Wii U Ports?

[Viper1]

Tachikoma said:

Right now, the issue is more "do we even want to bother with a wiiu version?" more than "should we use UE3 or UE4", so the point is a moot one, and much of the goodness in the jump from 3.0 to 4.0 (even from 3.5 to 4.0) would be lost in the translation, compute within shaders, advanced lighting calculations and physics as well as animation routines and kismet scripting would be cut back a great deal to run with a modcrum of stability on the WiiU, while the end result would look a shade better than a UE3 version, the differences would not negate the costs involved, and with the UE3 WiiU framework already in place, unless we experienced a significant shift in buyer preference in Nintendo hardware from first to third party, no developer is going to actively seek the release of a title using UE4 on WiiU, and lets face it - when was the last time you saw a Nintendo console with 3rd party sales even half that of 1st party?

Nintendo released the WiiU at the worst possible time, with little to no 3rd party backing after the initial release as most major third party studios are making the transition from this generation to the next, where the WiiU is considered old-hat before it's even established itself.

The studio i'm currently working at is working on a cross platform (PS4/Durango/PC) title right now, and initially, it was going to come to the WiiU too, but when the studio received it's devkit and spent time going over the intricacies of the development environment, and the recent sales reports for third party software, it quite sensibly decided against it.

Where the WiiU will be once support for PS3 and 360 deminishes is a console surviving from first party and the occasional small studio 3rd party release for 3rd party studios without the manpower or green to fund development of a next gen title.

Sorry but that's just the cold hard truth.

Something that should be noted here is that not once have I ever stated that support was going to be great or good or even mediocre.   If you read most of my posts here, it was far about whether it could be done than should be done.   Most of my posts are replies to other claiming it can't be done at all or would be severly gimped.  And even those posts of min that focused on the 'should' have addressed the development pipeline factor more so than the graphics factor (which I've downplayed at every turn to begin with).  The benefits of a much faster development for a studio looking at multiple Wii U projects will certainly look into investing into UE4.  Certainly the initial project would have increased costs and development time as the engine is worked on but future projects (remember, I'm looking a multi-project angle here) would benefit greatly.  

As a single project, of course it's beyond pointles with UE3 already there.  But I'm looking at the entirety fo the generation, not just 1 project.  And you can be certain bigger developers are looking that way too.  Games aren't planned 1 at a time as I'm certain you'd know even at a smaller studio.