Valve: Wii U has power. Gabe Newell talks.

[HappySqurriel]

selnor said:

HappySqurriel said:
I could be wrong but I suspect that the entire reason the hardware of the Wii U was choosen was to ensure that it would receive cross platform development from third party developers regardless of whether they were targeting current generation HD consoles or next generation systems.

Effectively, developers can release their PS3 and XBox 360 games with moderate graphical upgrades on the Wii U at 1080p @60fps, and (if Sony and Microsoft go all out) games targeting next generation platforms could be released on the Wii U with minor graphical downgrades and still run at 720p @ 30fps.

I doubt the 2nd part of minor downgrading. If xbox 3 and ps4 are capable of that unreal next Gen tech demo, then Wii u will be I the same position its in now. The unreal tech demo made Zelda HD at e3 look really poor. Check out unreal Samaritan tech demo on YouTube.

The difference in processing power required to run a game at its highest level of detail at a resolution of 1080p @ 60fps and to run the same game with its second highest leve of detail at 720p @ 30fps is very large. With Crysis 2 as the example you would need the top of the line GPU to play it at its highest detail at 1080p @ 60fps but you can play the same game using a Radeon 4770 (a 3 year old entry level gaming graphics card) at the second highest level of detail at 720p @ 30fps.

 

Edit: So if the Wii U can play most of the HD console games at close to the highest level of detail in their PC counterparts while maintaining a resolution of 1080p at a framerate of 60fps I think it should be able to handle (most) of what the next generation systems do while maintaining a resolution of 720p at a framerate of 30fps with minor graphical downgrades; assuming that the next generation systems are rendering at a resolution of 1080p at a framerate of 60fps.