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forethought14 on 14 July 2013
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Zero999 said:
forethought14 said:
Zero999 said:

Bolded: I'm 100% sure people have to understand that wii u has all the horsepower it needs.

See, that's not the point though. The difference is moderately large, but it's not big enough to say that it will be "impossible" to port games. I'm certain that Wii U has enough horsepower to surpass PS3/360 and run PS4/X1 games one way or another, but considering how developers are treating it, they won't want to port games for the console if it will give them nothing in return. Next-generation is going to be more expensive to develop for than the current gen, and downporting it to Wii U will likely be quite costly. Again, it won't be impossible, but the fact that they think they'll need to invest quite a bit to make it happen is something they're looking down on, and that's the problem with Wii U's overall power. Recall that many developers are claiming it to be "underpowered". More powerful than PS360 for sure, (developers who say otherwise need to get their acts together, looking at you, all of EA) but not as powerful as they want.

Wii U not selling well right now can also play a factor to those developer decisions. If Wii U were selling immensly, then I'm sure a few developers would consider next-gen ports to the system. I guess I should have mentioned that sales are also affecting their decisions, combined with the specs, and the fact that the architecture is very different. 

bolded: hell no. you don't understand what scalability is, do you? and wii u isn't too far behind the others in the first place. as it was said many times before, wii u vs ps4/xone versions will be like the same game on a pc at medium settings vs high/ultra

I guess you didn't read my last paragraph, I added to the power thing? Firstly, I said that it won't be impossible, it'll be a hell of a lot better and easier to port PS4/X1 to Wii U than porting PS360 games to Wii, but also recall that Wii U has a completely different architecture. The downporting part may be the easiest thing to do (easy is relative), but you have PowerPC vs Jaguar, very different architecture. The CPU needs to be coded for in a very specific manner, otherwise it will perform badly (unfortunately, it's likely what's happpening in the industry with Wii U). And Wii U's GPU is also extremely custom, while PS4/X1 use pretty much off-shelf parts with some modifications. The costliness will result from both the downporting (the least costly) and the coding for different architecture (probably more costly). If Wii U had more power, all the developers would need to worry about would be the architecture. Don't worry, I'm on your side and fully understand that scalability of engines are a key point for next-gen and Wii U will be able to run them one way or another. The question would be, if developers would want to invest in it. Costly is relative, depending on what the game is, and how much the developer or publisher estimate they'll receive from the game when it's out in stores. I'm talking "costly" in regards to what devs would consider expensive or not. Relative relative relative, because in some cases it won't be as simple as dialing down the work-load.