Lair dev laments hideous Wii games, blames budget issues
Factor 5 president Julian Eggebrecht sees potential in the Wii's graphical hardware, despite its technical inferiority to its competitor's consoles.
Speaking to RevoGamers, Eggebrecht laments how Wii titles whose aesthetic is more geared toward "traditional, more photorealistic" visuals do not push the hardware. "There you really have to push it," he said, "and they're really not pushing it. Why not? Hmmm. I don't know, the hardware is very, very easy to understand."
As for the reasons, Eggebrecht speculates it's a mixture of developer's laziness and a publisher's unwillingness to provide a large enough budget, both related to the Wii's image. Factor 5 has previously shown the GameCube hardware more than capable of gorgeous visuals with the Rogue Squadron series, and Capcom has also shown off technical prowess with Resident Evil 4.
If more games show off the Wii's graphical capabilities and consumer expectations increase, perhaps developers and publishers might be more eager to step up their own visuals / budgets. Imagine the possibilities now that there's more memory (and duct tape!).
As for returning to work with Nintendo, Eggebrecht showed willingness but revealed no plans. "We're honestly at this point thinking about several titles in development and we haven't settled quite yet on which platform or which platforms if one of them is," he said. "So might be PS3, might be Wii... we're totally open to that."
[Via CVG]
