Gaming Forums => Nintendo Gaming => Topic started by: Hyawatta on October 24, 2011, 12:47:24 PM
Title: Wii U Must Support An Equivalent of Direct X 11/Open GL 4.2
Post by: Hyawatta on October 24, 2011, 12:47:24 PM
If you look up the specs for any next-generation game engine you will see that there is at least one thing they all have in common, Direct X 11/Open GL 4.2 support. The only other major commonality seems to be a focus on multiprocessor (around 20 processors) support. Rallying support for an equivalent of Direct X 11/Open GL 4.2 functionality is likely much more feasible than asking Nintendo to add a 20-core processor to the Wii U.
If the Wii U releases without support for an equivalent of DirectX 11/OpenGL 4.2, then it would be in a similar situation as the 3DS releasing without a second slide pad. Except I don't think an expansion would be able to fix it.
It seems fairly obvious that the next generation development efforts are based around DirectX 11/OpenGL 4.2 functionality (Feel free to include any engines that I may have left out):
Epic Games' Unreal Engine 4 id Software's id Tech 6 Crytek's CryENGINE 4 DICE's Frostbite 3 Techland's Chrome Engine 6 CD Projekt's RED Engine 2 Capcom's MT Framework 3 Square-Enix's Luminous Engine Valve's Source Engine
I can’t emphasize enough how critical this is. As long as the Wii U can support DirectX 11/OpenGL 4.2 level functionality and features, it should be able to compete with the new systems that Microsoft and Sony will eventually release. Of course the Wii U can run ports of games developed for the PS3 and 360, but the Wii U's ability to run the next-gen engines, at their full capability, will secure its position as a viable console for developers to release their future multiplatform games onto during the upcoming generation of consoles.
If the Wii U can handle the next-gen game engines that require a DirectX 11/OpenGL 4.2 level of functionality and features, then it will enjoy the multiplatform support that the PS3 and 360 had. If the Wii U cannot run the next-gen engines, then it will suffer from having a similar level of multiplatform support that the Wii had.
Title: Re: Wii U Must Support An Equivalent of Direct X 11/Open GL 4.2
Post by: ThePerm on October 24, 2011, 01:04:19 PM
or something, whether it supports it or not it will have processors beefier then a ps3's, and a ton more ram according to what devs say. Will it support it? Maybe, Maybe not. It won't be like the Wii though, what it will be is first out of the gate though. Epic has mentioned they are pleased with the system specs though so, that is some sort of indication. Also, cross id support off from the beginning. id doesn't share its engines anymore. If they want to port something they can though. Also, Valves source engine already runs on ps3 and xbox 360...its not a next gen game engine.
Title: Re: Wii U Must Support An Equivalent of Direct X 11/Open GL 4.2
Post by: Ceric on October 24, 2011, 01:44:10 PM
Correct me if I'm wrong but, I'm fairly sure Nintendo normally supports OpenGL.
Title: Re: Wii U Must Support An Equivalent of Direct X 11/Open GL 4.2
Post by: ThePerm on October 24, 2011, 02:06:06 PM
yeah, im betting it supports one of the newer ones out of the box, and Im also betting it can always firmware update openGL. OpenGL is just an API, its the middle man in the graphics pipeline. Or at least thats how i seem to understand it.
also is there a reason why this was posted on every nintendo forum?
Title: Re: Wii U Must Support An Equivalent of Direct X 11/Open GL 4.2
Post by: Ian Sane on October 24, 2011, 02:36:37 PM
If Nintendo is going to really **** something up on the Wii U, this will be it. This is strictly a third party support issue and Nintendo is just utterly oblivious at how to appeal to third parties. Last gen's third party support was a disaster because the industry was moving in the direction of multiplatform support and Nintendo designed the Wii to be the exact opposite of that.
There is also another factor in play here. All but two of those engines listed are Western. Nintendo is oblivious to anything outside of Japan. Miyamoto and Iwata have probably never heard of the Unreal Engine because nobody in Japan uses it. Who in NCL's hardware design team is going to note that Unreal Engine needs to be supported? The xenophobia issue is something that affects most Japanese companies so I'm not just picking on Nintendo here. They actually pay more attention to the West then a lot of other Japanese companies but they still are always thinking with the Japanese market in mind. Twilight Princess is a big success here but less so in Japan so they're all disappointed. The American sales meant nothing. You list off all the big games that use Unreal Engine and they'll shrug them off as American games that have no sales potential in Japan.
Title: Re: Wii U Must Support An Equivalent of Direct X 11/Open GL 4.2
Post by: ThePerm on October 24, 2011, 04:02:12 PM
seriously, this shouldn't affect the system at all. Even if Nintendo only supported OpenGL 3.0 thats like saying
Imagine OpenGL is a spoken language, and your an English speaking company, but your boss speaks russian, but speaks it with the hippest new slang.
and it has to be translated into English which will the instruct employees on how to do their operations, you have to hire an interpreter. One of the interpreters(interpreter 1) is pretty good with the new slang, while the other one(interpreter 2) knows some recent slang, but is missing out on some of the newer lingo. Interpreter number 2 was hired first and he has a contract so he'll have to do. to begin with who knew about interpreter 1 because he is still just a noob? He's only been working since august 8th. Now the company won't start production till the end of 2012 so theres still time to decide if interpeter 2 is going to stay with the company or whether to switch to the more qualified interpreter 1. Either way it is still possible to make all the products with interpreter 2 as long as some extra work is done as it isn't really a big deal. Also, not to mention the fact that interpreter 1 might be more versed in the slang then even the boss, which could confuse the boss for a couple of months.
Either way i see ATI as handling this one anyhow.
Title: Re: Wii U Must Support An Equivalent of Direct X 11/Open GL 4.2
Post by: Ceric on October 24, 2011, 04:20:21 PM
I think a more apt example would be if 1 translator knew Russian and a bit of the industry. While Translator 2 knew Russian and was steeped in the terminology and nuances specific to your industry. In general Translator 1 is fine but less mistakes be made and you be capable of more with Translator 2 because they could give it to you at the granularity you needed.
Title: Re: Wii U Must Support An Equivalent of Direct X 11/Open GL 4.2
Post by: BlackNMild2k1 on October 24, 2011, 07:26:10 PM
Well, to my knowledge, what this basically boils down to(I'm sure I've posted this before) is that Wii U's GPU needs hardware support for advanced Tessellation.
I believe that was the major difference between DX10/OGL3.x & DX11/OGL4.2.
Another feature that the Wii U must have hardwired is Global Illumination. Mix that with your advanced Tesselator (both built in features) and Wii U should be a beast of a machine that produces results good enough to stand up to anything that Xbox720/PS4 can produce... atleast well enough to receive a port.
Hardware Tessellation & Global Illumination mixed in with all the other effects boosted by a factor of 3 will make for more realistic graphics beyond what is seen on today's machines.
Fortunately for us, the Zelda demo @ E3 showed some impressive lighting and that was only coming from a 1st gen pre-alpha Dev Kit. It should only get better from there, especially since it's kinda rumored that Nintendo has been tweeking the stats UP with each subsequent dev kits due in part by feedback from Dev's on the kind of things they are trying to accomplish with the hardware.
My guess is (based on a recent comment) that EA has been pushing for speced out PC ports @ 1080p to NxtGen machines, BF3 specifically. If Wii U can achieve that, then I think they will be more than alright.
Title: Re: Wii U Must Support An Equivalent of Direct X 11/Open GL 4.2
Post by: MegaByte on October 24, 2011, 10:59:51 PM
I am a little worried about this. GC and Wii use GX, something similar to OpenGL, but it's not real OpenGL, so any middleware has to be rewritten (and the fixed-function TEV units make things even more difficult, which is why most middleware-based software looks like crap).
The 3DS uses OpenGL ES 1.1 (the mobile version) plus custom shaders, rather than the more modern OpenGL ES 2.0, which means middleware programmers again will have to make a customized version.
If the Wii U is based on the R700 series of chips as reports have suggested, that would indicate support for DirectX 10.1 SM 4.1 (only Microsoft actually uses DirectX)/OpenGL 3.3 - several revisions back. Still, supporting OpenGL and programmable shaders is already a huge leap from what they have now. They'd have to make big changes to silicon to support new features (with any reasonable speed), and trying to tack those on defeats the cost benefit of going with older tech in the first place.
Title: Re: Wii U Must Support An Equivalent of Direct X 11/Open GL 4.2
Post by: Chozo Ghost on October 25, 2011, 06:47:33 AM
Hopefully the developers have been putting pressure on Nintendo about this, and more importantly hopefully Nintendo has given them what they asked for.
Title: Re: Wii U Must Support An Equivalent of Direct X 11/Open GL 4.2
Post by: NWR_insanolord on October 25, 2011, 06:55:10 AM
The specific tech it supports isn't as important as whether developers are happy with what it does, and so far the system has gotten a lot of positive reactions from developers who never had anything nice to say about the Wii.
Title: Re: Wii U Must Support An Equivalent of Direct X 11/Open GL 4.2
Post by: Hyawatta on October 25, 2011, 10:58:18 AM
also is there a reason why this was posted on every nintendo forum?
I hope that Nintendo employees read through these forums to help get an idea of what the consumers want from the Wii U. There are some critical issues that, if we can address them now, may save Nintendo some trouble down the line. Imagine if the 3DS forums made a big deal about adding a second circle pad, and then the system actually released with them at launch because of the points made on the forums. Let's do this for Direct X 11/Open GL 4.2 support for the Wii U. A man can dream can't he?
Title: Re: Wii U Must Support An Equivalent of Direct X 11/Open GL 4.2
Post by: MegaByte on October 25, 2011, 11:16:43 AM
The specific tech it supports isn't as important as whether developers are happy with what it does, and so far the system has gotten a lot of positive reactions from developers who never had anything nice to say about the Wii.
I partially disagree with this because what looks nice to the developers now (bringing things up a little further than the current status quo) may not look so nice once they are actually developing on it and each system is competing for their development resources. And remember, most things we've heard from developers so far are either Nintendo-approved and/or from a limited set of people based on early access or second-hand knowledge.
Title: Re: Wii U Must Support An Equivalent of Direct X 11/Open GL 4.2
Post by: Stogi on October 25, 2011, 02:56:43 PM
I haven't read all the posts but didn't the team that is making Darksiders 2 say that it took no time to get it running on Wii U. Doesn't that confirm some sort of continuity?
Title: Re: Wii U Must Support An Equivalent of Direct X 11/Open GL 4.2
Post by: MegaByte on October 25, 2011, 03:00:18 PM
It means that the hardware generally supports whatever PS3/360 supports. This discussion is about supporting more advanced features than that.
Title: Re: Wii U Must Support An Equivalent of Direct X 11/Open GL 4.2
Post by: Stogi on October 25, 2011, 03:21:02 PM
Ahh so this discussion is basically if Nintendo is going to future proof the Wii U?
My guess is 'kinda'. I posted my theory in another thread but basically what it boiled down to is Nintendo will be the weakest of the next generation consoles, but their generation won't last as long as Sony's or Microsoft's. They will be able to once again leap frog their competition midway into their lives....if they wanted to.
The hardest years for Nintendo will be the first few years of NextBox and PS4's lives. If they can future proof it just enough that games can be easily downscaled, then they do not have a problem.
But honestly, I do not think Nintendo cares what the competition is doing or going to do. They don't have to support anything. What they need to focus on is selling their gimmick (in the positive connotation). A second screen is an awesome idea. If they can flesh it out (hopefully with support for multiple Tablets) and bring out another Wii Sports, they will be just fine.
Title: Re: Wii U Must Support An Equivalent of Direct X 11/Open GL 4.2
Post by: ThePerm on October 25, 2011, 04:23:39 PM
also is there a reason why this was posted on every nintendo forum?
I hope that Nintendo employees read through these forums to help get an idea of what the consumers want from the Wii U. There are some critical issues that, if we can address them now, may save Nintendo some trouble down the line. Imagine if the 3DS forums made a big deal about adding a second circle pad, and then the system actually released with them at launch because of the points made on the forums. Let's do this for Direct X 11/Open GL 4.2 support for the Wii U. A man can dream can't he?
they don't. They are Japanese, and NOA isn't a develper, they are a warehouse with a marketing department. Even if a 1st party subsidiary said something theres only a 40% chane NCL will listen. We're luck retro said something, otherwise there would be no nunchucku.
also im pretty sure anyone could write a shareware(for developers) bridge program that understands opengl 4.2 if opengl 4.2 isn't supported. Some resources would have to be used to run it(unless someone pre-"renders" the code. I'm guessing most openGL stuff isn't too different. Its software middleman code. Whats important is what the hardware can do. I guess it all boils down to how lazy developers get, but converting code is something that can be automated. So if it isn't included theres an easy fix, but it likely will.
Title: Re: Wii U Must Support An Equivalent of Direct X 11/Open GL 4.2
Post by: Ceric on October 25, 2011, 04:31:10 PM
also is there a reason why this was posted on every nintendo forum?
I hope that Nintendo employees read through these forums to help get an idea of what the consumers want from the Wii U. There are some critical issues that, if we can address them now, may save Nintendo some trouble down the line. Imagine if the 3DS forums made a big deal about adding a second circle pad, and then the system actually released with them at launch because of the points made on the forums. Let's do this for Direct X 11/Open GL 4.2 support for the Wii U. A man can dream can't he?
they don't. They are Japanese, and NOA isn't a develper, they are a warehouse with a marketing department. Even if a 1st party subsidiary said something theres only a 40% chane NCL will listen. We're luck retro said something, otherwise there would be no nunchucku.
Hey, They also have a Translation Service.
Title: Re: Wii U Must Support An Equivalent of Direct X 11/Open GL 4.2
Post by: ThePerm on October 25, 2011, 04:38:33 PM
lol, yeah the middlemen is going to scower the internet and bring issues up. No, for NCL to read that and care they would have to do it first hand. Translators only translate the things the client is interested in.
Title: Re: Wii U Must Support An Equivalent of Direct X 11/Open GL 4.2
Post by: MegaByte on October 25, 2011, 04:41:56 PM
also im pretty sure anyone could write a shareware(for developers) bridge program that understands opengl 4.2 if opengl 4.2 isn't supported. Some resources would have to be used to run it(unless someone pre-"renders" the code. I'm guessing most openGL stuff isn't too different. Its software middleman code. Whats important is what the hardware can do. I guess it all boils down to how lazy developers get, but converting code is something that can be automated. So if it isn't included theres an easy fix, but it likely will.
There is a reason that you have to wait for new graphics card lines to get new OpenGL features -- the older hardware either can't do it, or isn't optimized to do it with usable speed. You can't magically enable it in software. There is no easy fix.
Title: Re: Wii U Must Support An Equivalent of Direct X 11/Open GL 4.2
Post by: ThePerm on October 25, 2011, 05:47:36 PM
Megabyte, i figure at best that Nintendo always uses custom chips, and they dont use OpenGL or DirectX, as you said above they use GX which is designed for their custom cards. While not being the same has allowed it to have features that are not openGl compliant, it basically is always like a pretty cousin of OpenGL. Judging from Nintendo's history in implementing these things they always create chips that have weird features that are really cool and helpful. So it always takes some work to get things running, but it is usually capable if doing most if not all features hardware wise. The GPU of the Wii U is supposed to be similar to a radeon r770 gpu, which is in the 4000 series, open gl 4.2 is supported by the Radeon 5000 series and the Wii U is a custom chip, So, its likely it can handle it. at worst it will use an open GL 3.3 equivelent. Looking it up 3.3 has the same functionality of 4.0 but for chips designed for 3.2. As always everything not included can be done in software and ran by the cpu with some work.
the thing that trumps this is that ps3 and xbox 360 don't support open GL 4.2, and all indications are that their successors won't be out till 2013, unless something changes at e3. This means Nintendo will have the lead system on the market. Developers are more apt to release games on a new more powerful platform even if its not they're favorite platform, so likely there will be some good middle-ware written by the time the newer systems come out. Its the advantage Ps2 had by being first. When ps4 and Xbox720 come out it will have the most market share. Not only that based on current announcements I think the perception of Nintendo, and Wii U will be pretty positive after next years e3. The games they are pushing are popular with the "mature" crowd. There will be more. Nintendo hasn't even passed out the money hats yet, and likely next year is when we'll know about the Nintendo titles and the secret 3rd party titles that will make an impact.
Title: Re: Wii U Must Support An Equivalent of Direct X 11/Open GL 4.2
Post by: MegaByte on October 25, 2011, 06:23:47 PM
The thing is, Nintendo's previous GPU was originally designed before OpenGL/DirectX were standardized on consoles. It wouldn't make much sense nowadays to create custom a custom API or major custom extensions -- if they were adding something like tessellation, it would be easier to just use a more modern chip design since that's not something you can just tack on as a separate piece. There are major pieces of 4.0 missing from 3.3, and that doesn't even consider 4.1 and 4.2 (this includes things that make non-graphics stuff like physics work better). Also, the customization for the Wii GPU involved embedding a security and I/O component -- it didn't add any major graphical features. If the leaked specs are correct, by the time the Wii U comes out, it will actually be 3 PC generations behind in graphics (as opposed to 6 with the Wii).
Title: Re: Wii U Must Support An Equivalent of Direct X 11/Open GL 4.2
Post by: BlackNMild2k1 on October 25, 2011, 06:26:48 PM
One thing you can't forget is that the HD5000 & HD6000 are both based on the initial design of the HD4000 series. So a fully customized HD4000 based chip could end up more like an HD5000 or HD6000 than anything in just the HD4000 series.
and like I said before, to my understanding(calling it limited would be an overstatement), the biggest difference between the 4000 series and the 6000 series are advanced Tessellators... well actually tessellators at all I think, and that is the major new feature for DX11, so if they add support for advanced Tessellators to the GPU then Wii U really shouldn't have much to worry about, especially not with a 1+yr lead on the competition who won't have any new features to add that the Wii U couldn't also do in some capacity.
Title: Re: Wii U Must Support An Equivalent of Direct X 11/Open GL 4.2
Post by: MegaByte on October 25, 2011, 06:31:34 PM
Like I said, if they were going to add that stuff, then they would have based the chip off the newer designs, not the HD4000 series. It's a pretty safe bet that those features will not be included. Keep in mind that nowadays, you have an entire industry helping to develop these standards... everything was still fragmented the last time Nintendo worked on a new GPU design, so custom stuff was a given. It is not anymore (custom stuff still has a place in mobile due to things like power constraints, but those should eventually evaporate).
What they are probably talking about when they mention customization is the embedded co-processor that the Wii had, the necessary interface to whatever memory system Nintendo chooses to use, the number of shader cores, and possibly something to make the wireless screen transmission more efficient (if that isn't handled elsewhere). If you look at the other consoles, the memory interface and the number of cores are essentially the only things that are customized.
Title: Re: Wii U Must Support An Equivalent of Direct X 11/Open GL 4.2
Post by: ThePerm on October 25, 2011, 09:02:46 PM
Well, if they can get a cheaper price with the same functionality then thats the goal. Doing some round about deals with making custom chips is a good way to get performance at lower costs. Wii isn't a good example because it was a glorified gamecube, but gamecube was able to be made at low cost with comparable power to the xbox, and with features that weren't in graphic cards yet.
Title: Re: Wii U Must Support An Equivalent of Direct X 11/Open GL 4.2
Post by: MegaByte on October 25, 2011, 09:57:34 PM
But they can't. GameCube was cutting edge -- yes, it didn't have completely programmable shaders, but those were a new concept that probably couldn't have been added to the design in time. Also, the GameCube graphics chip was designed by those involved with the N64 design -- Nintendo so far behind now that it's highly improbably that they're in a position to dictate graphics hardware improvements, especially as graphics hardware has been advancing at a faster rate than the rest of the computer industry. Designs have gotten much more complex, so it's not like they can just come up with magical new designs to pop in. What they're trying to do is come up with cheaper designs with "good enough" technology, not cutting edge functionality. It will come down to whether Nintendo's vision of "good enough" is good enough for everyone else.
The other custom part of the chip might just be a bit of circuitry to do things like translate TEV unit commands into modern shaders for Wii BC (or knowing Nintendo, just include all of the original circuitry too).
Title: Re: Wii U Must Support An Equivalent of Direct X 11/Open GL 4.2
Post by: ThePerm on October 25, 2011, 10:20:24 PM
Well, Nintendo has pretty good ties with the ATI folks over at AMD, and negotiating pretty good prices is something they can manage in ways other companies can't. Its why Sharp gives Nintendo better prices for their screens. They have a good relationship, and while Wii had a kinda half-assed gpu, its not like it wasn't AMD's most successful GPU ever. Selling 80 million GPUs was good for business. Those same people were the team of people who worked for Silicon Graphics on n64. Its a long relationship, and Nintendo has helped them keep careers. There is a sweetheart relationship that gets them good prices. The thing that makes them pick a cheaper old GPU is more likely an accounting trick so that it justifies the cheaper price.
Title: Re: Wii U Must Support An Equivalent of Direct X 11/Open GL 4.2
Post by: MegaByte on October 25, 2011, 10:24:56 PM
The thing that makes them pick a cheaper old GPU is more likely an accounting trick so that it justifies the cheaper price.
Uhh, okay, believe that if you want, but there's utterly no basis for that. These companies never reveal prices anyway, so it wouldn't make sense. If they're actually using newer tech, then its in both companies best interests to advertise the case.
Its why Sharp gives Nintendo better prices for their screens.
Probably a bad example since Sharp was fined for price-fixing those screens ;)
Title: Re: Wii U Must Support An Equivalent of Direct X 11/Open GL 4.2
Post by: ThePerm on October 25, 2011, 11:11:34 PM
but Nintendo never advertises specs either, it works better for Nintendo that people be confused out of the specs. We'll never know exactly how powerful the system really is unless we're a developer.
Heres how I see it going down 1 E3 2012: many games are announced, some of them new ips, but many more ports of xbox games, some ports of ps3 games. Excitement is greater this year than it was last year. Theres a combination of excitement between innovative titles, and your typical excitement over the pulp games that are so popular now actually being on the system. Possible announcements of Xbox 3 and Ps4 steal some thunder though, though its possible Sony and Microsoft stick to their consoles and just release add-ons. After all the graphics of Wii U are "marginally better"
2. Release fall 2012 : The system is released, with a combination of excitement and the usual doubt. It has some solid games at launch and manages to sell well. The graphical distance between Wii U and the current systems are marginal and there are some criticism of this, but some newer games have been shown off by some Japanese 3rd parties with some amazing graphics. Sales start to spike towards the end of Christmas. Specifically around November there is a shortage and this creates media attention. People wait in line on black friday. Gamers start to enjoy features they weren't really anticipating as Nintendo releases some things through the internet.
3. Spring 2013 Sales are doing well, and better than expected by most analyst. Theres a couple games being released in March, around the 27th-28thish that didn't make it to launch but got pushed back a couple of times. These do pretty well in sales, 3rd parties start announcing games for the fall. Many of these third parties were not originally not on board.
4 E3 is in full force and so is the marketing for Xbox 3 and ps4, they will be much more powerful then Wii U, by a lot. They will be very expensive though. Wii U games are being shown off with ultra-realistic graphics. The graphical gap between ps3 and xbox360 and Wii U has grown from marginal to significant, as developers get into the second and third generation of Wii U engines. More games are announced at e3, but overall for Nintendo its a pretty dull year as far as announcements go. Most of the e3 press conference was spent on how well 3ds was doing now that they altered its appearance last fall with a new model.
5 Summer: No games are really released in the summer, some analyst start to put 2 and 2 together that Summer is movie time.
6. Fall-Winter 2013 the other systems are released and Xbox 4 starts to do really well in numbers in America while ps3 does better in Japan, microsoft has managed to once again do what Sony doesn't. Nintendo has market dominance and while it sees a dip in sells when the other consoles are released its still doing a hell of a lot better then it was in 2010.
7 Spring 2014. Iphone games are getting better, but they still have shitty input. What once was an Angry Birds game type market is now flooded with indy clones, and other casual games. It suffers from the same problems the Atari 2600 had. Nintendo enjoys some late march releases like it does every single year since Pokemon Colosseum came out. Developers start to bitch that they didn't sell enough copies of the Nintendo games they clones, citing only Nintendo does really well on Nintendo systems, a key developer on Wii U jumps ship to ps4 citing Wii U's lack of power.
8 at e3 Nintendo announced some games you really don't care about that will come out in the fall. Some better games are coming out in the spring the next year, and a killer ap Zelda style game is coming out the next fall from then. At this point though 3rd parties are confused. Some of them re having pretty good sales, and others are not. The Wii U is confusing. However, theres an abundant amount of games on the system. Studies show that people watch as much tv on their Wii U as people do not. Turns out Wii U's sells are doing pretty good for people who just want to watch TV and don't want to deal with bullshit companies like dish network. Sales for Wii U are pretty good, not as good as the ones for Wii were, but still very positive, not at all as negative as the ones for Gamecube.
9 summer 2014 another draught, fans wine about it, but the movie sections of the Nintendo forums are filled with many more reviews.
10 fall 2014, the games you don't care about come out in fall 2014, only diehard Nintendo fans buy them. Also, xbox and playstation do very well this year. However, Sony has some financial trouble and people are starting to doubt if they are going to stay in the console business. Sony starts releasing more games on the PC, which at this point produces ridiculous graphics. The Ps4 still continues to be a popular home theater item, but games sales are down considerably. an unseen force is making waves in the industry and it wasn't expected at all. Except right here.
11 Spring 2015, with the power vacuum left by Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo start to pick up on some of its properties. Microsoft however manages to have some sort of edge as it has better graphics. Ports however are made for Wii U despite it being inferior. It has enough market share and sales that it can still get ports despite not being future proof.
12. e3 Nintendo announces the successor to 3ds, some more games you don't care about, but one you end up loving. 3rd party support grows actually as the market flux has managed to counteract the abandonment rate of 3rd parties. Nintendo has lost its kiddy image at this point, but still releases mario games.
13 summer is still bone dry, and really nothing good but Zelda is coming out this year
14 Fall 2015 Zelda is released for Wii U, the game is received mixed. Not everyone is pleased by the graphic style whether it is realistic or cartooney, there is still a divide. People who were 14 when Twilight Princess love it, but others still say Oot or alttp, or WW is better. Nintendo can't please everyone.
15 spring 2016 A moderately good game is released in the spring, some decent 3rd party games, but support has swayed over to xbox 3, Nintendo focuses on ds3 with another big title coming out in the fall. Other then that it becomes a draught year again for Nintendo.
16 e3 Nintendo pulls a rabbit out of its hat and decides to do something that reinvigorates the Wii U just a tad
17 fall 2016 aside from the big release there is some moderate fanfare for the fad that Nintendo has created
18 Summer 2017 Nintendo announces the successor of the Wii U, people talk about its resemblance to the holodeck on Star Trek.
so worse case scenario Wii U wont get some PC ports starting 2.5 years after the release, though you could switch Microsoft and Sony, but one of them will probably have to bow out.
Title: Re: Wii U Must Support An Equivalent of Direct X 11/Open GL 4.2
Post by: Stogi on October 25, 2011, 11:28:47 PM
Quote
It will come down to whether Nintendo's vision of "good enough" is good enough for everyone else.
I think you hit the nail on the head with this. Though through Nintendo's eyes, their vision isn't is it good enough, rather is it Nintendo enough?
Nintendo's policy to make profit off of hardware is one that will never change. These companies that sell at a loss do it because profit isn't the point; market placement is. They want their systems to be sitting next to your TV so they can eventually take over your living room. Sony and Microsoft want to be synonymous with "Home Entertainment".
Nintendo does not want to do that. They instead want you to use your machine everyday; they want to provide content that will entice you to play everyday. They want to be synonymous with "Fun".
Does "Fun" need "cutting edge functionality"? Of course, but where? Iwata, like any new President, has placed a new focus for his company and it is not graphics. He placed it on innovation. So yes "cutting edge functionality" is needed, but to make two screens work in tandem, and not creating shrubs that react realistically to rain.
So must Nintendo support an equivalent of Direct X 11? No, and they may suffer from a lack of third party efforts. But the cost of their system will be affordable, the innovation new and exciting, and their own software will be brilliant and irresistible.
Title: Re: Wii U Must Support An Equivalent of Direct X 11/Open GL 4.2
Post by: MegaByte on October 25, 2011, 11:43:18 PM
but Nintendo never advertises specs either, it works better for Nintendo that people be confused out of the specs.
They only stopped advertising specs when they fell behind and went in a different direction. Back when they were ahead, they pushed them like crazy.
@Stogi, agreed, but they've been talking a lot about catering to what the devs want, and I'm not sure they'll be futureproofed. e.g. It should not be up to one guy who says, "oh, I don't need that," and then suddenly you don't have digital output like the Wii. Also, a lot of these new graphics chip capabilities actually have nothing to do with graphics, they have to do with parallel processing. I expect we'll see more impressive use of non-graphics processing that can have a real effect on gameplay (physics, AI, etc.), but it's going to be a lot harder on Nintendo systems if they're missing some of the new features. That's the kind of innovation that I hope Nintendo doesn't overlook. There are still unexplored innovations out there that don't require changing up the control system. The developers probably don't even know everything they will want yet.
Title: Re: Wii U Must Support An Equivalent of Direct X 11/Open GL 4.2
Post by: BlackNMild2k1 on October 26, 2011, 12:19:17 AM
Like I said, if they were going to add that stuff, then they would have based the chip off the newer designs, not the HD4000 series.
Why? if the 5000 & 6000 are both based off the 4000 but for reasons due to their build have much more power consumption and features that Nintendo don't need and don't want, then why wouldn't they just start from the basic building blocks that the 4000 provides and then build up to an HD6000 minus all the unnecessary stuff that doesn't benefit the system as a whole?
When I hear custom 4000 series where the dev kits started off with a 4770 (or something like that) with reports that the newer dev kits are even more powerful than the last revision, then I think building up from the basics is exactly what they are doing.
As you said, there are lots of things in the newer designs that have nothing to do with gaming, and those designs are being built up from the design previous. There are probably millions of transistors dedicated to just making the damn chip DX11 compliant which isn't even necessary when they make the chip "a la carte" with just the major features of newer designs thrown in (ie. Advanced Tesselation & Global Illumination). So to me it makes sense that Nintendo would go back to the bottom (4000) and work its way up to a much more custom, streamlined and efficient version of the HD5000/6000.
Title: Re: Wii U Must Support An Equivalent of Direct X 11/Open GL 4.2
Post by: Stogi on October 26, 2011, 12:32:27 AM
Quote
Nintendo would go back to the bottom (4000) and work its way up to a much more custom, streamlined and efficient version of the HD5000/6000.
I bet that wasn't even Nintendo's idea. They probably had a list of criteria that had to be fulfilled, so ATI took that and ran with it.
Title: Re: Wii U Must Support An Equivalent of Direct X 11/Open GL 4.2
Post by: MegaByte on October 26, 2011, 12:43:01 AM
Chip design is a significant, significant effort. It would be easier (cheaper) to just strip out the unwanted items rather than redo them from the ground up. I don't think AMD has found big ways to make your specific desired modern features more efficient, or they'd already be using them in their regular chips. When I hear that the dev kits have gotten more powerful, all that tells me is that they went from a 4770 to a 48x0 -- they just added more stream units.
Title: Re: Wii U Must Support An Equivalent of Direct X 11/Open GL 4.2
Post by: Ymeegod on October 26, 2011, 04:39:10 PM
DX11 has shader model 5 as well though.
And we really don't know what's under the hood of the WII U yet but it might be able to do opengl 4.2 which supports Shader Model 5. The bad news is how much an hit it's going take--I have an ATI's card and their opengl performance is awful.
But the good news is people might not care, depending on costs. For example if all three systems used the same type of API then the difference is peformance and looks for the most part. Some people might be happy to play the game at a lower resolution or 30 fps vs 1080P and 60fps.
Title: Re: Wii U Must Support An Equivalent of Direct X 11/Open GL 4.2
Post by: MegaByte on October 26, 2011, 04:46:45 PM
We don't know, but the discussion was based on supposedly leaked information. This isn't simply about resolutions and framerate, graphics systems are much more complicated than that.
Title: Re: Wii U Must Support An Equivalent of Direct X 11/Open GL 4.2
Post by: Hyawatta on October 26, 2011, 05:15:09 PM
Chip design is a significant, significant effort. It would be easier (cheaper) to just strip out the unwanted items rather than redo them from the ground up. I don't think AMD has found big ways to make your specific desired modern features more efficient, or they'd already be using them in their regular chips. When I hear that the dev kits have gotten more powerful, all that tells me is that they went from a 4770 to a 48x0 -- they just added more stream units.
Even though it seems more likely that the newer dev kits went from 4770 to 48x0, do you think that there is any decent chance that Nintendo has opted to move to an HD5000 or HD6000 base instead of just adding more stream units?
Title: Re: Wii U Must Support An Equivalent of Direct X 11/Open GL 4.2
Post by: MegaByte on October 26, 2011, 05:30:42 PM
It's possible, if they can keep the prices down.
Title: Re: Wii U Must Support An Equivalent of Direct X 11/Open GL 4.2
Post by: BlackNMild2k1 on October 26, 2011, 05:54:01 PM
I don't know if AMD does fabrication for Nintendo or not, but they did just get their 28nm in place and will be shipping laptops using it next month.
So if they did push for a beefier GPU, the 28nm process should keep the heat down and hopefully the cost too. That's assuming they are aiming to use 28nm for Nintendo's GPU that is.
Title: Re: Wii U Must Support An Equivalent of Direct X 11/Open GL 4.2
Post by: MegaByte on October 26, 2011, 06:06:13 PM
I mentioned in the other thread why that might not happen. Aside from that, the cost of the new process is going to be higher at the beginning. Globalfoundries and TSMC do manufacturing for AMD (the latter for the 28nm process), and thus Nintendo. This kind of tech isn't something that can be picked up and placed just anywhere; due to the manufacturing complexities, they have to co-develop the process along with the design.
Title: Re: Wii U Must Support An Equivalent of Direct X 11/Open GL 4.2
Post by: BlackNMild2k1 on October 26, 2011, 06:11:43 PM
Since we have no idea what Nintendo has been developing, I'm holding out hope that they were planning for 28nm all along.
And also that IBM isn't actually the one fabbing all the chips for Wii U since they are not (publicly) on the 28nm process yet and have already announced the CPU at 40 or 45nm.
Title: Re: Wii U Must Support An Equivalent of Direct X 11/Open GL 4.2
Post by: Ymeegod on October 26, 2011, 09:41:57 PM
Actually Mega this is what I was talking about:
:The Xenos is a custom graphics processing unit (GPU) designed by ATI, used in the Xbox 360 video game console. Developed under the codename "C1,"[1] it is in many ways related to the R520 architecture and therefore very similar to an ATI Radeon X1900/X1950 series of PC graphics cards as far as features and performance are concerned. However, the Xenos introduced new design ideas that were later adopted in the R600 series, such as the unified shader architectur
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Just because it's being based on the 4800 series doesn't mean they won't add to it.
Title: Re: Wii U Must Support An Equivalent of Direct X 11/Open GL 4.2
Post by: MegaByte on October 26, 2011, 09:52:00 PM
Ah, but the difference there is that the Xenos was cutting edge, so they pretty much had to have features somewhere in between generations.
Title: Re: Wii U Must Support An Equivalent of Direct X 11/Open GL 4.2
Post by: MorbidGod on October 29, 2011, 08:52:25 PM
If the Wii U is based on the R700 series of chips as reports have suggested, that would indicate support for DirectX 10.1 SM 4.1 (only Microsoft actually uses DirectX)/OpenGL 3.3 - several revisions back. Still, supporting OpenGL and programmable shaders is already a huge leap from what they have now. They'd have to make big changes to silicon to support new features (with any reasonable speed), and trying to tack those on defeats the cost benefit of going with older tech in the first place.
The R700 is what the newer generation cards are based off of. And the Wii U started development probably right before the Wii was released. How can Nintendo support the newest tech when the cards were started back when R700 was the newest? Easy, by starting with that card and going from there. Thats why the dev kits are changing so much right now because AMD is still working on the GPU giving it the support for newer technology.
Don't worry about Nintendo graphics too much, guys. PS4 and Xbox 720 is being released in 2013 maybe late 2013. I don't think they are waiting till 2014 or 2015. And if they release in 2013, they all will be able to support same technology and engines, with the newer ones being faster but not anything noticeable.
And the reason the Wii didn't have advance graphics is because Nintendo had to make a choice, graphics or Wiimote. They didn't have the money for both. They choose Wiimote. Was it really a bad choice? Can you deny they are the winner of last generation? They were able to REUSE the same specs of the GCN Generation and sell an extra 80 or 90 million units. So they have TONS of money to spend of R&D for both control interfaces such as Wii U tablet and advanced tech inside. I mean the rumor spec is impressive. a IMB Power7 based off the Watson CPU which is very powerful. A GPU based off of R700 which is the same base for AMD's modern GPU's. So as you can see, Wii U rumored spec list is impressive.
