https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/26/arts/video-games-graphics-budgets.html
"That strategy had shown weaknesses through the 1990s and 2000s, when the Nintendo 64 and GameCube had weaker visuals and sold fewer copies than Sony consoles. But now the tables have turned. Industry figures joke about how a cartoony game like Luigi’s Mansion 3 on the Nintendo Switch considerably outsells gorgeous cinematic narratives on the PlayStation 5 like Final Fantasy VII Rebirth."
The article goes on to note studios that have been closing and games that didn't sell (Suicide Squad).
Personally excited to see the Switch continue but also give us just enough power to ideally get to more stable games (Zelda Echoes) or getting games to 60fps which I believe adds to the gameplay for certain genres. And of course opening us Nintendo folks to more games on the go (please bring me Silent Hill 2).
by txdline
39 Comments
That’s why they morphed the console division and the handheld division into one console, one team got it. Nintendo has made their bread and butter on “fun games.” Maybe the GameCube and Wii didn’t do crazy numbers but those were fun consoles. That’s what’s most important. People who played Nintendo only complain about the “first party” nature Nintendo has to take with its consoles being hindered in terms of power.
That and the Gameboy/DS pipeline into regular consoles can’t be overlooked.
Nintendo 64 did not have weaker visuals. It could handle more polygons than PS but didn’t have the memory for complex textures, audio, or video. N64 was peak visuals from 97 to 99
Of all the consoles where Nintendo was lower power than the Sony competition they went with the two that weren’t.
It’s funny they mention the 64 and GameCube. They were still very much pushing graphics capability at that time. The GameCube was more powerful than the PS2. The 64 mostly was more powerful, it just had cartridges and a few weaknesses
40 years my ass. The NES and SNES had top tier graphics, the N64 was groundbreaking, and the GameCube had the best graphics card of it’s generation.
Nintendo GameCube had weaker visuals? I thought it was more powerful than the PS2 in terms of spec?
The industry as a whole needs to figure out how to navigate a world in which development is so much more expensive. If a game is 4k, then the assets needs to stand up to a 4k display, and that can take a whole team of artists making dirt and rocks and stuff. I’m glad that there are studios doing this, but not every studio can afford it, and it shows.
Nintendo’s approach may not be the way forward, because their R&D also seems expensive, and they have brand value that doesn’t apply to other companies. But games will probably see a decrease in graphical fidelity (or more stylized designs to cover it), other than a few tentpole AAA titles.
Arguably the entire indie gaming scene has been doing that.
I don’t know if it’s anyone’s message as much as just how it plays out.
Isn’t Luigi’s Mansion 3 like one of the best-looking games on the Switch?
The Gamecube had the best graphics card of its generation. That’s not why it sold less than the PS2. It had no Internet and no DVD player. The huge thing back then was having a console that was multi-purpose.
The only issue with N64 and GC was media storage, they were fine (if not great), graphically speaking.
The power gap shrinking and diminishing returns are starting to become apparent. The Switch was able to punch above its weight to run 3rd party “out of reach” games like DOOM or Witcher 3. Next gen I think the Switch 2 will comfortably be able to run a lot more 3rd party games that still look good today.
It’s not as powerful as a PS5 or series x and won’t get games like GTA 6, but even for those systems we are really starting to see diminishing returns. GTA 6 and Intergalactic look like gorgeous games so far, but comparing GTA 6 to RDR2 and Intergalactic to TLOU2, the graphical leap isn’t close to what we saw from GTA 5 to RDR2 or TLOU 1 to TLOU 2, and those are generational leaps similar.
nothing wrong with more fidelity, but admittedly stylization will always beat it imo
They held this view in the handheld division since the beginning but in the home console space they had competitive specs until the Wii era
Wait what? N64 was more powerful than PS1 and GC was more powerful than PS2.
Good graphics does not always mean a good game!
I get the gist of the article but they are just flat out wrong about the N64 and GameCube. They were both more powerful than the Sony consoles of that era. Nintendo competed pretty fiercely in the home console market in terms of graphical tech until the Wii came out
This would have been a much better article if they had focused on Nintendo’s philosophy with handhelds and how that eventually became the basis for their home console strategy. The Gameboy was a device that was made using much older parts so they could make huge profit margins just off the hardware. The same philosophy would carry through with the GB Color, GBA and DS, where it handedly beat out its competition that had much more powerful systems.
More like 18 years. The N64 and Gamecube were both powerhouses. The shift that came with the Wii is what gave them the identity they have now. They realized what every indie dev knows which is that gameplay is king, and people will play games with “worse” visuals as long as they offer a fun gameplay experience. That’s not to say you can’t have both, FF7 is actually a pretty good example of doing both, but if a developer is going to choose one to focus on to keep their projects within a reasonable budget I would much rather them do what Nintendo has been doing.
The gamecube was more powerful than the ps2, hack journalist.
This is 100% false (but then it’s from the NYT, so what would you expect). I can still remember back when the SNES came out, Nintendo did a whole series in Nintendo Power to tout the graphical superiority of the SNES over the Genesis (more colors, more background layers, transparency, Mode 7, etc). It’s different now because no one is buying consoles for the graphics, anyone who cares about that would just build a PC instead.
Who wrote this? Seriously?
While the PS1 certainly advantages over the N64, actual graphic capabilities were not one of them, especially when it came to 3D. The only thing PS1 had an edge over the N64 graphics wise of was the easier use of FMV due to disc storage and design.
The same can be said with the PS2 and GCN. Just look up the differences between their respective versions of RE4.
Then why was the old slogan ‘now you’re playing with power?’
I don’t know… Mario sunshine was beautiful.
>Industry figures joke about how a cartoony game like Luigi’s Mansion 3 on the Nintendo Switch considerably outsells gorgeous cinematic narratives on the PlayStation 5 like Final Fantasy VII Rebirth.
I have never seen this joked about in my life.
A lot of people think that developers choose stylized artstyle because of hardware and not because of an artistic choice and a more powerful console will make Nintendo switch all their franchises to realistic artstyle.
Just look how many people don’t know that engines like Unreal can make cartoony artstyle.
There definitely was a time Nintendo cared, they had the superfx on the SNES, the entire point of the 64 in N64 was how many bits it had and the GameCube was still more powerful than the PS2 by a respectable amount
Nah, it was with the Wii when they just stopped competing with Sony and MS and just started to do their own thing.
Honestly as long as the game looks decent and runs smoothly that’s all I care about
Ive had a ps4 and a ps5. do you know how many games had good graphics but the game was super shallow and didnt offer much in fun gameplay so many
People are choosing the Nintendo console and games over Sony not because of the graphics or lack there of they’re doing it because they consistently turn out higher quality games and they choose to focus on quality over quantity, including not forcing games out of development before they’re ready. It’s missing the entire point to focus on the graphics as the primary indicator of whether or not people will buy the game.
Sorry, the GameCube had weaker visuals than it’s competition? Are you joking?
My favorite game I played in 2024 was Tactical Breach Wizards.
It looks great for what it needs to do, but the story and design feel like they have had 500X the love of most (not all) big budget games.
Made by a small team over 6 years, and it shows. I love games like this.
The thing is you might say Nintendo gets the bigger end of the stick because they can produce less costly games than Sony but at the end of the day both Nintendo and Sony realize that not having direct competition is more profitable than beating your competition. Nintendo might have to worry more about graphics to market their games if they had direct competition but they position themselves so that they don’t, and that’s been mutually beneficial for both them and Sony since the Wii.
So yeah, the switch’s successor needs to run any first party game at 60fps imo because that’s just a standard people expect now but beyond that graphics will continue to not be a focus of Nintendo’s marketing.
The whole article seems flawed, they picked Nintendo consoles that weren’t weaker graphically and the idea that graphics don’t matter wasn’t true either.
The real difference is that Nintendo has had a focus on games having distinct graphical styles for their titles rather than purely pushing the photorealistic limit of a system as that approach is more prone to looking dated and aging poorly compared with more stylistic choices.
The n64 is a more powerful system than the ps1, but the ps1 beat the n64 in games and systems sold due to the n64 using carts instead of cds. The carts cost more to make than cds and could hold less data than ps1 discs, which made some third-party devs like Square to make games for Sony instead
The gamecube was the second most powerful system of that generation but lost due to nintendo using mini dvds, which could hold less data than regular dvds, which lead to some devs to abandoning the game cube because their games wouldn’t fit on the system.
Another reason the gamecube sold worse than xbox and ps2 was due to a lack of features, ps2 could play dvd, cd, ps1 games, could play online. The og xbox had xbox live, dlc, xbla games, cds, a hard-drive, dvds (although you needed an adapter). The gamecube could play online, but only 3 games supported it, and it could play gba games, but you needed to buy an adapter and the disc to do so.
That dosen’t mean the gamecube and n64 were bad, they both had great libraries and a great legacy , but due to poor judgment and decisions, they led to worse sales of the systems compared to the competition at the time (they still beat sega)
Huh? N64 was cutting edge, dwarfing the PS1 and GameCube was only behind Xbox in power. They were always pushing limits of graphical tech until the Wii era.
Article makes no sense and the author doesn’t quite seem to know what they’re talking about.
Best selling consoles of each generation since the console wars really started:
* SNES outsold the more powerful Genesis
* PS1 outsold the more powerful N64
* PS2 outsold the more powerful Gamecube & Xbox
* Wii outsold the more powerful Xbox 360 & PS3
* PS4 outsold the LESS powerful Wii U & Xbox One
* Switch outsold the more powerful PS5 & Xbox Series
It’s been very clear that power is not a major factor.
Graphics are nice but they shouldn’t come at the cost of gameplay. I would much rather games scale back their graphics if it meant shorter development times and less broken launches.
N64 had weaker visuals than the PS1?
Tell me the author doesn’t know what they were talking about without saying so explicitly. Other than texture quality, N64 visuals far surpassed the PS1.
The NY Times is complete propaganda and not a reputable news outlet.
As others have pointed out, Nintendo didn’t give up on the graphical muscle battle until Wii in 2006. The article is completely wrong.