A lot of people tend to feel that the more power the better (and in the paper, yes, the easier it is to get something running the better; but that's also a fallacy, if running a 128 bit game on a X360 is easy then you don't do a 128 bit game anymore). That's not necessarily true, for there's not really a switch in there that says "max details on", stuff like if you crawl the grass bends, tree's branches moving with the wind or generating more than 5 faces on a FPS game are not automatic, every detail takes time to implement and the more detailed a game is the more work it takes. That's why after 6 years Crysis still looks so good, the gpu tech improved, but if other dev chases after the same thing they practically have to start anew when it comes to details; unless they use pre-loaded engine's for everything, which is certainly Epic's plan. And maybe I'm old fashioned but that dependency on external tech is not something I find good for the industry, in the end it might be a monopoly just like any other; a monopoly within a market who had it's monopolies), no less.
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z0m3le was talking about development costs a few posts up, a current gen game costing 15 million is a really cheap game; they often cost 30 million if not more.
An FF last gen costed 30 million, with full 5 year production and FMV's, when this gen started the rule was multiply by four, so a FF costing more than 100 million was no surprise; I doubt the figure dropped to less than 3 times the dev costs seeing the work needed on assets. I believe 20 something million for a exclusive game is the norm, almost 30 for a multiplat one (costs an extra 3/4 million if done alongside); but I haven't looked at where those numbers were stated for 1/2 years so I'm talking out of my memory alone.
I also remember stranglehold costing 30 million, sure the costs dropped a little, but still.
Of course, with all that said you can't go against progression altogether, which is why any platform should be appropriately powerful for what it is.
Sorry for the rant.
Don't be sorry, very interesting rant!
I feel that issue about development costs gets overlooked a lot when I hear about people salivating over next-gen after seeing SW:1313 and stuff. All the effort and resources it takes to create these amazingly detailed assets, animations and environments is just madness! People need to look at the credits for AAA games like Assassin's Creed, Dragon Age or Max Payne 3 - they're half an hour long and sometimes more than a dozen studios have worked on these games all over the world! a single game! on current consoles! that is absolutely insane! That Star Wars game looks like it does because it seems to be highly linear and controlled in terms of level progression and they are LucasArts collaborating with friggin' ILM!
It seems to me like Nintendo tries to be the last bastion for lower budget games with DS and Wii both sticking with visuals in the realm of the hardware's respective previous generations and 3DS and Wii U doing the same/similar thing.
I'm dragging this from the depths: (1 page away, but still)
Nintendo doesn't really seem afraid of it. Wii Motion Plus, Wii Fit, Classic Controllers and GC controllers (these two not being compatible)
Rather, they make money out of it.
Kinda, but I believe it's only because they were sure that they had software to really sell these things. With Wii Motion Plus they banked big on Wii Sports Resort and then the new Wii Play Motion thing since Wii Play sold so ridiculously well simply because it came bundled with a controller. They were clever in the way that they "forced" the hardware to onto consumers with bundles for well established brands.
But the lack of support for WM+ also shows that it just wasn't enough to make many games require the use of it. Were there even more than 10 games? Flingsmash, WS:Resort, Zangeki No Reginleiv, Skyward Sword, Red Steel 2, Wii Play Motion ..those are all I can think of, am I missing something?
Of course the fact that actual interesting game ideas kind of didn't happen very often after the WM+ launched didn't help much either. It's never just one thing, I see that (Wii Fit sold a ton as well but people probably didn't have many good game ideas for a bathroom scale *cough* Rock 'n' Roll Climber? *cough*)
Well technically we're seeing games now that aren't being played by the console like they were meant to, possibly due to the RAM ammount (on Crysis 2 it was certainly a big part of the equation), how much would a 512 MB GDDR3 @ 700 MHz expansion module cost right now?
Probably $10 or $20, they could even have included that cost at launch in their profit margin (it was cheaper but Nintendo actually did give out the wii condoms this gen to launch systems that lacked them; taking from their profit margin)
Of course the motivation for doing this to a manufacturer is low; but think about this, it's all a matter of marketing and leverage against competition. If consoles a year from now are launching with 4 GB as a response to the wii-u then it would be a wise counter-measure to have an expansion slot for RAM.
I meant the "not being played like they were meant to" more like with Perfect Dark on N64 where the expansion was required for players to access the campaign (!) and many mp features while being technically "optional".
Consumers are viewed as seemingly stupid already and I don't think any company would trust them to handle upgrading their RAM even with a simple expansion stick that looks like an USB drive these days.
Like I said, for us who are somewhat tech savvy and "know" about these things it would be totally cool to be able to enhance our console a bit to keep up with other machines but I just don't see that working in a big-picture scenario with the way the industry has gone.
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Also, I dont see how leaving the classic controller out is feature crippling when the wiimote could essentially do what classic controller did with added features. I see it more as an evolution. Thats like saying Nintendo feature crippled the NES because they didnt adopt the joystick.
It fits the feature crippling description because had it been included, devs could just say "ah what the hell" and make a regular-ass game but Ninitendo might've envisioned that to "encourage" developers to come up with unique ideas for the Wii Remote since that's the only controller that 100% have. of course history went a different route but I believe they might have thought that we'd see more Elebits/Eledees and less 3rd Person Action Game With Crappy Camera Because No Camera Control games.
They're basically the polar opposite of what Sony is doing in trying to force creativity by imposing hardware limitations and different interfaces while Sony tries to make everything the exact same every time but with more bells and whistles (that's why they haven't changed a thing about their controller other than including pointless sixaxis to be able to say "hey we have Teh Motions too!" at the last minute (which is probably a good thing 'cause that boomerang controller was hideous). Sony's basically sticking to what works and lets developers make games with all the toys they can throw in the ball pool while Nintendo likes to challenge devs. Sony puts developers in a sandbox and says "you've been here before, right? do whatever you like" and Nintendo might hand them a hammer or a saw and asks "what can you make with these things we've given you". both produce interesting results.
Sorry, I don't know how this turned into a Sony vs Nintendo-design philosophy rant.
The original XBox and PS2 were capable of rendering games in HD, Nintendo could have allowed the Wii to do so as well for less than $5 per console.
Huh, what really? HD? 720p+? 'Cause if you mean 480p, GameCube did that as well. Please enlighten me.
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oh god this was a looong ass post and quite hard to glue together lol
