Treyarch Blames Wii for World At War Omissions

« H E Gaming :: Scrubking :: email
posted 1 December 2008, Monday

I couldn't take it anymore. I had to see if Activision or Treyarch had made some sort of official statement concerning the glaring omissions in the Wii version of Call of Duty World at War. I went through the trouble of signing up for their official forum and I was greeted by a sticky post made by one of the developers who goes by the handle JD_2020. In spite of the fact that I expect companies to claim the Wii is to blame for their bad games I was still surprised and disappointed. Here is some of  what JD had to say:

Now, I have seen a number of concerned posts and e-mails about the Wii co-op. I’ve heard many arguments for many games that have online cooperative components on the Wii, but need to impress upon you the difference between those games and Call of Duty: World at War. Hopefully, I can set some things straight within the Wii community.

First, we have teams of engineers that have investigated online co-op for the Wii, and it simply is not physically possible with the Wii hardware and the engine we have running on the platform. The graphical accomplishments of CoD:WW utilize more of the system resources available on the Wii than other games in order to look as good as it does.

For a Multiplayer level, you need only enough geometry to sustain a fun competitive environment for players. An SP level, however, would be much larger than your given MP level, The amount of overhead that adds to the system (in terms of memory and processing power required to store and render that kind of data) is non-trivial. Then when you take into consideration all the AI, scripting, and client synchronization, there is an awful lot more that has to go on under-the-hood with co-op that simply cannot fit on the Wii platform. I haven’t even touched on the client-server host paradigm of our net code and the additional complexities it adds to this problem domain…

Our goal has always been to design the most fun, best-looking WW2 shooter of the year on the next-gen platforms. We have made a tremendous effort to bring this experience to the Wii...

It's hard not to get insulted when reading this stuff knowing that games from 5 years ago on PS2 had co-op, vehicles and capture the flag. It's like the developers are personally calling you an idiot because only an idiot would believe such garbage. In spite of the ridiculous notion that the Wii is not capable of co-op I really take offense at this guy's attempt to paint the Wii version of WAW as a "tremendous effort". The only "tremendous effort" Treyarch made was forcing themselves to make a Wii version they probably didn't want to make.

I think the Wii version of WAW is a great game, but it's nowhere near a tremendous effort and there is absolutely no excuse for the lack of co-op, zombie mode, vehicles, capture the flag and all the other stuff they left out.

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Post a comment. (3)


1. Voltaire left...
2 December 2008, Tuesday 12:37 am

Well i dont know how to feel about this. I know for a fact that WaW on Wii is an amazing game, i also know that with the choise of the Wii version or the PS360 version, i would get the latter. The controls arent up to par with MoH, not to mention all the ommitions you mentioned. However, i can see the point this guy is makeing. The engine running on Wii is a miracle as it is, and running that both on the same console would be difficult, specially when your developing on the 1 year cycle Treyarch does. I do think Co-op online would be possible though, at least for 2 players. I am mad as hell for, as a Wii gamer, not getting all the goodies (death cards....why no death cards?) on the PS360 version, but you have to give these guys some credit.


2. Scrubking left...
2 December 2008, Tuesday 10:44 am :: http://newlevelgaming.blog-city.com/

The Wii is not at fault for Teyarch's lack of effort. If their Wii engine can't do something it's because they didn't program it to do those things. And it's not a miracle that the CoD4 engine is running on the Wii as game engines are routinely changed and tweaked to fit specific games or systems.

And their dev cycle is at least two years. The next CoD game is already well under way at IW, and it won't be too long before Treyarch starts on the one after that. It doesn't matter though because if Treyarch had time to get the HD versions of the game right then they surely had time to get the Wii version right. Of course that is never the case it seems and the Wii always gets the short end of the stick.

I can't wait until The Conduit comes out so that these developers can stop using the "Wii can't handle it" excuse.


3. annoyed wii gamer left...
13 February 2009, Friday 9:22 am

COD5 on the wii is really fun and a great game but the thing what i don't like is why does the wii not get search and destroy ect ect.Treyarch could have done alot better i think treyarch dosen't care about the wii because they could have made the graphics better, more maps and more matches online.