"Wii U hardware is on par with current gen consoles"

[JEMC]

NightDragon83 said:

JEMC said:
Well, that's odd.

Usually studios need months to port from PS3 to Xbox or vice versa, but they always said that they were able to port Darksiders II to WiiU in just a few weeks.

If the console is only on par with the HD twins, how could they do it so quickly?

Because Nintendo specifically designed the Wii U to be easy for 3rd parties who are used to primarily working on 360 and PC as their lead platforms to develop for.  The fact that many developers are able to get full games up and running on the system in mere weeks is a testament to that.

Of course, Nintendo could have taken the Sony route and went with bleeding edge technology and a custom CPU / GPU architecture that takes years and a ton of money for developers to become familiar with... but we all know how that would work out.

Yes, the WiiU was designed to be easy to port, but we are talking about a game that while not being a graphical behemoth, it fully uses the hardware of the PS360. It's not that easy to pick that code, port it without optimisation to a new hardware and have it working in a matter of a few weeks.

The other option is that they have used the code of the PC version to make a quick port, but if we look at the recomended requirements of Darksiders 1 (they will probably use the same engine so the requirements will be fairly similar) you needed a GTS 240 / HD 3870 with 256 MB and 2GB of RAM, and those specs are fairly superior than the ones on the PS360. Btw, the minimal requirements ask for a Geforce 8800 or an X1900, both also better than the ones on the HD twins.

So, if WiiU's hardware is on par with the others, how have they done it?

And this is what they said in August:

http://www.videogamer.com/wiiu/darksiders_2/news/darksiders_dev_praises_power_of_wii_u.html 

"Asked if Darksiders II will be best on Wii U, Adams said: "Yeah, just because the hardware is more powerful and it will have some extra features that I think will actually be useful to people playing the game. With it's controller, [the Wii U version of Darksiders II] might be the best version of the game."

On another note, imo going the "Sony route" is dumb. They were lucky with the PS2, but this time it has been more a problem than an asset.