'iPhone is Much More Powerful than Wii', says TellTale Programmer

The Wii isn't the most powerful piece of hardware out there. The PS3 and Xbox 360 are more powerful, but Nintendo's machine is still putting up a fight. Now Telltale Games has come into the picture and trashed the Wii's horsepower because of some complaints that the Wii version of Monkey Island has some framerate problems.

[jack who]

*grab's a popcorn*

iPhone 3G S specs 256MB of RAM and a 600MHz CPU.

wii specs 88 MB of RAM and 729 MHz CPU.

[Sibs]

Wow, never knew the Wii was that bad...

[PotNoodle]

The CPU in the 3G S is apparently capable of around 800MHZ too, but is capped by apple.

[user3915800]

My wrist casio watch has more power than the wii.

My alarm clock has more power than the wii.

Hell my dead uncle jimmy sausage has more power than the wii.

My empty cardboard box has more power than the wii.

[ChickeyCantor]

Ram doesn't really matter if your Resources are taking over big amounts of ram.

Wii is designed for gaming purposes, apparently the 88mb is enough for games. No 3D IPhone game comes close to any high production on the Wii.

[qface64]

i dunno about that
wii is underpowered but i wouldn't go that far right??

most iphone games don't even look anything close to some psp games if you ask me

[G3TDOWN]

In term of USE: yes iphone is more powerful

In term of Games and Graphics: FAIL !!!!

[Tony999Montana]

@qface64

The fact that most PSP games look better is not necessarily because of power. PSP has a lot of big dev teams working on it like EA and rockstar who have a larger budget then any of the iphone teams at the moment and a lot longer to produce their games. Also consider that most iphone games are relatively small in size to accommodate for the iphone's lack of memory to spare and people who are too impatient to download larger games. PSP has been working with a standardized memory capacity, the UMD which is 1.4GB (?, correct me if that's incorrect).

Some devs have previously stated in interviews that if people were willing to download large games then they would be able to produces something amazing on iPhone.

[Elimin8]

I don't know if to be impressed at the iphone "if" true or feel "insulted" bad for nintendo. anywhores, the iphone isn't for gaming unless you don't use it specifically for phone use. If you do use it for gaming then I hope you carry around a spear battery pack or charger.

[IdleLeeSiuLung]

It doesn't seem completely implausible considering computing power has doubled every 18 months. Seeing how the consensus is the Wii is a slightly upgraded GameCube processing power wise, it isn't impossible that the latest iPhone has a more powerful processor.

Another thing is the resolution on the iPhone is considerably lower so, it could be more powerful relative to processing power per pixel....

[SinnedNogara]

Here is this:

The Wii is as powerful at least an Xbox.

http://revoeyes.blogspot.co...

[Leafs117]

oh crap, the blog says the wii is more powerful than the first xbox! It must be true!

[FamilyGuy]

Having more ram doesn't make it "more powerful"

I wish we really could see what the iphone is capable of but because it's not truly a gaming platform it's likely that there will never be a company who decides on throwing a big budget game on it. They make small, cheap games because those sell best on cell phones. Impulse buys. If a great looking iphone game came out but at the cost of a psp game casual gaming consumers would be very hesitant to pick it up. Then again, the "first" game to do it would get tremendous attention and it would probably sell well based on curiosity alone.

[Arthur_]

You're all fools if you doubt the power of the IPHONE.
I have taken it upon myself to make a list of things that it outpowers:
The Wii
The 360
The PS3
David Hasselhoff
Nuclear Power Plants
1969 Cheverolet Camaro
Optimus Prime
NASA
France
Family Guy
The Cleveland Brown Show(and its not even out yet)
The Big Spinning Wheel on The Price Is Right
Roybertito's Carne Asada Milk
The American Economy
North Korea's Ego
WoW's China Servers
The Jonas Brothers Fanclub

Need I say more Gentleman?

I didn't think so.

[NeoCloud]

Are they Serious?? Give me a iphone game that looks as good as MarioGalaxy,Metriod,Zelda or Even PSP games like Tekken,GodofWar,CrisisCore then i will believe it.

[N4g_null]

If you believe what the dev says then you need to read between the lines.... the programmer does not understand Wii graphics programming very well. Most people can write a flash graphic's engine since they njust need to peace some code together which is sort of like making stuff for the Iphone... there are a lot of apps that prove flash like features for game design.

What is true is a bad programmer can shine on a more powerful system when it has plenty of ram... The problem is slow down... it looks like some one does not understand memory management on the Wii. When they say 88 megs then they mean 88 megs of ram. It does not help that they basically ported the game to the wii when obviously they needed more ram to run their shoddy code.

Let me know when the iphone has a factor 5 game on it. Also let me know when Iphone games have normal mapping and online play.

[DevastationEve]

You're so wrong man...nothing overpowers the Jonas Fanclub, sorry.

[iamtehpwn]

Everything else I'm not sure about it.

[G3TDOWN]

games look better on my PS3 than my computer, my computer has 1GB rams

like a geforce 9 with 256 > geforce 8 with 512 ram

[STK026]

PS3 uses like 74mb of it's ram for it's OS, chances are that your computer uses much more than that (for it's OS and all the programs runnning in the background). Also, console games are optimized for the specific console, while PC games have to run on a wide variety of system. Also, your PS3 might have a better CPU and a better GPU than your computer.

RAM has alot of importance.

Also, saying a GeForce9 with 256mb is better than a GeForce8 with 512mb isn't always true. There are alot of things to take in account before saying which card is the better card.

[somekindofmike]

@ G3TDOWN

Apples & Oranges! you can't compare specs of a PC to specs of a console for the reasons stated above.

I'd would definitely bet that the iPhone OS is more heavy duty than the wii OS, purely because it does a lot more. so therefore that extra RAM over the wii might just be there to help run the OS + applications more smoothly, and not specifically for gaming purposes.

That is just a guess though.

[jag_stilvecchio]

But aside from some neat games like Galcon everything on my iPhone controls for crap. I do love it for Soduku may a little Labyrinth, the occasional Bejewled game. But real games aren't on phones, imo.

[Kyur4ThePain]

My universal remote is probably more powerful than the Wii.
Meh, who knows? Who cares?

[TheTwelve]

It's sad that the Wii is even being compared to the Iphone.

12

[RockmanII7]

agreed

[Jhun]

People who would play a Wii couldn't care less.

[Dead_Cell]

You're taking the piss,surely?

[jack who]

88 MB main memory (24 MB "internal" 1T-SRAM integrated into graphics package, 64 MB "external" GDDR3 SDRAM)

oh and 3 MB embedded GPU texture memory and framebuffer.

[PotNoodle]

I guess he is talking about the iPhone 3GS?

[darkequitus]

The 2&3G one or the 3GS?
There is a big difference between the first 2 and the new one

http://www.anandtech.com/ga...

[Riddicrash]

Im not trying to defend it or be biased either way, but the iPhone is much more expensive than the Wii and the Wii is a few years old now, so the technology is much older than the iPhone, you may as well say that my Samsung Tocco Lite is more powerful than a ZX Spectrum, although true it means nothing because its much newer technology!

[STK026]

assuming the 3rd gen iTouch has similar specs, the price difference will be of about 50$, not so massive if you ask me. Comparing with the iPhone is pointless since it comes with a 2 or 3 year plan.

The iPhone 3GS came out in 2009, the Wii came out in late 2006, there's about 2.5 years between both. However, the iPhone is a portable device while the Wii is an home console. The PSP came out in 2005, 4 years after the release of the PS2, yet was less powerful and costed more. So, following your logic, either the PSP was an underpowered and overpriced handheld or the Wii is an underpowered and overpriced console.

[hates video games]

that whole thing about HD graphics was wrong. I think Black for the original xbox looked better. Which is just sad. Hell, even Red Steel looks better! Why do people think that game is any good any ways? Its just your average boring shooter. Its sad when a phone has more power then a console :(

[MetalGearBear]

"iPhone is Much More Powerful than Wii'"????
really? I thought iphone tech is more powerful than Xbox360. LOL.

[-MD-]

I don't see anyone laughing yet. I'll wait.

[MetalGearBear]

.....................

[Sunny_D]

lol that was funny

[Product]

This is the same guy who said the DS has the power of a toaster.
Their pr needs help

[BulletToothtony]

only the 360 can actually toast bread.. and fry eggs.. I kid fanboys.. i kid!!

or am I??

http://www.youtube.com/watc...

[Neo604]

with bigger built in harddrive too.

[JasonPC360PS3Wii]

Yet the 360 is still kicking the PS3's ass

[maverick1191]

yet the wii is kicking 360's ass lol jason you had that coming you fanboy

[BrotherNick]

Meh, power doesn't matter anymore according to sales. Anyways while the trolls are in glee about this statement, the developer chose the wii over your ps3/360 anyways. :\

[Vicophine]

Awesome statement, now excuse me while I go played COD4, DMC, and Resident Evil 5 on my Wii..

Oh wait.. ;)

[Leafs117]

it looks like quality doesn't matter anymore either since all of the crappy games are selling on the wii while the good games are all being sold on the 360/PS3/PC

[BrotherNick]

Lol, I never had any interest in any of those games...

[keysy420]

and istrad of looking like an idiot he stood by them. The wii has alot of tricks tht can be used and dis a tech that is well used and easy to use. so getting more out of the system is easier maybe the wii is really underpowered but so easy to dev for that it makes up for it

[Kamikaze135]

It's not even as powerful as the PSP. If it's more powerful than the Wii, then why does Resident Evil 4 look MUCH better on the Wii?

[Kyur4ThePain]

Maybe because it's a 480x320 display vs your TV set?

[somekindofmike]

@ Kyur4ThePain

One thing I do know is that the iphone screen runs at 160dpi (dots per inch) that is extremely high, comparatively PC's / Monitors average between 72 / 100. Standard TV screens run at a lower DPI, but I don't know the figure. The point is that a screen running at 160dpi is going to look brilliantly crisp, even if it is smaller. the iphone screen produces a very high quality 'window' as you put it, just a smaller window.

If you didn't notice, the days before HDTVs Sonic the Hedgehog on the megadrive always looked nicer on a 15inch portable TV compared to a say a 40inch screen. this is because the game would run at the same resolution no matter what the size of the TV, meaning on a 40inch screen you would see huge pixels.

This is still true today, a 1080p game will look crisper and sharper up close on a 19inch HDTV compared to a 52inch screen. but if you got a screen that big you shouldn't be sitting that close ;)

[vader1231231]

That's a pretty bold claim...
Wait a second, if apple can make a cell phone more powerful than the wii, does this mean that if they were to make a console that it would be more powerful than the ps3?

[devilhunterx]

Well they both are overhyped garbage.

(goes back to play No More Heroes)

[tunaks1]

RE4 IPHONE : http://mrpoulpe.files.wordp...
vs
RE4 WII: http://img394.imageshack.us...

[na-no-nai]

awesome link you have there. i knew the wii was powerful and stuff but dang that is some neat info i didnt even know about. of i knew developers are f'ing lazy on their games for the wii and stuff. hopefully more devs are getting off their asses and make some qualities games that are good for once

[matey]

tunaks1 is on the money look at RE4 on both systems and tell me the iphone is more powerful telltale are telling tales muppets the wii has a TEV,S3,plus a GPU, that is comparable to 360 GPU its a fact devs that say these things are full of crap cant take the fact that ninty wont let them use bigger amounts of memory for wiiware oh proccessing true power is 1.2Ghz has the iphone got proccessor that big i seen proof on japenese site for MH3 S3 textures are imencely detailed and can look very real plus i remember CAPCOM saying they got the ps3 assets of MH3 running on wii in no time so wii =cheap dev costs which is something else SONY ect need to take note anyone can make sony/microsoft consoles they just take everyone elses tech throw it in there machine done charge the earth for it now there loosing its a fact and nintendo should bring a Wii2 out dec2010 with quadcore and HD plus make sure they add there joint patented holographic storage/hardrive/hvd tgey have with biggest in the buisness inphase tech they will then have 2 markets midend=wii ultra high end=wiiHD this would be more than twice the ps3 power convince people it will be the last console u will ever need with TB of memory ect

[Samus HD]

Chek out the tennis games like virtua 2009 or grandslam tennis and iphone games that can compete with wii. iPhone is a good phone but vs Wii , iphone sucks. I sad it because i have a wii and iPhone

[Samus HD]

DS has much more good games than iPhone i sad it before iPhone for a phone is good but for Games is on the bottom

[Tony240ZT]

I do agree, the DS has far more quality games.

I hope english isn't your first language.

[EpsilonTeam]

BULL.. He's trying to make us believe that their engine is more powerfull than that of lets say Metroid Prime's? It's not the Wii's fault if they cant code for the machine. Their game is just a adventure game for crying out loud.

[ajay_solidsnake]

The title of thread itself made me LOL

[ChickeyCantor]

An 333~600mhz Arm Cpu =/= 333-600mhz IBM PPC CPu(Especially when you consider its a 722Mhz).
They both perform different.

But whatever.

[EvilTwin]

"I'd would definitely bet that the iPhone OS is more heavy duty than the wii OS, purely because it does a lot more. so therefore that extra RAM over the wii might just be there to help run the OS + applications more smoothly, and not specifically for gaming purposes. That is just a guess though."
-- somekindofmike

A good guess, I'd wager. The iPhone is an electronic swiss army knife. It's doing a LOT of stuff besides gaming. The Wii, OTOH, is completely gaming-centric. Its web browser is even ridiculously slow and clunky. The eggs are all in one basket, so to speak.

I'm sure the iPhone has a buttload of power. It just isn't concentrated for one lone task, and that's why you certainly won't see it putting out the graphics of Prime 3 or Galaxy.

Hell, they're having problems with the frame rate for Monkey Island? Call Retro studios. They managed to get Corruption's framerate LOCKED. Don't complain about a lack of power when other devs are doing just fine with it.

[kraze07]

'iPhone is Much More Powerful than Wii', says TellTale Programmer
...
Seriously??? I wonder if this guy actually understands the words that come out of his mouth.

[asdr3wsfas]

The only way to make this comparison is by ignoring the graphics optimization of any hardware included in the wii while being ignorant of how Nintendo does pixel shading. Opterons are server processors and overclockers (including myself) have found that those Opterons perform worse for games and graphics than the athlon64 cores they're based on, despite having double the onboard cache. The reason is that servers need good floating point calculations and so they optimize the Opterons for it, which end up killing the normal Athlon64s for FPU intensive operations. On paper as marketed, the Opteron is a faster chip due to increased cache, but this doesn't translate to graphic performance because they're two different tools designed for different jobs, just like the iphone and the wii. AMD won't handhold you while they explain this because they expect competent professionals to understand it, and if you play Homestar Ruiner on the wii you'll see that is the last phrase you'd use to describe Telltale Games (explanation included below).

This is the same situation. The wii and Gamecube use a Texture Environment Unit that is unlike most other pixel shaders. Factor5 actually bothered to sit down and use this in the Gamecube version Rogue Squadron. In the Hoth scene they get 20 million polygons running at the 60fps default for the game. It set a record for most polygons in a 6th generation title. Factor5 tried to port this to xbox and they couldn't get it to run. Try and port this to the iphone.

This was a launch title so the lack of comparable performance is more a sign of laziness or ineptitude on the part of other devs than a problem with the hardware. Now consider that the wii is much faster than a Gamecube and you'll realize that this guy is used to other platforms and can't unlock Nintendo's strongest tools. That he's speaking out of frustration because the other consoles are close enough to PCs, which the monkey island devs are used to. The fact he's claiming this when Rogue Squadron for Gamecube has been out for many years and was a launch title makes you seriously question how much effort developers spend on Nintendo. They hate it because it's slower than other systems and this can't be denied, but this is a completely irrational comparison that makes entirely no sense. It just proves he didn't play Gamecubes.

If you're used to normal pixel shaders, you won't get any performance programming the TEV the same way. This is why people said those advanced effects used in the Conduit were impossible; you have to implement them differently for use in the TEV, but then you gain more typical pixel shading functionality. Saying it's impossible is a lot easier than admitting that you might not be that awesome a programmer.

Comparing it to an iphone are the hasty words of a frustrated developer who is used to PCs. It's a total joke and more of an admission that he doesn't know how to optimize for the wii compared to other platforms. I just finished the wii port of Homestar Ruiner by Telltale games and what I'm saying is obvious if you play it. The game is extremely buggy in widescreen and often skips. How could they have messed that up except by not knowing how wii is different from PCs? It's just a change in resolution.

Homestar Ruiner even runs slow with one character (Strongbad) and every object on screen immobile except one stationary 3d object being kicked around at a time (the turtle, curdled milk, and hurdle on the track in the race to the end of the race lag). The turtle crashed my wii and during the animation and all of them would skip, so they couldn't even render one moving 3d object without lag of three in the entire game. This was not limited to my console and I read the fix of dropping out of widescreen as advice to someone having the same trouble.

Anyone who thinks that the wii can't move one 3d object because of hardware problems is obviously mistaken. A passing comparison to a Gamecube game reveals that. He's obviously frustrated at a different platform than he's used to while his finished product - openly available for inspection - reveals that his skill is the main issue.

I'm trained in this so please don't tell me he's an expert and I'm not. Just go look at Rogue Squadron and then realize there's no justifiable reason to think what he's saying. Besides, did those record setting 6th gen graphics available at launch draw anyone to the console? The "hardcore" and developers who think similarly abandoned Nintendo long ago, and anyone claiming otherwise never owned a Gamecube. n64 killed that generation and they still didn't program for it. They only blame the wii's horsepower to excuse their lack of skills, and in context of the previous two Nintendo systems the serious hate some devs have for the console. They didn't even try to justify why they didn't make n64 or Gamecube games. Now they can't shut up about the performance of the wii.

I'd give anything to have Telltale booted from wiiware so we can get some competent programmers who can animate a single 3d object spinning in the air without chopping. Or who can implement widescreen without horrible crashing and play test enough to detect these sorts of errors. But I know this won't happen. Sadly I'll have to support them for my Strongbad.

[tunaks1]

did Factor 5 shut down? If not do they have any Wii games in development?

[asdr3wsfas]

The American operation shut down due to a pulled superman contract. Former employees (a large number suggesting this isn't frivilous) recently filed a lawsuit saying wages were withheld by moving resources to another developer, along with giving them the code they'd developed for a Rogue Squadron game on the wii. Whether it gets finished depends if Factor5 or the new devs they hocked it to decide to complete what the original developers accomplished.

Sadly, the lawsuit at least confirms that some if not most of the skilled programmers working on that title have left the company =(

An employee at the German operations posted to his twitter account some vita update with mention of an unannounced wii game and it was taken as a sign they might release one, but whether this is Rogue Squadron or not is unknown. They wrote a flight sim engine for the wii that looks quite nice and hopefully at least this is sold to other devs for use in their wii games.

[EvilTwin]

Damn, oobob. Why ya gotta lay out so much pwn-age in one response? :D

It's pretty sad that devs got so lazy with the Wii. But it looks like that is slowly changing, TellTale's b.s. aside.

[N4g_null]

LOL they pulled that statement back and some one else I believe Will addressed this. What is funny is this illustrates what I and other have to deal with. People are not really given a lot of time to do things right because the bigger companies just have money laying around to do things like actually learning how to program some thing rather than hacking. oobob if you knew how much was hacked together code you would be very surprised.
It also sound like these guys are using another compressor than S3 or maybe they are compressing the wrong things.

With the Wii you have to dive a little deeper. Like say if you have a sound clip you get your audio running really good and cut up the meatier sounds. Yet you leave the other along and then you don't have to compress as much. The bigger your sound file is the longer the compression takes to expand. On top of this I don't remember the Wii have a crazy sound compressor de-compressor.

I like tell tell but I think they are still learning. It sounds like they are talking to the wrong people in the industry for help hey but no one works for free....

What makes factor 5 shine so much is they hardly ever use real sound every thing is like a higher form of midi to them. I remember a tool call muse X I believe? Pretty cool stuff.

This is really too bad because I like tell tell and their crew yet he should know the state of gaming LOL. At least post you thoughs under a fanboy name to get them out of your system.

Then get back to work at making such an under preforming system look like a power house. What is funny about that is you become a rock star of sorts if you get it right. These guys should get the engine to a point where the programmer just gives it to the designers and let them work around these limitations and then go back to a lab to make the point and click engine better.

Kevin Bruner is responsible for the tool set they use I believe. He pretty much did not talk to any one for a while and this is not some huge crazy rich studio also. He also worked for Lucas arts and was one of the guys burnt by HD gaming when they laid off lots of people I believe I may be mistaken because I know a few from there that where.

I'm sure he will get it right it is not as hard but production dead line can be a b!tch! He needs to learn how to embrace the fake LOL. We are not beyond using a CGI mix with 3d yet 3d can be less heavy some times.

Give these guys a chance though He's been around since 2001-2 I believe and the wii is not as easy as you might think. The TEV has little info on it yet a call to factor 5 or retro could help out a lot LOL. Of course they may want to be paid LOL.

[asdr3wsfas]

"oobob if you knew how much was hacked together code you would be very surprised."

I'm busy with my gf and will respond in full later, but my friend told me that the kickoff/extra point meter and controls in one of the madden's he worked was the modified golf meter and controls from one of the Tiger Woods releases ;)

[G4drake]

so?.....who cares!!!!!!!

[Chrono1e]

and thats why the iPhone version of Resident evil 4 looks much better...(not!) ah these guys are stupid, why dont they just do their work right instead of been blaming it on hardware, baka!

[Braid]

Obviously the crack he's using is much more powerful than iPhone.

[ico92]

oh come on the wii isnt that powerful but thats just an insult