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

[oohhboy]

Eh like I said I'm not into the nitry gritty of computing like that. Was just making guesses as mu current t phone eats up 1G. Of ram like that and my thinking was the more complex the machine or tasks the more ram it would use up.

Then don't go around randomly making **** up. Opinions are fine, that stuff is zero dollars a dozen, but be sure to back it up with facts. Going "eh" and shrugging your shoulder isn't going to absolve you of Bullshit.

The Xbox version of Madden using Kinect has voice command. Whether it actually works is another story given the history of Kinect, but it isn't too much of a stretch to see that feature come to the WiiU. But this chunk of marketing vomit doesn't inspire confidence.

"One thing we're doing, which is pretty innovative with this game, is using what we're calling dynamic grammars," Logan said. "There are commands that we're loading directly into the game right now. What dynamic grammars do is take text and dynamically load it in, the name of the characters you have, your custom audibles and basically uses phonics to sound it out."

The Macintosh says "How much wood can a woodchuck chuck".

[ThePerm]

so, at wall mart they sell e-machine computers with 4gb of ram for 298 dollars, thats with an ati radeon 6310 and a dual core amd athlon. That has a bunch of software loaded, so if you get rid of the software and double the ram you have an idea of what the Wii U can be if its $300

[bustin98]

You know what you get with that emachine? Bloatware. The cost of the those systems are supported by other companies sticking their **** in there trying to get subscriptions and anything else from the unwitting. So you can't do that kind of cost comparison.

[BlackNMild2k1]

so, at wall mart they sell e-machine computers with 4gb of ram for 298 dollars, thats with an ati radeon 6310 and a dual core amd athlon. That has a bunch of software loaded, so if you get rid of the software and double the ram you have an idea of what the Wii U can be if its $300

I'm going to assume his was a sarcastic statement.

now take that same e-machine, (added video card and all) hardwire all components directly to the motherboard and then shrink the entire thing down to 1/4-1/6 the size. Take the included monitor and make it wireless and handheld with 0 lag and light as hell. and then stick it all into a box, put it on the shelf and tell me it will still cost only $298

[MysticGohan]

so, at wall mart they sell e-machine computers with 4gb of ram for 298 dollars, thats with an ati radeon 6310 and a dual core amd athlon. That has a bunch of software loaded, so if you get rid of the software and double the ram you have an idea of what the Wii U can be if its $300

I'm going to assume his was a sarcastic statement.

now take that same e-machine, (added video card and all) hardwire all components directly to the motherboard and then shrink the entire thing down to 1/4-1/6 the size. Take the included monitor and make it wireless and handheld with 0 lag and light as hell. and then stick it all into a box, put it on the shelf and tell me it will still cost only $298

"Nuff Said"

[ThePerm]

i think you missed the point

Its a budget priced 299 dollar computer with software

vs a slightly more powerful console without (windows 7, nero, etc..., 1yr of virus protection) 

The e-machine doesn't come with a monitor, and the graphics chip are integrated and similar to the one wii u is rumored to have.

I made the assumption if it(wii U) could have twice as much ram(for the same price), and obviously a better motherboard, then that's what you can expect from Wii U for $300. Thats a pretty decent platform for gaming, not top top of the line, but suitable for the needs of console gaming. Console game systems are a good bang for the buck, and affordable to everyone.

The idea was you take a 300 dollar pc, remove the junk. Replace the junk with better stuff and keep the price at $300, then you can guess what Wii U's power for price is. So were guessing 8gb of ram, 3ghz dual core processor(the e-machine is only 1.3), a slightly better then mid-level radeon chip. Obviously, the processor is going to be very different because its in the IBM family, and the motherboard won't be a mess. And obviously Nintendo is going to get a good deal on the touchscreen(and really how much does a mouse plus keyboard cost to manufacture vs the new gamepad?). Also, there are many ways Nintendo saves money. Like the case is made out of mostly plastic, not metal..etc

The lame budget pc is still more powerful then an xbox 360 or ps3, but you would hope Nintendo would get the price right just as they did and get in the same power range or better. IF that makes any sense? OR make it even cheaper and get in a better power range.

what Im saying is Nintendo should be able to get a good amount of power for $300 or even $250. So, we should all be happy.

[BranDonk Kong]

Radon 6310 is garbage.

[ThePerm]

Well the Rumor is Wii U has a modified Radeon 6770(Juniper), now Radeon 6310 may be "garbage", but the two chips are only a november to april release difference. So, price wise for production they are in the same ballpark for what to expect for keeping costs down thanks to moores law. Todays 7870 is tomorrows 6310.

realistically we can expect Wii U to be much more powerfulthen ps3 or xbox 360, any rumor saying otherwise is probably BS

[oohhboy]

That's not how it works Perm. The 6310 is low wattage, low budget, low end GPU for Netbooks mean for and I quote:

Video Viewing, casual online gaming, web browsing, instant messaging and e-mail.

It's the ATI equivalent of an integrated INTEL chipset.

The 6770 is an actual main line card. Note here the specs and no where there is the 6310 listed because it is an unrelated product. You can find the specs to both items here, the 6310 is under IGP line and the 6770 is under Northern Island.

The 6770 has almost 10x the bandwidth. 10x the number of cores, has 17 times raw computing power. They are two completely different classes of product which are only related in the sense they are designed by ATI. My current old Nvidia 9800GT released in July 2008 is 6.3 times the raw computing power over the 6310 and half that of the rumoured WiiU chip you pointed to.

You have strung together two unrelated bits of data and called it a pattern. Also Moore's Law is an observation and is about to come to an end in around 2013 where the expected doubling of transistor counts and densities are to only happen every 3 years.

As for the WiiU being more powerful than the PS360, that is guaranteed. The 360 and PS3 GPUs are based on technology with unit's of measurements in the Millions. Current graphics cards including mine are measured the Giga or Billions. Unless Nintendo went mental and actually choose the 6310, there would be no way in hell the WiiU could even be considered on par with the PS360. After getting over the WTF moment, ATI would laugh them off for trying to order something so weak.

Brandogg assessment is correct, the Radon 6310 is garbage. Next time someone tells you that the WiiU is weaker or on par to the PS360, tell them is physically impossible since Nintendo couldn't order something so weak as a new product.

A large part of the reason why consoles can be as cheap as they are is because the likes of the Big 3 can guarantee orders of components in the 10's~100's of millions which allow the production line to spread the cost of tooling and streamline the entire line for the next 5+ years, so instead of paying today's per unit cost they can pay something closer to the average price over the next 5 years. This is something e-machines can't do since for each line of computers they may only sell in the 10's to 100's of thousands which means they pay much closer to today's price, not the future. So comparing an e-machine to the WiiU is not possible since they exist in completely different economies of scale.

[NWR_insanolord]

The fact that Wii U launch titles look better than games on hardware the developers have had six or seven years to learn the tricks of should be enough to prove that it's a significant step up. Look at Xbox 360 launch games compared to what's coming out this year; things only get better looking over time, and the Wii U's already ahead even with mostly unoptimized games.

[Chozo Ghost]

Unless Nintendo went mental and actually choose the 6310, there would be no way in hell the WiiU could even be considered on par with the PS360. After getting over the WTF moment, ATI would laugh them off for trying to order something so weak.

Brandogg assessment is correct, the Radon 6310 is garbage. Next time someone tells you that the WiiU is weaker or on par to the PS360, tell them is physically impossible since Nintendo couldn't order something so weak as a new product.

Well, they did offer the Wii....

Just sayin'

[oohhboy]

Mental as in "Throw away everything they showed at E3 and suddenly announce a completely different console".

The Wii wasn't a new product, it was an old one. So old in fact my computer can emulate it almost perfectly.

[BlackNMild2k1]

Did NWR not cover the EA event 48 hours ago?

I didn't see any mention of Madden Wii U or the screenshots of Fifa 2013.
Did I overlook them somewhere?


I guess what I'm asking is, where are the screenshots and details for Madden Wii U?
What was announced for Wii U at that EA event that we didn't already know about?
Was it really just Madden, Fifa and Mass Effect?

[Kairon]

I guess what I'm asking is, where are the screenshots and details for Madden Wii U?
What was announced for Wii U at that EA event that we didn't already know about?
Was it really just Madden, Fifa and Mass Effect?

I'm working on it as we speak. Yes, those were the only Wii U games at the show, and Madden wasn't playable.

[Enner]

The EA Summer Showcase always seemed to be a small event so it isn't too surprising for those three games to be the only ones shown.

[Kairon]

I guess what I'm asking is, where are the screenshots and details for Madden Wii U?
What was announced for Wii U at that EA event that we didn't already know about?
Was it really just Madden, Fifa and Mass Effect?

I'm working on it as we speak. Yes, those were the only Wii U games at the show, and Madden wasn't playable.

Here's our coverage:

FIFA 13 Impressions
FIFA 13 Screens
FIFA 13 Artwork
Mass Effect 3 Impressions
Mass Effect 3 Artwork
Mass Effect 3 Gameplay Video
Mass Effect 3 Gameplay Video /w Controller

Madden Wii U wasn't playable unfortunately, so there's no more information about it than what EA has already announced. I've also got an interview with FIFA 13 Line Producer Matt Prior that I hope to post soon.

[tendoboy1984]

Love those GameCube graphics! Is that crowd made from sprites?! The Wii U is supposedly more powerful than an Xbox 360 (and possibly a PS3, but that damn CELL chip is hard to top). Can't developers do better than this?

[TJ Spyke]

The Wii U is more powerful than a PS3. And who cares what the crowd looks like? You are not looking at them, so I would rather a developer use that processing power for stuff like AI and the players.

[Kairon]

Love those GameCube graphics! Is that crowd made from sprites?! The Wii U is supposedly more powerful than an Xbox 360 (and possibly a PS3, but that damn CELL chip is hard to top). Can't developers do better than this?

That crowd is twice the resolution of the crowd on the 360 version. FIFA 13 on the Wii U is running on the same engine as the 360 and PS3 versions. Producer Matt Prior has gone on record saying that the Wii U version is the "best looking."

I hope to post an interview I had with him sometime soon that will contain more details about the game's graphics and features.

[oohhboy]

You can't render a crowd of 30k people as polygons in realtime. A square is made of 2 polygons. A box with the bottom, top, and back missing consists of 6 triangles. That gets you a shin. 4x for a pair of legs with a knee joint. 24 triangles. 2x for arms, 48 triangles. 6 x 2 for head and body, 12 + 48 = 60 triangles for one box man. 60 x 30000 = 1,800,000 triangles for one frame. times 60 full number of frames. 108,000,000 triangles a second just for the crowd of box people with no feet or hands. Then you have to animate them, texture them in team colours, light, give them some behaviour to match the action. Even the "Epic" strategy games cap out at a couple thousand units.

You're better off making flat people that you can palette swap with an alpha layer nailed to a 1 triangle board to determine rotation, animated with a couple of frames each. Since the developer know the limits of the camera, they only have to ready a small set of sprites to handle limited amounts of rotation and you can cut that in almost by half by mirroring them. So the dudes in white raise their right hand on this side of the pitch, on the opposite side they raise their left. Since you are playing the game, you are too busy to give much of a ****.

[ThePerm]

or better yet, using different levels of people based on distance. People up front a few 100 polys, next row lower polygon, next row sprites. My minecraft field was made out of flowers and mushrooms(which are sprites).

[NWR_insanolord]

Love those GameCube graphics! Is that crowd made from sprites?! The Wii U is supposedly more powerful than an Xbox 360 (and possibly a PS3, but that damn CELL chip is hard to top). Can't developers do better than this?

As someone who buys FIFA every year on 360, those screens look better than any FIFA I've ever played.

[Chozo Ghost]

Aside from the crowd, that image looks like it could have been pulled off of a real TV sports broadcast as far as I can tell.

[Ceric]

The heads bugs me on the Fifa Screenshots.

[NWR_insanolord]

Tendoboy called that screenshot "GameCube graphics." For reference, this is what FIFA looked like on the GameCube.