| superchunk said: A lot smaller, however the gap between PS4/Xbone and PX360 is also smaller than the gap between PS2/XBox gen to that of PS360. Basically, Nintendo went GC to Wii to WiiU where GC to Wii was minor jump and Wii to WiiU was major. MSony went MAJOR jump to minor. End result is Wii U is far closer to its competitors. More similar to that of PS2 to XBox. |
That, especially the LAST LINE, is all any tech-geeks around here ever need to read when pondering the "how weak is Wii U" argument ad nauseum.
Everyone knows that Wii U is going to be the weakest console again this gen, but "weakest" is a relative term this time around, whereas the Wii was only roughly 1.5-2 times the overall power of the GC. It was more powerful than the original Xbox, and you could absolutely state with accuracy that it was the most powerful SD console to exist, as it outpaced the original Xbox. But there was still a huge gap between it and the PS3. That didn't excuse the laziness of many developers in their shitty ports, or lack of ports, but it was still something that was just there, out in plain view.
The Wii U, on the other hand, is just the third notch down an HD scale, going Wii U>One>PS4. That's how it pans out this gen, from "weakest" to "strongest". They're all HD, they all have good hardware, they all can handle a lot of the same things. Engines and graphics will simply have to be scaled down for Wii U. BUT, unlike the Wii last gen, companies will not have to entirely make a game from the ground up for Wii U, because it's an HD console. They just have to scale it down, which costs less time and resources. Once sales pick back up for the console itself, there will be little legitimate reason for most third parties to support the system with multiplat (or even exclusive) games.
