It’s not a secret that most of us around here don’t really play the Wii all that much. Nintendo’s cash cow sits around and gets very little attention. I’m looking to change that in 2009.
The Wii is a global phenomenon that has changed the face of video games as we know it. There is mass appeal and a lot can be said for what Nintendo has done for the industry. So, I want to be a part of this huge conglomerate of Wii lovers.
Yesterday I went to Best Buy to return some unwanted Christmas gifts and I picked up a whole slew of Wii paraphernalia. I got a power adapter, wireless sensor bar, and component video cables to make a nice Wii setup in my office to go along with the PS3 and Xbox 360 setups. Now I can move the console out of the living room and into my office where I tend to spend most of my time. I also picked up a rechargeable battery pack for my Wii Fit board and a copy of Shawn White Snowboarding. I fully intend to use it all.
To go along with all of this, my wife and I are going on a huge fitness kick for the New Year, both intending to shed a few pounds (me a lot more than her). I’m going to be using the Wii Fit daily for 30 minutes as well as lifting with some free weights I brought back from my parents’ basement over the Holidays. I’ll be checking in every week to let you guys know the progress. Wii Fit has sold more copies than I care to count… it has to work, right? Right?
Anyway, I’m going to be putting in a lot of time on the Wii this year. Anybody have suggestions for games I should pick up?
[Update] Well, it seems the odds are not in my favor. I hooked everything up today in my office and brought my Wii upstairs. Fired it up and the GPU seems to have overheated. Not sure how that happens when you don’t use it, but who knows. Anyway, it’s out of warranty and I don’t have any money to get it repaired or replaced at the moment. Unless Nintendo or one of you out there wants to hook me, I’m Wii-less. Boo.
Wishing everyone a happy and healthy New Year for 2008! Make your resolutions now. We’re holding you to them this year. My resolution for 2008 is finish up a lot of the games I’ve shelved to make time for new ones. I have a bunch, so we’ll see how it goes.
What are your gaming resolutions for 2008? Are you going to buy a new console? Stop being an ass online? Start being an ass online? Who knows, it could be anything. Let us know in the comments.
In the weekly Bungie update, Luke Smith confirmed that Halo 3 does in fact run at 640p natively, which is then scaled up by the Xbox 360 to every resolution it supports. Luke let everyone know the reason for this lower resolution: the lighting engine. To keep up with a good frame rate and still have their HDR (high dynamic range) lighting system, Bungie had to make the game run in two buffers of 1152×640, a very unconventional resolution.
This ability to display a full range of HDR, combined with our advanced lighting, material and postprocessing engine, gives our scenes, large and small, a compelling, convincing and ultimately “real” feeling, and at a steady and smooth frame rate, which in the end was far more important to us than the ability to display a few extra pixels. Making this decision simpler still is the fact that the 360 scales the “almost-720p” image effortlessly all the way up to 1080p if you so desire.
Hit the jump for more »
Word around the interwebs right now is that Halo 3 only runs at 640p and is scaled by the Xbox 360 to 720p and higher. Beyond3D forum member Quaz51 did some tests to show this.
He tested several edge images in the game using 1:1 mapping on his Samsung 1080p set to come up with his conclusion of 640p. The image above is the edge of a sniper rifle in the game. Quaz51 tested “approximately sixty X360 games (and lot of PS3 games too ), all are 720p except two 1080p (VT3 and NBA street), two 600p (PGR3 and Tomb Raider) and Two 640p (Perfect Dark and Halo3.” He’s very credible over there, so I’m going to believe his results.
So what does this mean? It might explain why some people don’t think the graphics in Halo 3 looks that great. I wonder if Bungie will confront this issue.
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