But by that reasoning, Sega' s initial failure to include a T anywhere within the brand name should have resulted in immediate financial strain.

NOO!!! you see, the " T" is a cruch. Sega learned to walk without that crutch. Namco came along, then they decided to become NAMCOT but only for the 16-bit generation. After that they lost the " T" and have been in a downward spiral ever since. reports from Japan indicate that everyone who ever worked at Namco suddenly got SARS.

In fact, I put it to you, my good man, that Namco' s misfortune comes not from their brand name missing a ' T' , but rather a lack of salami in their managerial staff' s diets.

That is proposterous! Seriously, be reasonable and have some amount of logic and intelligence, man! They are Japanese, they do not eat salami. All they eat is fish and rice. Never anything else, otherwise their Japaneseness would disappear and they would all have English accents and look like people from Iceland. NAMCOT was able to control half of the world without salami. Geez!

i dont see reason to complain about frame city killer, just visit IGN' s screenshot archive and look at it, streets a burstling with people all of them looking quite nice.

i visited IGN, i' ve seen the screenshot, they are much better (now looking average) than the latest screenshot , however IGN screenshot are a bit dated, they are posted on October ok??? the difference between those screenshots and the latest is significant...

And don' t forget that Frame City Killer is still very much a work in progress. Because Namco liscenced the UE3 they' re probably still learning it as they go so it' s not going to look as good as what Epic will put out (the people who designed the engine). Not sure what the release date is now (Feb 7th I think?) so until the game' s in our hands, it' s not completely fair to judge it on how smooth the wheels are on parked random cars.

man this game is probably on shelves in like 2 months or 3, it won' t get much better

about the rest of your post, i don' t expect at all from this generation to see a cubic wheel of that kind so what about the 360????!!!! i thought we got oevr this from dreamcast, well yeah there are a looot of crap games that will make look a ps2 game like an n64 game and what i' m saying and please follow me what i' m saying is: frame city killer is one of these games , that look just crap and crap ... i won' t care about that if it was from another developer but absolutly not from namco ... i think they have the enough ressources to not make out games with this quality .

N.B: try to check out the latest pics of that game on www.best4gamers.com

Namco should not release this football game, it looks terrible and this is on xbox360? What a joke! Just go buy Fifa 06 on xbox360. I don' t know...but maybe the japs are intetionally making crap looking games for the 360! If they were to make a footy game for the ps3 I doubt it' ll look this bad...even if it were on last gen consoles!

I wonder what made them want to give the players shiny kits? That' s just strange...

And if Frame City Killer wants to be GTA, its possible they sacrificed graphics for the sheer scale of the city to be streamed smoothly like GTA3 did. Only GTA covered up those bad polygons and textures much better, so the screeshots looked nice too.

Early 360 games will most definitely have to choose between next-gen graphics and other aspects, as they learn the architecture. That' s why NBA Live 2k6 skimped on features. I expect GTA 4, Frame City Killer 2 or some such to be stunning.

ORIGINAL: UnluckyOne

I think some people are a little dillusioned by " next generation" consoles. Think back to our current consoles, and ask yourself how many completely graphically awesome games there are. Now think of how many other " average" games there are out there too. For every awesome looking game on the Xbox/PS2 there are about 100 average looking titles. Just because it' s a next generation console doesn' t mean that every game will instantly have " super high definition omgwtfbbq awesome graphix" . Progression is a slow thing so give it time.

I totally agree with you on that one UnluckyOne. There' s this whole illusion with the next gen that all games are gonna be when in fact most of them will just be and some will even be [:' (].

Also, people looking at screen shots and trailers are generally ignoring two very important factors. Artistic direction and gameplay. I' m playing Oddworld: Stranger' s wrath and Advent Rising currently. If you were to take screenshots of the two, and then ask someone to decide which to buy, no one in their right minds would get Advent. Not saying that that' s a bad decision, considering that Oddworld is frickin' sweet, but Advent is a top-notch game as well. Perhaps not in the graphical area, but the artistry and gameplay are great.

For me it' s not the power of the next-generation consoles that makes me raise an eyebrow, it' s mainly the developer behind the listed games ;). Namco of Japan makes pretty looking games.. Namco Hometek does NOT :p.

As Cheesaw stated the hype for " next gen" as been enormous this time around, like nothing we saw during the launch of the PS2, but infact back then the jump was bigger.
The jump from 50 polygons to 5000 was enormous, but the jump from 5000 to 50000 want be seen as much, it will be seen though, as in little details in models will be modelled and not skinned.

Are you sure frame city killer is using Unreal 3? because they only say unreal technology, so it could possibly be unreal engine 2 which was used by UT2k4 and Unreal 2 and Unreal Championship 1 and 2. The graphics don' t really look all that bad when you watch the high def trailer, although they certainly don' t look that good. And when you have tons of characters and cars on screen you can' t make them taht detailed. GTA just has a field of view of like 10 degrees and everything is is blurred out on the sides.

Although I am disapointed in this games graphics. They can definetly do better.

There was no jump from the Dreamcast to the PS2. I think the graphics got worse actually.
And it isn' t just polygons for this generation. Shader 3 adds 200 times the detail without using any more polygons. That and the lighting, blurr effects and other special effects that can' t be done on the older consoles.

In PDZ each individual brick and grit are 3D. You don' t see anything near that in the old gen. You can see individual blades of grass in fifa.

This is probably the biggest jump. N64 to Dreamcast was second biggest. DC added many 3d special effects and had a very powerful GPU (the jumps are much bigger if you have HDTV for 360 or VGA adapter for dreamcast)

When dreamcast came out i was extremely wowed. When PS2 came out i kind of laughed. When Xbox came out i was slightly wowed. When 360 came out I was pretty wowed.

I keep forgetting the dreamcast ever existed, it was hardly released here in denmark, it had a small following but the Playstation was too well dug in at that moment in time.

That is proposterous! Seriously, be reasonable and have some amount of logic and intelligence, man! They are Japanese, they do not eat salami. All they eat is fish and rice. Never anything else, otherwise their Japaneseness would disappear and they would all have English accents and look like people from Iceland. NAMCOT was able to control half of the world without salami. Geez!

Aha! How little you know of Japan. Anyone who' s ever watched ' Mr. Baseball" knows that the Japanese dine only on steak and champagne. This sushi stuff is WWII propaganda that still hasn' t worked itself out of the system. They have to import it, as it' s already the national dish for another country [Iceland].
Besides, David Beckham eats salami, so it stands to reason that 74% of Japanese consumers eat it too. In 20 years they' ll have completely mastered the " Do What The West Does - Just Better" cultural technique and will be far more Caucasian than most Europeans.

ORIGINAL: locopuyo

Are you sure frame city killer is using Unreal 3? because they only say unreal technology, so it could possibly be unreal engine 2 which was used by UT2k4 and Unreal 2 and Unreal Championship 1 and 2.

Yes they' re using UE3.

http://www.epicgames.com/press_namco.aspx

Now why would anyone use unreal 2 to a next gen game?
...Many developers are insecure and new to the technology infront of them,and since making a 3d engine can be costly and hard thats why we see people buy the UE3.0 ...anyway,as the time goes people will start use the power.
And probably start making their own.

Well Unreal Engine 3 is also a very good engine. Many capabilities and very easy to use. It is probably the best engine out there for first and third person games.

Before i start, i want to state there are always acceptions.
But in the rhelm of graphic power, most asian development studios are just now learning to use these new graphic gizmos, such as normal mapping and specualr shading.
Namco has been focused on making the playstation look good, and as much work as that takes, it' s all pretty familiar seeing as the playstation is about as base as you can find.
So companies like ID or crytek or valve don' t really exist in asian (korea being exempt) because there have been no real demand for graphic work horses.

IMHO i think if it' s pulled off right, like virtua striker, i will enjoy it.