Topic: Wii U - e3 is over... now what?

[UltimatePartyBear]

The power glove (which was so bad) was not Nintendo's.  I think Nintendo toyed with another motion sensing controller, though.  I remember seeing pictures in Nintendo Power of a kid punching the air in front of an L-shaped doohickey.

U Force?  I don't think that it was actually made by Nintendo, though.  I knew a kid who had one.  What a piece of garbage it was.  The only fancy controller that I ever used was the NES Advantage, which I still have.

I didn't know it was ever sold.  I barely remember anything, but I had always been under the impression it was some internal experiment that never came out.  I guess this means Nintendo didn't do anything with motion sensing in the old days after all.

UltimatePartyBear, have you gotten to play the 3DS yet?  I be curious to get your reaction on using the Circlepad for GB games and DS games where its substituting the d-pad as a fellow NES Max veteran.  I prefer it  but that's pretty widely known.

I bought a 3DS at launch, but I've haven't played anything like that yet.  I do like the circle pad in general, though.

[Caterkiller]

Naughty Dog on Wii U

"To be honest with you, the idea of it is very, very cool. But there’s nothing that the Wii U has that the Vita and PS3 doesn’t. You know, it’s an interesting piece of technology, and I’m interested to see how people use it.


I’m not completely sold yet. That the screen isn’t multi-touch, that’s a little weird. It seems there are some very strange holes in it, but to be fair, last time I was sceptical of the original Wii, and look at how that did. I’m sure that he games they make for Wii U will be amazing."

http://www.n-europe.com/news.php?nid=15906

All I can say is I don't think that is entirely true, but I really don't know what any system is capable of.

[UltimatePartyBear]

Naughty Dog is a Sony subsidiary, so I don't know why anybody would even ask them about it.

[Chozo Ghost]

and I would punch someone if they threw my controller.

That would make you just as bad (and arguably worse).

[TJ Spyke]

Not like in the face, just in the shoulder.

[ThePerm]

Naughty Dog is a Sony subsidiary, so I don't know why anybody would even ask them about it.

to see how hard it is to talk bad about the Wii U, he tried to but kinda failed.

[Chozo Ghost]

Naughty Dog is a Sony subsidiary, so I don't know why anybody would even ask them about it.

to see how hard it is to talk bad about the Wii U, he tried to but kinda failed.

Maybe he actually wanted to talk good about it, but due to the fact he kinda is owned by Sony he felt he might lose his job so he toned down his praise of it?

[broodwars]

Naughty Dog is a Sony subsidiary, so I don't know why anybody would even ask them about it.

to see how hard it is to talk bad about the Wii U, he tried to but kinda failed.

Maybe he actually wanted to talk good about it, but due to the fact he kinda is owned by Sony he felt he might lose his job so he toned down his praise of it?

Or maybe he's just extremely uncertain about it, which is pretty much what he said.  He admitted that he was wrong about the Wii, so he could be wrong about the Wii U as well.  Considering Naughty Dog's a Sony-owned developer, he was remarkably kind towards the two systems, actually.  A lot of developers got burned with the Wii (no matter how good their games were), so frankly they all have every right to be skeptical of its successor.  And he brings up a good point that has been frequently stated about the Wii U: at its heart, it's a 3DS (sans 3D screens and processors) hooked up to the equivalent of a PS3.  There's very little revealed so far that it can do that can't be done with other technology on other consoles, which is the problem Nintendo has had since E3.

[Ceric]

We all know we hit the point of diminishing returns on power.  The next obvious way to go is smell.

[broodwars]

We all know we hit the point of diminishing returns on power.  The next obvious way to go is smell.

Tell that to PC gamers and developers.  I've been seeing articles popping up on Destructoid and whatnot in the past few months with developers starting to complain that they want to work with more powerful hardware than the 360/PS3, so it looks like there's a demand in at least the development community.  I think we have one more incremental upgrade left in these consoles before we go to something radically different (like Cloud gaming or whatnot).

[Ceric]

We all know we hit the point of diminishing returns on power.  The next obvious way to go is smell.

Tell that to PC gamers and developers.  I've been seeing articles popping up on Destructoid and whatnot in the past few months with developers starting to complain that they want to work with more powerful hardware than the 360/PS3, so it looks like there's a demand in at least the development community.  I think we have one more incremental upgrade left in these consoles before we go to something radically different (like Cloud gaming or whatnot).

I used Diminishing returns for a reason.  Doubling the power of the PS3 will not cause a leap at the level of the XBox to 360.  Things will look better but not leaps better.  Developers will always have a use for more power.  More power means you can be less efficient and have less restrictions.  From a developer perspective I'll take all you can give me.  From the consumer perspectives if I can't see a noticable difference I wonder what's the point.  Think about if the Wii releases the same as it is with just a GCN controller.  Developers be cool I have more power.  Consumers be what's the point.  I think that is what the jump to next Gen is going to be like for the next Gen systems of the HD system.  Even though under the hood the system will be 2-3 times beefier in every way.  I'm fairly sure MS, Sony, and Nintendo all realize this.

[MegaByte]

The thing is, we still need more processing power, but not especially for graphics, for things like AI. Unfortunately, it's harder to make the case without the flashiness of graphics.

[ThePerm]

The thing about the diminishing return on graphics, is its graphics and power per cost. Sure developers are going to want more power, but can consumers afford those machines? One of the walls that was hit years ago was processor speed. As it turns out anything above 3ghz turns your processor into an oven, so the move was made to make multicore processors. They just stack processors, what really needs to be done is researching specified algorithm cores. cores that process a certain type of information really fast and really well. Like for instance encoding video is done at a slow slow speed on my general multicore processor, but apparently a ps3 can encode/decode video formats in lighting speed x2. The more different things a processor can handle the more efficient data management can be. Ps3 processors could be made to do anything with the right programming, but general processing programing is more difficult then throwing numbers at a smart core.

Also, more ram, thats always better.

[Chozo Ghost]

Diminishing returns only applies to graphics. Extra RAM and computing power is still highly useful and in demand for other things. The PS3 and 360 only have 256mb of RAM which is weak compared to modern PCs which typically have 3-4gb or more of RAM. I think the rumors were the Wii U was going to have 1-2GB of RAM, right? That's still a far cry from where PCs are, but its a huge leap forward over current consoles.

[ThePerm]

other than graphics and physics, what the hell else do you need more power for? everything else is just coordinate and inventory management...

[SixthAngel]

other than graphics and physics, what the hell else do you need more power for? everything else is just coordinate and inventory management...

Exactly.

People say AI but I don't see that getting better since we actually reached diminishing returns there as well.  Enemies can't be too smart or they will beat you constantly.  It could get better without reaching that point but people won't really care, especially when the most popular game of the day's (CoD) idea of fighting the enemy is sending wave after wave of them until you reach a checkpoint.

Physics seem to be the same way. Outside of a few games improved physics would have almost no effect on the actual gameplay making it basically another graphics upgrade.


Developers always want to work on the most powerful systems for a few reasons.
One is that simply due to their job and interests they are tech heads.  These are the people who would yell at me for using XP despite the fact that it can run absolutely every thing I've ever tried to run on it and there is no real reason for me to change.

Another big reason is that they want there resumes and skills to reflect the latest technology.  By knowing the newest engines and newest tricks they can command more pay and get jobs more easily.  They are scared that if they work on the DS they won't be able to get a good job when it dies because other people will have better resumes and previous experience on the next level of tech they move to.  Its honestly pretty damning how little creativity and design is seen as being useful by the devs.

[MegaByte]

It's not about being smart, it's about being human-like. There's still a huge gap in the way computer rivals play compared to human ones.

[SixthAngel]

It's not about being smart, it's about being human-like. There's still a huge gap in the way computer rivals play compared to human ones.

We've reach diminishing returns there outside of maybe Seaman type games.  The Call of Duty games rely on sending wave after wave of enemy after you until you reach a checkpoint.  The design of the game relies on them being too stupid to be human like.  When nearly every game out there interacts with people by shooting or stabbing them more human-like AI is incredibly difficult to distinguish anyway.
For the vast majority of games AI advances simply aren't going to matter to the vast majority of player just like graphics.

[King of Twitch]

In other words more LAZINESS. That's where the phrase 'ness gen console comes from.

[MegaByte]

That's a very narrow viewpoint. The fact is, we are so far away from good AI, it's hard to even imagine the types of gameplay it would open. We're certainly not talking Call of Duty here.

http://www.next-gen.biz/news/ubisoft-ai-not-graphics-real-next-gen-%E2%80%9Cbattleground

"AI has always been the real battleground. In general the industry expects that graphics will not be a strong feature any more... Obviously, graphics are better for marketing purposes because you can show things. AI you can't show… The challenge is that, if you see an AI coming, you've failed. And that's a problem we have to overcome as we create the impression of flawless, seamless worlds. Our challenge with the PlayStation 3 and Xbox [360] is that we're extremely limited in what we can do. It's a challenge for the engineers to provide nice graphics and nice AI and nice sound with a very small amount of memory and computation time. We think that the next generation of consoles won't have these limits any more.”

So, the other thing is to be able to have nice everything instead of focusing only on one component due to hardware constraints.

[SixthAngel]

We are really really far away from human like behavior.  So far away in fact that the "big leaps" between generations will hardly bring us closer.  I remember when enemies hiding when low on health, being scared when a there partners were killed and picking up used weapons was a big deal.  The easily noticable things are now gone and only incredible leaps in AI will be very noticable.

[Chozo Ghost]

other than graphics and physics, what the hell else do you need more power for? everything else is just coordinate and inventory management...

Let me explain.

I was reading a video game magazine awhile back about the new Battlefield 3 game and how the console versions are forced to be gimped with smaller maps and fewer players can play at a time versus the version for the PC. So that is a good example of the sort of things which can still benefit from beefier hardware. Graphics aren't going to improve much, but if you want to have epic 30 simultaneous players games then you need more RAM and stuff.

[ThePerm]

well isnt that a ram issue more than a power issue? It seems like they already have the power to do anything, but not necessarily the ability to keep track of everything.

Isn't that what i said already as well?  The biggest upgrade we can have on is more Ram, Ram is always good. If an old system like Gamecube had like 10 gigs of ram it would have amazing graphics without all the shaders and wizardry.

Also, the new disc drive is going to be quite the upgrade, it wont be Blu-Ray but the more space on discs you have the better. Nintendo could have just stuck with DVD-9 and we'd be bitching in the long run. Also, i'm sure Nintendo wants the system to be harder to pirate again.

[Ceric]

More power is always good but with more power the audience that can appreciate it what that does for them diminishes.

[NWR_insanolord]

The trick with AI isn't so much more power as it is figuring out how to code it. The former will certainly be necessary to pull it off, but all the extra horsepower will be wasted until someone takes advantage of it with the right programming. Does it really make sense to design consoles around something that's barely even theoretical at this point?