Why The Conduit Will Open New Doors For The First-Person Shooter Genre

When the Nintendo Wii was released in 2006, it was immediately dismissed by many first-person shooter developers, who believed the system had neither the power, nor the technology to produce a great shooter. Though this belief has arguably been disproved more than once, next year's "The Conduit" may cause many developers to completely rethink their position.

Conduit has the potential to be superior to the majority of most competitors on the rival and often-touted "most powerful" systems, the X360 and PS3. Here are a couple of reasons why. These conclusions are based upon what data we can glean from the game developers and the demos they have released thus far.

First of all, The Conduit's visuals will be almost as technically proficient as shooters on "graphically superior" consoles, if not more so. The developers of Conduit have created what is called the Quantum3 engine, capable of utilizing features that gamers have come to expect from the X360 and PS3. Examples include: bump mapping, material based bloom, dynamic water effects, and color gloss maps.

You may not know what many of those expressions mean, but apparently neither do many Wii shooter developers; so this is in many ways a big and much-deserved step for the console. When the game was presented at press conferences, gamers could not tell the difference between the graphics in The Conduit and in other Xbox 360 games. Secondly, and probably most importantly, The Conduit will have better, more precise control. This is a point that should not require much explanation. Not only will the game utilize the WiiMotionPlus attachment for more accurate aiming, but the game's controls themselves are completely up to the gamer. An example of what this means is that at any point in the game, the gamer can pause and edit pointer sensitivity, or map button controls.

Far too many games developers focus on graphics and therefore have not invested as much in developing games for the Wii as they have for the rival consoles, the Xbox 360 and PS3. When a representative of the first-person shooter developer Epic was asked whether or not they would be developing for the Wii, their answer was, "Why? That would be like a step backward!" This reveals an imbalanced emphasis on graphics, an area where the Wii is perceived to be at a disadvantage.

If developers such as Epic would put themselves in the shoes of gamers, they would recognize that graphics is only one piece to the gaming puzzle. Also important are the visuals themselves, and the gameplay. Gamers know that when developers focuse on making better and better graphics, they are prone to completely overlook opportunities for innovation in gameplay. Developers who realize that the gameplay is ultimately all that matters will find themselves rewarded in the marketplace.

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