No. THe low resolution is not the problem. In-fact, if the 3DS had the texture memory and polygon capabilities of the wii, devlopers would have had no trouble taking advantage of the resolution similarly to how capcom used low resolution for RE4 on the GCN.
To answer the OP: The 3Ds can't do anything polygon intensive like star War RS, and while it can come close, it can only do high numbers of shaders at once when doing very small areas with 1 or 2 enemies at a time.
On every aspect the 3DS is huge potential wasted on crappy hardware design decisions:
- Great shaders wasted on sub-PS2 texture quality and polygon count
- 3D wasted on a low resolution and mediocre graphics
- New Wifi features wasted on a 4 hour battery
- Analog nub that, while superior to the PSP nub, takes up too much internal space.
Originally Posted by Nuclear Muffin:
Well, the 3DS is powerful enough to run a graphically enhanced version of MH3 Tri (which was one of the Wii's very best looking games) so we know that it's more powerful than Wii.
Only if by "graphically enhanced", you mean with some normal maps added at the cost of a significantly lower polygon count and texture resolution.
It is one thing to speculate what the 3DS can do, but don't act as if what you are implying is fact.
The 3DS has, at bare minimum, 4MB of VRAM and maybe 96MB of available FCRAM (which is over twice as fast as DDR2, and a tiny bit faster than DDR3). FCRAM is three times as fast as RDRAM, the RAM used in the PS2. However, the PS2 ram was clocked at a higher clock speed, about 400MHz, so the effective data rate is about the same. So at the same data rate, the 3DS has three times the RAM of the PS2, and the same (or more) amount of VRAM available.
There are a couple things we do not yet know. One is, how much VRAM is actually there? If 4MB, that is fine. The 3DS is operating at a much lower resolution than the PS2, so it should technically be better. But at the same time, is the FCRAM in the 3DS unified? If so, it would allow the GPU to borrow unused RAM, sort of like how an integrated GPU steals your system RAM. If that is the case, the 3DS VRAM could be well...anything.
So no, the 3DS does not have sub-PS2 textures. Half-assed games might make it seem like that, but a quick glance at Revelations, Mario Kart or 3D Land, or hell, even Ocarina, show that it is capable of much higher textures. The Wii has only 3MB of VRAM, so it is definitely more capable than that. The limiting factor here might be space issues. Currently, except for MGS, all games are shipped on 2GB carts. The PS2 used DVDs, which use 4.6GB. Textures might not appear that great because they simply would not fit.
As for the polygon performance, we all know the PS2 was a beast in terms of polygon pushing power. No one really knows what clock frequency the PICA200 GPU in the 3DS is running at, so no one can actually determine if it can
technically push more polygons than the PS2. I say technically, because no game I have seen so far looks like it is coming close. That could be because they are not used to the hardware, it might be because it is not possible, who knows. Only time will tell.
Even if the game was asset perfect, and you don't know it is, don't even consider suggesting otherwise based on scans, we will know when it's out. But even if that was the case, it will be running at considerably lower resolution. It would take about "double the rendering power of the Wii." to do the exact Wii game, at it's native resolution and framerate but in 3D, but the 3DS game will not be doing that.
I dunno if the 3DS has twice the power of the Wii (I definitely do not think that. A little better at the most), but I know that the Conduit developers ported Conduit 2 over to the 3DS "asset perfect", and it ran flawlessly and in 3D. This developer claims they pushed the Wii to its limits, and if they did, maybe we have a baseline, but who knows.