That was quick. According to vgchartz , the Wii has now outsold the 360 despite its one-year lead.
This is a historic moment in video game history: The clearly graphically inferior console, launched later is outselling the graphically superior console.
This is good, of course.
(Bring on the historical arguments about other graphically inferior consoles coming out on top.)
Playstation 2 was graphically inferior to both the XBox and the GameCube. Although it did come out earlier. Still, I don’t know if it’s that historic.
But.. but… the Wii isn’t graphically inferior? I don’t even think it makes sense to think of a console as graphically inferior. It’s about the games, and when every other game on the 360 suffers from art direction from hell, it’s hard to understand what the point of all that polygon pushing power really is.
The Wii is quantitatively inferior in terms of polygon-power, but ‘being capable of drawing more polygons, more quickly’ is just a macho thing similar to a owning a V8 engine, or a Harley, it only remains impressive if you’re driving (i.e. hacking the GPU), but it soon becomes uninteresting (or even irritating) for everyone else.
The Harley is adored not least because of its looks, and besides, the real motorcycle connoiseurs all seem to like old (=underpowered) British bikes.
Machismo has its place in games, but is no substitute for having a creative, playful spirit, or ‘good taste’, for that matter. (“It’s the controllers, stupid”).
I’ve never considered buying a game console before, but I’m very tempted by the Wii as a family gift ‘from santa’ for Christmas. It captures the spirit of fun in gaming, is elegant and modest, rather than just promising macho GPU power which I neither want, nor care about.
Nintendo has done it before: its original Gameboy resisted against a number of more sophisticated (in terms of hardware specifications) handhelds.
I guess it depends what we are measuring but the Nintendo consoles have never been powerful machines. The NES was not superior in CPU speed to other consoles at the time.
Well as someone who has followed games consoles since the Atari 2600, and having both the Wii and the 360, the wii still makes me feel “better”, the wii is a fun family or group orientated machine, this can be seen by how impossible it is to buy the extra controllers on this system, the 360 controllers can be found anywhere cheap, the 360 is great for the graphically intense games, but the Wii just plays better, resident evil on the Wii feels so natural that even a friend who had never played with a wii was killing zombies in 5 minutes, My wife has even bought her own games for the Wii, something she would never even think about on the 360,
The 2 system are going to be compared on each of their merits, but Nintendo games have always been lighter, and more fun, the 360 games are generally more aggressive, racing, killing etc.., both have their place in the games world, you buy what suits you most, but unless you have both how can the argument of which is best be settled! they are both fantastic machines, and are aimed at different audiences. the price difference shows the difference in hardware, but also helps explain the balance of sales,.
If you have the money buy both, if not then buy the one that suits you best!
Raider 123
That’s quite a feat indeed. Hopefully this will prompt manufacturers to ditch the mine is bigger competition and produce innovative games.