Mr. Poolman
Member
I've said it before, but gamers are easily distracted with realism.
Art style weights a lot more, and Nintendo is really tight on this area.
Art style weights a lot more, and Nintendo is really tight on this area.
The Wii U and its ability to produce amazing visuals.
- Thread starter delta25
- Start date
Reread the OP. He is specifically calling to attention that the Wii U unexpectedly has better textures and lighting than other games on better machines.
This is (in my opinion) the next issue they need to adress in their next console.
Their games look beautiful and play amazingly well but I feel like the IQ holds everything back.
All that hard work on art style and such can't truly shine as it should due to crappy IQ.
I want to think a PS4 machine from Nintendo whenever they decide to release a new console is not that far fetched to handle their games with some AA on top.
papercan55
Member
Bingo.
Although i would say the first time since the snes.
Can you imagine how pissed you would be as an artist working on the galaxy games,skyward sword or donkey kong returns and knowing that most of your audience will be looking at your beautiful art and seeing blocky pixelated crap via a hdtv.
Amentallica
Unconfirmed Member
Future titles can, and will, in retrospect, make older games seem less impressive. It's happening now. That is not to say that in their own right, given their hardware, that PS3 and 360 games aren't pretty, but as you move forward, you will look back and see that they could have looked a lot better. This will always happen. When you're in the moment, you can predict that games will look better years from now, but you won't know exactly how until that future becomes the present, and when that happens, games retroactively lose their 'wow' factor.
I'm pretty sure his point is the Wii U is made by Nintendo, so Nintendo's designers have a firm understanding of its capabilities and the console was even designed with them in mind. If Nintendo's teams were suddenly asked to create a PC game, the results may not be as impressive in terms of output vs limitations.
Windom Earle
Member
It really has everything to do with Nintendo and nothing with the Wii U hardware (Despite providing the bare minimum of "hd muscle").
Shpeshal Nick
aka Collingwood
Mario Kart 8 is stunning and ZombiU is underrated in my opinion. I LOVE how that game looks.
Davey Cakes
Member
"Prioritized game design" is a great way to put it.sörine;145375078 said:
Nintendo are masters of resource management.
I don't give a shit if their game designs are "tempered." If the games are fun, look great, and play like a dream, that's what matters most. Nintendo are perfectly ambitious. They won't try to go beyond the call and end up delivering an unpolished mess because of it.
IAmRandom31
Banned
The Nintendo engines are not technically impressive but thanks to good color and cell shading and various other techniques it looks pleasing overall.
Seems Nintendo is working hard to take the style of its 2D titles and move it properly into the 3D realm without losing the visual appeal.
Looks good overall, but not technically impressive in any way. Low poly counts usually, simple shading, simple texturing. Keeping it clean and simple and colorful.
Seems Nintendo is working hard to take the style of its 2D titles and move it properly into the 3D realm without losing the visual appeal.
Looks good overall, but not technically impressive in any way. Low poly counts usually, simple shading, simple texturing. Keeping it clean and simple and colorful.
That's next on the list.
The Wii U has nothing to do with it. Nintendo Japan has the ability to make any game look great. That's the power of discipline to ship a complete product, and also have a great artstyle to make up for technical shortcomings.
Put Wii or Gamecube games in HD and i'd say the exact same.
Put Wii or Gamecube games in HD and i'd say the exact same.
Herb Alpert
Banned
It has been said that Nintendo didn't even provide proper technical documentation about WiiU to third parties.
You bet they understand better their hardware.
Now if they can figure how to use the gamepad...
I wouldn't say better but defiantly equally as impressive as what some of the other platforms ate doing.
Astral Dog
Member
I think it depends on the epectations of people, having a good, clean, colorful artstyle helps a lot to hide the flaws, compared to much more powerful hardware, and, the Wii U is an example that you dont need a powerful system to make pretty, (and costly!) games.
But, one important thing that is not mentioned enough, people need to keep their expectations in check, there is NO way a Wii U game will ever compare to an XBONE, PS 4, or PC game technically, just no way, we know whats on the system, so sometimes i wish people stopped comparing them that much, both favorably and negatively,
But, one important thing that is not mentioned enough, people need to keep their expectations in check, there is NO way a Wii U game will ever compare to an XBONE, PS 4, or PC game technically, just no way, we know whats on the system, so sometimes i wish people stopped comparing them that much, both favorably and negatively,
So PS360 games are ugly shit because we've seen PS4 and Xbone games now. wtf am i reading?
It's all about the art style, and not the console, as I can bet the Xbox 360 could make similar looking games if they tried them on it.
The visuals are amazing, yes, but we shall not praise Nintendo hardware at all - we should have this good looking games in 2006-2007 already.
The visuals are amazing, yes, but we shall not praise Nintendo hardware at all - we should have this good looking games in 2006-2007 already.
DragonSworne
Banned
Credit goes to the years of software drought. I don't like the fact we had to endure a lack of gaming from Nintendo for 3 years waiting for them to catch up with HD development. I don't think the visuals make up for the long wait. Hopefully the learning curve for next generation won't be as tough.
The perfect Dark
Banned
I own all next gen consoles and nintendo games on wii u are the best looking current gen games imo.
Amentallica
Unconfirmed Member
The 'ugly shit' comment was an exaggerated response on my part, but my point still stands. How about you try to actually understand what I'm saying rather than dismiss it entirely.
It's not about Hardware, but more about Artstyle. If we had more big-budget Games going for big colourful Artstyle on the Last Gen, Nintendos Output wouldn't even be this impressive as it is right now. And it's also the reason why it will continue to impress. Because there is basically no competition in terms of colourful Games with special Artstyles
bobbychalkers
Member
Nintendo knows how to leverage the most out of their system with games that look nice and run great, their only issue now is IQ.
LiveFromKyoto
Member
I own a PS4, and my Wii U wows me more regularly. Mario Kart 8 is the best art ever. That F-Zero Mute City stage is like, holy fuck. Wind Waker was like watching a Ghibli movie in some scenes. Mario 3D World has some amazing objects. I still haven't given Pikmin a spin yet.
It's a shame it wasn't worth 3rd parties' time to put resources into their ports, the hardware is clearly capable of some great stuff.
It's a shame it wasn't worth 3rd parties' time to put resources into their ports, the hardware is clearly capable of some great stuff.
It was the worst, unfortunately. That's not normal an hardware with the double of the RAM can't handle the same fps of the ps360 multiplat. The merit of nintendo it's to reach their graphic target although the hardware handicap.
They put the same time of the ps360 version, it seems the problem it's more the hardware bottlenecks.
Until RIME, or a game like El Shaddai comes or Okami comes along again, your right. The industry needs more of those kinds of games
The Main Event
Member
Wii U's excellent digital output helps too, produces great IQ.
SmokedMeat
Gamer™
Realism can be beautiful as well. A great looking game is a great looking game regardless of whether the artists are going for realism, or a whimsical cartoony world.
The Wii U's games look great. While it may not be on the cutting edge of technology we've reached the point in gaming where that's no longer needed to produce outstanding visuals.
Nothing to do with the hardware and everything to do with the third party developpers toolchains.
You completely missed my point. If Nintendo had designed something like a ps3 or 360 or literally anything else in the same power bracket, their results would be more or less the same.
There is no special chip in the Wii U that prevents screen tearing and smooths out edges or creates "more" color. It's just a low powered IBM CPU paired with a AMD GPU and some RAM, not much different from other consoles. There is no black magic going on here. I mean, the fact that the few Wii U third party games look and run no differently than their ps360 counterparts shows there is nothing special going on under the hood. Nintendo games look the way they do because Nintendo prioritizes different things and goes for a different look than anybody else.
Isn't the long running conventional wisdom that Nintendo holds back on the developer support for 3rd parties to ensure first party games look the best?
I thought that's more or less been the case dating back to the SNES.
Beren the Empty-Handed
Member
I'd argue that the lighting in WWHD is one of the few things that's disappointing. The torchlight work is pretty inconsistent with the rest of the game, as seen here. It also points out a few other lighting problems. I think they also overdid it on the bloom. This is pretty nitpicky, and overall the game looks great, but I wouldn't say it has spectacular lighting.
Neuromancer
Member
I agree, some of the games that have come out of Nintendo look amazing. Captain Toad's Treasure Tracker is another beautiful game.
By the way OP you should add a space between each image so they don't run into one another. It would look better.
By the way OP you should add a space between each image so they don't run into one another. It would look better.
Toolchain are part of the problem but say the hardware limits has nothing to do with the bad performances in the multiplat it's absolutely false.
The hardware demands a different approach to get full performance. In layman's terms think of PS360 as CPU focused while Wii U's GPU focused (as are PS4/XBO btw). It's not a "problem" exactly so much though, it's just a different architecture prioritization.
Developers who tried to "brute force" ports on Wii U tend to run into performance issues (especially with forced vsync throttling framerates). Those that take their time to really maximize Wii U's more modern architecture though have had impressive results, like Criteron with NFSMW, Frozenbyte with Trine 2 or Beetribe with Bayonetta to give several examples.
prag16
Banned
There's absolutely zero chance the Wii U version of those multiplats were given equal effort. Zero.
Of course you could argue that Nintendo should have made the hardware powerful enough that multiplats could be plopped on there and run at least on par without a large effort. But that's another discussion entirely.
I'm sorry but i don't agree about 3D world, i've had a Ps4 since launch and an Xbox One for almost a year and i still think 3D World is an impressive looking game, i don't have the sharpness on my TV cranked all the way up so i don't see many jaggies ad it looks sharp enough, i certainly don't think it looks blurry at all. And who cares if the worlds are small and simple? It looks great and that's what matters.
Take this from someone who has had a WiiU for less than a week and whose last Nintendo system was a SNES more than 20 years ago.
ninjablade
Banned
this right here. Nintendo colorful games get the biggest budget, i think it's the only company that can even get great sales from colorful cartoony games, cause the xbox and playstation crowd don't seem to buy them anymore.
Really? I'm not doubting cuz I don't know much about Nintendo's corporate or development 'culture', but that's definitely quite amazing to hear.
And awful. I mean, its normal for 1st party devs to get the cream of the crop and latest tools and all, but deliberately holding back on 3rd party developers? No wonder 3rd party support for them has become so poor.
Anyways, I'm still far more impressed by the art style of these games than its tech. I can see some half decent textures(nothing spectacular), some nice DoF effects, decent lighting. But better hardware could do all that and more, plus with higher resolution and general higher image quality. Its still a highly disappointing machine in terms of 'what it can do' by modern standards.
LiveFromKyoto
Member
Sure, and Sony and MS as well, though perhaps to a lesser degree - I think it's no accident that Naughty Dog, God of War and Halo & Forza looked a notch above everything else on their respective systems, beyond focused single-platform development. And the fact that the bulk of serious 3rd party Wii U development took place early on meant there weren't even great tools in the first place.
But what I was referring to was the Wii U having a different architecture and no 3rd parties putting significantly large teams on ports to maximize that. Straight Right and the Call of Duty & ZombiU teams were probably the best we got.
Herb Alpert
Banned
More simply, they don't seem to feel the need to help third parties with their bizarro hardware. They probably just give devkits and there you go.
Are you kidding? 360 is heavily CPU multithreading dependent to achieve high performance. 360 doesn't even have a dedicated sound chip, that's offloaded on CPU resources too. The CPUs on both 360 and PS3 were incredibly overengineered for their day, while all the consoles this gen take a reverse approach to architecture balancing.
ShadowSoldier89
Member
Mario Kart's aliasing is an absolute eyesore, especially on 4player