Mynintendonews

Vigil games, the development studio behind the Darksiders franchise has told Game Reactorthat the Wii U hardware is on par with the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Many of us were hopingthat the Wii U would be slightly more powerful than either of these consoles, but it seems as though the graphical prowess behind the machine is similar to current generation consoles.

"We have limitations based on Nintendo’s progress, but, you know, that really has, the only problem that’s been for us is, you know, not having an actual release date. But once we know when the Wii U has, when Nintendo has commited to a firm date, you know, we will be able to commit to a date for Darksiders II, but we’re planning on it being a launch title, and so far everything’s been smooth sailing.

We got the game running on their hardware pretty quickly, and the controller’s been great to work with, now it’s just down to deciding what we really want to do to make it a unique experience on the Wii U. You know, taking advantage of you know the extra screen and the touch capability and all that. So, you know, so we’ll have a few new feature for sure, but I think visually, for the most part, it’ll be pretty much the same.

You know, so far the hardware’s been on par with what we have with the current generation’s. Based on what I understand, the, you know, the resolution and textures and polycounts and all that stuff, we’re not going to being doing anything to uprez the game, but we’ll take advantage of the controller for sure."

- Darksiders 2 game director, Marvin Donald

Just keep in mind that he says "so far", which means that he may be talking about early dev. kits.

to many different stories about the power of Wii U. I'll wait for the final product lol. But either way i'm happy. I don't think it needs to be 2-3x better as dev costs atm are already high enough. HD has killed a fair few studios this gen.

I agree with the too many different stories.  Like you I will wait for the final product.  I've read somewhere that Nintendo is constantly changing the Wii U hardward to meet suggestions by developers.  Sorry, I don't have a source for that last statement :(.

Wii U will be what Wii has been this gen... Poor graphics compared to True Next Gen.

Hmm, hopefully he's just talking in relative terms, if nothing else, especially with the extra controller it's important that it has at least 1.5-2GB of ram.

If it just has 512mb-1GB, they're really shooting themselves in the foot.

Hopefully the final console build will be at least 3x4 as 'powerful' as the X360-PS3.

As for the controller, I'm not really a fan, but it does have potential for games such as RTS's.

Based on what I understand, the, you know, the resolution and textures and polycounts and all that stuff, we’re not going to being doing anything to uprez the game, but we’ll take advantage of the controller for sure."

That's simply the best thing anyone can say about Wii U.

No way textures, at least, are going to be the same. Even the most pessimist rumors say it has at least 768 MB - 1 GB of RAM, plus it's pretty hard to get on par or below the 8-12 GT/s fill rate of the PS360. That alone should make games look much more crisper.

Well, that's odd.

Usually studios need months to port from PS3 to Xbox or vice versa, but they always said that they were able to port Darksiders II to WiiU in just a few weeks.

If the console is only on par with the HD twins, how could they do it so quickly?

Well, I couldn't possibly care less. Any Nintendo first party title with graphics that are just a little bit better or even on par with the PS3 and I'm all good.

@JEMC  According to previous rumors the Wii U specs are very similair (that doesn't necessarily mean "equally as strong as") to the Xbox 360.