Factor 5's Julian Eggebrecht on Wii Graphics

Once again, Julian proves everything FWA believes about the Wii to be true. In a recent interview with Revogamers, Mr. Eggebrecht spoke his mind on the possible causes for the crappy graphics syndrome on Wii. Revogamers translated the important parts of the interview for our reading pleasure:

- On publishers not taking advantage of the Wii’s power for graphics: “the traditional, more photorealistic route, because there you really have to push it, and they’re really not pushing it. Why not? Hmmm I don’t know, the hardware is very, very easy to understand. Now the problem might be –and it just might be- is that some studios -or some publishers specifically- are discarding the graphical capabilities automatically simply because it is a Wii title and they’re basically telling the developers “look, we won’t pay for any advanced graphics”.”

- On Wii’s “shaders” and possibilities: “If you connect you can get a lot of shader effects which would’ve been on the 360 or the PS3.” (…)”it’s got so much more power compared to the GameCube. If even with the extremely similar shader hardware, the system clockrate is so much higher, you can do so much more advanced things” (…)”in the photorealistic route there’re certain things which the basic structure of the graphics hardware was not meant for and which you have to find really clever tricks to basically make up.

Publishers refusing to pay more for decent-looking graphics? Not surprising. More after the jump, including Factor 5's next possible projects.


Everyone knows I'm a huge fan of Factor 5 developing for the Wii. Luckily, it seems the possibility isn't being ruled out entirely. And considering that Lair hasn't done nearly as well as it should have, the company could do with making some moolah. What better way to do that than work on a polished game on a system you're extremely familiar with?

And then there's that little matter of the Wii already having outsold the 360.

- On porting their old tools (SW engine): “If we would do a Wii version of that, certainly that could be something which somebody could license. (…)” “But I can imagine that there will be several engines coming out, also for the Wii ”

- On casual gaming: “I really hate the current trend of the hardcore people very much getting into this bubble of being very defensive and not wanting the whole casual thing to happen. In the end it’s all one big market we’re, essentially we’re all casual.”

- On F5’s next project: “We’re honestly at this point thinking about several titles in development (…). So might be PS3, might be Wii… we’re totally open to that.”

- On Mario Galaxy: “is so inspired that it seems to be worth the success of Mario 64. (…) “yes, this thing is actually taking advantage, (…) it’s basically doing new graphical things with the hardware”

- On the German and European industry: “now that the consoles are coming back, specially with the Wii selling so extremely well, I think for the first time in many, many years, you actually have a pan-European situation where you can develop quite nicely”