Topic: Why does the Wii U get so much hate?

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@Ralek85 Oh man, I'm sort of glad that this is a tech talk and not a sales & marketing one, otherwise you'd have me seriously doubting my skills as a sales trainer...
I would dare to wager that if we were sitting at a table discussing this, then things would have been clear within the space of a few hours. Having only text and not being able to express (other than using CAPITALS, bold or italic text) any intonation and sentiment to certain words or pieces of text can really be a pain sometimes.
Then there was (or is) the possible partial language barrier and there seems to be something else going on that I just can't seem to figure out, because after having re-read all my own comments (yes indeed, you made me do that) I still think they make sense and SHOULD for all intent and purposes, have made my points clear by now.

But I am a very patient person: you need to be when you have young people in your team that haven't got the skill set or experience that I have, but on a forum where I go to enjoy myself in my spare time by talking about games and such, it is an entirely different story.

You're an okay guy though, so I will try one last time to explain to you what I actually mean.

First off, you still don't (completely) get vision vs visuals. And I even quoted the dictionary...
Let's take another approach to it (dangerous but I don't know what else to do because keeping a more or less similar line throughout all these comments didn't quite work as well as I had hoped):

The difference between the two is that visuals (and let's limit that to GAME visuals) are still there, even IF YOU DON"T LOOK AT THEM! (confused yet?) Because remember: visuals, aka graphics are part of what a game is made of. Video and sound. In game sound also doesn't go away just because you don't listen to it. A game has graphics and sound regardless of you looking/listening or not. (Seems obvious, right?)

Now, VISION is what YOU see, ALL THE TIME. Both in games, movies and real life. See? BIG difference. That is why when you are directing your eyes to a certain point and look at it, the image that you see at that EXACT moment is your FIELD OF VISION and every time you move your head, that field of vision changes. Also, eyes do NOT have a resolution, frame rate or whatever other technical game related numbers we have discussed over these past few days.

So, what seems to have happened here according to me is that you mixed all these things up together with the whole topic of game engine scaling. In short, it has turned into quite a mess and I have to say that I was quite surprised when I read your reaction, because we've taken a few steps back instead of forward. Hence the different approach this time.

Also, some things AREN'T debatable, as I've stated before, not because I say so, but because they simply are, so neither of us should have to be dedicating a lot of text to that in order to get our personal point across. Of course you are ALWAYS free to disagree, but facts remain just that: facts. Regardless of what you and I, or anybody else for that matter, think about it. And you're just going to have to take my word on some of the other things I've said or explained. I wouldn't have taken all this time and trouble to type it if there wasn't at the very least a large chunk of truth to it.

Non-debatable things or things we shouldn't dwell on are:

• The difference in fun factor of Nintendo games compared to other platforms (other games can be fun too, a lot of fun even but it is still not the same and even professional game journalists, websites, critics and even Sony's CEO agree on that)
• The design philosophy of Nintendo (it's theirs so they should know and the fact that it doesn't always turn out to be successful takes NOTHING away from the fact that they adhere to it)
• And tying into these two things is The Nintendo Difference (so much is written about it, again by professional game journalists, websites and critics and into so much detail that you can't ignore or debate it's existence)
• The Wii U GamePad being a gimmick. It is not, based on the ironclad definitions of the meaning of gimmick that I already gave, and these obviously don't apply to the GamePad. Same as with the philosophy: the fact that it isn't used correctly or to it's full potential takes NOTHING away from that.

If for whatever reason you don't agree with these things, then I would kindly ask you to leave it at that and we will just have to agree to disagree on these points, or you could dig into it by looking up more information on these facts and that might change your mind about some of them. Either way, let's not discuss them anymore.

Now, with that out of the way, let's re-run the whole reason why I explained the game engine part scaling to you in relation to more or less powerful consoles. (and the same can be applied to PC's of varying power as well, obviously)
The most important thing you should get out of it is that because the scaling can be done in a RELATIVE manner, there is very little loss of quality, the graphical intent (artistic view) can be kept in tact and when done by a professional programmer/developer (which most of them are) can look equally good regardless on what platform it is on.

Now let's keep it at that and take these things for facts. No need to go into it any deeper than that and wasting too much time on the fact that the artist COULD be feeling that his artistic view is compromised or not. It just isn't. PERIOD.

A big hint towards that fact is that the programmer/developer IS the artist, so he is in charge of the adapting and scaling and therefore can see to it himself that the way the game needs to look or come across isn't compromised, whether the game is on a high end gaming PC or on a smart device. Or a not so powerful console...

Then this:

"I'm confused, because I thought that was the entire point, why else would you decrease e.g. the number of dynamic lights or the number of waves, or reflections, or whatever, than to lower the strain on the system, to allow it, for example, to produce 'more' frames, of the 'scaled-down' image, thus keeping FPS up. Basically, don't you do "less" of any-one-time, so that any-one-time, happens more often thanks to that? In fact, wouldn't even the FoV, how 'wide' = "much" you see, at times be able to directly impact FPS?"

AGAIN: (field of) vision is the human factor, the eyes, what YOU see when YOU look at a certain point. (read: in general, since vision is not specifically game related) So what YOU see or how "wide" you see is NOT and NEVER WILL BE impacted by technical/graphical factors such as frame rates and resolutions and vice versa. If you still think it is, then I would love to hear all about the graphical resolution and frame rate of your backyard...
Lame joke, I know, but I hope it does get the point across so you can cut vision loose from whatever game related topic. It should drive the point home that vision is first and foremost related to your eyes. Hope you get that now, otherwise I'm going to be the one that is confused...

Okay, I'm going to HAVE to assume you understand that now, otherwise you might as well stop reading, because I'm going to build upon what I just said.
The thing with field of vision is that both film makers and game developers have the skill to make you look where THEY want, so they put something in your field of vision to distract you from anything else happening on the screen at the same time (this is also why I used the metaphor of the illusionist a couple of times, because they make use of the same principles as well.)

Smart programming can add to that whole "we want you to look here" trick by either making you see things that are not there or it can help to make things look better than they are. I will take the rain as example again: if you are outside and it is raining like hell, could you really tell how many drops are falling? No, you can't.
If you program that into a game, a subtle change in number of raindrops and spacing them out on the less powerful console (and keep in mind: we're talking VERY minimal changes here, so think going from 1000 drops to 800-900 and spacing them out only a few micrometers more) will still give you the same overall result: it rains like hell and the whole rainstorm can still cover the same area size. UNLESS you would then put the two versions of the game side by side, you will NOT see the difference, but the difference in work that the CPU & GPU have to do can be significant. And of course you have to take into account that if relative scaling is used, it won't be done with just that one thing but on EVERYTHING in the game, so in the end, when all the graphics of the game are PROPORTIONALLY scaled, the difference for each separate effect can be very minimal, almost unnoticeable to human vision but the OVERALL effect can have a HUMONGOUS effect on the workload of the CPU & GPU.

It is true that a programmer could choose to just switch of some effects (take care not to confuse effects with graphics, because they can also be physics and those are invisible) entirely when they are still too heavy for the hardware or if the hardware doesn't support it. (think engines having more advanced DirectX 11 effects and the Wii U not supporting those natively) but there are hundreds of alternatives to use, such as simpler programs, middleware solutions and such to still more or less imitate the same effects in such a manner that it is hardly indistinguishable to the naked eye.

Reading your reactions I keep getting the feeling that you expect the end result to be much more visible and it is not: it's all very subtle. Also, scaling is not done ad infinitum, so there is always a safe guard that takes care of what I like to call the integrity of the whole software/game and there isn't going to be just a single part that is going to look bad or less good compared to the others.

What you MUST take from this is that this is another reason why the artist's view does not have to be compromised (because of the overall graphical result being largely the same) and the impact on the one looking at it (you/the gamer) is also practically the same. And what you must also get is that scaling does NOT mean removing things/LESSER objects, it means lesser EFFECTS on these objects, so with the water/wave example that I gave you should think "same number of waves, but slightly less high (micrometers), slightly less complicated in effects, such as water spray and foam" and you could even slightly alter the complexity of light reflection/refraction and overlap/number of colors. All these are, once again, hardly noticeable to us without side by side comparison or a VERY critical and highly technical eye. Something that most gamers, contrary to popular (or their own) belief, don't have.

Now, having down-scaled all these things for the "weaker" platform means that there's more CPU power left to maintain a solid frame rate, so there also the answer is a firm NO. The frame rate will NOT be affected in a negative manner if proper scaling is used. If you would try to run an engine with all effects switched ON then the frame rate on the Wii U would drop like a plane suffering engine failure in mid-air. And that is exactly what the scalability of the game engines is for: to maintain the quality and idea of the software/game, WITHOUT compromising the game itself in ANY way, whether that is on a technical level or artistic level.

You should not think or theorize from a point of view that the difference in graphics/quality would then be the same as Wii vs Xbox360/PS3 because it's not. Nintendo isn't there yet and they have quite a bit of catching up to do, but all consoles now being HD capable has made the gap a whole lot smaller and only the most advanced of effects will have to be left out or replaced.

The only things that WILL have a larger impact in most cases, is what we also already discussed before and those are AI, size of the game areas and number of things on screen at the same time. BUT, and here's the kicker: even these can be solved when done correctly or when the trade-off between the complexity of the game and the intelligence of the software can reach a certain balance because when the lessening of effects by scaling has freed up the CPU & GPU, you can use that for any number of things, so if you can tweak the frame rate to be stable and still have some space left, you can then use that to address some of these issues. Not all, mind you but once again, the damage can be lessened in such a way that the software as a whole maintains it's original idea and execution.

But only if developers work for it and have the time and we all know that ain't gonna happen any time soon, so for the near future I only expect such quality from Nintendo and their first and second parties. If the results of those efforts end up selling more Wii U's then we'll see.

Next the loading time issue you mentioned: I looked up and compared reading speeds between the various drives of the consoles and the speeds with which they can read (and therefore push) data is nearly identical, so loading times are a non issue, so we can leave that one behind us for good now. The single exception would be if the programmer of the weaker console would choose to relieve the CPU somewhat by loading parts of the level only when they are required, resulting in slightly longer or more frequent loading times. But that (as explained in earlier comments) is also what the GPGPU is for, so anything resulting in something worse than that is only, and ONLY due to shoddy, hasty or lazy programming. Again the optimizing thing we discussed before.

In first person shooters, part of the gaming crowd probably will notice that they have 8 opponents instead of 16 (sometimes very easily since it is known by reviews or the info is present on the DVD box of the game) but if people complain about these kinds of things, well suffice it to say that to me, ridiculous doesn't even begin to describe what I think of that. First person shooter multiplayer will still be perfectly playable with a couple of soldiers (or bots) less and seeing as they aren't all running around in the same area of the map at the same time, the effect is also lessened.

I do agree with @arnoldlayne83 that in games such as Dynasty Warriors it can be a thing because there the whole premise of the game is that you have hundreds of enemies on screen at the same time, so if that changes to dozens of enemies, then the game's intent is severely compromised. I can't think of any other game where this is issue will have such an impact but there might be a few others, I don't know and I don't need to know, so let's also not discuss this one anymore either.

P.S.

The whole Kennedy effect thing is very abstract and distant to me. First off, Kennedy was (obviously) before my time and secondly I live in Europe as you'll know by now so I honestly can't say anything relevant about times being better back then. On the other hand, old people use that sentence a lot in general but not related to Kennedy. Just that times were better. My own parents even say so, occasionally...

As for the “normative power of the factual” theory: I've asked around and let people read what I found on it and none of my colleagues or even my CEO has ever heard of it and like me, they found neither use nor relation to it in marketing, so the answer is a resounding NO. I don't know what personal experience (if any) you have with actually doing sales and marketing, but you'll just have to take it from me that marketing isn't about making people accept established facts as being normal. If I had to describe marketing in layman's terms then it is about making services or objects more desirable (than the ones the competition offers) and thus making them sell more.

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@TheRealThanos Thanks again for taking the time and being so patient with me, I really do appreciate it.
Generally speaking, I think we have some misunderstandings going on, not all of them purely due to the language barrier, and most likely, we won't be able to 'detangle' them in their entirety. Despite that, let me at least point towards one, that is rather simple to clear up, and, as an additional upside, might make me look less like a mentally challenged individual to you.

In regards to FoV, I'm just gonna quote Wiki here:

"The field of view in video games refers to the part you see of a game world, which is dependent on the scaling method used."

You know like in console games typical featuring a FoV of 60°, while on PC, you are more flexible, and you might typical have a FoV of 90°. I hope I managed to clear at least that up.
Now, anything I said about 'field of view' (FoV) was only related to this meaning of the term FoV. I think it is an honest mistake, since 1.) we talk about videogames here, this is the meaning normally associated with FoV as far as videogames go, I think, and 2.) I understand now, what you meant by FoV. I still do not understand, what this has to do with scaling or visuals in videogames in general. If I understand you correctly though, your very point is that, it has indeed nothing to do visuals but with vision. I get that.

Unforunately, having said that, I still have no idea whatsoever how said "vision" figures into this at all. Vision relates to biological facts, which, such as they are, can be considered to be more or less constant, as well as physics, to be more precise, optics, wich are indeed completely non-debatable. For example, the human FoV is close to 180° horizontally. The FoV of a videogame can basically be anything.

Now, I think, you were trying to say, and this might be as much my understanding of your comments, as it might be assumption on my part, that the human vision, is too, let's say, limited to notice all the small and diverse changes that happen as part of the scaling process, therefore, they won't impact the experience of the player, nor compromise the original artistic intention (I better not use vision here, since that was my veryyyy original misunderstanding right at the start).

The metaphor of the illusionist is actually not helping me personally in this regard, since if I think of those, I think in terms of distraction, meaning shifting one's actual vision or focal point form physical location A (e.g. assistant) to B (e.g. illusionist). Now, I might be ignorant on this, but I don't think this is normally (at all?) done in videogames for the purpose of scaling. I also imangine, since videogames feature a rather dynamic 'stage' that is looked upon by the player, this might be quite hard, much harder at least than on a basically static illusionist 'stage'. Since it doesn't help me, at least in this interpretation, I just gonna ignore it for now.

That leaves me with the aformentioned understanding, that it is about human capacity to actually see those adjustments. For the sake of getting to the point at heart of things, I'm gonna play the proverbial advocatus diaboli, I'm also gonna play dumb (shouldn't be hard^^):

Maybe I'm unable to even grasp the most basic concept, you took the pain of explaining to me, but anyways, if I'm hearing you correctly, games on the WiiU should be able to look (visuals) as well as perform great. Any or most changes due to scaling, should be hardly noticeable and not impact the experience or the artistic or design intent (design as related to gameplay, since not all visuals can be treated merely in terms of presentation, some actually have a purpose or function beyond that).

Simply put then, if so, then why don't Nintendo games look like downscaled version's of their competition (I'm not talking about artstyle here)? I assume any lack in presentation is then purely due to lazyness/time/money/lack of skill (you used "proper scaling" alot^^) and so on?
But I doubt any of that could apply to Nintendo itself, since they "design hardware around games" ... again, I have to ask, where are those games? Where is Nintendo's 'downscaled' Infamous for example, we are two years in by now .. something has to give.
Honestly, I do want to take your word for it, but is hard. It would be much easier to go by the old creed of "seeing is believing". I don't see it, maybe it's just me, maybe it's just not YET available ... I can't tell.

No, here is nothing ridiculous about this at all. If you don't believe me, just give BF4 (shoddy game but sill) a shot on PS3 and on PS4 respectively. It is a world of difference, speaking purely in terms of gameplay experience. The only thing I can take away from this is, that you are obviously not big on these kinds of games, but the fact of the matter is simple: engaging with 64 players on water, air and land, on the same map, is a very different experience, than with 24 players. Depending on the game, I could not imagine how it could be possible to NOT notice any such drop in player count. In BF, it is not a matter of noticing it or not noticing it (this is not about degrees, it is about worlds, and actually integrity of core design) ... it's matter of the game being the "BF experience" or not being the "BF experience". By our token, I might be ridiculous then, but I can assure you, this is neither a personal foible of mine, nor is in any way, shapre or form related to "fanboism" or wuteva.
I'm no DW-games player at all, but I imagine the difference might be crass as well there.

It is unfortunate, that you went ahead and kind of unilaterally 'Defined' certain subjects as "Non-debatable". To make sure, I didn't go completely off the reservation, with my remarks about gimmicks e.g., I referenced Wiki once again for a quick look, which reads like this:
"In marketing language, a gimmick is a unique or quirky special feature that makes something "stand out" from its contemporaries. However, the special feature is typically thought to be of little relevance or use."
Or for that matter, Webster: "a method or trick that is used to get people's attention or to sell something".

The gamepad makes the WiiU a) stand-out / get attention and b) is for the most part of little relevance. Those are facts. Nintendo tacitly admitted that by releasing the Pro Controller, in addition to the already available support of the WiiU/Nunchuk combo (and classic controller etc.). The number of games that play ONLY, or BETTER with the Gamepad is very small, therefore it IS of little relevance. I don't think we need to consult any definiton of relevance on this ^^.
I for one therefore disagree with you on that, since I really can't see which of those points are debateable. Your argument about potential doesn't hold much water with me, to be honest, since the only thing it accomplishes is challenging everyone else to do, what can't be done, by proving a negative. If we were having this discussion in 2013, I'll be willing to listen, giving the argument the benefit of the doubt. But all the goodwill in the world, doesn't change the facts at hand, and it also only goes so far.
In that regard at least, the whole "fanboi" debate, would work in both directions.

As for the rest, e.g. the Nintendo Difference, I think I made my point on those. I admit my level of "suspension of disbelief" when it comes to these kinds of broad popular (non-technical^^) "beliefs", might be somewhat abnormal, but they are just so omnipresent in history, policital science as well as sociology, that you have to be kind of really 'aggresive' towards them, if you EVER want to get even close to the bottom of any subject you are studying. It is a constant uphill battle unforunately.
As a side note, but we don't have to discuss that, I think the term "journalism" in regards to videogames is in 99% of the cases an extremely unforunate choice, or more often than not, simply wrong. But since it is a broad term, and since the likes of FOX news are refered to (by some ) as journalism as well, I guess it is not technically wrong, just misleading, abhorringly so. Anyways, game journalism is not a good foundation, to build an argument on, at least in my opinion of course.

I'm sorry, I went against your wishes in bringing these two points up again, but I think at least one response should be allowed to any subject of a unilaterally declared permanent cease fire ^^ I accept, that you choose not to get into those anymore, but like I said, I felt entitled to one last retort, before we leave it at "agree to disagree" on those contentious subjects.

PS: As for the Kennedy example, my bad, I just thought it was so deeply engrained in the collective consciousness, that most Americans (maybe not so much the younger generation) would be able to relate to it without trouble, even those who joined us on our side of the bigpond.^^ The point I was trying to make, was rather simple. Since Kennedy died, things seemingly went 'sour' for the states, just think of Vietnam for example or Watergate under Nixon. The U.S. presumably lost their dominance, and their 'innocence' and so on. Anyways, to make this short, just because most assume things were and would have been better under JFK's "Camelot", and just because some authorities (with their own agenda) reinforce that public perception, doesn't make it a "fact" and most certainly, doesn't make any of that "Non-debatable". At least as long as any such discussion is supposed to be a means to the end of actually having a better understanding of what might really be going on, if everyone is just talking to make his opinion known, it might be just as well of course. In a similar fashion, I have serious reservations about buying into the "Nintendo Difference" as anything even close to a fact.

As for the “normative power of the factual” theory, that is rather "out there" in a way, I certainly admit that, but if you think about it less in terms of laws/rules, but as norms in terms of something like widely unchallenged public perceptions, I think it does matter a great deal. In regards to other aspects, related to that, I mentioned before, like opinion leaders and multiplication, I am, on second thought at least, not suprised that they are rather or completely unknown. I assume any training in marketing and sales is concentrated on the application of it's theories, not so much on their roots or foundation or reflection on those. At least that would actually make a lot of sense.
Like you say, I have no personal experience what so ever with marketing, but I don't think I'm going out on a limp, when I say, that the likes of Piewdiepie (he is rather famous I hear^^) are opinion leaders, and work as a sort of multiplier for his viewers, and their friends and relatives etc., and that this in turn, matters to you guys in the marketing and sales departments (does it not?). At least, I'd be surprised if it didn't. Even in rather "conservative" markets like books, there seems to be enough evidence to support claims, that even a small number of bloggers/ reviewers etc. can have a decisive and statistically significant impact on sales and success of a book (or it's failure). All of those considerations stem from similar and more often than not, closely related sources and schools of thought in the fields of sociology, political science, communication studies and psychology (those fields regulary overlapp on a wide variety of subjects and theories), going back to the first half of the last century.

I guess you could say, that modern marketing is very much a profiteer of those developments, if you will.