San Francisco (CA) – A TellTale Games developer has claimed that the iPhone is more powerful than the Wii. The developer – known as Yare – was responding to complaints about poor frame rate issues in Tales of Monkey Island for the Wii.
“Frame rate issues will probably get sorted out eventually, but keep in mind that the Wii is just not a powerful console,” Yare wrote in an official forum post quoted by Gamezine. “An iPhone is much more powerful than a Wii, even.”
Yare has refused to retract the controversial remark and reiterated his blunt assessment in a subsequent post.
“I stand by them. The Wii and DS are extremely underpowered and their popularity doesn’t remove the hardware limitations,” stated Yare.
It should be noted that a number of developers have expressed similiar reservations about the Wii. For example, Lennart Sas, the creative director of Triumph Studio, recently told OXM UK that the Wii was too “last-gen” for Xbox 360 game ports.
“The key selling point for the Wii is the Wii controls. You should build your game round that,” said Sas. “The weakness for the Wii is the graphical and processing technology, which is last-gen. So you have to custom tailor your game to best use of the Wii’s strengths, which is the Wii-mote. I don’t think you can do that with a direct port.”
Indeed, a number of Xbox 360 games, including Godfather, Guitar Hero and Harry Potter, have all been “shrunk down” to accommodate the Wii.
