Zoy
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- Joined: May 15, 2006
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Re:Day of "Oh look, another Wii Disaster"
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Sep 04, 2008 18:25
Simple economics, m'lads. *smugly chomping on a cigar* What we've got here is a toxic swirl of a little white box that prints money, and a whole lot of developers who frankly don't take much pride in their craft. The fact is the Wii is capable of much more graphically than it's being called on to do, and there are only a handful of developers who have the pride in their craft to push it. At the same time, however, there is a constricting aspect to core Nintendo fans' desires to see newer versions of their classic series. Obviously characters like Mario can't be graphically complexified very much at this point. About the most that can be done is some kind of normal mapping of his denim overalls, maybe some kind of real hair/fur for his moustache... but he's a cartoony character and it won't work stylistically if his appearance is complexified and made realistic. Zelda might be the only series they have that can support a wide variety of visual reimaginings... but those games are on a very long development cycle -- and so far for very good reason, as they have seemingly all been excellent. But with titles like these so few and far between, the Wii does seem to be relegated to a secondary status in core gamers' entertainment systems. What I would hope for any company would be that they would do what they need to to stay afloat and be profitable, but to always set aside some of that money for what might be called auteur games... the most artistic, visionary games that are bigger risks but carry the unique visions of particular designers/development teams. Those types of games will always be relatively few and far between, but with good planning we could see a few of them every year. At this point though, we have a situation verging on the out-of-hand mess that burgeoned on the Atari 2600, with an avalanche of subpar games being brought out to make a quick buck. One advantage that Nintendo has over the Atari of 1983 is vastly more savvy management, though. But 2008 is a bit of a letdown, with Nintendo trying to herald the upcoming Wario game as some sort of major milestone in their dedication to core gamers.
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