Topic: How will the PS3 be able to compete against the more advanced Wii 2?

[NWR_insanolord]

Why is everyone talking about the price of the system components going down?  The real increase in price is the money that must be spent on games with all the new trimmings.  That is the true cost for creating a new sytem for a first party heavy company like Nintendo and I haven't seen anything to show me the price has dropped much.

Most of Nintendo's Wii games wouldn't even be considered exceptional looking Gamecube games.  I've never seen a company of such quality that so blatantly cheaps out on the extras like Nintendo does.  So introducing new hardware won't raise Nintendo's dev costs much.  For them I think the purpose would be to introduce a further revision to the controller where they can be sure 100% of the userbase has it and to respark hardware sales as the Wii sales trail off.  Upping the specs is something they'll do to support HD because not supporting that TV standard will be seen as missing a feature the general public will at that point expect all consumer electronics to support.  Retro and third parties might push the hardware but NCL will continue making Mii games that will look indistinguishable from Wii Sports.  Actually I can imagine them making HD support optional for Wii 2 games (I believe the other consoles make it mandatory) and then never supporting it themselves.
 
But then I would not be surprised if Nintendo just added some wonky feature to the controller and released a Gamecube 1.75 that still doesn't support HD.  I don't really expect them to do that but in the back of my mind I can imagine them doing it.

I guarantee you that Nintendo will not force developers to support HD on their next console. They don't force Wii developers to support widescreen or even 480p, and I doubt they'll even require that much next time around.

[ThePerm]

well i mean having higher clockspeeds is fine and dandy, but because shaders ad power exponentially and the wii has limited shader use it makes it harder for companies to match the power on other systems. On the other hand if developers do work hard they can dish out some pretty content. It just takes some effort and time. Possibly there could be a whole slew of games coming out for Wii with really good graphics. Actually, if anyone knew anything about shaders it means that the lack of shaders mean that developers got to start being way more creative with bump mapping and textures. While making my Half-life 2 levels i just figured screw it, i'll just have really high resolution textures, and really there wasn't a huge dip on graphics, especially if i turned down luxel resolution.

[Rize]

I agree Nintendo will not force developers to support HD, but Nintendo will always support it on the Wii 2 and the best developers will as well.  Any games us "hardcore" gamers want to play will support it... with the possible exception of Wii-Ware stuff.

Concerning Wii vs. Xbox: you can say it is more powerful except it has a "different" (read: inferior) shader model.  That's a pretty important difference.  Obviously technology needs to be paired with good art, but developers are definitely figuring out how to make shaders look really good now.

So a big question for the Wii 2 is will Nintendo make the switch to the modern shader model?  You would think that would be a good idea now that most developers are experienced with it, but to use it properly ups the art costs dramatically.  Meanwhile, they need to worry about backward compatibility as well (I'm sure they'd love to continue selling the same Wii-Ware and Virtual Console titles).

In any case, it's practically certain that whatever the Wii 2 is, it will quickly (if not immediately) be far out-classed by the NextBox and the PS4 whenever they arrive, and whatever power it has will go largely unused.  Basically, the same situation you have with the Wii now.

[NinGurl69 *huggles]

It will dominate the market.  Right.