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

[Caliban]

Darksiders II at top spec'd PC levels?
http://www.officialnintendomagazine.co.uk/29257/darksiders-2-wii-u-preview/

Developers Vigil are still early in their plans for the Wii U version of Darksiders 2, but are excited about the potential of the controller's touchscreen being linked to Death's equipment. You might perhaps be able to drag and drop armour and weapons onto his body - while watching the character on your TV gradually getting tooled up as you do so.

After only a few weeks with the Wii U development kit, however, the team were genuinely buzzing with excitement - the graphics looking to match the top-spec PC iteration and the code working remarkably well on the hardware. It's early doors yet, of course, but the signs are that, for non-Nintendo developers, the Wii U is great system to work with - a far cry from the 'new hardware issues' that other consoles (most notably the PlayStation 3) have presented for third-party developers in the past.

Darksiders II development comments are all over the place. I could've sworn they just said that they aren't improving the visuals over the PS360 version.... but then who knows when this preview was written, even if it was just published today.

I sure hope this game sells well across all platforms because otherwise THQ will close them too, or something.

[Ceric]

Darksiders II at top spec'd PC levels?
http://www.officialnintendomagazine.co.uk/29257/darksiders-2-wii-u-preview/

Developers Vigil are still early in their plans for the Wii U version of Darksiders 2, but are excited about the potential of the controller's touchscreen being linked to Death's equipment. You might perhaps be able to drag and drop armour and weapons onto his body - while watching the character on your TV gradually getting tooled up as you do so.

After only a few weeks with the Wii U development kit, however, the team were genuinely buzzing with excitement - the graphics looking to match the top-spec PC iteration and the code working remarkably well on the hardware. It's early doors yet, of course, but the signs are that, for non-Nintendo developers, the Wii U is great system to work with - a far cry from the 'new hardware issues' that other consoles (most notably the PlayStation 3) have presented for third-party developers in the past.

Darksiders II development comments are all over the place. I could've sworn they just said that they aren't improving the visuals over the PS360 version.... but then who knows when this preview was written, even if it was just published today.

I sure hope this game sells well across all platforms because otherwise THQ will close them too, or something.

In response to the story quote.  I thought they said that they weren't looking to improve the visuals beyond what they had unless they found it super easy to do.  This statement keeps in line with that since the Maxed version of the PC version would be assets they already made.   That would be awesome if the WiiU could pump out visuals better than a Graphic Haus PC.

[King of Twitch]

As an example, I put forth the possibility of loading up your team and plays in Madden and taking it to a friend's house (who also has a Wii U, of course), and both being able to play from their own controller.

Any guesses how much memory the tablet itself is going to have?

[BlackNMild2k1]

As an example, I put forth the possibility of loading up your team and plays in Madden and taking it to a friend's house (who also has a Wii U, of course), and both being able to play from their own controller.

Any guesses how much memory the tablet itself is going to have?

I was just hoping for an SD card slot. It would probably be the cheapest solution, especially if Nintendo expects us to transport the actual controller to a friends just to multiUcon multiplayer.
Custom teams with custom logos, uniforms, plays, rosters, stadium, & stats might start to get quite large in size, especially when you are coming with saves from multiple games.

[BlackNMild2k1]

WiiU to NOT be dependent on 3rd Party Titles at launch!?
Good to know since it didn't work out so well for 3DS....
http://ds.ign.com/articles/118/1187093p1.html

"When we were preparing to launch the 3DS, we had very positive signals. High levels of pre-orders. High levels of buzz. High levels of interest. Even things like search activity, which we measure, were all very positive and very robust," Fils-Aime said. "That led to a very strong first day and very strong first few weeks of sell-through. Following that is when we began to see some slowdown of momentum."

"I would characterize the key factors as being… first party games, like Ocarina of Time or Star Fox, should maybe have been made available more quickly after launch. That might have been a missed opportunity. And then secondly, not launching the eShop until June was certainly was something that negatively impacted our momentum. I would point to those two factors as being significant ones that took some of the wind out of our sails following a positive few weeks after launch. As we take away those lessons and apply them to future launches, we need to look at things like key first party titles are launching much earlier in the launch window."
[...]
"Having said that, I think the launch of 3DS affirmed that it is the role of Nintendo first party content to drive the install base. Those the roles that Ocarina of Time, Star Fox, the Mario games, Kid Icarus and Luigi's Mansion 2 will play. Those are the titles that will drive the install base. We hoped that third party titles at launch would drive that base, and that didn't happen to the degree that we needed."

I believe that most of us had said the exact same thing leading upto and throughout the 3DS launch. You need good Nintendo games to drive the hardware sales and the 3rd party games will piggy back on the momentum. Of course the price was also way too high, but that's a separate issue.

Bring a good Nintendo launch title* for the WiiU and the system will sell. If the system is selling, then 3rd party software will sell too. If the 3rd party software is quality, then it will continue to sell. It really not that hard to figure out.


*A good launch title needs to demonstrate the features of the system. The things that set it apart not only from the Wii, but the PS360 too. It needs to show off why the Ucontroller is so special and show the potential that you want all the 3rd party software to help realize.

[Ceric]

I saw the word "Launch Window"  which means I read that statement as we will just readjust "Launch Window" to be a whole year.  That way the 3DS had all these games "Launch Window".  Now that the Cynical is out of the way,  I think its a good lesson they learned but, why didn't they learn it from every system since N64?

[Dasmos]

All the Wii U needs is Pikmin 3 at launch and I will be a happy camper. The controller would be perfect for Pikmin, probably even better than the Wii remote (which was better than the GC controller).

[TJ Spyke]

Adrock, even back at E3 Iwata said having more than one controller per system was possible.

[Chozo Ghost]

Having more than one controller was always known to be possible. What is still up in the air is whether or not the GPU will be capable of displaying to the screen of more than one controller. Even assuming it can display to more than one controller, will it be capable of high res display on more than one? Or does multiple controllers force the quality to be broken down in order to make it possible? That is the question.

[King of Twitch]

As an example, I put forth the possibility of loading up your team and plays in Madden and taking it to a friend's house (who also has a Wii U, of course), and both being able to play from their own controller.

Any guesses how much memory the tablet itself is going to have?

I was just hoping for an SD card slot. It would probably be the cheapest solution, especially if Nintendo expects us to transport the actual controller to a friends just to multiUcon multiplayer.
Custom teams with custom logos, uniforms, plays, rosters, stadium, & stats might start to get quite large in size, especially when you are coming with saves from multiple games.

I dunno, there are a lot of slots already on the side of that tablet! I'd wonder if there's any more room for it. And I'm sure there will be more than one controller, it's been the standard since Atari Pong.

[Adrock]

Having more than one controller was always known to be possible. What is still up in the air is whether or not the GPU will be capable of displaying to the screen of more than one controller. Even assuming it can display to more than one controller, will it be capable of high res display on more than one? Or does multiple controllers force the quality to be broken down in order to make it possible? That is the question.

For realz. Just because something is possible, doesn't mean Nintendo is going to do it. The Wii was capable of playing DVD movies but Nintendo said nuts to that. I recall Iwata, Miyamoto, and Reggie each saying pretty different things concerning the whole multiple tablet controllers thing, all fairly cryptic. Matt Ryan is the first person from Nintendo to give a straight answer.

[ThePerm]

maybe they dont want to talk about multiple tablets because theres something else they aren't telling us thats kinda a secret for next e3, something nobody has even hit on. The last thing they want is Sony and Microsoft copying all their ideas.

[BlackNMild2k1]

Having more than one controller was always known to be possible. What is still up in the air is whether or not the GPU will be capable of displaying to the screen of more than one controller. Even assuming it can display to more than one controller, will it be capable of high res display on more than one? Or does multiple controllers force the quality to be broken down in order to make it possible? That is the question.

No it's not.
The GPU will be more than capable of displaying to the main screen and probably 4 uMotes too.
Eyefinity is capable of upto 6 screens, and even though Nintendo will want it customized, they might not even have to render more than 2 whole screens.

[I'm not a techie]I think the controller screen resolution was (or very close to) 1/4 a 1080p screen (800x~540).
So if the GPU was able to handle 2 1080p screens, but one broken into split screen (upto 4 split screens), then all it would have to do is send a quarter of each screen to each corresponding controller.
Now assuming that we likely won't have more than 2 Umotes per system, then the GPU really only has to render 1x1080p screen (main TV) and then 1/2 a 1080p screen for the uMotes.
Also considering most of what will be on the uMote screen will likely not be all that complex (menus, extra buttons, status screen/HUD, etc etc), there should still be plenty of horsepower left for the main 1080p screen.[/I'm not a techie]

The REAL question is what is the tech that Nintendo is using to stream the video from the console to the controller and how does that work?

I've already made a post on similar tech and they all seem to be focused on sending the same video stream out to multiple devices. That would be 1 video streaming out to 6 different devices.
We need to know if the transmitting device Nintendo is using is capable of sending multiple streams to multiple devices, or do they need a different transmitter for every video stream receiver.

[RedBlue]

Having more than one controller was always known to be possible. What is still up in the air is whether or not the GPU will be capable of displaying to the screen of more than one controller. Even assuming it can display to more than one controller, will it be capable of high res display on more than one? Or does multiple controllers force the quality to be broken down in order to make it possible? That is the question.

No it's not.
The GPU will be more than capable of displaying to the main screen and probably 4 uMotes too.
Eyefinity is capable of upto 6 screens, and even though Nintendo will want it customized, they might not even have to render more than 2 whole screens.

[I'm not a techie]I think the controller screen resolution was (or very close to) 1/4 a 1080p screen (800x~540).
So if the GPU was able to handle 2 1080p screens, but one broken into split screen (upto 4 split screens), then all it would have to do is send a quarter of each screen to each corresponding controller.
Now assuming that we likely won't have more than 2 Umotes per system, then the GPU really only has to render 1x1080p screen (main TV) and then 1/2 a 1080p screen for the uMotes.
Also considering most of what will be on the uMote screen will likely not be all that complex (menus, extra buttons, status screen/HUD, etc etc), there should still be plenty of horsepower left for the main 1080p screen.[/I'm not a techie]

The REAL question is what is the tech that Nintendo is using to stream the video from the console to the controller and how does that work?

I've already made a post on similar tech and they all seem to be focused on sending the same video stream out to multiple devices. That would be 1 video streaming out to 6 different devices.
We need to know if the transmitting device Nintendo is using is capable of sending multiple streams to multiple devices, or do they need a different transmitter for every video stream receiver.

You are correct sir. The GPU is not the problem here, it is all about the bandwidth. So the only limiting factor is going to be the radio(s) that nintendo is using in the Wii U. http://hd.engadget.com/2005/12/15/hdtv-over-wifi-general-impressions/ In the article they are talking about streaming High-def video and how much bandwidth it eats. Now imaging the same scenario x4. http://www.tomsguide.com/us/video-streaming-need-to-know-part-2,review-784-3.html# in this one they show what happens when the radios run out of bandwidth.

[MegaByte]

It's not x4 though, it's x1 -- it takes approximately four Wii U remotes together to equal one HD screen.

[Adrock]

Hmm, I quoted Chozo instead of TJ. Oh well.

So I'm getting a bit confused with all of the tech jargon. I thought we established that it was the transmitter/radio thingamajig (not the GPU) a while ago. We just weren't sure if Nintendo was going to allow the functionality even though the hardware is technically capable of it. Am I getting this right? Assuming Matt Ryan isn't talking out of his ass, it's a good sign that someone bluntly answered the question.

However, I'm calling shenanigans on Ryan saying it was a "misconception." Nintendo never cleared it up. When asked, I recall Iwata citing cost concerns for consumers and when someone brought up bringing a tablet controller to a friend's house, he fumbled his was through it. I believe Miyamoto said that we might as well use 3DS. While there are more questions about the functionality, this is more or less the confirmation many of us were looking for. I don't care how Nintendo/AMD does it, just as long as it gets done.

[Chozo Ghost]

I think ThePerm is right that Nintendo didn't want to reveal every detail at E3 for fear that Sony and Microsoft may steal ideas. As it is I think they've probably revealed too much because the basic concept of the streaming content to the controller is now known, and if Microsoft and Sony really want to they could be busy copying that as we speak.

[BlackNMild2k1]

Nintendo never said they were gonna show more WiiU at GamesCon (Aug. 17-21 - Cologne, Germany), despite rumors stating that Nintendo pulled out of it, and more recently said that there would be nothing else about WiiU till next year. But THQ just released their GamesCon Lineup and 2 WiiU games are on the list.

Darksiders II & Metro: Last Night

Will THQ show off some actual WiiU games footage or we just be seeing more of the PS360 versions?

[nickmitch]

Most likely just the PS360 versions, if Nintendo isn't showing anything.

[ThePerm]

it would have been more effective to not have a name for the console this e3, when they first showed off Wii it was still going by its code name

[nickmitch]

I think Iwata knew we'd need even more time to get over this one.

Or at least for 3rd parties to think of "U" puns.

[SixthAngel]

I'm expecting playable first party games when they show it next.  Not the demos they had before but pieces of actual games they plan to release.
I don't expect it to be shown again for a while.

[Chozo Ghost]

it would have been more effective to not have a name for the console this e3, when they first showed off Wii it was still going by its code name

I'm hoping and praying every day that "Wii U" IS the code name, and that by the time the system launches it will get a new and better name.

[TJ Spyke]

I think people overract to it. I think Wii U is a good name.

[BlackNMild2k1]

I think WiiU is better, but still not as good as Wii^u