Topic: The OFFICIAL Big N rumor thread *bring your own salt*

[UncleBob]

Depending on how bad things are, SEGA may not have much of a choice regarding how they're sold.  I don't know how it works in Japan, but if a judge *could* order that SEGA auction off their properties to raise funds to cover their debts.

[TJ Spyke]

I have never seen thAt happen to a video game company other then when Acclaim went bankrupt and the bankruptcy judge had their IPs auctioned off individually (of course, they owed so much money that even office furniture was being sold to pay off creditors).

[nickmitch]

That's a little more common than you think. The videogames industry I think is simply more subject to buyouts than other industries.

[UncleBob]

Also, Acclaim is probably about the only major publisher to go under and bankrupt in recent years.

Generally, what we've been hearing is about development studios closing doors - and they generally (though not always) don't own the IPs they work on - thus have nothing to sell.

[Chozo Ghost]

Also, Acclaim is probably about the only major publisher to go under and bankrupt in recent years.

What about Midway? Wikipedia says they were the fourth largest publisher in the year 2000 so they were a big deal, but about three years ago they went bankrupt. They were the creators and owners of Mortal Kombat, among other things.

[BranDonk Kong]

Ironically, Acclaim published all of the home versions of Mortal Kombat and many other Midway franchises.

[Stogi]

Wii Less Powerful than PS360, according to two anonymous developers

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2012-04-02-wii-u-less-powerful-than-ps3-xbox-360-developers-say

"No, it's not up to the same level as the PS3 or the 360.," said one developer who's been working with the Wii U. What does that mean? "The graphics are just not as powerful," reiterated the source.

This developer is not alone in their opinion. Another developer at a major company confirmed this point of view. "Yeah, that's true. It doesn't produce graphics as well as the PS3 or the 360," said the source. "There aren't as many shaders, it's not as capable. Sure, some things are better, mostly as a result of it being a more modern design. But overall the Wii U just can't quite keep up."

The article goes on to give an explanation of why the Wii U may not be as powerful as today's systems. The reason is the tablet controller.

Nintendo is also hampered in some ways by the tablet controller. Putting something innovative into a new console is pretty much expected, and the tablet controller is Nintendo's big innovation for the Wii U, not raw horsepower. The tablet controller, with its color LCD touchscreen, is not going to be an inexpensive component. This would tend to push the price of the Wii U (which consists of a Wii U console plus a single tablet controller, according to sources) higher; keeping the retail price of the whole package low means cutting back on the capability of the GPU, CPU, RAM and other components in order to keep the price at the desired level.

What is that level? Nintendo hasn't said yet, but certainly the continued weakness in the retail market for console hardware and software (down 8% last year in both the US and Japan) indicates that consumers will not be enthusiastic about high prices for new consoles.

Nintendo has been focusing their public statements about the Wii U on innovation, and game design quality, and offering a unique experience. Those are good things, but at the same time they have avoided direct power comparisons between the Wii U and the current competitors, the Xbox 360 and the PS3. This implies that at the least the Wii U does not have a strong graphics advantage over the competition; if they did, why wouldn't Nintendo want to shout that from the rooftops?

Some of the developers discuss the Wii U's main weakness....One tablet controller. They also discuss how other controllers like the Wiimote+ may get a redesign.

"The whole thing about the tablet controller is that you only get one of them, and you can only use one and it's not completely independent," noted the source. "The base console has to be on, and you have to be in range." Queried about other controllers, the source was clear: "Other controllers are just Wiimotes, or other Wii controllers. They may change the form factor or looks a bit, but it's the same controller."

This means that one player using the tablet controller will be having a somewhat different experience than other players on the same console. Nintendo has shown several Wii U games that make interesting use of this, where the player with the tablet controller has a different view and different goals than the other players, or is competing directly against the other players. However, what if you've got 2 or 3 or 4 players who all want to play Call of Duty on the Wii U, and the tablet controller offers some advantage (or puts you at a disadvantage)? Will there be arguments, and will that affect satisfaction with the console?

Some developers are looking at the PS3/PS Vita combo as being more powerful than the Wii U with tablet controller, and easier to program, too. "You can do everything with that combo that you can with the Wii U, and more," said the source. Nintendo's bid for a unique play experience with the tablet controller may not be completely successful.

The key issue of console price versus performance is definitely a difficult one for Nintendo. Unless they can price the Wii U very low, Microsoft and Sony will probably be able to price their consoles below the Wii U, and they may well want to do that in the Wii U's first holiday selling season. Will Nintendo be able to convince hard-core gamers to buy the Wii U if it offers somewhat less power at a higher price? Or, indeed, what would any consumer think of slightly less power at a higher price? This would force Nintendo to make sure the innovations of the tablet controller (and perhaps other features) are compelling enough to make the Wii U a desirable buy despite the price. Many fans would probably buy a Wii U if they could get a new Legend of Zelda game with HD graphics; but are their enough of those fans to make the Wii U a hit? Will Nintendo even have one ore more of its iconic brands available in a game at the Wii U's launch? These critical questions are likely to receive some answers at E3 this year.

This article basically gives us a reason to doubt the power of the Wii U while also claiming that it's new innovation isn't really an innovation at all (though they don't mention buying a PS3 and Vita would cost a **** ton of money). Sounds like some bullshit to me, but I posted it because it does calm expectations.

[Enner]

Rumor mill making hard swings in the Wii U's power question these past few weeks. Ah, it makes me anxious!

While there is no doubt the PS3 and Vita combination is great and full of potential, it also costs at least US$500. Sony will have beaten the Wii U to the tablet controller punch when there are games out that use it as such. Perhaps we'll see something of the sort at E3?

Hell, we better be seeing everything at E3.

[Caliban]

I trust Caterkiller's source more than these anonymous developers. To have a system capable of running UE4, theoretically it is already better than a PS3/X360.

[Ian Sane]

The PS3/Vita combo is the same idea as the Gamecube/GBA combo and that really failed to set the world on fire.  For this concept to take off it needs to be standard.  Expecting people to own two different systems is too much of a gamble.  It will be too niche for developers to give it serious support and rarely would they make a game that REQUIRES it.  There is no such concern on the Wii U.  You want to require it, put it in, as every Wii U owner has the necessary equipment.

My big concern about the Wii U has always been that it will be too much like the Wii.  The threat of Nintendo going skimpy on the specs and relying on shallow gimmicks has always been there.  Any rumour about such a thing is easily believable.  After putting up with Nintendo's annoying ability to **** anything and everything up, I pretty much expect it.  Anything negative is believable.

The Wii U has to be comparible in hardware to what the PS360 successor's will be.  LESS than PS360?  I'm not buying it.  It'll be strictly the casual console and will get **** third party support.  That's a completely avoidable situation and I'm not going to tolerate it.  To do such a thing either means that Nintendo are hopeless idiots or they specifically WANT to just be the casual guys.  Either way, I'm not going to be their customer anymore.

Of course if Sony and MS lock-out used games I'm sure as hell not going to be THEIR customers either.  So then what?  I guess I buy NOTHING and stick to retro games.  But if the industry honestly went that way I question how well it would do.  All three consoles would then have something would seriously turn off a good chunk of potential customers.  That could have a serious negative impact on their bottomline.

[Stogi]

I actually don't think developers won't care that much if the Wii U is only barely better than the PS360. They've been working on those consoles for 6-7 years now. They are extremely capable with those graphics. They also couldn't help but notice the extreme rise in development costs, so a system where they could continue to use they're already prefabricated assets could be seen as a plus. After all, not all developers care whether a single blade of grass moves independently from another. They care about their jobs and being financially stable.

The problem that might occur is the PS420 coming out and being drastically better, basically forcing developers to go high-end and thus allocating most of the money onto their systems. If that happens, it'll be the Wii vs. all, all over again and third party support will be severely lacking.

Nintendo can avoid this, but it would require a pricey system. There's a good chance MS and Sony will end up building a high-end system, but what if they don't? Nintendo could lose their new blue ocean base.

Obviously the answer is the middle somewhere, but it's tricky. Nintendo may have to sell at a loss.

[Caterkiller]

Just one of those day later April Fools jokes. How come we've herd nothing but "at least on par" up until this massive wave just now?

Plus UE4! That is all.

[Adrock]

Shenanigans. I recall Mark Rein, of all people, saying some nice things about the platform which is a good sign because he has no reason to do so if he didn't think he could make money off of it. He seems like the type of person who would blurt out something negative if hardware was really an issue. I think there's a decent chance that Wii U will be able to handle Unreal Engine 4. Rein just seems too excited for the hardware to be less capable than something that came out 7 years ago. And I really don't think Nintendo would be that stupid. If Nintendo really hadn't figured out the importance of more advanced hardware, 3DS probably would have been less capable than the PSP.

I don't expect Sony and MS to make the same leap in power that PS3 and 360 did over PS2 and Xbox. Taking such heavy losses in a global economy that's much worse than it was 6-7 years ago seems horribly irresponsible. They'll be plenty powerful but I think the limits will be a bit more modest.

[Chozo Ghost]

I don't believe for a second that the Wii U will be as weak as or weaker than the PS360 in terms of CPU power, but there might be something to this in terms of the GPU since it will have to output display to not just the TV but the tablet as well. So in that sense this is a bit plausible. But I would think the tablet display could optionally be disabled in certain games, and then with the full power of the GPU going entirely to just the TV I would think that should just shatter anything the PS360 could even dream of producing.

If there is anything at all to this rumor it means Nintendo should have equipped the Wii U with either a more powerful GPU, or added in a secondary one.

[ejamer]

This is a load of bull coming from a Sony development house.  How can I tell?  First there are the inaccuracies that sound like they are based on old dev kits instead of anything recent. Second, we've got this gem:


"Some developers are looking at the PS3/PS Vita combo as being more powerful than the Wii U with tablet controller, and easier to program, too. 'You can do everything with that combo that you can with the Wii U, and more,' said the source."


Yep, Sony development house confirmed.  Nobody else has ever claimed that Sony systems are easier to program for than the competition, or cared enough to talk about console/handheld interaction.


 


All kidding aside, I don't believe that Wii U will be less powerful than current systems. That simply doesn't make sense to me. However, I also don't believe that Wii U will offer a huge leap forward in power - or that such a leap is particularly necessary or beneficial.  (And where additional power will be exciting is in AI and general processing power, not graphical improvements.)


Just my two cents.

[ShyGuy]

I think these weak comments come from developers not knowing how to port games to the different hardware of the Wii U. Look at all the lousy ports the PS3 has gotten that look worse even though the system has more graphical muscle than the 360.

Heck, look at the crappy PC ports of 360 games that run like garbage on the much more CPU, RAM and video of a modern desktop computer.

[BlackNMild2k1]

I guess this is as good a time as any to post this comment that I've been sitting on for over a week.... (I've been hoping some counter to it would surface... but that has not the case)

I'm not sure how reliable the info is... but when you start to hear it from several different places all at once, maybe you should atleast hear them out. :/

Just read something official (middleware documentation I won't link here) that made it sound like the Wii U CPU should perform roughly comparable to Xenon for the most part, and better in some cases. So while the CPU itself is only slightly better, the fact that the system can offload stuff to the GPU and DSP leaves more computational performance for logic and AI. That's pretty much in line with my expectations.

I guess I should clarify the statement a bit further: A company I won't name wrote that their engine performs "roughly the same and in some cases better" on Wii U. The engine in question is completely CPU bound, so the GPU doesn't matter and the DSP wasn't used. Said company also notes that the Wii U version now performs an order of magnitude faster compared to previous releases, which helps explaining some statements by 3rd parties: unoptimized middleware can bring even the strongest system to its knees.

Anyway, as the piece is strictly talking about software performance, stuff like OS overhead wasn't taken into account (they only used the resources available to developers). The 360 version also had tons of updates by now, so there's probably still room for further optimizations on both ends, the OS and the engine itself. But at this point, the systems seem roughly comparable, with the Wii U having the edge.

But just the fact that the floor version of the Bird demo exist tells me that something isn't right.

[Luigi Dude]

Lets also not forget the Zelda HD demo from E3 last year.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arHNcSMXaBk

This demo was made by Nintendo in only a few weeks and on early Wii U hardware which is less powerful then the final hardware.  Seriously, the Zelda demo looks better then anything on the 360 and right up there with the PS3's best looking games like Uncharted 2 and 3.  If this was done quickly on early hardware, then that pretty much shows that full fledge games done on final hardware are going to be well above what the 360 and PS3 can do.


Of course I wouldn't be surprised if the reason some developers are saying the system is less powerful then the 360/PS3 is because they're only going to give the system the quickest and shittiest ports possible that will look worse then the 360/PS3 versions.  It's going to be just like the Gamecube where even though the system was more powerful then the PS2, a good number of Gamecube ports looked worse then there PS2 counterparts.  Oh and lets not forget that even though the Wii was right on par with the Xbox, a lot of third parties made their Wii games look like crappy PS2 games, despite the fact these same third parties made much better looking Xbox games just a few years earlier.

Like I've been saying, don't expect much from third parties when it comes to how their Wii U graphics look.  They're going to say it's a weaker system now, just so they can try and justify why their ports looking like sh!t at E3 when the system is finally revealed.  And like always, they'll just pretend that Nintendo own games that look lightyears better on the same system don't exist and keep saying the systems weaker then it really is, just like they did on the Gamecube and Wii.

[BlackNMild2k1]

http://wiiudaily.com/2012/04/wii-u-launch-date-set-for-november-18-2012-report/

some people may want to reevaluate their choice of launch date in the appropriate thread before it's too late (myself included)




...or maybe not considering that site still has up their story about 768MB of embedded DRAM in the Wii U.
and the story that puts words in the mouth of Take Two and their financial report regarding GTAV.

[tendoboy1984]

SEGA is in trouble? That's news to me. They just finished their publishing deal with Platinum Games, they made Sonic Colors and Generations, they're currently working on Sonic 4 Episode 2 and Phantasy Star Online 2. Not to mention the new IP's like Valkeria Chronicles.


SEGA has done a lot the past few years. If they really were in trouble, then they wouldn't have spent the time and effort in developing/publishing those big games.


Then again, with them shutting down much of their North American QA and publishing sectors, maybe they're just going to exit the Western market and simply focus on Japan? If they do that, then what will become of the Sonic franchise and its fanbase?

[TJ Spyke]

A company can make a lot of products while being in debt. Sega was pretty much in debt from like 1993-2003 and still released lots of stuff.

[millerball]

Wii Less Powerful than PS360, according to two anonymous developers

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2012-04-02-wii-u-less-powerful-than-ps3-xbox-360-developers-say

I don't doubt this at all. If you want non-pixel counters to recognize a visual jump over 360/PS3 you'd have to make the system ridiculously powerful. A cheaper and smaller system is probably better than a 2-5x hardware bump that most people won't even notice.

[GoldenPhoenix]

Unless I am mistaken, but haven't NAMED developers stated it is at least as powerful as PS3/360 if not more powerful? Why are we believing anonymous developers if that is the case when larger, known, developers have stated the opposite?

[ejamer]

Unless I am mistaken, but haven't NAMED developers stated it is at least as powerful as PS3/360 if not more powerful? Why are we believing anonymous developers if that is the case when larger, known, developers have stated the opposite?

Why?  Because we all know that Nintendo will go cheap on the hardware to keep entry costs low and stay profitable, and it wouldn't be a surprise to see them release new hardware that is closer to the previous generation than push any boundaries on the technical side.


That said, not many people seem to really believe these anonymous statements - or at least not that they represent the full story.

[GoldenPhoenix]

Unless I am mistaken, but haven't NAMED developers stated it is at least as powerful as PS3/360 if not more powerful? Why are we believing anonymous developers if that is the case when larger, known, developers have stated the opposite?

Why?  Because we all know that Nintendo will go cheap on the hardware to keep entry costs low and stay profitable, and it wouldn't be a surprise to see them release new hardware that is closer to the previous generation than push any boundaries on the technical side.


That said, not many people seem to really believe these anonymous statements - or at least not that they represent the full story.

But we have far more reputable developers stating otherwise. So wouldn't that override any other "anonymous" rumor out there? I understand people are upset with the Wii being under-powered, but unlike the Wii we have some pretty solid, provable, statements from reputable people that the system is at LEAST on par with 360 and PS3, if not more powerful.