Wii U Ports?

[Tachikoma]

Viper1 said:

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.

That's where working in the industry would give you more of an insight into things, many of the studios that would potentially use UE4 for games would rather release a non UE game on the platform first, to 'test the waters' for sales, no company is going to go all out and port the engine to release several titles on the same engine without any idea how well even one of those games will perform.

Additionally, studios don't pick one engine and stick with it for all games unless they only make a certain selection of games, and in most cases on their own engine, most non-epic games released using the UE are one offs or major studios milking a series (some harry potter games used UE for example).

but again its down to money, and even if a studio was going to release several games on the WiiU, and had a crystal ball that could see into the future and see a good return on investment for the series, chances are 95%+ that they would use UE3 and *not* UE4.

Your point is that UE4 could be made to run on the WiiU, i don't see the point in arguing this as mark rein has said this himself, my point is that, having over a decades worth of experience working in different studios, i can tell you without any doubt, nobody is going to port UE4 when UE3 would suit them just fine, and nobody is going to port UE4 with a view to use it for more than just one game, because right now the WiiU is a ROI minefield and without that assurance that a large profit could be made, nobody will bite the bullet, which in turn results in lagging third party support and no real end to the situation.