lalala I can´t hear you !!! Better, BETTER I SAY !!!

Shin'en is only 5 people, so we'll never see a game like Uncharted from them, they make simple, arcadey titles instead, that look great without the need for a lot of complexity.

However, they did say that with one of the two Wii U games they're currently working on, they would "unlock more of the Wii U's power."

‘Wii U eDRAM usage is comparable to the eDRAM in the XBOX360, but on Wii U you have enough eDRAM to use it for 1080p rendering."

That quote right there is the key piece of important information the rest is just fluff. This tells me that the speed of the eDRAM is about the same as it is on the 360 with the difference being the amount of eDRAM, 10MB to 32MB, had the Speed of the WiiU's eDRAM been significantly faster then he would of mentioned it in that very sentence as higher bandwidth is required for 1080p when all assessts remain the same.

Keep in mind that the 360 was designed for 720p forward rendering, which provided almost free x4MSAA at the time, also keep in mind that it was designed for a 2005 release, and back then just getting 10MB of eDRAM was friggin expensive, now the same eDRAM with the same bandwidth can be purchased relatively cheap with more capacity, just like how things are now with SSD's.

The key problem with the amount of eDRAM the 360 faced was that the industry moved towards deferred rendering which required a larger frame buffer, this resulted in Microsoft dropping the AA mandatory requirement, and then resulted in games, including halo 3, rending below 720p. The WiiU currently has enough eDRAM which shouldn't cause a problem, but then this is nothing to be surprised about as this should be the absolute minimum expected.

As I've said many times on this forum, the WiiU will be capable of some very nice graphics, just look at these last gen console to see the last of US and Halo 4 pushing each respective console, so the WiiU will have no issue in this regard, however, the PS4 and Xbox one will simply blow the WiiU out of the water in every aspect and this will be abundantly clear once we start seeing multiplat tittles on the PS4/Xbox one/WiiU.....if 3rd party bother with multiplat on the WiiU after this year...but that's a problem Nintendo has to fix and a separate topic altogether.

Anyways, that's my 2 cents, take it as you like.

The edram in the 360  was on a different chip and crippled by a 32 gb/s bus....in contrast to the edram on the WiiU, which is on the same die !

There is no way in hell that the edram in the WiiU is as slow as the 360´s ( The slim 360´s edram is "faster" than the old 360´s edram, but to keep  the Hardware compatible with the "old 360s" they lowered the bandwith to 32 gb/s too)

Basically, it is some insight on how Nano Assault Neo was developed for WiiU and how that was going. It would be helpful if you know the game, to set this into relation. Nano assault Neo is a small download-game with small levels but with fast gameplay and a lot of shiny effects. So basically you can expect it is a game that is heavy on the GPU (graphics and all) and don't use much of the main memory (the BIG discussion point of PS4 and XBOne) and main CPU. What he says basically confirms that.

Firstly he speaks about fast eDRAM that is asociated with the GPU. That is important to render the frames fast. Transferring between main memory and memory associated with the GPU can take time, so having enough memory where to render all you want helps to get to 60fps. He says, WiiU has enough of the fast GPU-memory to render 1080p without a sweat, in difference to XBOX360 where you need to restrict yourself to 720p or to render in multiple passes (slower, depending on effects probably not fast enough for 60fps). So that part basically says, that it should be no problem for devs to make games on WiiU 1080p@60fps. No arcane coding needed for that (That's the part with HDR and RGB, he says the memory is plenty enough so that you don't have to think about clever solutions to realize some stuff). He also mentions, that the resources are enough to power also the gamepad.

Second he speaks about shader-optimisations for Nano Assault Neo. You have to know, programmers start out making stuff work and then look into details to optimize it. OK, normal programs are mostly never optimized, but that is important for games, as a fluid gameplay is what gamers expect. The shader-part says, that he is talking about GPU-programming, that means the graphics part of the game. He says, although Nano Assault Neo is using a shiny graphic, they never had the need to optimise much. The first attempt was already fast enough to run the game with the fast-paced gameplay and at 60fps. They looked later into it and saw, they had the chance for some optimizations. That means, as more speed (more than 60fps) is not a really good option, they could add even more effects to a game like that. Meaning a successor to the game might look even better and still run at 1080p@60fps.

Last he speaks about the main CPU. As expected the game doesn't use it much. He says it only uses one core and makes the sound at another. As sound was in past consoles often made on the main core people already know how to make it without using much of the CPU-power. So, plenty of main CPU-power left. That doesn't will help much on the graphics-side, but can be used for simulating-parts or stuff. Pikmin for examples will use the main CPU for calculating how all the Pikmin follow their given tasks. That is a game that uses more of the main CPU. Other stuff you can make with the CPU are AI or random level generation. Again, Shinen's game is no good measure for that, as it was to expect it would use not much of the main CPU and he basically says they used basically the third part of it.

He doesn't even speak about main memory. Nano Assault Neo would not need much, it has small levels. Games with big levels and open world games will make use of much main memory. As it is the main talking point of PS4/XBOne we can expect to see such games there.

what I don´t get is: Why haven´t they used the DSP for the audio ? Is it easier to just let a CPU core do it (If you aren´t using more than one) ?

This confuses me too; the whole point of the audio DSP is to take a load off the CPU, right? Maybe they didn't need it for Nano Assault cos the CPU still had plenty of room to spare.

That is the most likely scenario ! They are probably using a souped up Wii engine for their games and they  (as you said ) weren´t restricted or "forced" to change anything...did the Wii use a DSP? I can´t for the life of me remeber if it did !

I agree, most likely the extra-effort (and therefore time and money) wasn't worth the result. As I said, a game like nano Assault doesn't utilize the CPU much, so there probably was no reason to do much.

Of all the games currently released or developed probably Pikmin 3 and X make the most use of the hardware, but in different areas. X will need every bit of main memory to reduce visible loading, while Pikmin will utilize the CPU a lot to coordinate all the Pikmin and the enemies. Pikmin needs the CPU much more, that's why I assume they will have used the DSP for the sound.

Yes, Wii used a DSP for audio, as did the Gamecube.

A word on engines; Shin'en's games have run on the same engine since Nanostray 2... on the DS.

Yep, you read that right.

Nano Assault's not running on a Wii engine, it's running on a DS engine.