Entrevista: Eggebrecht y el desarrollo de la potencia de Wii

RG: Just one more question about that thing. Some other tools like the Unreal Engine are widely and easily licensed and used by many studios. We haven't seen a modified version of them for the Nintendo platform, which could make a full and easier use of its graphical and control possibilities. Why?

JE: I think the issue with that... you would have to ask them. I think the more successful the Wii platform gets, the more Epic and other engine vendors will probably think about the whole thing. But if their engine is all thought about and all built around the current generation in terms of 360 and PS3 graphics hardware, then they might have a problem actually getting for example the data sizes down to a point where they work nicely on the Wii. Outside of that this guys usually haven't work much or at all in the GameCube days on the graphics side, and that comes down to exactly what you were asking earlier and I don't know if with their high end graphics program... as they're willing to look at the hardware and do something completely new. But I can imagine that there will be several engines coming out, also for the Wii, because the more successful it gets, the more people will ask about the pros of portability. But it is a tricky issue because you can take the PC and then you say "for the PC and the PS3 and the 360, all have an arrange to kick off memory" for example. That's so much more!, so all of your data structures... certain things within the engine always assume that you have that much memory, it might be practically impossible to go over to the Wii. So it really depends on your engine and if it was designed in mind with something very small and very large, and it's sometimes not very easy to scale in very large and very small.

RG: So then it's not a matter of scaling but maybe reworking

JE: Yes, exactly.

RG: Mario Galaxy seems the best example of what the Wii can do. How far do you think a studio can go from that point? In other words, how much does the game use the power of the system in your opinion?

JE: I haven't seen all of Mario Galaxy...

RG: Have you tried it?

JE: Yeah, of course! (laughs) I'm a huge Mario fan, it's the one I'm looking forward to the most.

RG: Oh the cake stage is awesome!

JE: Yeah! (laughs) No, I'm so looking forward to it because I was a little disappointed (as probably most were) with Mario Sunshine because it seemed that at the half point they kind of lost interest in making the game. And Mario Galaxy is so inspired that it seems to be worth the success of Mario 64. And with that also, certainly looking at it, it's the first game -also which I saw at E3- where I said "yes, this thing is actually taking advantage, it's running at 60fps, it's basically doing new graphical things with the hardware. Having said that though, it's nice because of the things it's doing; it also does have certain advantage by having exactly the perfectly right style for the hardware. Doesn't make it easier at all, but nevertheless they have a big advantage due to that, because, of course, the Mario style just fits their hardware absolutely perfectly, and they're taking nice advantage of it. I think the biggest challenge which you have on that specific hardware platform is to go into the photorealistic route, because 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. And that's kind of the next... that's the big barrier on the platform. I think certain developers will grab it. Certainly, if we would do a Wii game, we would try to do that.

RG: That'd be fantastic. After the Rogue Squadron series and Lair, will we be flying with Factor 5's next game? Any clues on when and in which platforms?

JE: (laughs) Hmmm... it's going to be a while and we actually cannot say anything about the platform yet. We're honestly at this point thinking about several titles in development and we haven't settled quite yet on which platform or which platforms if one of them is. So might be PS3, might be Wii... we're totally open to that. (laughs)

RG: Ok, the last question... we're making a poll for our readers, what's your favourite Wii game or project at the moment?

JE: Hmmm... it's interesting, if I have to go just for one it's Mario Galaxy, but I'm almost as interested in Wii Fit actually, because the whole thing is just intriguing!. Not so much as a gamer, I mean that's as casual as it gets, but just in terms of what they come up with in terms of clever software is the case...

RG: Or what You can come up with!

JE: (laughs) No, but I mean, personally as a gamer I can't wait for Galaxy

RG: Ok, that's all, thank you very much, Julian.

JE: Thank you guys.