Rein: Wii is "just not our medium" Comments by Robert Purchese

I cant imagine a muscle bound Mii taking care of the locust anyways.

Another Eurogamer 'bait' artcle...
no wonder this site is going down the shitter.

Could port epic pinball to the wii though

Rein has said this before and he's right. The stuff Epic does, and the same goes for id Software as well I guess, is just not something the Wii is suitable for.

I see his point but I don't think family friendly Ninty would want Epic anyway....

what would be the point in doing it for the wii?

the hall mark of epic games are top end graphics and pretty extreme violence

why should they change that just to put it on the wii

and spazmo, this is an excerpt from gamesindustry.biz, why does that mean eurogamer is going down the shitter

I'm really hoping for their next game the soldiers, guns and environments will all have more polygons/higher resolution textures. That's real innovation, not this gimmicky "inventiveness" and "creativity" that Wii development apparently stimulates.

@robg

Shut up you silly tosser.

He's not saying 'creativity sucks', he's saying that Epic know where their development strengths are, so they play to those strengths rather than branching off and creating something utterly shit, which happens far too often.

A big shame, the Wii controls would absolutely rock for the shooters they make :((
Also, they might have been one of the few 3rd parties to actually push the Wii graphically.

I wonder if the new Wii audience would like their games though...

That's real innovation, not this gimmicky "inventiveness" and "creativity" that Wii development apparently stimulates.

" I know instead of making the player press a button wii'll make they shake the wii-mote"

"I'm really hoping for their next game the soldiers, guns and environments will all have more polygons/higher resolution textures. That's real innovation"

Jesus. If you're right, gaming will be dead in ten years.

If it's technical challenge they're after I would have thought the Wii would have provided the perfect medium for them to show off what Epic can do. Numerous technical folk claim the Wii still has untapped technical potential, why not take up the challenge?

I suspect "image" has quite a lot to do with it.

It doesn't surprise me that Epic don't want to support the Wii. While UE2 might run on it OK they're very much focused on UE3 and that definitely would not run on the Wii without severe compromise. I can't imagine for one second that the majority of the Wii's target audience would want to play UTIII or Gears of War and even if they did, there's a good chance that they'd own a 360 or even a PS3 anyway.

Interestingly, Eraser, I think id would be quite interested in developing for Wii - cf Carmack's work on Doom RPG and Orcs And Elves, simply to learn new platforms - but were they to do something on it, it wouldn't be idtech-engine based.

By contrast, I think Epic are focused on one single channel, so it probably makes sense for them to stick to that channel.

Also, I hear they had real difficulty to get textures to pop-in at incovenient enough moments on the Wii.

Why optimise for a relatively limited platform when you can be lazy and rely on ever growing processor speed to do the work for you?

True elite coders/designers don't need high end hardware to show off their skills.

"Our area of expertise is the more high-end consoles and things that push technology higher."

Some say the wii is pushing technology higher. Just not graphical technology.

Rein: Epic blinkers. Still if he wants to exclude his product from the majority of the world's consoles, that's up to him. Nintendo don't seem to give a flying fuck :)

ok i'm going to have to call bull$hit on that one cause they're biased. ofc they don't want the wii to be a success. they made so much money from the unreal 3 engine can you imagine people wanting to play games that are not made with that? they'll lose tons of money.

heck even Valce pc gamings king (blizzard is the queen) are thinking of doing wii. why? cause they aren't biased


EDIT : sorry i read the article somewhere else first and the author was also talking about the time they said wii is a kid's toy

Not our "area of expertise"?!

So what is? The interminably crashing engines? The broken-on-release and half-patched PC versions of Gears of War and UT3?!

Whats the big deal?

Let Epic do what Epic do. There seems to be this attitude with gamers that every game has to be suitable for everyone. It doesn't.

There are plenty games out their that take great advantage of the Wii. For every gamer that loves Super Smash Brothers there is one that loves Gears of War. While graphics are not everything there are plenty of people who like games that are nice to look at, it enhances there enjoyment, the same as for other people the new controls and creativeness the wii provides enhances their enjoyment.

Also developers have to weigh up if its worth porting a game to the Wii. By making a drastically different console Nintendo took the risk that they would loose out on some games that might not be well suited to the Wii, or might not sell well, while also gain other new games that are.

If everything were the same, games would get pretty dull. Nothing wrong with specialist or niche developers.

'Some say the wii is pushing technology higher. Just not graphical technology. '

Some others also say that waggle != technology/pushing forward. I don't see why people keep bringing this up.

Makes sence really, after all Epic have always been in the front line for pushing graphic technology forward.

"While UE2 might run on it OK..."

I seriously doubt that the wii will run the UE2 decently. Frontlines runs on the UE2 and it looks well beyond wii games. These engines are not developed with wii architecture in mind.

No, the wii needs to get it's own engines, designed from the ground up for it, I'm pretty sure that such an engine will shame most games out there. I don't think epic would be interested in such a thing though.

"waggle != technology/pushing forward"

Are you oversimplyfying because you are oversimple? Quite how we are still getting idiots wo can only see the wii-mote and nunchuck as 'waggle only' is beyond me.

"Quite how we are still getting idiots wo can only see the wii-mote and nunchuck as 'waggle only' is beyond me."

Maybe because a very large percentage of Wii games don't use the Wiimote properly and just end up being wagglefests that would lose nothing from using a standard controller.

Yes, there are good uses of the Wiimote, but not many.

"If they're pushing graphics technology why are they working with a graphically limited console like the 360 and not exclusively on the PC? "

Maybe because PC tech is too nebulous. To push a boundary you need to have a fixed goalpost. With PC's you just shovel more money in the case to get better graphics. No fun in that, no challenge.

What he means is he can't port the engine. Of course that sounds a bit naff, so he starts talking about sculptures and painters.

Obviously Epic can do what they want, but ignoring the console and handheld with the highest install base worldwide doesn't seem like smart business.

But at least they aren't making a half assed attempt at doing Nintendo games either (I'm looking at you Atari, AITD for wii was awfull).

"Obviously Epic can do what they want, but ignoring the console and handheld with the highest install base worldwide doesn't seem like smart business. "

I think money is one of epic's smallest worries atm. They are one of those few developers that can pretty much do as they please (blizzard being another).

to the people that think UT3 or GOW have nice graphics (over and above anything on the Wii specifically) - this is subjective in the same way gameplay or taste in music is.

all this bloke is saying is the Wii hardware doesn't render enough polygons or specific shader effects (brown and bumpy) etc. to represent his 'house' style and hes sticking with it. fair enough. i have no doubt a version of unreal 3 or gears of war could be made on the Wii - it just wouldn't look the same.

his painting/sculpture analogy is pure bull because at the end of the day you could do any game (gameplay wise) i've seen from ps3 or 360 on the wii.

@Xerx3s - The Splinter Cell games used UE2 on the PS2 and GameCube so I am certain that the Wii can at least run that particular engine. Of course, the engine has evolved and scales to whatever hardware you're using hence the reason the Splinter Cell games always looked vastly superior on the Xbox as it has shaders and all that jazz which the PS2 and GameCube lacked.

HEAVYface - "his painting/sculpture analogy is pure bull because at the end of the day you could do any game (gameplay wise) i've seen from ps3 or 360 on the wii."

Of course, you can if you split the game over a number of loads and severely tone down the visuals. That's true of any game on any system ever bar rare exceptions. I remember when the Atari ST and Amiga came out, many of their popular games where released on the Commodore 64 and Spectrum, two previous generation computers with inferior hardware. Of course, they didn't look or play quite as well. ;)

WTF is he talking about???

"That's like asking a sculptor when he's going to start painting."

That's a plain pathetic excuse just to cover the fact they don't have the will to do some stuff on a machine that sure doesn't have the sheer power of a 360/PS3 but kick ballz on the controls aspect....

Besides have he ever heard of Michelangelo?? He was a painter, a sculptur and an architect... Rein must take a trip in Florence and Rome to see what Michelangelo was capable of... he might even learn something!

He talks about graphic capabilities... well, why they don't just concentrate on the PC then, as it has far more power than the consoles.... oh, wait!!! because PC isn't profitable as console are!!! That's a poor excuse, asshole!!!

Real development teams don't bury themselves into a hole like this.

R* Table tennis is a prime example of this. A damn fine game on all formats, and totally outside the box for R*'s normal games.

Yay for small minded developers who put all of gamings worth in visuals and forget that it's an interactive medium!

Hooray for people who think bleeding edge technology is purely about advancing exactly the same thing everybody else has been advancing for the past 40 years!

Hooray for lack of historical insight, context and thought about what he's said on his part, especially every other developer who complains that apparently whatever visuals are being given aren't enough!

Hooray for lack of business sense and reduction in sales!

Hooray!

"Real development teams don't bury themselves into a hole like this."

The clothes made from $100 bills that Epic wear make your statement, and all others like it, sound rather pathetic and needy.

Mr. Rein: "I'm sorry mr. whiner, but can you speak up, my money suit is rustling like a bastard"

They dont NEED to cater for the Wii. They dont NEED to water down the fantastic visuals they get from UE3.

Frankly, something like gears or UT3 would look like complete ass on the Wii as it's resolution would turn everything into a highly pixellated slush. Epic understand this, and so should all of you.

the point is you would never have the same visual target if you were developing for the wii and 360. this guys only interested in normal maps and other shader effects, and thats fine.

i don't think anybody thinks the Wii would visually be able to match the 360 version for specific effects, but you could make a visually interesting wii game using the same basic game design.

if you take a look there are some nice looking Wii games out there.....

"the point is you would never have the same visual target if you were developing for the wii and 360"

Great, so the visual target would be shit on BOTH consoles.

The Wii is NEVER going to be able to support an engine like UE3. It simply doesnt have enough grunt. The reason Wii games look good is they use shaded objects a lot, rather than push around lots of expensive (in terms of memory and GPU power) textures. UE3 is built for shaded textures, thus will never be compatible.

I dont understand why people are saying Epic should support the Wii. They cater to the wronf audience and use the wrong technology for the Wii. Just leave Epic to do their thing..

no the visual target would be platform specific, for example the 360 version would use all the hardware strengths on that platform, ditto the Wii version.

i suppose i could draw an analogy using zelda on the gamecube. wind waker and twilight princess are obstensibly the same game but with different visual targets.

the developer would acknowledge the strengths of each platform, because like i posted previously, gameplay wise theres nothing on 360 or ps3 the wii wouldn't be able to do. its just this guy doesn't want the bother, and like before thats fine, but all this bullshit graphical snobbery is just, well, bullshit.

they should make a game for wii
to show how talented they really are
instead of polishing up games they've already done!
and when are they going to add more colour to greys of war
grey,brown,red and abit of green!
should have put it on wii with them colours!

He's simply saying that Wii is not their thing, not going to branch out into Wii development because they want to stick with the more powerful consoles that let them make the games they want to make.

As a very obvious example; GOW2 could not have been done on the Wii as it is, no amount of innovation in the controls would allow them to do the same thing.

I really don't understand the hostility directed at this statement, he's not saying anything we don't all know (i.e. the other consoles are more powerful than the Wii and Epic have no plans to do anything with the Wii). Now if he pissed himself laughing at the idea or something or sneered at the idea, then we'd have something to bitch about. But he didn't he was, in fact, very tactful.

As for Wii stimulating "inventiveness" and "creativity", well, I can't wait for that to start happening. So far the best use of it that I've seen is Metroid (where it mostly emulated a mouse, with occasional twisting) and Zelda (where it also emulated a mouse). Conduit is starting to look really good too (mouse :) ). Outside of the FPS though, the Wii remote is normally just a gimmick where you "shake the wii remote to do X" unless I missed something awesome. Hopefully the new Wii remote MotionPlus will change that.

Edit: Well some of that made no sense. :)