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Pokemon X and Y game, vs. Pokemon TV show graphics quality

In the kickoff 48 hours of their release, Pokemon X and Y sold iv million units, making them two of the fastest-selling games of all time, simply behind 1000 Theft Auto 5. Pokemon Ten and Y are being universally received as excellent additions to the second-biggest-selling game franchise of all fourth dimension — and across the addition of full networking/multiplayer functionality, by far the greatest new feature is the improver of full 3D graphics in battles and in some areas of the game globe. The 3D graphics are and then adept that Pokemon X and Y almost looks the same as the Pokemon TV show — an impressive jump from the Nintendo DS's weak 2nd graphics. The question is, though: When will the graphics of a Pokemon game be better than the TV show?

Prior to the Nintendo 3DS, the Nintendo portables packed some of the weakest hardware in the gaming manufacture. The Game Boy Advance, released in 2001, had a 16MHz ARM CPU — at the aforementioned time, in the PC industry, AMD had but released the magnificent Barton-core Athlon XP. The Nintendo DS, which was released in 2004 and went on to become the biggest selling game console of all time, had a 67MHz CPU and 4MB of RAM. As we've learnt with the rising of smartphones, though, portability and accessibility can be a lot more than valuable than flashy visuals.

The 3DS, notwithstanding, perhaps by virtue of its high-res display and other advanced features, packs a dual-core ARM bit clocked at around 233MHz, 128MB of RAM, and a GPU with OpenGL support and 6MB of defended VRAM. Equally a result, afterwards monopolizing the portable gaming market for 25 years, you can finally play some impressive 3D games on a Nintendo handheld. When it comes to standard 3D games, the graphics on the 3DS aren't that impressive — but for Pokemon, which is based on a simply drawn anime TV testify, the image quality is impressively similar. Accept a look at the comparison screenshots and videos below.

Pokemon TV show, screenshots

Screenshots from the Pokemon Tv set show. Click to zoom in.

Pokemon X and Y, screenshots

Screenshots from the Pokemon X and Y games. Click to zoom in.

When volition the Pokemon games accept meliorate graphics than the Television receiver prove?

As you tin can see, the Idiot box show has slightly more detail than Pokemon X and Y, but the difference is fairly minimal — except, of course, for aliasing. While the TV evidence looks polish and warm, Pokemon X and Y has lots of jaggy edges that catch the centre in a bad way. Some of the textures look a bit likewise digital/computery in the Pokemon game, too.

The jaggy edges are caused by the low output resolution of the Nintendo 3DS (400×240) on a three.five-inch display. Information technology only isn't possible to draw those thin, night outlines on every character at 400×240 (133 PPI) and not accept jaggy edges. If the resolution was much higher — say, the 1136×640 (326 PPI) — so those jaggies would get abroad.

A college resolution would necessitate a more than powerful CPU and GPU, though — but cipher too extraordinary. A concluding-gen Qualcomm SoC (the Snapdragon S4 with Adreno 225 GPU) or Apple SoC (A6 with a PowerVR SGX543MP3 GPU) would take more than enough processing oomph, bandwidth, and polygon-pushing power to bulldoze a cel-shaded version of Pokemon that looks meliorate than the TV show. Or, to put it another way, if Nintendo always released Pokemon for iOS or Android, the image quality could be better than the Television receiver show.

Processing power, though, is inexpensive. By the time the side by side Nintendo handheld comes along, it's nigh guaranteed that it will take a big enough CPU and GPU that it tin easily match graphics quality of the Pokemon TV evidence. A better question to ask is whether Pokemon'due south developer, Game Freak (owned past Nintendo), will actually carp spending fourth dimension on creating high-quality models and textures to beat the graphics quality of the Pokemon Television set show. Because in that location's no competition, and Pokemon 10 and Y were ii of the fastest selling games of all time, I can't imagine Game Freak or Nintendo volition be pushing overly hard for super-high-quality graphics.

At present read: GTA 5: PS3 vs. Xbox 360, gameplay and graphics quality comparison

[The story originally said that five.v 1000000 units were sold in 24 hours. Nintendo has since provided the official figure of four meg in 48 hours, and the story has been updated to reflect that fact.]