Nintendo Wii: "underpowered"?

While most developers and producers (including big ones like EA and Ubisoft) have said that they are fully behing the Wii, a few developers (”lazy”? naaah) have said that it is “underpowered” for the games they are developing for consoles like the PS3 and the Xbox 360. Gamers, in forums - especially younger ones - also complain about the Wii, calling it “a souped-up GameCube with a new controller”. It’s as if it was CGA in the age of VGA - though those gamers are probably too young to know what CGA was. :)

That image, however, is wrong - and it just shows that people are simply not thinking.

The Wii is said to be “2-3 times as powerful” as the GC. Right? On paper, that seems to be nothing compared to the multi-core, multi-gigahertz monsters that the 360 and the PS3 are.

That’s a way to look at it, sure. But think of it in another way. Do you think that the current generation of games - PS2, original Xbox, GameCube - are absolutely, downright ugly? Ugly in a way that they are unplayable? Do you find games like God of War, Gran Turismo 4, Halo 2, Metroid Prime or the better-looking GC version of Resident Evil 4 “ugly”?

I don’t think so (unless you are SO young that the 360 is your first console ever. :)) Well then, the Wii will beat all of those in terms of graphics. Easily.

1 Response to “Nintendo Wii: "underpowered"?”


  1. 1 Pilotgeek

    Face it, the Wii IS underpowered. That DOESN’T mean it’s crap, only that we won’t see as many games ported over to it. Of course you can get great graphics with the Wii if you try, but the development costs will be higher in order to take advantage of optimizing the hardware. Also, yes it is a souped-up Gamecube. It has better graphics hardware, but the processor is almost identical to the gamecube:

    -”Broadway, the Wii’s CPU, is a derivative of the PowerPC 750 CL clocked at 729Mhz,” and that the “Hollywood” GPU has “no notable increases in programmability” over the Gamecube’s “Flipper” GPU. The end result? “The Wii has the processing power of one-and-a-half GameCubes with no noteworthy increases in functionality.”- **

    ** http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2007/09/gamecube-1-5-the-numbers-behind-the-wiis-technology.ars

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