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Soundwave on 06 April 2012
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Viper1 said:
Soundwave said:
Viper1 said:

I think you are forgetting about capacity of the medium.

Some PS3 games already approach the entire 50 GB capacity of a dual layer Blu-ray disc.    You are suggesting they find a way to put those assets and the higher quality assets all one disc?   Going the 2 disc route just upped the cost.  Releasing 2 seperate SKu's is even more expensive.


You do realize PC games have different levels of assets stored on one disc that run on 5, 6, 7, 8 different hardware configs (let alone just 2) right? That doesn't make a game double the size.

None of this is anything particularily new. Devs deal with this stuff every day, lol.

The alternative -- not getting games like Mass Effect, BioShock, RE5, etc. etc. etc. isn't any better. At least this is a way for Wii U users to get the same games as everyone else and for Nintendo to still be able to turn a nice profit off their hardware and not have to sell the base console for a price that's outrageous (which would alienate the casual/soccer mom/kids group, which I'm guessing is a complete non-starter for Nintendo).

I think it's fair for Nintendo to say "well if you're a hardcore player and you really want these obscene specs so you can play these higher end games that start to come out as this generation wears on, we still want your business, but you're going to have to subsidize the cost of this extra hardware piece which we can sell you for cost". That sounds like a fair deal and reasonable compromise to me.

PC games are massively compressed.    Your install size and the size on the hard drive are very different.    Console games aren't compressed.

Now even if Wii U turns out to be underpowered compared to the PS3 and Next X, it won't have the developer abandonment the Wii had.  To port to Wii, you had to completely redo the game because of the difference in architecture and asset handling.   Because the Wiii Uuses modern shader architecturre, it's far easier to port down too it.  Going from shader model 3.0 to a fixed function TEV is very, very hard.  But Wii U will utilize at least shader model 4.1.  Even asset scaling would be simple.

The question is anyone going to be crazy about buying the Wii U version when there are better versions of different platforms for likely the same price?

This is all going to follow a pretty predictable scenario where the Wii U version sells the worst, and then developers start to phase out making a Wii U version entirely.

Lets not act like Nintendo is the incumbent leader here when it comes to the hardcore demographic. Faaaaaaaaaaar from it, they got about as much to prove with this crowd as a cheating-and-caught-in-the-act husband does with his wife.

Nintendo can't sell a crazy expensive piece of kit. They just can't. Basically I'm just advocating the WM+ approach ... too expensive in 2012? Sure. But late 2014? Time is Nintendo's advantage, they have time to let technology scale to a price. Not so much. Let the consumer decide if they want it or not. I think in a way it's also a "democratic" approach to hardware. Why should the soccer mom who just wants Wii Sports U + NSMB Mii have to pay $400 for a game console? She doesn't need to play Call of Duty 209238. If you want to play those high end games and you're insistent on a high end chip ... then step up to the plate and pay for the add-on. You want it, then let your wallet do the talking.

Even if disc space is that much of an issue -- what's an extra disc cost to press? 50 cents? If it all doesn't fit on one disc, you can have one disc for the "crappy" version, lol, and a second disc for the "high end assets" version. Not much different from just about every Blu-Ray movie today which ships with like 2-3 different versions on different discs.