It’s a wonder though, that they sell at all. Why? Let’s take a look at a recent trip to a local “large chain” game retail outlet (it’s pretty obvious who it is, exactly):

Three Zelda boxes, at the bottom of the wall and out of view. "New Releases" indeed.

Notice the “New Releases” wall? This photo was taken yesterday, the eve of a little game called The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword launching in the US. Today, this store will launch the game with the wall looking this way- a game that has already garnered several perfect scores and a wealth of controversy. This is the game to get for that platform this holiday. In this picture, we can barely see two to three display copies of the title at the bottom-right of the wall.   Isn’t slightly odd that a Game of the Year contender is so lightly displayed?

Of course, by contrast, Skyrim, Uncharted 3, Batman: Arkham City, and Battlefield 3 are all over the walls of PS3 and 360, with little room for anything else (never mind the fact that posters for said game are also littering the store). When asked for a copy of the Wii version of Modern Warfare 3, the store employee first looked puzzled, then stared at the wall for a good two minutes.

Then, he looks up, and finds it in this shiny, out of the way spot:

Where is Modern Warfare 3? Shouldn't it be front and center?

Apparently you have to be seven feet tall as well as 17 years old to play MW3 on Wii :

Aha! There you are? Quite a bit different location than the front-center, eye-level PS3/360 walls...

Looking closer, here it finally is. It’s pointless to say that he knew nothing of whether or not this game worked with the Headbanger Headset that they had in-stock (which works perfectly with Black Ops and Conduit 2 on Wii).

It seems even stores are trying their best to tell you that Wii just isn’t a console for hardcore games (in this case, even GOTY nominees made by Nintendo themselves). If mature, serious games can’t even get retail space when it’s clearly available, then it’s no wonder that the average gamer that walks in these stores have no idea that they even exist for Wii.

But you have to wonder: why isn’t Nintendo PR taking care of this, and ensuring that third-parties do also since there are some 45 million potential customers in the US? Why bother making a Wii version if you’re not going to make the effort to ensure that it actually reaches the hands of the hardcore gamers owning these systems?

Do you think this is a good business practice for these stores, and is it a bad call for publishers to allow their games to be shoved out of view like this?

Who’s at fault here, the store manager for portraying a biased display, or the NOA reps that are supposed to do store visits to stop this sort of thing?

My misgivings began as soon as the short began and I realized it was essentially a sequel to Toy Story 3. There’s no evidence that Pixar cut any corners in the production, and in fact the credits tell us that every voice actor was persuaded to come back to reprise their roles. Still, I had to wonder why it had been made. Toy Story 3 was the perfect ending to the franchise. We didn’t need to see the characters again. It didn’t show off any particularly creative storytelling or sight gags the way previous Pixar shorts have. It was just several minutes of filler.

That feeling continued into Cars 2. I’ve said many times before that what sets Pixar apart from all other animation studios currently working (including Disney) is that their films are about something. Finding Nemo was about the bond between a father and his child. The Incredibles asked us to wrestle with how society should deal with extraordinary people who have extraordinaray gifts. Toy Story 3 was about the poignancy of time’s passage. Cars 2? Well, there’s something in there about staying true to yourself, but the idea gets lost in all the mayhem. For two hours, it’s mostly just zoom, vroom, and boom with lots of beautiful environments and really neat gadgets.

The story this time centers around Tow Mater (voiced with dumb gusto by Larry the Cable Guy) as Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson) and pretty much every other character from the first movie gets shoved into supporting roles. The movie introduces two new characters who are both British secret agents. One is the veteran Finn McMissile voiced very recognizably by Michael Caine whose very distinctive voice may cause dissonance in some audience members since McMissile as drawn doesn’t look even a little bit like Caine. The other is a younger computer analyst type named Holly Shiftwell (the movie has one gag in which only the first three syllables are pronounced) voiced by Emily Mortimer who succeeds in being more anonymous. The plot has to do with a world grand prix race which is supposed to promote a green eco-fuel and a shadowy group’s plot to sabotage the fuel and drive people back to traditional oil which they have just begun production of on an offshore rig. Investigating this group is the aforementioned pair of British spies, and a series of misunderstandings gets Mater drawn into the adventure. The plot is really quite complex (perhaps too much so for little children), but it never really feels like it matters. You can see this going on with the romantic subplot between Mater and Shiftwell. We’re told at the end that they are a couple, but we never really see why. It just seems to happen because it’s supposed to.

In fact, the whole movie feels obligatory. The moments of heartfelt character development which have been the hallmark of Pixar movies are missing here. The whole point seems to be to send brightly colored cars whizzing around at high speed. I’m sure little children will love it, but adults have grown to expect much more out of Pixar. If I wanted to see a gorgeously rendered CGI film with a thin plot, little character development, and borderline annoying comic relief, I would have seen Rio.

Cars 2 is still likely to be the second best animated movie this year (Rango would be the best). It is, as previously mentioned, gorgeous to look at. Occasionally the animators display a piece of architecture or environment that will take your breath away, and there are occasional nice little sight gags showing what a world redesigned for living cars might look like. But in all honesty, this is the first Pixar movie that I would have been just fine seeing on DVD or streaming off Netflix. If it sounds like I’m being harsh on Pixar, it may be because the trailers attached to the movie in my theater were for Winnie the Pooh, Muppets (both of which looked uninspired), Smurfs (which looked wretched), and another Alvin and the Chipmunks movie (which made me want to punch one of the five year olds sitting next to me for laughing at it). After 25 years in the business and so many sterling films, Pixar should be allowed to have a dud. But for a while Pixar seemed to be that one studio who could produce commercially successful films without becoming overly commercialized itself. Now the spell seems to have been broken.

Here’s hoping Brave brings them back on track next year. In the meantime, save your money and skip Cars 2.

Dear Xantar,

My husband, Tom, who is in his mid-40s and who is an otherwise polite, hip, and modern guy, has one annoying habit which is old-fashioned and maybe even rude—he always answers his cellphone with “Hello?” even after he has looked at the screen and knows who’s calling. I have repeatedly suggested to him that, since he knows who’s calling, he should say “Hi” followed by the name of the caller when he answers his phone (for example: “Hi, Fred” or Hi, Mom”). That kind of greeting lets the person on the other end know that he already knows who it is so that introductions can be skipped, and the conversation can begin. Tom completely disagrees. He claims that it would be impolite to say the caller’s name because then that person would know that he had checked to see who was calling before he answered the phone, and Tom feels that screening calls is rude. WHAT? I mean, who DOESN’T check to see who’s calling before answering a phone these days and who DOESN’T already assume that everyone who can screen calls is doing so? Please help. Tom says that the only way he will even consider greeting his callers by name is if you side with me.

-Phone Etiquette

Dear Hello Anybody Home,

I can clearly remember a time when I called a friend of mine on his cell phone and he answered with, “Hello?” How rude! I couldn’t believe it! Didn’t he know it was me? I mean how could he possibly have not checked to see that it was me calling? Other than if he was in the middle of something else and just picked up…or maybe he was in a rush…but other than that, I can’t see why he couldn’t have just answered, “Hi Xantar!” I was so put out that I immediately hung up on him, defriended him on Facebook, and then poisoned his dog. He deserved it!

Oh wait, you know what? That didn’t happen at all. Why? Because I didn’t give a damn. Seriously, you’re getting worked up because your husband answers the phone with “Hello?”! I wonder what else peeves you off. You must be an awfully pleasant person to be married to. Do us all a favor and don’t have any kids. Because if you start micro-managing them the way you already do your husband, you’re likely to let loose a crew of sociopaths upon the world.

Dear Xantar,

My brother is recently engaged and getting married in three months. I had a family vacation scheduled for the weekend that he’s marrying. Would it be appropriate to ask him and his fiancée to reschedule?

-Rescheduling a Wedding

Dear Rescheduling Your Therapy,

Are you kidding me? Do you want to be THAT guy? You know what, just skip the wedding and go on your vacation. I’m sure your kids won’t have any regrets on missing their uncle’s wedding. You know, the only wedding he’s ever going to have in their lives (hopefully).

Dear Xantar,

I suffered a miscarriage at 12 weeks pregnant. My husband didn’t know about the pregnancy and I went through the miscarriage in silence. Though the emotional toll has been great, and my husband has noticed my depression, he is still clueless. Should I tell him about “our loss” knowing that he’ll be just as upset as I am—and also quite relieved, because the child was unplanned. Or should I continue to keep this mum to protect him from the whirlwind of emotions I’ve been feeling?

-Big Secrets in a Marriage

Dear Secret,

What the hell is this, an episode of Glee? Somehow you got pregnant and not only did you not tell your husband but you also managed to keep him clueless about what was going on? I know pregnant women don’t usually show at 12 weeks, but there are still physiological changes that happen. Did he somehow fail to notice? Why is it that your instinct during this life changing event was to keep everything a secret?

And I notice that you don’t seem to give your husband much credit. You imply that if he found out about the miscarriage, he would be relieved since the child was unplanned. I guess you must know him extraordinarily well if you think he’s not capable of complex emotional nuance. How kind of you to spare him the grief. I’m sure he’s completely happy watching you go through a depressive episode for no apparent reason.

Just go tell him what happened. And stop making women look bad, for crying out loud.

The most common tagline associated with any review of Square-Enix’s Imaginary Range is “50% comic, 50% game, 100% awesome.” Actually, it looks like all those reviews might be quoting the same early review and just running with the tagline. Whatever the case, it’s a very high bar to live up to, and while what I’ve seen is promising, it’s way too early to make any pronouncements.

I don’t know exactly how the time is divided up between the two, but Imaginary Range is indeed a combination of comic book storytelling and games. Specifically, Imaginary Range tells an ongoing story in the form of comic-style panels although these differ from traditional comics by incorporating occasional animations, zooms, and pans. There is never anything elaborate, but it does add a little cinematic touch to the proceedings. If you have ever seen the web original series Broken Saints, you will have an idea of what I’m talking about.

From time to time, Imaginary Range will also present mini-games which you must complete in order to move forward. They range from a missile-guiding game resembling Flight Control to simple hidden object searches. Some effort is made to integrate the games into the plot with varying success. For the most part, you probably won’t care. The games are well-done, and some of them are surprisingly addictive. After finishing the main storyline, you can unlock a mode which allows you to replay three of the mini-games to try to get higher scores. My favorite is a vertical shooter in which you must control a laser which can skewer a series of bombs heading toward the buttom of the screen, Space Invaders style, and then set the bombs off to destroy even more bombs. Playing the games also earns you coins which you can use to unlock concept art in the gallery.

The skewered bombs end up looking like martini olives for some reason...

Unfortunately, the story itself is a bit nonsensical. What’s included in the app is basically an introductory chapter, and as such things go it’s pretty substantive. We get a decent introduction to a set of characters, watch them fight off an alien force, and even get a flashback which seems to develop a relationship or some kind of background between two of the characters. It’s far too early for me to get a good idea of where the story is going, but the bigger problem is that what I can tease out about the story makes absolutely no sense. From what I can tell, there are two heroes fighting off an alien invasion of some sort. One of them is carrying a Tablet (yes, it’s capitalized as if it’s a proper name for a product) which can create anything imaginable as long as they draw imaginary energy from objects around them. That imaginary energy comes in the form of…well, random shapes and posters scattered around the pages of the comic. The whole system seems completely arbitrary and suspect. Hopefully we’ll get a fuller explanation in future chapters.

Imaginary Range also has a bad habit of having its characters speak in obtuse, vague language which merely leaves the reader confused. I have to wonder if Square-Enix is having localization problems since they have a history of shaky translations (e.g. Final Fantasy VII). Then again, a lot of the anime I watch also tends to be deliberately obtuse, often to the detriment of our understanding and for no particular reason other than to make us feel smart if we actually can figure out what’s going on. As it is right now, I’m willing to wait for more details, but I have definitely been left feeling rather unmoved so far.

At least the art work is excellent. Character designs are attractive and distinctive, and the action is conveyed clearly (although sometimes you will want to zoom out on the page so that you can see the flow of panels properly). This is also crucial for some of the gameplay since the hidden object puzzles depend heavily on being able to distinguish between what you can interact with and what is merely a background object.

Imaginary Range’s biggest flaw has to do with the implementation of its gallery. I don’t mind the idea of unlockable concept art, but I find it hugely problemmatic when the unlocking mechanism is entirely luck based. As I mentioned before, playing the mini-games earns you coins which are used to unlock gallery art. However, you don’t use the coins to buy unlocked pictures outright. Instead, coins are used to buy scratch-off cards (the type you see in a lottery) which you then scratch off using your finger. Uncover 3 icons under the 9 circles and you unlock a gallery. However, whether or not there are actually 3 icons there to uncover is entirely random, and I spent a lot of time buying cards and scratching them off before I finally got one which unlocked a gallery. It gets tedious after a while, and for the life of me I can’t understand why Square-Enix chose to implement their unlockable gallery this way.

Take a look at the number of coins I have in the upper right hand corner...

...compared to how much I had when I finally uncovered three moogle icons. And that was for just one piece of artwork.

Of course, I can’t get too annoyed with Imaginary Range’s foibles considering that it’s currently free in the iTunes App Store. I’m sure Square-Enix is using this release as a teaser for paid content to be released in the future. It’s worked on me to the extent that I would be interested enough to buy the next installment, assuming it has a reasonable price. However, Imaginary Range still has a lot to prove before I’m convinced that it’s truly “awesome.” If the story doesn’t get any better and the gallery continues to be unlocked by scratch-off lottery cards, I’ll have to declare it “good” but not “great.”

Anyway, director Kenneth Branagh clearly sees something Shakespearean in this tale of gods and giants fighting in faraway lands. The history of this world stretches back over a thousand years to when Odin, father of Thor and Loki, drove away the frost giants from Earth and left behind tales for the Norwegians to pass down through the generations. In the present day, Thor is about to ascend to the throne when he is provoked into an ill-advised raid against the frost giants which shatters their fragile truce. To teach him some humility, Odin banishes Thor to New Mexico and casts the hammer Mjolnir down with him, not to be taken up again until Thor has learned his lesson. At this point, Loki launches a plot to take over the throne, motivated by sibling rivalry and a craving for approval from his father. Meanwhile, Thor learns about the lives of mortals with his human love interest, an astrophysicist named Jane Foster.

The court intrigue in Asgard is the more interesting storyline in Thor, so it’s a good thing that the movie spends most of its time there. Asgard is an entirely CGI world, but it looks so grand and fantastic that I didn’t really care. People who have seen Kenneth Branagh’s full length adaptation of Hamlet already knew that he had an eye for beautiful scenery, so it’s nice to see that he can work with computer generated backgrounds just as well as with set pieces. Loki ended up being the most interesting character to me because of his backstory. To be sure, he does cause a lot of death and mayhem, but once we find out all the details of his past, it’s hard not to sympathize with him a little.

More impressively, Thor himself manages to avoid being a bland ubermensch. A major share of the credit goes to Chris Hemsworth’s performance which can only be described as “star-making.” Hemsworth certainly has the physical presence of a god among men (and his transformation since we last saw him as Kirk’s dad in Star Trek is very impressive), but he also has charisma to match. Thor is a boisterous and cocky character prone to smashing mugs on the ground if he likes his drink. He gets away with it because he is clearly well-intentioned and very friendly when he’s not whacking people with his hammer. Hemsworth ably guides Thor’s character development from an arrogant borderline jerk at the beginning of the movie to a much more thoughtful future ruler at the end. He also turns out to have pretty good comic timing as his fish-out-of-water moments on Earth are genuinely amusing without being overplayed.

Unfortunately, Thor and Loki are really the only characters with any development at all in the movie. What traits we attribute to the characters come entirely from the actors playing them. The most notable is Sir Anthony Hopkins as Odin, but we also have Colm Feore as the king of the frost giants, Stellan Skarsgard as Jane Foster’s mentor, Rene Russo as Thor’s mother, and Idris Elba as Heimdall. All of these talented actors are entirely wasted in their roles, but I suppose lesser known actors would have turned them into enormous blank slates. Then we have Natalie Portman’s Jane Foster. A big part of the plot hinges around Thor’s relationship with Jane Foster but it comes across as entirely obligatory instead of heartfelt. It’s hard not to snicker a little bit when they have a makeout session while the metaphorical clock is ticking down. The movie also makes the odd choice of showing Sif, a female Asgardian warrior, gazing significantly at Thor on a few occasions and generally looking like she might be carrying a torch for him.

It doesn’t help that Jane Foster is really kind of a jerk. We meet her in the beginning as she stumbles across the storm that Thor makes when he is thrown to the Earth. She decides to drive her truck towards it which is reasonable enough except when her driver starts to get nervous about coming so close, Jane physically grabs the wheel and steers them even closer. Dude, not cool! And then when she accidentally hits Thor with the truck, her first reaction is, “Please don’t be dead!” It made it a little hard for me to see why Thor pined for her so much when he has a perfectly nice Asgardian comrade (who looks like Jaimie Alexander) right there beside him. None of this can be blamed on Natalie Portman or Chris Hemsworth. They might have great chemistry for all I know, but their relationship is too underwritten.

So Thor is much better than I expected it to be, and it will earn its inevitable humongous box office opening. Nonetheless, it still represents a trend that I can’t celebrate. The recent superhero renaissance began with Spider-Man, Batman, and the X-Men, all characters defined by their humanity and flaws. Their stories are designed to be relatable on a human level even when ridiculous things like flying monsters and energy blasts are appearing around them. Superhero movies have been pretty good about maintaining that human connection up until recently. Iron Man 2 took a sudden sharp turn into a full-on alternate universe which doesn’t even pretend to resemble ours any more. Thor has continued that trend, and later in the summer we are going to have Captain America which, besides looking like a steroids commercial, has an alternate version of World War II and uses Hitler as a villain. I just don’t care about any of it.

By all means, see Thor. It’s a rip-roaring good time and a visual spectacle to boot (even if the action sequences aren’t really anything to write home about from a choreography point of view). It’s just that I can’t help feeling as if the talented actors in this movie are just barely holding the greedy corporate bloodsuckers at bay.

For Sony, it was a week. A week in which all the meanwhile they posted meaningless updates stating that they were ”re-building our system to further strengthen our network infrastructure” and other such vague nonsense.

Sony was not haxX0rz the way Shadow Fox was speculating, but they were recently hacked anyway. And their reaction to the incident was the worst possible.

Companies are sometimes targeted by hackers. Sometimes the hackers succeed. There isn’t really that much shame in being successfully hacked. It’s impossible to make any system 100% safe. But trying to pretend nothing is going on while hackers have a whole week to spread and sell vital user information is not only incompetent but dangerous.

If Project Cafe (as Nintendo is calling it) really is more powerful than the Xbox 360 and the PS3, that’s great and is probably more power than we need. Videophiles claim that some cutting edge games are revealing the age of current gen consoles. I honestly don’t see it. Well, I do if I look really closely and pay attention, but at this point what holds my attention is the gameplay and story. I know a certain segment will never be satisfied with any amount of power, but Project Cafe will be plenty for me. And it really should be plenty for any other developer as long as it’s easy to work with (and Nintendo now has a history of making their hardware much easier to develop for than Sony).

If the new console is launched on time in 2012, the Wii will have had a six year run. Not bad at all. That is, it’s not bad if the launch of Project Cafe signals the end of the Wii. I personally think the Wii will last for another few years after that, especially if Nintendo continues to support it. Project Cafe sounds like it’s aimed at the core gamers market and might not hold much interest to your grandma. If the Wii can exist (and even thrive) alongside the PS3 and Xbox 360, than it can continue on alongside Project Cafe. I expect 2012 will see the launch of  more Wii Sports or Wii Party titles to keep casual gamers interested.

Internet posters are freaking out over reports that the Project Cafe controller will incorporate a six inch touch screen. I can’t determine the truth of that rumor any better than IGN can, but I’m not worried about its usability. If Nintendo knows one thing, it is how to design ergonomic, easily picked up user interfaces. The N64 controller has been their clunkiest controller to date, and even that wasn’t so terrible. When Nintendo makes stupid decisions, it is in going with designs that work perfectly for their own games but which do not work so well for games that third party developers might want to make. If a six inch tablet screen is too clunky, I am confident that Nintendo won’t use it. Although I can’t help noting that a TV console with a tablet controller would make a very good web browser.

I will also predict right now that Project Cafe will use global Friend Codes similar to the 3DS. And I’m ok with that. The problem with Friend Codes has never been the codes themselves but the requirement that players must exchange a new code for every online game they want to play. If Nintendo adds in a lobby system, they will have everything they need. But please for the love of Miyamoto, if you decide to incorporate Achievements give players some actual rewards for them!

None of this is preventing IGN editors from offering their opinions and declaring their disinterest before even seeing a prototype in action. Some things never change.

My bias toward Pixar mostly has to do with the timeless quality of their movies: they focus exclusively on universal themes of friendship, parenting, love, and loss and scrupulously eschew pop culture references. Even the best Dreamworks and 20th Century Fox films rely to some extent on modern references which end up dating them. I re-watched Shrek 2 recently and was struck by how many of its jokes probably won’t make sense to anybody ten years from now (such as a chase scene with Shrek riding on a white bronco). With Rango, ILM has taken another approach which is to pay homage to spaghetti westerns — or in other words make really old pop culture references — while still moving the plot along with enough verve and energy to keep people entertained if they don’t catch the jokes. I’m no connoisseur of the western genre, but I caught scenes which were clearly paying homage to High Noon, the Man With No Name trilogy, and legendary villain actor Lee Van Cleef not to mention an extended riff on the Flight of the Valkyries segment in Apocalypse Now. There’s a scene in which the main character imitates various stereotypical walks seen in a western town which pretty much sums up the whole movie. Even the musical cues are western staples!

In fact, Rango borders on unsuitable for small children. Not only will they miss many of the references, there are also some pretty dark themes. Several characters die (one of them on screen), the plot has to do with stealing water in order to buy up real estate, and some of the characters are definitely drinking alcohol. There’s also a Greek chorus of mariachi owls who constantly predict the main character’s death and otherwise demolish the fourth wall. On the other hand, none of the kids in the audience with me were squirming, so what do I know?

It probably helps that the broad strokes of the plot are familiar: Rango arrives in town, gains fame through sheer luck, is eventually exposed as a fraud and forced into exile, then returns to save the day. Children are familiar enough with this formula that they probably don’t mind dialogue that often flies over their heads. Said dialogue is a treat for the adults in the audience, though. The main character is voiced with flair by Johnny Depp (sounding absolutely nothing like Captain Jack Sparrow) who successfully conveys the impression of one who can just barely talk faster than the situation he’s gotten himself into. Solid supporting work is provided by a cast of names you may know but probably won’t recognize by voice including Abigail Breslin, Isla Fisher, and Alfred Molina. The only voice I picked up on was Ned Beatty since I had recently watched Toy Story 3 again.

Even if the story and acting wasn’t so good, Rango would be worth seeing for its visual splendor. The level of detail in the characters, some of whom are quite furry, is extraordinary. The aforementioned mariachi owls can be seen playing their instruments correctly — the camera even zooms in on their “fingers” so that you can watch. The background scenes are even more amazing, often becoming so photorealistic that I would have been fooled if there hadn’t been a walking, talking lizard in the foreground. One scene that stood out to me showed a closeup of sand blowing off a badge. The amount of processing power required to render each grain of sand flying away must have been immense, and it was almost as if ILM was daring me to pick out the flaws. There is some dissonance in seeing the cartoon antics of talking animals running around on scenery that looks for all the world like it was filmed with a traditional camera, but not as much as you would think. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised. This is ILM after all. But it is still nice to see that they have once again set the standard for CGI.

Oh, and it’s not in 3D. This is a good thing. The movie takes place mostly in desert settings, and while the colors are bright on a movie screen, the dimness associated with 3D would have killed a lot of the appeal.

I’m not sure why Rango didn’t come out in the summer, but I’m glad it was released when it did. After everything else I’ve watched, Rango is still the best movie I’ve seen so far this year. If it’s still playing in a theater near you, skip Rio and go back to Rango.

For those not in the know, this very thread got me many more contacts in the industry, and several forum members from dozens of other websites have come to know me based on what you see below.

Of course, time will show that this thread has shown its age, as I’ve confused pixel shaders and vertex shaders constantly, though still making the same valid point.

People tend to use performance, or better yet- perceived performance to justify their purchase of a product.  The onslaught of negativity towards Wii on-whole in and out of the industry today is proof that this type of bias will never truly end.

After a good-old dive into the world of archived web images, I came across the infamous post itself that garnered several hundred posts and scores of fanboy hate on both ends of the spectrum.

The point of this message board post?  To disrupt and expose the “safe-haven” that is popular opinion, and shed light that it may not be as safe as people would think.

In the end, the only thing that mattered were the games- and it’s clear that Resident Evil 4 alone proved that GameCube was no slouch when it came to top-of-the-line graphics, as well as mature content.  GameCube (nor Xbox) were ever completely realized last generation because PS2 was the market leader, and unanimously project lead on any major project that spanned more than one console.  Direct to Xbox or GCN titles stayed few and far between, and it took a complete teardown and release of official whitepapers of each console several years later to prove that my theory was really close- both consoles were really identical in prowess, and many minor features were better on the graphics side than the other in too many places to count.

Below is the original post in its archived glory- feel free to discuss…

NOTE: images were resourced, and original statement(s) changed to reflect recent news on the subject at hand…

Hello all, this is your not-so-friendly neighborhood Shadow Fox.

In my time in these forums, I can’t help but notice this general observation that Xbox is the most powerful console of the next-gen systems, and some even say it’s 3-times more powerful (which I most certainly have yet to see in a game).

My big gripe is (yes, this is a rant), that almost everyone thinks this, or “knows” this, yet they haven’t a clue how they got this “information”. Who told you Xbox was most powerful? Did they prove it? How? The reason why I say this is because every person I’ve personally met or chatted with on the boards believes Xbox is more powerful because of one of two reasons:

1). The numbers in the specsheets appear higher for Xbox than GameCube, so that must mean it’s better.

2). Microsoft, or [insert magazine or website here] said so.

NOT ONCE have I actually talked to someone believing this propaganda that actually found out the Xbox was more powerful thru a proper benchmark test, or by matching up individual components of the machines to see how they fare against each other in their respective operations. Usually I end up talking to some guy that works at EB or something and ask them what they think, and they say the same thing- they heard it from somewhere else, or saw it on a website that knows next to nothing about the tech of these consoles.

Best-looking console game to-date? Damn skippy. 15 million polygons per second, anyone?

So who’s to say what is most powerful?

Personally I’m quite sure Xbox and GameCube are VERY identical in terms of polygon performance and effects, after looking at the facts on each system’s abilities, though I’m led to believe that Xbox might not be as powerful as everyone thinks graphicswise, especially since Microsoft avoided posting REALWORLD PERFORMANCE NUMBERS (the polygon performance you get in an actual game, not a demo test). Nintendo posted a very generous realworld number of 6-12 million polys/sec, which was surpassed in one of its own launch games at 15mps (StarWars Rogue Leader, which is still currently the most polygons displayed in a game to-date).

So, Microsoft states Xbox can push 120+million odd polys/sec with no effects as RAW polygons, and Nintendo eventually posted that GameCube’s theoretical maximum was 90 million polys/sec with effects (1 texture, 1 infinite hardware light). Microsoft’s numbers appear a cool 30 million polys/sec higher than Nintendo’s, but why do current games barely push over 10mps on this “all powerful” Xbox, and 5 games have already matched 15mps on GameCube (originally started by the Rogue Leader launch game)??

For one, Microsoft’s numbers are indeed inflated. The Xbox’s fillrate is nowhere NEAR 4 Gtexels/sec (more like 250-750 Mtexels, according to developers). Xbox’s system bandwidth isn’t a true 6.4GB/sec, considering any info from the CPU to the GPU and vice-versa is bottlenecked at 1.02GB/sec; one-third of GCN’s overall system bandwidth in realtime. Xbox’s GPU also requires 16MB of the 64MB DDR just to cull a Z-buffer (which is embedded on the GCN GPU at no cost to system memory), and also GCN’s internal GPU bandwidth is more than twice that of Xbox’s (25GB/sec compared to 10GB/sec). Also, Xbox claims to have more effects than GameCube, and better texturing ability in its GPU, when the XGPU can only do 4 texture layers per pass, and only 4 infinite hardware lights per pass (8 local lights can be done, also). GCN, on the other hand, boasts 8 texture layers per pass, and 8 infinite hardware lights and local lights per pass, all realtime.

What this means is that while Xbox relies on vertex shaders and pixel shaders (which BTW are absent from GCN hardware) to do realtime bumpmapping, the same effect is done in hardware on GameCube via it’s texture layers. Xbox also must deal with texture layers per bumpmapped surface per scene, though.

Also this whole processor thing is quite twisted considering Xbox and GameCube are two TOTALLY DIFFERENT architecures (32/64-bit hybrid, PowerPC native compared to 32-bit Wintel). GameCube, having this architecture, has a significantly shorter data pipeline than Xbox’s PIII setup (4-7 stages versus up to 14), meaning it can process information more than twice as fast per clock cycle. In fact, this GCN CPU (a PowerPC 750e IBM chip) is often compared to be as fast as a 700mhz machine at 400mhz. So GCN could be 849mhz compared to Xbox’s 733mhz machine performancewise.

Not ONCE do you hear this fact stated by Microsoft’s PR, nor do you see anything listed that Xbox can be “beat in” on their official specs (no realworld poly count, no realworld fillrate, no listing of simulataneous texture layers/hardware lights per pass, no mentioning that pixel/vertex shaders only do bumpmapping and skinning commonly done on all games now)…

One of GameCube's best water displays with water refraction/reflection maps

One of Xbox's best water displays without water refraction/reflection maps

Now, don’t get me wrong; I love my Xbox, but there’s no way we’re EVER going to see more than 30 million poly/sec games in this console’s lifespan, and neither will GameCube. Dead or Alive 3, a game Tecmo said “was impossible on any system other than Xbox” due to the amount of polygons onscreen, is a 9-10mps game, tops. The character models (which were also claimed to be an impossibility elsewhere) consisted of 9,000 polygons each- the same amount of polygons in characters in StarFox Adventures, Eternal Darkness, and even in Luigi’s Mansion (end boss). Resident Evil 0, however, boasts the highest polygonal “low-end” model to-date- a whopping 25,000 poly character. Now why is this possible (even against prerendered backgrounds) on a “less techincal” console? Why isn’t Xbox smothering GCN to death with games that are impossible to be done on any other console?

Height map bumpmapping as well as DOT3 bumpmapping on every object

Bumpmapping Microsoft didn't want you to know about that's done just as well on Nintendo's system without "vertex shaders".

I’ve constantly emailed Microsoft about this, and I’ve recieved no response other than “thank you for your interest in our product” with a link back to that wretched xbox.com. Nintendo only commented that it’s specs listed are realworld figures, and are reconfirmed.

EDIT: Rare was contacted, and confirmed that StarFox Adventures does indeed display massive amounts of bumpmaps, and realtime reflection/refraction effects by directly manipulating GCN hardware. When asked about one of the largest areas in the game (Krazoa Palace) regarding fillrate and polygonal display, Rare actually stated this was one of the easier levels to get running on the GCN.

EDIT 2: Nintendo of America was contacted, and they simply replied “Maybe, maybe not…but isn’t it the GAMES that matter”??

People say water in games like Bloodwake and Morrowind can’t be done elsewhere. I point to StarFox Adventures, and even Super Mario Sunshine. People say games like Halo have loads of bumpmapping. I point to Rogue Leader, Eternal Darkness, and Resident Evil’s character models and doors. I’ve even heard the gripe about individual blades of grass rendered on Xbox games. I once again point to StarFox Adventures, Mario Sunshine, and even the recent Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. Some Xbox fanboys I’ve run across have even been sore enough to say Xbox has faster loadtimes. I then point to Luigi’s Mansion and Metroid Prime, which are impossible on Xbox because they HAVE NO LOADTIMES (the game is constantly streamed from the GameCube disc in burst packets). Simply put, there’s not one effect Xbox can do that GCN can’t, while this can go the other way since Xbox lacks half of GCN’s hardware lights and texture layers onboard.

While I’m sure Xbox is technically capable of more alone (simply because it has an HDD for potentially larger games; which I’ve yet to see), I’ll have to give the nod to GameCube looking at the facts- which are the games that Xbox has only matched with Rallisport Challenge so far.

Either way, neither console can be proven more powerful than the other unless benchmarked properly, since the machines are so totally different from each other.

A word to the wise: no matter how large those numbers look on specsheets, if you don’t know what the hell they mean they should be taken with a grain of salt.

End Rant.