonna match MS and sony. Just like when people get all artistic over pure visuals"
What are you talking about? The opposite is ACTUALLY what's occurring, Nintendo still offer the same experiences they always did.
MS and Sony are the ones demanding that market fracturing makes them the winner, and Apple and Nintendo the loser. Well imo thats 100% wrong and Kinect is proof of this mistake.
ozstar what are you talking about? you went way off. Fact is nintendo wont be as strong as ps4,nextbox. So they are saying gpx wont be different even though it will.
okami does not look better than crysis. Nintendo is arguing that it does because we hit a wall. Im say no we have not.
I absolutely adore the wealth of Nintendo's software offerings, but seriously, will they stop spouting nonsense about hitting graphical walls. Subsequent to PS3 & Xbox 360 hitting the market, Iwata once again stated that the hardware of the original Xbox, GameCube and PS2 was sufficient for graphics moving forward, and that graphics were again hitting a ceiling.
If graphics hit a ceiling before PS3 & Xbox 360 even released, how come we have absolutely stunning titles such as Uncharted 3, Gears of War 3, Killzone 3, Halo 4, God of War: Ascension, Beyond, and The Last of Us. Check out a quote from Mr Iwata regarding the Wii (then codenamed Revolution) at Nintendo's pre-E3 2004 press conference:
"I could give you our technical specs, as I'd know you'd like that, but I won't for a simple reason: they really don't matter. The time when horsepower alone made all the difference is over. "Work on Revolution is well underway. When you see it you will be excited because you will experience a gaming revolution."
Agreed. Idk about you, but I 100% disagree with him. In a small scene with little detail (like most Nintendo games or a racing sim game) a trillion more triangles than before won't matter much. But in a game like Skyrim, the ability to process a trillion more triangles is very beneficial. (ie. more dense vegetation and forest, more high detailed characters on screen, and so on) it's not just about improving a single model, but the entire scene. Same goes with applying a lot of high-res textures, along with high quality lighting shading. Then there's intelligent A.I. and intense physics calculations, blah blah. He's so wrong, there's a lot to improve upon.
But of course he has to say this stuff, he has to sell as many Wii Us as he can before the PS4/Xbox 8 come out. I'd buy a Wii U if it was $199.99 (granted I'm positive it'll have very little improvement over PS3/360) with the pro controller and without the tablet controller, only for Nintendo games. They haven't convinced me that the tablet is a good idea.
You guys really don't get it do you? The graphics comment is two fold.
1. We're getting to a point graphically, where MOST PEOPLE (Not life time game enthusiasts like us, developers, industry insiders, and pixel snobs) won't be able to see a meaningful difference when added effort is put into graphics beyond say for instance an Uncharted, etc. It's just not going to matter to them.
2. It's already TOO EXPENSIVE THIS GENERATION to create graphics heavy games that take full advantage of current hardware. Many developers have gone belly up, or have had major set backs due to crippling costs combined with sales that before this generation, would have allowed them to at least break even.
If you really believe that more than 2 or maybe 3 companies will even think about risking the resources it will require to take full advantage of some mega-multi-quad cored beast, then you need to start thinking realistically.
Businesses are trying to make money, not lose it. They don't make games for us as favors, but to make profit from. Even the companies that make the most per game such as Activision, Rock *, Nintendo, etc. do not even come close to maxing out console hardware graphically. And they actually have the money to take such a risk.
Just because more powerful consoles are on the horizon doesn't mean games will look drastically better. Expect that extra power to be wasted with lazy coding to cut corners rather than optimize, heavy operating systems that attempt to give gamers the option of truly using their console as their PC, etc. Photorealistic game graphics will not be the norm any time soon.
"ow come we have absolutely stunning titles such as Uncharted 3"
Which came like 6 years after the release. Nintendo isn't going to wait 6 years just for that one pretty title.
I assume they are talking about their own needs which is pretty much breaking them when it comes to third party developers.
However Nintendo simply does not want to push the graphics buzz. Because if they do they will directly compete more and more with Sony and MS who are going apesh/t over graphics.
Nintendo clearly wants to focus on other things like how you can play a game. And usually this is done towards their own interest. I just hope third party developers embrace this controller and put it to good use.
We did hit a graphical ceiling of sorts at the start of this gen, and had to pay for the pretty graphics that were achieved with platform stability, framerate issues and generally lower framerate overall, bad ai and overall buggy, more expensive games...
The gen has only recently started to actually come into it's own, and has had a rocky road to get there. Not only that, but were we are now is really good, and all that is needed are overall performance improvements for games to still look incredibly amazing without gimping everything else.
The graphics should be a part of any given game, and not improved by crazy amounts in spite of everything else like this last gen has been.
does it really matter? Nintendo fans have been telling us for 7 years now that it's the gameplay that matters, so I wouldn't worry too much about whether it's a lot more powerful or equal to the 360
I don't think they'd care much at all if other fanboys weren't constantly screaming the equivalent of 'OMG! IT SUCKS! DON'T BUY IT! WAIT FOR SONY/MS!' That crap is annoying. The only peace on a Wii U article here at N4G are the good news/non-inflammatory articles, since haters and trolls have nothing to say there. Pathetic.
graphics never hit a wall and wont, to say that is totaly dumb, they can produce games that look life like with effects we cant imagine, now this cant be done on consoles as it would take a 4000 dollar system to do so but the point is , its possible to do so much more, did the gta4 hit a graphical wall with modders when they used ice and made it almost photo realistic. NO
A lot of people will take that title out of context.
"There’s definitely the chance for not only graphics, but also other features that our competitor’s consoles don’t have. But I think it will become increasingly difficult from now on to compete over graphics. This is because that no matter how much we increase the number of polygons we can display and improve the shading it will become increasingly difficult to tell the difference. "
He's basically saying that eventually we'll hit a graphical wall.
I absolutely adore the wealth of Nintendo's software offerings, but seriously, will they stop spouting nonsense about hitting graphical walls. Subsequent to PS3 & Xbox 360 hitting the market, Iwata once again stated that the hardware of the original Xbox, GameCube and PS2 was sufficient for graphics moving forward, and that graphics were again hitting a ceiling.
If graphics hit a ceiling before PS3 & Xbox 360 even released, how come we have absolutely stunning titles such as Uncharted 3, Gears of War 3, Killzone 3, Halo 4, God of War: Ascension, Beyond, and The Last of Us. Check out a quote from Mr Iwata regarding the Wii (then codenamed Revolution) at Nintendo's pre-E3 2004 press conference:
"I could give you our technical specs, as I'd know you'd like that, but I won't for a simple reason: they really don't matter. The time when horsepower alone made all the difference is over.
"Work on Revolution is well underway. When you see it you will be excited because you will experience a gaming revolution."
Yea, it doesn't bother me since i'm not into the whole "3D" trend that's going on..\
does it really matter? Nintendo fans have been telling us for 7 years now that it's the gameplay that matters, so I wouldn't worry too much about whether it's a lot more powerful or equal to the 360