bonzobanana said:
3 weak cpu cores, slow memory bandwidth and a gpu marginally ahead of ps3 and 360 probably means the wii u is far easier to emulate. So while the wii u needs powerpc emulation on a x86 processor its far less demanding than the 360 and much, much easier than ps3 with its cell processor. gpu performance may have higher demands but only marginally. The wii u was always very low cost, low performance hardware. I think recent games like Xenoblade X really have to develop at a low level to get that sort of performance and even then there is horrible compromises including missing collision detection etc. Most of the early wii u games performed at a sub par level compared to ps3 and 360 with missing features, inferior graphics and lower frame rates. Clearly there is some advantages in the graphics hardware though with a complete absense of screen tear for most games. |
The 360 and Wii U should require similar effort to emulate. Both use standard PPC chips. The point is that the 360 emulator hasn't even had many non-XBL games running on it, so the point about CPU performance makes very little sense since we are not talking about optimization, but rather functionality. Same applies to slow memory bandwidth. How quickly an emulator can be developed doesn't depend directly on the capabilities of the platform (only indirectly.).For all three platforms the GPU's are causing issues just as often as the CPU emulation. Anyway, the PS3 emulator is actually further ahead than the 360 one, due to interest and effort mostly I suppose. So there are even factors beyond hardware to consider.
As for the Wii U's relative power. I think it is evident that almost every non-port runs at 720p vs. sub-HD and/or has many more advanced graphical features. Why? More ram and a better equipped GPU can go a long way when the bottleneck of the 7th Gen were these two things. And you honestly believe PS350 games didn't have low level programming? Games like Uncharted, The Last of Us, Killzone, Forza and Gears of War 2 come to mind.
