From the development side, it wasn’t more effort to get Giana running on the Wii U than it was to port her to the X360. The TCR side was a bit simpler, but the low level engine side was harder. The Wii U has some PC-like dx10/dx11-like systems like geometry shaders, however, when we started working on the port, we already had our game released on the X360, and going from a console release to Wii U is easier since the consoles have very similar performance characteristics. Another helpful factor is the amount of overlap when it comes to controller support, interfaces, user management and suchlike (even though every single engine system needs to be rewritten to support it).

The effort we spent porting to the WiiU was comparable to migrating to some other major platforms, even though we had much more experience with those. All in all, the experience was very similar to doing an Xbox 360 port early on in the console’s life cycle.

Our “time to triangle”, which is the time it takes to get good performance with the final rendering techniques, was around 1 month for 2 programmers. This included doing the porting work needed for every other major system such as sound, input, etc. Doing all of the lotcheck requirements took about an additional 1-2 months for 2 developers (1 programmer and 1 tester on average).

On the tech side, having DX11 level features is pretty useful, which makes large parts of the system compatible with our other platforms. Overall the hardware itself is slightly faster than the other current-gen consoles. One very nice advantage the console has is the additional usable memory you have. Having that extra memory made development much easier compared to other current-gen platforms.

And this is why the Wii U won't appeal to non-Nintendo fans.

Imagine how Uncharted 4 and Halo 5 will look like compared to TLOU and Halo 4...

In a few years Wii U's graphics will look outdated to the general public, which is a big deal because graphics play a huge role to even the lightest gamer. The fact Wii U isn't getting some if the biggest 3rd party games make things even worse.

Hopefully the Wii U will only last till 2016...because Nintendo did a horrible job with it...

Still buying one when X releases tho :p it's the game I always wanted tbh.

There's no evidence that supports that theory. The Wii U won't appeal to non-Nintendo fans because of the abysmal 3rd party support not because of inferior graphics.

aye anyone that cares about console graphics is just fooling themselves yes 480=>720/1080 is a gap but if you care so much for the resolution you would have been a pc gamer.

i myself barely see the difference between tloz;ww and its hd component yes the hd has a bit more whatever but in general its the art direction that matters

Visuals slightly better than TLOU or GTA V are pretty good. I think Nintendo knows though that nobody (including them) is going to throw GTA level money at their console and so having all that extra power would be a waste.

That explains perfectly why the most weak console almost always sold the most in gaming history.

Good thing Nintendo focuses more on the artstyle than on raw graphics then. Timeless, yo.

No point bringing facts into it. Some people live in their own little world.

Didn't know 360 had DX11. Guess that will also make PS4 and X1 current gen as well. Clock speed on both is similar to Wii U and is lower than 360 and PS3.

Good to know we don't have a single next gen console.lol

Good to hear another developer confirm Wii U is in fact superior to current-gen. Although I've never heard of Black Forest Games.