| happydolphin said:
I'll ask Archbrix to jump in here. He is the one I'm basing my info from, and I'm not sure they are just rumors, more like very educated guesses. |
Thanks for having faith in what I have to say HappyD, but really, I'm privy to the same info as everyone else. I'm not as tech-savvy as many people around here (HappySquirrel, Viper1, etc), but my friend is, and his reasoning echoes what they say: It is exceedingly unlikely that we will see another "Wii to PS360" gap with "WiiU to Durango/Orbis".
The Wii was a beefed-up Gamecube (more RAM, etc), but lacked any real changes to the graphical architecture. The WiiU, however has modern architecture, has a GPU two gens ahead of PS360, and from what I've heard, 2 gigs of RAM, with 0.5 gigs dedicated to the OS, which gives it 3x the RAM of the PS360. The Wii didn't have anywhere near this leap over the PS2/GC/Xbox. In order for the WiiU to be thoroughly dwarfed by its 8th gen competition, it would have to be more lacking than what we know it to be. The engines that people point to (UE4, CE3) are supremely scalable, meaning that we won't see another case of WiiU being ignored regarding multiplats... even if Durango and Orbis can run them closer to their PC counterparts. I say "closer" because Epic has already come out and stated that they want Durango and Orbis to have more power than they do currently:
http://www.psxextreme.com/ps4-news/27.html
When they debuted Fortnite at Comicon, Epic also basically said that if you want true next gen, you're gonna need a high end PC. The only way we will see WiiU dwarfed the way the Wii was is if Durango and Orbis launch much later than 2013.
Regarding the whole "WiiU is only slightly more powerful than current HD consoles" because of what we've seen thus far, consider this evidence:
Xbox 360 launch games:
Xbox 360 only one year later:
Now consider WiiU launch games:
... and imagine what games like Zelda HD, Metroid Prime 4 or Super Mario Galaxy 3 will look like in a few years.
