Topic: Wii U in Review (News & Rumor Consolidation)

[Jabs]

Thats exactly my point, UE4 does a light tracing system where all the rooms lighting is calculated based on the surfaces of materials and how it cascades around the room. The technology is amazing but in action it doesn't look much better than what we have today, unless the game has a rapid day night system it won't be very noticeable in action and even the then the effect can be pre-baked in to the visuals very easily for use on current consoles.


Today CD Projekt Red showed off their new graphics engine for their future games (http://i.imgur.com/WnZXu3V.jpg) personally I'm not seeing the huge jumps any more. I have seen some great pre-rendered stuff or absolutely over the top tech demos that look impressive but they are totally pointless if developers can't afford to build entire games to those levels of detail.

[NWR_insanolord]

UE4 is designed to be scalable. They built it to be able to run on iPhones, so getting it to work on the Wii U is no problem, Epic just doesn't see the value in porting it themselves. That's why I'm saying Nintendo should jump in and do it themselves.

[Jabs]

True I suppose it is scalable, I should look into what advantages it would have over UE3 on even the mobile platforms. But these days it's getting harder to know where Epic's reason ends and the sales pitch begins.


They are eager to sell the next version of their engine regardless of the eventual impact on the industry. Epic has said the next generations shouldn't be too bad for developers in that budgets will only double but that's already far to high for what the industry is willing/able to absorb.


I want to believe them but do question their motives, I'm not going to create a false dichotomy here and make them all good or evil but some clarity would be nice.


Nintendo probably can't do the port directly but they could at the very least make an investment in Epic to produce it. A better way to get Epic to do that would be that have more 3rd party developers show an interest in the platform, that could force their hand if necessary.

[BlackNMild2k1]

Nintendo: No Need for Alarm
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2013-02-01-nintendo-no-need-for-alarm

a more positive/optimistic outlook on Nintendo today.

[Caterkiller]

The latest ND showed us of some brief monster footage for Bayo 2. It all seemed very CGI, but according to the directors recent Tweet, it is indeed real time footage from the game.


https://twitter.com/PG_y_hashimoto/status/294100142204801024


http://www.nintengen.com/2013/02/bayonetta-2-wii-u-confirmed-real-time.html


http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=_fv6rtK3mCo#t=90s


It's dark but I think we can look forward to a much prettier game than the  first.

[mysticgohan]

Sounds promising Cata Really interested in what Retro's up to, and what Platinum will do after Wonderful 101 and Bayonetta 2, is there anything else for Wii U?

[Caterkiller]

Sadly I won't get anymore tidbits until my source goes to GDC this year. Even then we'll be lucky if I can get some solid info from there.

But yeah the screens in that link are very CGI like which is nice. It's all super dark too so there is still some mystery as to how well it will look all lot up, either way seems impressive so far.

[Louieturkey]

Wii U will be fine.  Everyone likes to spout about specs but it sounds like the new systems will be running at 1.6 Ghz just like the Wii U CPU is.  The only difference is the number of cores and for what the other companies want to do, the extra cores will be used for other services so they can run Netflix and a game at the same time and be able to surf the internet as well.

It wouldn't surprise me at all if Gearbox's new game runs nearly identical on all three platforms.

[Louieturkey]

Nintendo: No Need for Alarm
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2013-02-01-nintendo-no-need-for-alarm

a more positive/optimistic outlook on Nintendo today.

Wow, the first person outside of here and Nintendo themselves that has actually put thought into their forecast of the Wii U.  I may have to start paying attention to this man.

[Ymeegod]

Actually the WIIU CPU is running at 1.25Ghz.  3-cores at 1.25 vs 8 cores at 1.6 and you can easily see who's going win.  The only real bottle neck is going be the ram--all three systems went with DDR3--though MS and Sony are aiming at 8GBs it's still slow ram.

Right now it looks like MS and Sony are going be around three times as powerful as the WII U. 

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The only saving grace will be nintendo's strong point--pricing--by the time Xbox Next/PS4 hit I imagine the WII U will be under $200 making ideal for the parent/student crowd.

Also I'm expect the WII U to have a rather short life span--by 2016 I bet Nintendo will have another console that's going be on par with the next generation of system (making the WII U life span 4 years). 

[Ceric]

Orbis is suppose to be using much faster Ram then the other two and only 4GB possibly bumping to 8.

[TJ Spyke]

No chance in hell Wii U will have a 4 year lifespan, especially since the Xbox 3 and PlayStation 4's rumored specs are not that much better than Wii U. And you really think Nintendo will drop the price by over $150 by the end of the year? Hahahahaha, yeah right. The most that might happen is a $20 pricecut.

[Soren]

http://www.chipworks.com/blog/technologyblog/2013/02/04/looking-at-the-wii-u-graphics-processor/


http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=511628



Gaf is going crazy now that Chipworks handed out a hi-res GPU die photo. There are a couple of threads but no real concrete information other than it's a highly customized GPU.

[alegoicoe]

No chance in hell Wii U will have a 4 year lifespan, especially since the Xbox 3 and PlayStation 4's rumored specs are not that much better than Wii U. And you really think Nintendo will drop the price by over $150 by the end of the year? Hahahahaha, yeah right. The most that might happen is a $20 pricecut.

I agree with you on the 4 year life pan, but I can't help but think that in a couple of years Nintendo will redesign the system and the gamepad with improved specs to get it closer with the other systems. By the way, just heard of a rumor that Lords of Shadows might be coming to Wii U, doubt it but still fun to speculate.


Update: http://www.joystiq.com/2013/02/04/konami-would-consider-hd-castlevania-mirror-of-fate-mercurys/

[BranDonk Kong]

All of these posts with people talking about how weak or strong the Wii U is or isn't are pointless. Unless you know a little bit about computer engineering, computer science or software development, then you're just talking about crap you read on the internet. Not necessarily talking about anyone in this thread, but people on neogaf, etc. There are a couple of smart people, but then a bunch of people that want to pretend like they know what they are talking about.

[BranDonk Kong]

Or people can always just, you know, wait until a game comes out, then play it and see if it meets your demands.

[Caterkiller]

All of these posts with people talking about how weak or strong the Wii U is or isn't are pointless. Unless you know a little bit about computer engineering, computer science or software development, then you're just talking about crap you read on the internet. Not necessarily talking about anyone in this thread, but people on neogaf, etc. There are a couple of smart people, but then a bunch of people that want to pretend like they know what they are talking about.

Yup, used to be me on the school yard. I just can't wait to see the visuals of the first generation games on the PS4 and 720. It will be nice to see what Wii U will be doing when the multiplats hit.

[alegoicoe]

All of these posts with people talking about how weak or strong the Wii U is or isn't are pointless. Unless you know a little bit about computer engineering, computer science or software development, then you're just talking about crap you read on the internet. Not necessarily talking about anyone in this thread, but people on neogaf, etc. There are a couple of smart people, but then a bunch of people that want to pretend like they know what they are talking about.

Yup, used to be me on the school yard. I just can't wait to see the visuals of the first generation games on the PS4 and 720. It will be nice to see what Wii U will be doing when the multiplats hit.

Same as always "Sticking with their Guns"

[Soren]

All of these posts with people talking about how weak or strong the Wii U is or isn't are pointless. Unless you know a little bit about computer engineering, computer science or software development, then you're just talking about crap you read on the internet. Not necessarily talking about anyone in this thread, but people on neogaf, etc. There are a couple of smart people, but then a bunch of people that want to pretend like they know what they are talking about.

The Gaf thread is chaos really. Lots of people talking like they know when no one knows really. But I am genuinely interested in what the tech geeks find inside the GPU,regardless of how "weak" it appears.

[Ian Sane]

Sony and MS can't realistically release a chincy minor update to their systems and expect anyone to give a ****.  They have to sell these things as providing something the PS3 and Xbox 360 don't.

I don't know hardware all that well but I am smart enough to know that if the Wii U hardware is too inferior to the other systems that ports from games designed for those systems is impossible.  We already saw that exact scenario with the Wii.  It isn't some hypothetical situation.  It happened.

The Wii U unfortunately has some big red flags about its hardware.  First of all Nintendo has yet to show anything that looks to top the PS360.  Sony and Microsoft's first PS4/720 screens will aim to look more impressive than current games and Nintendo made no such effort.  They also refused to release the specs and dodged questions about the Wii U's ability to compete with the hypothetical PS4/720.

The most logical assumption for that is that Nintendo is a generation behind AGAIN or is too fucking stupid to realize how hiding specs and dodging questions about hardware looks.  If they know what they're doing they should be well aware of how the Wii's last gen specs totally screwed up third party support and that that is the NUMBER ONE concern for any Wii U fence sitter.  They could in a second clear everything up and say "here are the specs and they'e really impressive and should be comparable to any new console released in the next few years" but they don't.  So they either can't or are too clueless to realize how easy and effective that would be.

If anything the glorified-last-gen-hardware approach of the Wii is what Nintendo did last time and they have not demonstrated any change to their strategy with the Wii U.  It uses the same "Wii" name, has the Miis front and center, focuses on a nifty controller.  So they're going to go with the Wii status quo on pretty much everything else but NOT the specs and for some reason are still going to have the same hush-hush approach to revealing the specs as they did before even though revealing the specs in that case would be a good thing?  I would never for a second assume that Nintendo is doing this one really important thing differently while giving no indication whatsoever that they are doing that.

[Louieturkey]

I don't know hardware all that well but I am smart enough to know that if the Wii U hardware is too inferior to the other systems that ports from games designed for those systems is impossible.  We already saw that exact scenario with the Wii.  It isn't some hypothetical situation.  It happened.

Did you read the rumor about Castlevania Lords of Shadow Mirror of Fates going to HD consoles?  They actually originally made the game in HD and then downconverted it to 3DS specs with hopes but no expectations to make an HD version. Other companies could have done this all along but they chose not to because of whatever excuse they gave.  Same thing could easily happen with the Wii U, though I really don't believe the other systems will be that much more powerful.

[Adrock]

Jesus Christmas... The only people who care about specs are the people on neogaf pretending to know what the any of it means.

I love how in like a week and half the Internet went from "ZOMG Xenorobot Hunter looks awesum!" to "something something LOL GFLOPS custom fixed function something." This is why we can't have nice things.

[Ymeegod]

"$150 by the end of the year"  I stated by the time next-generation releases which is looking at 2014 most likely. 

And a four year cycle span isn't that hard to believe, how many years did the wii actually have?  6?  How many years since it's last major release?  Besides the late port of Xenoblade/Last Story/Zelda Skyword Sword the last two years were a joke.   

A four year span will allow them to release 2 years after Xbox Next/PS4 launches meaning Nintendo could release something of similar power of those systems and keeping a few third parties on board.

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[TJ Spyke]

4 years is out of the question. The only console in the last 20 years that wasn't a failure and only lasted that long was the Xbox. And even if Xbox 3 an PlayStation 4 didn't come out til 2014 (though more and more reports say they will come out this year), no chance in hell of Wii U dropping a whopping $150 as it would make the system a complete flop. You are talking about a 57% pricedrop within 1 year. And releasing their next system only 3 years after Sony and Microsoft release their Wii U competitors would be Nintendo saying the Wii U was a failure. Also, the next PS and XBX systems are not that much more powerful than Wii U (based on rumored specs), so system of equal power would be a very miniscule upgrade (like going from PS2 to XBX). The next Nintendo console will not come out any earlier than late 2017.

[Ymeegod]

Do you call the 3ds a flop since it had a price drop within a year?  It's not even a 2 years old yet it's going (the orginal anyhow) for nearly 1/2 of the orginal MSRP?  No,  price reduction is easily the quickest way to increase units sold.  More units sell, the higher third party support is going be.

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"not that much more powerful than Wii U (based on rumored specs), "  Where are your reading your info from?  Everywhere else it's stating the output for those sytems are 1.2 Tflops for Durango and 1.5 Tflops for PS4 which is nearly 3 times that of the wii U which is around 500Gflops.