Regarding the Wii2

[tamakun]

I have not been following Kotaku for the past couple of weeks, and actually, I haven't been reading any game blogs recently. I've been relying on Twitters and LJ posts to see what's going on in the gaming world.

It actually hasn't been that bad. I don't think I've missed too much, I'm not craving the next big game (aside from Portal 2, but that's a given) and therefore spending my money, and I have a ton of games that I want to play through anyways before I purchase any more big titles.

I hear rumours that Wii2 is going to be announced this summer at E3. At this point in time, I'm actually not really that interested in it. I've hardly got enough playtime aobut of the Wii as it is (currently, the game in there is A Boy and his Blob or No More Heroes 2). But, because it was mentioned (and all I heard was "more power", in essence), here are my thoughts and predictions before I look at any articles:
- Backwards compatibility with the Wii (GameCube backwards compatibility will be out, though)
- 720p or 1080p resolution, and current-gen Wii games will upconvert (which is mostly possible as evidenced by the Dolphin emulator)
- DVD Playback
- Ethernet port and Wireless-N for online play built-in
- WiiMotionPlus built-in (since they're already making those controllers)
- Better integration with the 3DS than the Wii was with the DS actually, scratch that, the 3DS has its own built-in store

Now that I've looked at a simple "what-we-want" post from Kotaku, they claim it's going to be more powerful than the Xbox and PS3. I can't imagine they can be more powerful than these systems - maybe equal in power, since we're starting to hit that cap, where the games visual and audio quality can't get much better. Other predictions:
- I figure it'll be a dual-processor of some sort
- Integration of the 3DS's Friend Code into the Wii2 (one unified code for ALL Nintendo products would be genius)
- After realizing that the Wii's Virtual Console covered all of Nintendo's back-catalog, it would be silly for them to drop the backwards-compatibility of the GC. I didn't even think of the Virtual Console.

I'm slowly starting to play games again, but right now, with my mind focused on saving money, I have no point in purchasing another console that I'll hardly play. Similarly, I haven't been interested in the 3DS because it's got a poor launch library (i.e. no Mario, Zelda, or Layton). Let me get through my current backlog of games and I'll get back to you on whether I'll want to pick it up. ^^

Comments

[ravenworks.livejournal.com]

For me, the "graphics can't get better than this" idea went straight out the window as soon as I saw the LA Noire gameplay trailer. Realistic faces just make the plasticness of the environments, and the weird flatness of the lighting, that we've all grown to take for granted as "realistic" graphics, look as un-realistic as they actually are...

[tamakun.livejournal.com]

Hm, wow, I never had a chance to really take a look at that trailer. You're right, though, the incredibly realistic facial features and motions (which seem to have somehow skipped over that uncanny valley) are marred by the fact that the clothes (such as the guy's collar) doesn't budge when they move.

I've always wondered what it would take to get to the "next step" of graphics, though. Most of the games we play these days are stylized or use little tricks to hide the flaws in the features of the characters - or in some cases, they'll have one neat trick (Batman's Cape in Arkham Asylum) and the rest of the game obscures the woodenness of the characters faces or other shortcomings. They haven't got the power to combine all the technologies together just yet, I guess.

Okay, let me ask you something. I remember hearing that when the first Shrek movie came out, the team behind the computer graphics analyzed hundreds of textures in real-life to see how they would move or react to different situations. However, the movie itself ended up looking "cartoony" anyways, because of the exaggerated features. Do you think that we might be able to get even-more-realistic-looking games, once Hollywood gets it all figured out themselves?

[ravenworks.livejournal.com]

That's the key of it. There's technically "nothing we can't do" right now -- which absolutely isn't true, but there's very little on the horizon of our expectations that we can't do, at least -- but under normal circumstances, we don't have the power to do most of it at once. Game developers have to pick and choose. We're still in the era where if you're walking down the street in GTA4, and you do a quick 180, all the cars go "oh shit" and suddenly drive into view, Truman Show style, because the game was only handling AI for cars in the direction that the camera is pointing. And like you said, we can have characters with realistic faces -- but often, their hands look terrible, just because there's not enough memory to have that kind of resolution over their entire body. Obviously there are ways to work around all of this -- but all of that eats into the budget, and so it's just not feasible in most games.

The best moments in videogames won't look distinctly better for a couple of generations, I'd say -- but all the "okay" moments in the middle that we're used to overlooking will slowly start to go away, as we start to have the horsepower so that developers don't have to break their backs to make graphics that look the way we've come to expect.

Heck, what am I saying. :P The better it gets, the more people's expectations will rise, that's always the way it goes ;)

[tamakun.livejournal.com]

So, do you think that LA Noire's direction is better than say, GTAIV? There's a disconnect with LA Noire in that the faces are ultrarealistic compared to the rest of the world, but GTA's entire look is unified (i.e. comparing their face to their clothes), even if it's not totally realistic.

That was also the point that Nintendo wanted to make with the underpowered Wii, anyhow, right? By not focusing on the high-powered graphics, theoretically more creative ideas will be used.

(And I'll have to see this Trumanesque GTAIV situation. Sounds amusing. ^^)

[ravenworks.livejournal.com]

I really don't know how to feel about LA Noire. The faces are amazing at times -- but despite what some people have said, I REALLY get a strong Uncanny Valley feeling from about 75% of the faces in that video. The faces are all wrong, and the lighting on them is all wrong too... I think it's an important first step, and hopefully it'll set a trend that other developers will pick up and be more successful with - but I do think that in the long run, once seeing faces like that isn't unusual anymore, games like GTA4 will "look better" in hindsight, like how people are already saying that Wind Waker looks better than Twilight Princess, just because its look hasn't already been done better by subsequent games.

And yeah -- that's what I don't like about the direction they're taking with the supposed Wii 2, and the 3DS.... the DS forced developers to come up with a good concept, because that was all they could offer. The DS was such a restrained system that there was almost nothing you could do to make a game look "better", other than just hiring good artists (rather than hiring a fleet of adequate ones, which seems to be the standard on consoles..) Obviously I'm generalizing, and there's nothing preventing people from making good games for powerful systems, but the temptation to shovel something through the unreal engine and be done with it will be a lot more prevalent, and people's expectations will rise enough that the art budgets for games will increase enough that even just making a "passable" game will cost enough more that publishers won't be as willing to take risks on strange concepts, y'know? (Though, maybe the iPhone is helping prove that not every game on a system needs to "max it out".... though that's harder to justify when there's a standard pricing model of $30-$50 per game in place :/)

About the GTAIV situation, I have to say I've never actually seen it myself (I've never actually played the game myself), but I heard someone discussing it on a podcast.... Just now I tried looking for something on youtube, but nothing really came up.... maybe it's not as remarkable as it sounds to see ;)

[ravenworks.livejournal.com]

err, "the faces are all wrong" should say "the eyes are all wrong", sorry. :X

[bassbeast.livejournal.com]

Okay, I now have to ask the question:

Who the hell cares that a collar doesn't move?

I mean, really. Is that all we have to care about anymore?

If that's what we as gamers have to bitch about, we're a spoiled lot.

Besides, how many companies are actually able to take advantage of that kind of horsepower to make that detail? What do you think that's going to cost? It'll be a good long time - ten years or more - before some guy in his basement is able to make a game with anything close to that level of detail. Heck, it's taken us about 15 years since the demise of the SNES before that kind of single-man creation is an affordable, viable level without bankrupting potential developers.

Gaming is so nascent that we don't have any sort of system to rival film in terms of production. This isn't to say that film is the be-all-and-end-all and gaming should aspire to it. Rather, both media straddle the line of product and artistic creation. Certainly there's room for both in the cinematic world, but gaming - particularly CONSOLE gaming - that's a different matter entirely. The developer/publisher model won't work forever, particularly with more expansive hardware. How many publishers would be willing to give a studio $3 million more simply to have a collar that moves too?

It's just not going to work.

[tamakun.livejournal.com]

Fair enough. It does seem a little ridiculous to add the "cloth physics" if it's not going to be important or even appreciated.

So what do you think the extra power that this proposed new Nintendo console would be used for, then? Better AI, more realistic physics? I just don't think that we're needing any more horsepower. I feel we're reaching a plateau, and anything above where we are right now may very well be wasted. (Are the PS3's Cell processors being used for anything intensive these days?)

[zillabean.livejournal.com]

I will snap up a 3DS the MINUTE Layton becomes available to the West, mark my words. That's the only reason I don't own one yet; no games I want :( I could care less about Nintendogs or Asphalt 3D. The only game I'd actually play on it would be Street Fighter, but I kinda fell off that bandwagon years ago. These days Layton sells systems for me, and if he appears on 3DS (Oh God, Please please please please), then I'm kissing $300 goodbye right then and there :)

I'm super excited for Wii2 news. I LOVE LOVE LOVE video game culture, and I just want to info!

[tamakun.livejournal.com]

I'm very slowly getting back into the gaming culture. I don't want to be forced into buying games due to my current backlog (and Portal 2 tomorrow, gleeeeeee) but I miss talking with people about it.

This is why a lot of my recent posts have been about games!

And yes, Layton is my main selling point for the 3DS too, right now. I haven't seen anything else that grabs my attention as much as Layton does. :)