'Is the Wii too under powered?'
A lot of critics out there both professional and just your average game players want to know if the Wii's hardware will be able to compete in the console wars for the long term or will the Nintendo Wii and its new controller just fizzle out and become a forgotten fad?
Ok, before I get started on this debate I just want to mention that I don't know a lot about computers. I'm not one of those programer guys who talk about or can even understand most of the talk about processing power, or why this chip is better than that chip. I have a small background in computer graphics, but when it comes to talking specs I'm going to look at you like a deer caught in head lights. With that being said, I'm not exactly stupid either and I know what I like when I see it. This is my argument.
The Nintendo Wii is about a year old now and we are just beginning to see what the Wii is truely capable of from a graphical stand point. Early in the Wii's life we saw very little reason to hope as the console was hit with rushed port, after rushed port, by devlopers looking to make a fast buck from game starved players. You see all the major developers thought the console was going to be a complete failure, but when the system became an instant hit and sold at an unbelieveable pace, those same developers were suddenly hit with a magical change of heart. This left us with such memroble titles as, Anibus 2 and Wing Island just to name a few. The knock on the Wii is that it's nothing more than a Game Cube with about another half of its power added to it. That doesn't seem like a bad thing at all to me. I owned both the Cube and the PS2. The GC seems quite a bit stronger. A good example would be the Resident Evil 4 port. It looks fine on the PS2 until you put it next to the Cube. The clarity on the Cube is a lot better and the smoke and other effects appear to be trimmed down on the PS2. Also, the PS2 takes A LOT longer to load this game and just about everything else I play on it.(Don't get me wrong I love my PS2, but if it is capable of generating graphics as good as 'God of War' the Cube has to be capable of doing it just a little bit better and thats not a bad thing.) So basically since I was playing games that were made for a technically inferior system AND still looked worse on the Wii, it was pretty obvious that something was wrong. Still, the fan boys at 360 and PS3 love to gloat about how weak the Wii is. Thankfully, Metriod Prime 3 came out and completely reinstilled my faith in the system. The game is absolutely gorgeoues and definetly looks next gen. The new trailers for games such as Resident Evil Umberlla Co. and Smash Brothers all look very promisng. Super Mario Galaxy truely looks like a god send and is going to shake the gaming world harder than anything since the first Sonic. A crap load of more games are finally nearing the end of their production and should be dropping like crazy for Christmas and early spring. After a long and brutal wait it's a very good time to be a Wii owner. It may not have the horse power of a 360 or PS3 but the graphics are at least without a doubt next gen.
Michael