Topic: Iwata Asks: Sin & Punishment 2 Team

[Karl Castaneda #2]

Nintendo's President sat down with key team members from Treasure to discuss Sin & Punishment: Star Successor.
 http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/newsArt.cfm?artid=22991

 A new iteration of Iwata Asks, a recurring interview column in which NCL President Satoru Iwata sits down with developers of upcoming games to discuss their development process, has been released. This edition details Treasure Co. Ltd.'s experience making Sin & Punishment: Star Successor. Along for the ride are Masato Maegawa (President of Treasure), Atsutomo Nakagawa (Director), and Software Planning and Development members Shingo Matsushita, Hitoshi Yamagami, and Yurie Hattori.    

Talking points include a look back at the N64's controller and how that affected development of the original Sin & Punishment, how Treasure refines their gameplay ideas in a jazz session-esque meeting of the minds, and the goal of getting the game to achieve 60 frames per second. On the latter point, the following took place:    

Maegawa:  Just about the time development of Sin & Punishment began, Super Mario Galaxy came out. When I heard it was being made at 60 frames per second, I thought we should do the same thing.    

Iwata:  (laughs)    

And there's your Iwata-laugh for the day. Read the whole interview here.

[NinGurl69 *huggles]

They did framerate GOOD.

[Stratos]

Sin and Punishment 2 has been in development that long? Wow.

[BlackNMild2k1]

It takes 3 people a long time to make a game like S&P2

[Halbred]

It takes 3 people a long time to make a game like S&P2

El Oh El

[Mop it up]

It's kind of sad how getting a game to run at 60fps is still considered an accomplishment. That should be a standard at this point.

[BlackNMild2k1]

with more power comes more push.

It's not like people get more powerful hardware so they can just max out frame rates of  last gen games. They gotta push the machine has hard as possible, and the new architectures* take time to master.


* non of this applies to Wii since it is exactly like programming for a more powerful gamecube, and until recently, no one outside of Nintendo themselves, have even tried to push the system at all, so if 60fps hasn't been a lock on Wii software up till this point, then that is just sad, pathetic and I apologize for wasting my time typing up this post and the conversation should carry on as if I said nothing.

[Ian Sane]

It's not like people get more powerful hardware so they can just max out frame rates of  last gen games. They gotta push the machine has hard as possible, and the new architectures* take time to master.

Yeah, and it isn't just raising the graphic quality.  If you want to add more stuff going on at once or have large environments it's going to affect the framerate.
 
I think we've gotten used to Nintendo having such consistent framerates because they've more or less plateaued in terms of pushing the hardware.  They seem to have reached a standard they're comfortable with and just concentrate on the game design.  So maybe we should be thrilled that Treasure has those old-school maximum-performance ambitions.

[Mop it up]

Three Nintendo-published titles come to mind with poor framerates, all Mario games.
Mario Kart Wii runs at 30fps in multiplayer. The graphics in that game are mediocre at best, so this is pathetic.
Mario Party 8 runs at 30fps on the boards, though fortunately the minigames are 60fps. Once again the game doesn't push the Wii, and also the GameCube Mario Party games run at 60fps.
Mario Strikers Charged has noticeable slowdown when the action picks up. The graphics in this game are more technically proficient than those other two games, but even so, it doesn't seem like anything that should cause slowdown.

I'm sure there are others as well, though these ones came to mind because the lower framerate impacted the gameplay. The Wii is supposed to put gameplay over graphics, so I feel that no game should sacrifice the framerate for pretty visuals or anything else. That's just me though, framerate dips don't bother everyone.

[vudu]

It's kind of sad how getting a game to run at 60fps is still considered an accomplishment. That should be a standard at this point.

Incomniac recently announced that they're no longer going to focus on making their games run at 60 FPS.  It seems like a step backwards, but in all fairness I have a hard time arguing against their case.

According to the developer, there is no marketing premium, or review score value, in supporting the highest-possible refresh rate common to all HDTVs. ... To back up his arguments, Acton has produced interesting data based on a large number of game reviews, which indicates that while there is a clear link between graphics and final score, there is little to no evidence that frame-rate has as much influence. He also polled readers of the Insomniac website, and found that while 16 per cent of respondents were firmly in favour of 60FPS, most are not, with the majority favouring a solid frame-rate that doesn't interfere with the gameplay.

[Caliban]

Naughty Dog recently announced that they're no longer going to focus on making their games run at 60 FPS.  It seems like a step backwards, but in all fairness I have a hard time arguing against their case.

Uh, that's Insomniac. Makers of the Ratchet and Clank series.

It's not really a step backwards. It's more of an adjusting of resources because they were just being wasted on something that isn't beneficial to the games they are making. Just look at the majority of games that are released for PS3/360 that are running in 720p... the games support 1080p, or so they say in the back, but they are running natively at 720p.

[vudu]

Uh, that's Insomniac. Makers of the Ratchet and Clank series.

Right you are!  Fixed.