So apparantly, despite the absolutely absurd amount of content, features and options and despite the impossibly large budget Mr Ashcraft of Kotaku reckons the game isn't next-gen.

What a tool.

I can't even see how "next-gen" is even a noteworthy attribute if Smash manages this level of awesome without it.

It's not next-gen because it could, in all likelihood, have been done on the Gamecube. Plus, I thought you loved Kotaku? Or are they only morons when they don't agree with you?

[quote=The X;812509]It's not next-gen because it could, in all likelihood, have been done on the Gamecube. Plus, I thought you loved Kotaku? Or are they only morons when they don't agree with you?

I'm constantly on it because it's a pretty handy central place for lots of game news among a few other on my favourites. But they tend to put a sh[COLOR=lightgreen]i[/COLOR]tty spin on a lot of things or quite literally not know what they're talking about. Their opinions are ridiculously easily influenced by PR speak.

Could Brawl have been done on a GC, really? Would it have online with downloadable content delievered via WiiConnect24? Could all the music, cutscenes and other content fit on a GC disc? Was GC in a powerful enough position for the game to be delayed as many times as it has been for such a level of polish and did Nintendo have good enough relationships with all the 3rd parties that helped make the game a few years ago?

More importantly, is the only thing that makes a game next-gen it's graphics? Would it be "next-gen" if it had better graphics and was on a 360? Apparantly so, since no one made any complaints about Virtua Fighter 5 and SC4 despite not having anywhere near the amount of new content that Brawl does. What about Street Fighter IV, is regressing to a SFII state (thats 1991, by the way) and slapping on a new graphics engine really next-gen? I'm not slating those 3 games, I just find the intangible "next-gen" standards pretty bizarre with a hint of double standards.


TL;DR: What if they made 2 new versions of Monopoly, one with enhanced gameplay and one with a more detailed game board and peices. Which one's worthy of being called next-gen? When you decide think about what made you decide what "next-gen" actually defines, I mean really think about it. If you think the question is irrelevent t video games then also ask yourself why.

[quote=Speedfreak;812560]Would it have online with downloadable content delievered via WiiConnect24?
DLC - since when? And last generation, the XBox was using downloadable content for Halo 2 and MechAssault. It's not a brand new feature of the next-gen.

[quote=Speedfreak]Could all the music, cutscenes and other content fit on a GC disc?
The Wii uses CD format. Using CDs is not next-gen. Sup, Sega CD?

[quote=Speedfreak]Was GC in a powerful enough position for the game to be delayed as many times as it has been for such a level of polish
Irrelevant to the actual game mechanics and whether or not they're next-gen.

[quote=Speedfreak]and did Nintendo have good enough relationships with all the 3rd parties that helped make the game a few years ago?
Kojima wanted Snake in Melee before the Gamecube had even been launched. Still irrelevant. Having Sonic the Hedgehog as a character in your game makes it next-gen?

[quote]More importantly, is the only thing that makes a game next-gen it's graphics? Would it be "next-gen" if it had better graphics and was on a 360? For a game to be 'next-gen', it has to make real use of a next-gen console. In this case, for a Wii game to be next-gen, it would have to make use of the Wii's motion/pointing facilities. For a PS3 game to be regarded as 'next-gen', it would have to make good use of Blu-ray, Cell processing, etc. Same goes for a 360 next-gen title. Burnout Paradise, for instance, would be considered next-gen because it simply wouldn't have been possible in the last generation of consoles. Brawl could have been.

The fact you can play through Brawl entirely with a Cube pad is pretty blatant evidence that Brawl isn't a next generation game.

tl;dr - Brawl is doing nothing that we couldn't have seen in the last hardware generation. Therefore it isn't next-gen.

I'm content with Last-gen, then. Next-gen hasn't been all that appealing anyhow.

Can it do everything a last gen system could do? Yes.

Will it be the best game ever made? Yes.

ARGUMENTS NULLIFIED

[QUOTE=The X;812568]DLC - since when? And last generation, the XBox was using downloadable content for Halo 2 and MechAssault. It's not a brand new feature of the next-gen.

You can download levels.

DLC wasnt available on GC. Therefore GC could not do that. Remember Smash Bros appeared on GC, not Xbox.

[quote]For a game to be 'next-gen', it has to make real use of a next-gen console. In this case, for a Wii game to be next-gen, it would have to make use of the Wii's motion/pointing facilities. For a PS3 game to be regarded as 'next-gen', it would have to make good use of Blu-ray, Cell processing, etc. Same goes for a 360 next-gen title. Burnout Paradise, for instance, would be considered next-gen because it simply wouldn't have been possible in the last generation of consoles. Brawl could have been.

Not every game makes use of it's console's abilities. How man 360 games have voice input? Why not? Xbox has a microphone does it not? Does every online game for Xbox 360 support offline split screen and lan? And DLC? And super nice pretty graphics? Flawed logic.

[quote=Bebop;812813]X was saying for a game to be next gen it needs to use everything about the console. Whether or not some developers sucked at using one aspect of the console is irrelevant. Under his own logic no 360 game is next gen unless it uses the voice input. How well it does it is meaningless.
No, it doesn't have use everything. I never, ever said that. It has to make use of things that weren't available last gen to be considering 'next-gen'. There wasn't a motion-sensitive console on the market in the last generation. There wasn't a console that used Blu-Ray discs. There wasn't a console that made online play integral to the experience.

For a game to be next-gen, it has to be doing things that weren't possible on the Gamecube, PS2 or XBox. By your logic, a new Atari console could have basic 3D graphics and be considering next-gen, simply because the Atari Jaguar used 2D graphics. Generations aren't company-linear. They span the whole video game market.

Whether it's Wii Sports motion controls, the amount of content contained on Metal Gear Solid 4's Blu-Ray disc, or Halo 3's implementation of high-detail leaderboards, content sharing and map-making features - that's next-gen. Those are things you simply couldn't do last generation.

Super Smash Bros Brawl is gonna be an amazing game, worthy of heaps of praise. I'll buy it, love it, and it'll probably be the only game I'll play ten years from now. But I won't indulge in any kind of fantasy that it's next-gen, because everything it does could have been done on the Cube. Even online.

Hold on a sec, if a game appears on Blu Ray, no matter what it's content, it's automatically next-gen because of it's format?

If it's making good use of Blu-Ray, then yeah. MGS4's doing that. You couldn't have fitted it onto a DVD. Obviously, if I slapped Brawl on a Blu-Ray disc for no good reason, that wouldn't be next-gen. More like an unnecessary waste of resources.

GC couldnt do DLC. Smash does. Xbox could do DLC but thats an unfair comparison because if Brawl were to be last gen you could only consider it on the console it would have appeared on. It's next gen just on that primitive definition. Frankly I would say Brawl's conent is next gen when compared with the content of the games listed. Some of them may be prettier looking but we all know graphics doesnt mean next gen.

Sorry, in what way coudlnt those games be done on Xbox? Assuming som corners were cut for graphics it'd be acheivable.

Taking Burnout Paradise as an example, you couldn't make an entire free-roaming city with no load times on the XBox. Then throw in an online system where you don't even have to return to a lobby to get people in on your game. The outstanding graphics are a part of the next-gen. They're not the entire foundation of it, but having pretty as hell games is one of the benefits on the next generation, I won't deny it.

1st party GC games didn't suffer from load times. Alot of 3rd ones too. Load times are last gen.
PS2 managed to cope with San Andreas just fine. I doubt paradise's city is larger than that. If PS2 could do it fine I don't see why Xbox couldn't.

It wouldnt have been able to deal with the same level of graphical quality and detail but we agreeded it's more than graphics that make something next gen. Graphics arent gameplay. They could have done a free roam city, but just because it wouldnt be as nice to look at doesnt mean it wasnt acheivable.

As for the online I don't know too much about it. However seeing as Brawl can pair you with an opponent and continue a battle following connection problems I'm sure Xbox could especially when you consider this is Nitendos first REAl home internet play, and Xbox raised the bar on its first try.

If Wii can do something similar to that on it's first try of a more primitive online play structure theres no reason why Xbox couldnt do that. Sounds like an issue of the developers, not the hardware.

All right, so you're an idiot? Jesus. How long did your brother test this game?

As far as I know he didn't test Paradise. Paradise sounds more last gen than next gen.

[url=http://www.vgchat.com/showthread.php?t=24614&highlight=burnout]Haha, oh wow.[/url]

No idea what you're talking about, I guess.

HOLY **** A THREAD ON A GAME I DONT CARE ABOUT AND HAVE NO INTEREST IN PLAYING I MUST READ IT!!!1!

I think you'd at least know what game your brother was testing.

First part: It's the graphical quality combined with the smoothness of gameplay while being online. Not going to happen on a last-gen console.

Second bit: For some reason, I think you know I'm Canadian, and I'm pretty positive you know X and Willeth live in the UK. On top of that I figured you'd know that's a fairly large distance between the two nations and sending that much information back and forth obviously leads to quite a bit of lag in the majority of games. Not having that in Burnout is a big deal. I apologize if I didn't factor in your complete ignorance on a topic you were arguing.

Generation of console features, Bebop, not a single console. DLC was done last gen (or the gen before??) so it's not next-gen.

[QUOTE=Vampiro V. Empire;812885]First part: It's the graphical quality combined with the smoothness of gameplay while being online. Not going to happen on a last-gen console.

[quote]Second bit: For some reason, I think you know I'm Canadian, and I'm pretty positive you know X and Willeth live in the UK. On top of that I figured you'd know that's a fairly large distance between the two nations and sending that much information back and forth obviously leads to quite a bit of lag in the majority of games. Not having that in Burnout is a big deal. I apologize if I didn't factor in your complete ignorance on a topic you were arguing.

I've had smooth play with Americans during Xbox Live as well as PC games. No lag across timezones isnt unheard of. I'm sorry that you think you're gameplay experiences are totally unique.

[quote]Entirely impossible.
Large maps and no loading times are not a new thing. So it's not entirely impossible.

Constant goalpost moving for the f[COLOR=lightgreen]u[/COLOR]cking lose. Looks like you guys don't know what it means either.

So because it was possible on an Xbox it's irrelevent (despite the sharing of user-created content, which was actually all I was referring to, but I think you knew that anyway)? I guess nothing on Xbox 360 is "next-gen" because PC did it all bloody ages ago. You could move the goalposts over to where it says "PC is a different market" if you want, no one's used it yet. Or you could just admit it doesn't mean jack shit and is quite literally a PR phrase used to belittle competition that's been used for the last two generations. Unless you want to show me some serious game theory work that actually gives the term some credit.

There's 3 options for you, bud.

Why would PC count in this discussion exactly? It is a completely different market and most PC gamers are proud of that fact. PC has always been one step ahead of the console market, but really, they're just that, two different markets. As for the term next-gen, there's at least some validity to the term. If a game couldn't've been made on a previous generation console, it's easily defined as a "next-gen" product. Makes perfect sense to me!

Though, really, why it matters is beyond me. If Smash is a "last-gen" effort and still manages to be an amazing game, far exceeding most "current-gen" titles, who gives a ****? And really, that was my only point from the get-go. I just thought it was stupid you guys thought it was a next-gen game and took the fact that it wasn't as an insult of some sort.

[quote=TechEncyclopedia]
A common label applied to a major upgrade of a hardware or software product.


Next Gen has been a code word for graphics in videogame ever since Nintendo Power printed it in their mag. People are use to thinking Next Gen inplys graphics, and probably don't consider the Wii Next gen. Because of this, I feel that the term is out of date, considering Nintendo choose motion controls over higher graphics, an upgrade disregaurding graphics. People who consider motion controls an upgrade of technology, like me, thinks the Wii is Next Gen. People thinking online play for Smash is an upgrade will also think Smash is Next Gen. Opinion opinion.

Either way, saying there is one "right" interpretation is just bogus, since the defintion itself is just a label of opinion.

It depends on whatever someone considers a big upgrade; so depending on what focal points a person consideres major-improvements--that will be how they'll decide if it's next gen. I don't believe graphics is where it's all at either, though I get the feeling a lot of people do.

[quote=Vampiro V. Empire;813431]Why would PC count in this discussion exactly? It is a completely different market and most PC gamers are proud of that fact. PC has always been one step ahead of the console market, but really, they're just that, two different markets. As for the term next-gen, there's at least some validity to the term. If a game couldn't've been made on a previous generation console, it's easily defined as a "next-gen" product. Makes perfect sense to me!

Though, really, why it matters is beyond me. If Smash is a "last-gen" effort and still manages to be an amazing game, far exceeding most "current-gen" titles, who gives a ****? And really, that was my only point from the get-go. I just thought it was stupid you guys thought it was a next-gen game and took the fact that it wasn't as an insult of some sort.

It was really more the fact that Ashcraft meant it as some kind of insult, despite being entirely hypocritical with the phrase. On that site "next-gen" is apparantly a very important attribute for a game. Any game that doesn't achieve the fabled next-gen standard is the worse for it, despite them never defining it and it seemingly always being about graphics. It's only ever an issue to them when the game is on Wii no matter how good it is or when it's a particularly bad 360/PS3 game. It's not a level playing field.

Except the whole article is basically praising the game. He mentions it could've been done on the N64, but says how amazing the single-player alone is. If what you say is right, than that's an even bigger compliment. It's not next-gen to him, which is a big deal to him, yet it's an awesome game? That's high praise.