Jay said:They said the same thing about the PS2 and it dominated the last generation regardless. There were plenty of talented developers who pushed the PS2 to its limits despite its supposed programming difficulty.
I don't recall developers saying that about the PS2. From what I've heard, the Cell processor is practically limitless in its capabilities, but that also makes it far more difficult to program for. So much so that the Orange Box for PS3 was delayed many times (from what I've heard).
Developers who don't want to do the work to make beautiful PS3 games have other options. That's why the 360 gets so many games first and the PS3 gets a poorly done port. There are good reasons why Kojima refuses to port MGS4 to the 360; it just can't handle the game as it is and he doesn't want to sacrifice the game's quality to put it on the 360.
Metal Gear Solid 4? The game that may as well be a movie for the first 20 minutes? If that's your idea of a quality game then it's no wonder the PS3's market share is so bad. MGS4 is my idea of a Final Fantasy equivalent. You spend so much time watching what's happening that you don't really play a game as much as you sit and watch a movie.
It's also possible that Nintendo will come up with a way to make all those titles easily "upgraded" to HD. HD seems to be the real crux of the argument right now anyway. The Wii doesn't do HD and for the "hardcore gamers" that's a must have. Sorry, I just don't buy it. A visually stunning game is nice to look at for a while, but if it doesn't have good gameplay, it won't last 5 minutes.
Oblivion might be great to look at, but the retarded beginning of beating up giant rats with a sword kind of turned me off. It really shouldn't take more than one stab to kill a rat.
You keep bringing up good gameplay like the PS3 doesn't have it. It does. Tons of it. More than I've been able to find on the Wii, frankly. All while managing to look good at the same time.
Sorry you didn't like Oblivion, but it seems to me you're stuck on one somewhat silly gameplay aspect in an otherwise outstanding game. And why exactly should a giant rat half the size of a man take only one stab to kill? Let's assume it should. If that's the case, why doesn't a headshot in COD immediately kill your opponent? I'll tell you why...while that may be more realistic, it would only make sense to apply the same rules to the player, and then the game becomes frustratingly hard. Games aren't real life and real life rules and mechanics don't work.
Have you even played COD? A headshot does immediately kill your opponent (at least COD4 does). If that's not how it is on PS3, then that's a shortcoming of that port. In the PC world, a headshot is an instant kill and has been since games like DOD. Maybe you weren't playing on Expert though. Maybe the PS3 doesn't have multiple difficulty levels. Most of the time the computer AI won't even take a shot at your head since it's a small target. I can assure you, on the PC, when playing online, headshots are instant kills. Yes, it's a little frustrating, but unless you're sitting still for long periods of time, you'll be difficult to hit.
As far as upgrading existing Wii titles to HD, it may be possible for them to run the games at 1080p, and while that may smooth the edges out a bit, that will do nothing for the texture resolution, which is where all the real detail comes from. They'll look like upscaled games, just like DVDs look like upscaled DVDs and not HD. And would that be much of a selling point? How many people bought the PS3 because it upscales PS1 and PS2 games?
All that's necessary for textures is to release high resolution ones. The same thing has been done in the PC world for ages. You simply download the "high-res" textures and boom, games instantly look better. If the developers have high res textures available, they could easily be downloaded for an instant game "upgrade".