Topic: What's with all the RE-releases?

[King Bowser Koopa]

The Resident Evil Chronicles games are heading to PS3.

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/blog/28281

To celebrate the 15th anniversary of the Resident Evil franchise, Umbrella Chronicles and Darkside Chronicles are being compiled and updated in HD to release on PlayStation 3 alongside recent updates of Resident Evil 4, Code: Veronica X, and Outbreak.

To accommodate the control of the Wii versions, they're being rejiggered to work with that glowing PlayStation Move thing. There are two ways to look at this: one could be bitter that some more Wii-exclusives being lost to the competition, but a more mature stance would be to say "sure, spread the love."

Let's face it, these titles have both been out for a while, does it really matter this late in the game? At least it means more people will get to play them. I own both Wii games and they are superb. For fans of the series, the unlockable content amasses to what is essentially a complete reference guide to the Resident Evil timeline*, characters, story events, enemies, items, and even memorable puzzle solutions. The games, when combined, cover every major event in the series, following the new GameCube-era retelling of the story that fills in plot holes, ties up loose ends, and even shows how Wesker survived the Spencer Mansion back in the first game. The added chapter that explains the RE4 prologue and the collapse of Umbrella is particularly nice. If you missed your chance to play these games before and own a PS3, it's time to rejoice. For the rest of us, let's hope for a Wii U port in the foreseeable future.

*The timeline of the games that count, anyway. Despite the incredible, jaw-dropping, loin-melting hotness of Sheva, Resident Evil 5 was simply an African-flavoured photocopy of 4. Get the Chronicles instead.

[NWR_Neal]

That reminds me. I should play these games...

[BranDonk Kong]

The Chronicles games were awesome. No reason to not make any money.

[broodwars]

Hmm...I'd normally be excited to hear that two games I really enjoyed on Wii are coming in HD to a platform I actually play games on more than twice a year.  However, I've been trying Move out on several titles of late (Child of Eden, House of the Dead Overkill), and the thing's been a total piece of crap. Stuttering cursors, disappearing cursors, calibration errors, etc. have made playing games with the thing almost impossible.  Plus, even when it does work, that trigger's really terrible due to how soft and mushy it is when you press it.

Maybe it's better with the Sharpshooter accessory.  I'll look into that when we're closer to the release of these games.

[FloY]

its a bit sad... i mean the wii is missing out on SOOO many games this year..


SF3 3rd strike online...mortal kombat arcade kollection....xmen arcade...voltron..and RE operation racoon city...the list goes on and on...
nintendo a really falling behind.

[Kikori]

We'll get RE: Revelations!

[JasonMaivia]

We'll get RE: Revelations!

...which will probably be later ported to Vita.

[ejamer]

I agree with the "share the love" sentiment. These are great games that found an appreciative audience on Wii, but expanding that audience is all good in my mind.  HD graphics won't hurt a bit either.

[Chocobo_Rider]

There are two ways to look at this: one could be bitter that some more Wii-exclusives are being lost to the competition, but a more mature stance would be to say "sure, spread the love."

Absolutely.  I mean, it's all about what's fair right?

The HD consoles got ports of one-time Wii exclusives like No More Heroes, HotD Overkill, GoldenEye 007, Dead Space Extraction, NBA Jam, de Blob 2 ... that's just off the top of my head so I'm sure I'm forgetting some.

Anyway, we can be mature about it because the Wii got ports of ... hmm... Chop 'til You Drop was more of a variant than a port.  What else.... umm... help me out here guys?

[NWR_insanolord]

It's a hell of a lot easier to port from Wii to PS3/360 than the other way around, and while I personally like Chop Till You Drop the results aren't generally very good when you do do it. The Wii would have gotten tons of ports from the other systems if it were capable of running them; you can't really blame this on the developers.

[NWR_Neal]

Well, I'm glad I could check this thread out for a little while. I'm totally bailing before people lose their **** over companies not graphically downgrading their games for Wii.


Also, Modern Warfare Reflex


And this humorous potential PR bullet point for one of these downgrade games: "It's the same game you loved on 360/PS3, but without HD graphics! Or a strong online interface!"

[ejamer]

It would be interesting to compare sales figures: will these RE spin-offs fare better on PS3 than they did initially?


Weren't there a few "Wii exclusive" games ported after slow sales on Nintendo's console that didn't see notable sales on HD consoles either? I seem to remember hearing that No More Heroes, House of the Dead: Overkill, and Dead Space Extraction all saw tepid sales on HD consoles - but can't find any source now. If true then maybe sales figures have less to do with the console than the game being offered.

[Shaymin]

For most companies, these are the things they plop out for the profit to make their new stuff. Capcom is especially guilty of this.

[Chocobo_Rider]

It's a hell of a lot easier to port from Wii to PS3/360 than the other way around...

Not trying to be a jerk, but I really need to know WHY that is.  People say it and it makes no sense to me.  Instead of NPCs with 100 points of articulation running through the background, why not just give them 10 points of articulation?  Why not scale the 50 destructible environments down to 10?  Doesn't the lower resolution alone mean you don't need as much horsepower?

We need specific answers!

...the results aren't generally very good when you do do it. The Wii would have gotten tons of ports from the other systems if it were capable of running them; you can't really blame this on the developers.

If they put in the effort, the sales would follow.  So yes, we can blame the developers.  They crammed SF4 to the iPhone but not to the Wii? I've played RE5 on the PC all the way through.  There is nothing at all that stands out in my mind that RE4 didn't prove was possible on the Wii.

So, what the heck... ?

Weren't there a few "Wii exclusive" games ported after slow sales on Nintendo's console that didn't see notable sales on HD consoles either? I seem to remember hearing that No More Heroes, House of the Dead: Overkill, and Dead Space Extraction all saw tepid sales on HD consoles - but can't find any source now. If true then maybe sales figures have less to do with the console than the game being offered.

Yes, I do believe that is true.

And this is why it further seems like it really doesn't matter how a game sells originally.  You can see cases for both sides of the philosophy.  "This sold poorly on Wii, let's spend money and surely it will do better in HD!" or "this sold great on Wii, imagine how well it will do once we enhance it for the HD consoles!"

So really, I don't think Wii sales really matter at all.  It's more a matter of how much "buzz" and "hype" the 'hardcore' community gives to a game. 

And this humorous potential PR bullet point for one of these downgrade games: "It's the same game you loved on 360/PS3, but without HD graphics! Or a strong online interface!"

Yea, cuz all these HD ports definitely use the PR bullet: "It's the same game you loved on Wii, but without the pointer (or motion) controls that made it unique!"

Plus, not sure about yours but my Wii has online built right in.  Works great.  I have over a thousand hours between Brawl, Kart and MHTri.

.................. so why do other companies not know this?

[broodwars]

It's a hell of a lot easier to port from Wii to PS3/360 than the other way around...

Not trying to be a jerk, but I really need to know WHY that is.  People say it and it makes no sense to me.  Instead of NPCs with 100 points of articulation running through the background, why not just give them 10 points of articulation?  Why not scale the 50 destructible environments down to 10?  Doesn't the lower resolution alone mean you don't need as much horsepower?

We need specific answers!

The problem with down-porting from consoles like the PS3 or 360 to the vastly technologically inferior Wii is that for all the time; money; and manpower you'd have to spend to take all your HD assets and strip them down so they could run on the thing (which is harder than you'd think), you might as well just build a new game from the ground-up for the Wii.  And it just doesn't make sense to do that for the Wii, especially as the years went on and increasingly more core-oriented Wii 3rd party games failed to sell on the platform.

On the flipside, when you move a game from the Wii to the HD consoles, you theoretically only have to change code and increase the output resolution as the assets are perfectly compatible with the existing hardware.  At that point, you're just adding features or assets instead of having to practically rebuild your entire game from scratch.  It's far easier and cheaper than going the other way around, and the HD consoles have long since established themselves as places where core-oriented games can sell.  I have my doubts that the Chronicles games will just based on them needing the Move, but Capcom can certainly try and it won't cost them that much.

It all comes down to cost and what companies would expect as the return on their investment.  Games sell on the HD consoles and the iOS devices.  Just Dance and Nintendo titles sell on the Wii.  It's not that hard to see why the Wii missed out on the titles it did, and it would probably have missed out on far fewer if Nintendo hadn't been so stuck in the past technologically when designing the Wii.

Besides, I don't know why you'd expect these games to stay on the Wii when multi-platform releases are so common these days.  The only thing originally keeping these games from crossing platforms was that there weren't the appropriate interface devices on the HD consoles.  Now there are, so these companies are trying to save cash in a down economy by raiding their old Wii titles.  You asked what you got in return for Wii titles now traveling to the HD consoles?  Several years of exclusivity.  That's more than most 3rd party titles can say on the HD consoles.

[MegaByte]

It's a hell of a lot easier to port from Wii to PS3/360 than the other way around...

Not trying to be a jerk, but I really need to know WHY that is.  People say it and it makes no sense to me.  Instead of NPCs with 100 points of articulation running through the background, why not just give them 10 points of articulation?  Why not scale the 50 destructible environments down to 10?  Doesn't the lower resolution alone mean you don't need as much horsepower?

It's simple. To get a Wii game to work on a more powerful system, you "just" need to translate the code. Then you can upgrade the models/textures if you want. To get a 360/PS3 game to work on Wii, you have to, at best, reduce the components of the models/textures, and at worst, redo the runtime of the game to fit within speed and memory constraints, which is essentially rewriting the whole game. With such a large difference in power, it's far easier to add than it is to subtract (the resolution difference is a minimal consideration compared to the amount of data/polys/effects/etc. that can be pushed, which is something Nintendo either didn't consider or severely underestimated). Usually, the multiplatform devs don't even try this and get separate developers to handle the Wii versions in order to get them out at the same time as the HD counterparts.

[Chocobo_Rider]

It's a hell of a lot easier to port from Wii to PS3/360 than the other way around...

Not trying to be a jerk, but I really need to know WHY that is.  People say it and it makes no sense to me.  Instead of NPCs with 100 points of articulation running through the background, why not just give them 10 points of articulation?  Why not scale the 50 destructible environments down to 10?  Doesn't the lower resolution alone mean you don't need as much horsepower?

It's simple. To get a Wii game to work on a more powerful system, you "just" need to translate the code. Then you can upgrade the models/textures if you want. To get a 360/PS3 game to work on Wii, you have to, at best, reduce the components of the models/textures, and at worst, redo the runtime of the game to fit within speed and memory constraints, which is essentially rewriting the whole game. With such a large difference in power, it's far easier to add than it is to subtract (the resolution difference is a minimal consideration compared to the amount of data/polys/effects/etc. that can be pushed, which is something Nintendo either didn't consider or severely underestimated). Usually, the multiplatform devs don't even try this and get separate developers to handle the Wii versions in order to get them out at the same time as the HD counterparts.

OK, so that makes sense.  I thank you.

But then, let's say companies want money (fair assumption?).

Wouldn't it still be a great cost/benefit analysis to put a separate team on game that is conceptually/artistically/philosophically finished and possibly DOUBLE (given the Wii's install base and accounting for the myth that Wii gamers don't buy "hardcore" games) the size of the net you cast on the audience?

The only problem of course would be to require that other team to put in the same amount of effort as the primary team.  Which is where the third parties tend to initiate the crap game > crap sales > no effort > crap game cycle.

[NWR_insanolord]

A team with enough talent to pull that off would produce more revenue for the company by making a completely different game. And there's no way a Wii version would double the audience; even if Wii gamers would buy core-focused games, which they never proved to do consistently, it wouldn't be anywhere near the install base.

[Chocobo_Rider]

A team with enough talent to pull that off would produce more revenue for the company by making a completely different game. And there's no way a Wii version would double the audience; even if Wii gamers would buy core-focused games, which they never proved to do consistently, it wouldn't be anywhere near the install base.

Why would it take less talent to produce an entirely new game than a 480p version of a finished concept?

Also, where are the numbers that suggest Wii owners do not buy quality core-focused games?  Cuz I can point to a few million-sellers that say otherwise.

And you can debate the exact percentage by which the Wii audience increases your potential, but by your proclamation, you think 100% of the PS3/60 audience is "core-focused"? I didn't either.

[NWR_insanolord]

It wouldn't take less talent; what I said was it would produce more revenue, which it would do because an original game would sell better than an inferior Wii port of a PS3/360 game.

You can cherry pick titles that sold well to make it look like core-focused games sold well on Wii, but it wasn't at all consistent. It was a gamble to produce a core game on Wii (unless you were Nintendo, and even then it wasn't a sure thing), and it was a lot less so on the other consoles.

I don't think the PS3 and 360 are 100% core, but they certainly have a much higher proportion than the Wii.

[NWR_Neal]

I broke my one rule...

Anyway, go and find the sales data for Sega's Thor and Captain America games. They had proven Wii developers (Red Fly, HVS) working on separate versions of the game. If they sold better (without looking I can tell you this much: they didn't), then maybe your point holds weight.

And how many of those "core-focused million sellers" aren't Nintendo games? Just Dance isn't a core game...

[Chocobo_Rider]

Insano/Neal-

Please, cite us some sales figures.  Otherwise your beliefs are only based on internet ramblings from mostly """hardcore""" sources.  In other words, meaningless.  And there is no point in a meaningless discussion.  But I'll go one more round while we wait for those figures.....

Insano-

So in your hypothetical, the Wii game is bad and the brand new IP becomes a success?  Since when are new IPs a safer bet than quality, multi-platform releases? Remember, my argument was that QUALITY(read:effort) makes the difference.

Anyway, I've said it a million times, it's not about cherry-picking.  It's about a simple formula, quality + mainstream appeal = success.  And yes, as much as "hardcore" gamers may want to deny it, their beloved AAA, blockbuster games are quite mainstream.

Tatsunoko v Capcom may have been quality, but it was obscure.  Sales I'm sure were moderate.
NBA Jam had a lot of hype, but they completely neutered the Wii version.  Why? Can the Wii not handle a shinier version of a 16-bit game? =P

I'm sure the PS3/60 has a higher percentage of core-trending gamers.  My point was, what is the sheer volume? I would argue it's rather favorable for the Wii, but few games have given the audience a chance to prove that.

Neal-

I'm not sure movie-liscenced games are a fair benchmark for core-appeal, are you?

It's sad that first party games always have to be taken out of this discussion.  Mario platforming, Link adventuring and Samus exploring were the very origin of core, American, console gaming.  But they don't have enough blood and sex to be """hardcore""", right?

[broodwars]

Please, cite us some sales figures.  Otherwise your beliefs are only based on internet ramblings from mostly """hardcore""" sources.  In other words, meaningless.

You mean like your continual insistence that incredibly neutered ports of popular multiplatform HD games would sell incredibly well on the Wii?  Just from watching this discussion, you've produced about as much evidence to back up your claims as anyone else has, so it's just a tad bit hypocritical for you to demand numbers from other people to refute your own beliefs.

[Chocobo_Rider]

Please, cite us some sales figures.  Otherwise your beliefs are only based on internet ramblings from mostly """hardcore""" sources.  In other words, meaningless.

You mean like your continual insistence that incredibly neutered ports of popular multiplatform HD games would sell incredibly well on the Wii?  Just from watching this discussion, you've produced about as much evidence to back up your claims as anyone else has, so it's just a tad bit hypocritical for you to demand numbers from other people to refute your own beliefs.

No, my friend.  Because, as you'll remember from a previous conversation.  I always looked up sales data on vgchartz.  However, vgchartz is not allowed here and my list of million sellers was dubbed "cherry picking" so I didn't bring them up. I want to see where you all get your numbers from.

All clear now? 

PS - incredibly neutered =/= quality.  Did I not mention quality in my previous posts? Oh no, I did.... you must have missed it ;-)

[NWR_Neal]

To be fair, I told you to find the sales figures for the game. I could do it, but you also said my point was invalid, and I have much better things to do.

Nintendo games get taken out of the discussion because we're talking about third party games going from Wii to 360/PS3 and vice versa. Nintendo games ain't getting ported to 360/PS3 anytime soon.

But seriously, what Nontendo """"core""""" titles have sold a million on Wii?

Once again, I could look this up, but I'm not going to.




EDIT: And get your fucking facts right. NBA Jam wasn't "neutered" on the Wii. It was made for the Wii. For ****'s sake, dude. All that dev team did was love the Wii and then everyone got burned that Corporate EA told them to port it to 360/PS3 because their main NBA title was terrible. It's not their fault the game sold better on 360/PS3.


And I don't need to cite ****, because if it sold better on Wii, the new game would be on Wii.