A lie is a lie. Nintendo deceived people when they showed the first trailer. They promised people that they will be playing this awesome looking next-gen game on Wii U but the actual game turned out to be nowhere near that initial trailer. They knew the hardware capabilities of the Wii U well but they still chose to mislead people with the first trailer. I remember how Nintendo and its fans were trying to prove at the time that Wii U was very powerful because of its revolutionary GPGPU and this trailer was often used as a proof. Nobody was willing to believe that it was a little more powerful than PS360. Now they pretend that they never believed the trailer and it does not matters if Nintendo lied. Nintendo always get a free pass in everything!

@mamotte

So does two wrongs make a right? Is that what you are saying. Those games and the related developers did not get a free pass and were criticized heavily. The same should go for Nintendo. But Noooooo; when Nintendo does it its completely fine and acceptable. I do not see an internet outrage anywhere as in the case of those games.

@ those up there

"Pulled an Ubisoft"
"A lie is a lie"
"Fanboy giving a pass because it's..."
"Did the devs actually come out to confirm the downgrade? If not then they need to be criticised heavily for it."

http://bit.ly/1ynkWFq
http://bit.ly/1NCS1UU
http://bit.ly/1NCS5E7

So, are we amnesic or retarded? your choose.

@ greiver
If people could overlook and love a slight drop in graphics in the case of games like Bioshock Infinite and still buy it in droves, why can't we do so here?
Why are we being villainized for giving such a small drop in graphics a pass when many did it before, if Infinity's sales are any indication?

Unlike Watch Dogs, this one isn't attempting to sell itself off of graphics.
There's no outrage because we knew this would happen and because the devs aren't known for trying to push visuals before everything else, as Ubisoft did with Watch Dogs.
Even with the "downgrade" the game still looks gorgeous, and it is confirmed to be massively stuffed with content that will make it worth owning.
Unless you're a graphics whore, of course, which most Nintendo fans are NOT, and thus still feel the game looks great.
Oh, and for the record, I picked up Bioshock Infinite for PS3, despite knowing about the E3 downgrade in visuals.
I'm not so shallow as to hold so minor a difference in graphics against a game.

This downgrade isn't on the same level as Watch Dogs.
People in here are asking us to pretend it is, so that they feel justified in eventually riding the negativity wave all the way down to the point where we shouldn't get the game because they "lied about it".

@wonderfulmonkeyman

The point still stands that Nintendo lied and deceived, regardless of the amount of content in the game or its artistic beauty, and nobody cares about it just because its Nintendo. If they showed the game as it looks today two years ago, the console would have gotten a lot of slack for being weak and underpowered. The downgrade is not minor in any way. The lightning, character models, textures, foliage and many other things are heavily downgraded from the E3 2013 trailer. The only thing that looks good are the monsters and strangely they look much better than the actual heroes of the story. I am amused at the developers' priorities. Nintendo used deception to generate hype and they should be held to the same standards as other companies.

EDIT: The gameplay of the game is yet to be tested by anybody. The game has been shown mostly as presentations and there isnt a single hands-on impression for the game. Isnt that strange? Therefore, you cannot vouch for the quality of the gameplay just yet. For now the gameplay looks like something out of Monster Hunter where players do hunting quests endlessly. The game is getting a free pass because of the false hype built by the reveal trailer and the blind faith in Nintendo by its fans.

@Griever

Title of the article "A Disappointing Xenoblade Chronicles X Comparison"

Sorry to point the obvious, but this article is proof that people care. Now, the question is, should we care? Bioschock infinite turned out to be a great game despite the downgrade. Uncharted 3 turned out to be a great game despite the downgrade. The Xenoblade video has, like, 30 minutes of real footage you can criticize or admire, like everyone else. The point is people isn' reacting. People is over reacting. It's not the first time this happens, Watchdogs wasn't the first one downgrading a game, other big studios like Naughty Dog has "lied" to us before, I mean... I dont get it.

I'm not saying "lying" (Man, that sounds so dramatic and personal) is ok, but be real. Nintendo isn't the first one, this isn't an exception to "let's doom it all" rule, and, hell, Nintendo is the "let's hate it" company of the last years. Your very definition of "free pass" is very twisted, sir.

I dont know what rock were you hiding under the last years, but Nintendo is being punished and doomed hard every single day.

@ greiver
"The point still remains" that you are villainising us for giving the same pass to this, that many did to Bioshock Infinity, and that your trying to use that as a way to lead into telling us we shouldn't buy the game due to this "lie".
You speak of holding Nintendo to a standard?
We are.
The same one people on other systems use to give games with good gameplay a pass, despite graphics not being as good as previews made them out to be.
Or, conversely, the opposite standard of those that allow a game's graphics to make up for their lack of above average gameplay, yet still buying them anyway.

We are holding this game up to a standard that doesn't condemn it for not having the same graphics as early trailers suggest.
We're holding it to the standards of gameplay first.
Which is a standard the whole industry should learn from.

You're also blowing the downgrade out of proportion.
It's nowhere near as bad as the Watch Dogs debacle, where the game was doing its best to sell off of graphics, on two consoles that had brought the graphics war to the biggest head it's seen since the days of Sega vs Nintendo.

I actually down voted you as you used 'your' instead of 'you're' where applicable.

It has nothing to do with your twisted world perspective, however it was somewhat entertaining.

"Sony FANBOYS MARKING ME DOWN YOU GUYS HATE THE TRUTH..."

We don't hate the truth. We just hate the people who falsify the truth.

I'll say the wiiu tech is different. I do love srams bandwidth. The system is balanced yet the ps4 and Xbox 1 are shooting for pc level graphics without having the correct specs. Which is why they struggle to output pc level graphics. Nintendo shoots for a good presentation with a focus on game play and clean design of its art.

Another question is how many cores are they using in this game? Another thing is I haven't seen a loading screen yet...hmmmm. almost 20 gigs of game and I'm sure that number includes compressed assets. That is a feat right there. I'll be using the hdd anyway. My 2 terabytes external will love this game.

I'm glad nintendo isn't into the specs car salesman way of promoting their system. The key is it is capable and it's up to the games to show this. So far we have a nice and steady progression.

The spec game only works if the people are gullible enough to believe numbers rather than output on finished products. Unfortunately Sony comes up so much because they are the classic example of over promised products. The ps1 had the emotion engine and no zbuffer. Result horrible texture wrapping. The ps2 has claimed to have a dma bus that was light years ahead of anything but even the GameCube had the better version of res evil. Then we have the cell. Really good at bluerays... yet ducks at almost everything else. When you look back everyone admits how bad these Sony chips where but during the time everyone was willing to believe and hope it was different.

This is why Sony gets so much reaction from the Internet when things are downgraded. People buy Sony for power not the hope of power or the illusion of power. I'm not saying they make crap but I am saying they have a habit of misrepresentation due to being ambitious and hoping programming can fix all.

Luckily nintendo is about good games first. Everything else is a plus.

I'm a pretty big Nintendo fan-boy but even I'm embarrassed by this. If you don't understand the technology, stop pretending you do because there's people faaaaaar more technical than you on this site. Memory bandwidth is only a small portion of the equation - all that bandwidth is redundant if the rest of the console isn't fast enough to utilise it.

Stick with what you know before those bubbles evaporate entirely, you're making a fool of yourself.

Dumbest comment I've seen in months on N4G, kudos.

Trollololol! This is some Nintendo fanboy who is using his alt account to unleash his inner troll. He constantly posts outrageous and nonsensical comments with poor grammar and no punctuation that get tons of degrees from sensible Nintendo fans and others alike. Dont feed him guys.

Dude, no.
It's true that a lot of games lately have been all realism-focused bland graphics and little new gameplay, but that does NOT matter in this case.
THE WII U'S GRAPHICAL CAPABILITIES ARE NOT ABOVE THE PS4 AND XBONE.
This game looks gorgeous, but please, let's not pretend that the Wii U is a PC pretender.

@vishmarx - don't lump us all in the same category. I love Nintendo, but I am not drinking the same kool-aid as gameboy1