Official Wii U Thread!: Pokemon Rubmle U coming to Wii U

[Andrespetmonkey]

happydolphin said:

Andrespetmonkey said:

All I'm saying is that third party support may be lackluster if the Wii U is dated compared to the other 2, games will look and run better on the other systems, other systems will be able to do more (think of the differences between BF3 on PC and on consoles, this type of thing could be common next gen, though this time between Wii U and playbox4), gamers will notice this, Publishers and developers will notice that gamers notice this, and build games with Microsonys system in mind, and promote their game on their systems. Wii U, not unlike the Wii but not as severe as the Wii, will be lagging behind when it comes to 3rd party support. 

I really want to stress that I'm only saying this from the perspective of the rumours being true, I really have no idea how powerful the Wii U will be, and I do think the Wii U will be a success with or without the 3rd party support, it doesn't need it.

If I had to make a prediction, not based on any rumours, I'd say we'll have more of a PS2 to XBOX scenario, xbox being both sonys and microsofts console in this analogy in terms of hardware power, but third party support will be better on the more powerful systems, and the sales figures for all systems will be fairly equal, all around 80 mil lifetime. But in reality, I have no idea what will happen.

I understand. The key thing here is that there is a threshold, one that must be crossed in order to be on the same playing field. If Wii U lags behind, but less so than the Wii does (as you said), the real question is, will it have passed that base step. See, the Wii, while being lesser than the twins, never crossed that step. The PS2, being lesser than the GC/Box, did.

True, but we are in a very different time now, a time where multiplayer and online functionality is key, and microsony already have a lot of experience in this area due to this gen and they will invest heavily into this area, no doubt. Both companies have learnt their lesson with pricing and making the consoles easy to develop for. The way I see it is SONY and Microsoft are in very good positions, whereas Nintendo still needs to build it's online infrastructure, which MicroSONY already has, and Nintendo needs to convince and appeal to 3rd party developers, which again MicroSONY already does.

So ultimately, I personally believe Nintendo will never allow itself to be in a position where it can be left out due to HW considerations by not making it past that invisible benchmark. So, even if WiiU is less than the 2 others, even at a PSX vs N64 level (at the very worst), it should then be subject to market factors, such as launch timing, price, customer adoption, rate of conversion, 3rd party library, 1st party library, the ability to do more than a trad console can (video playback, apps, media center) and so on and so forth.

If the Wii U is less powerful, I still don't think their will be anything severe enough in terms of scaling from MicroSONYs console to Wii U that will detract 3rd parties, but 3rd party devs won't exactly flock to it, and gamers still won't see Nintendos platform a go-to for 3rd party. This however, isn't much of a problem for Nintendo, judging by the success of the Wii, and Nintendo has other qualities that make up for not-so-great 3rd party support, like 1st party and cheaper hardware. 

We both think the Wii U will succeed, so maybe debating the specifics is irrelevant at this point. I guess we'll just have to wait and see :P