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Forums - Nintendo - Wii U: Reflections, Theories, and how it's a lot more brilliant than first impressions

thetonestarr on 07 June 2011

I see this as not a successor to the Wii, but a continuation of it. An evolution of it. They're taking everything that the Wii does and just expanding on it. Additional control options, additional viewing options, much better graphical abilities, etc.

It's absolutely guaranteed that Wiiware and VC will continue.

My only complaint is that it doesn't appear that the GCN controllers will be supported anymore, but since they didn't concentrate on the console AT ALL, there's a good possibility that it does and it'll just be revealed at a later conference.



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HappySqurriel on 07 June 2011
thetonestarr said:

If they do a multiple screentroller setup, one thing to remember is that, to support extra controllers, it takes extra RAM and extra CPU (mostly CPU) - it most likely has ZERO drain on the GPU because the controllers will likely have their own built-in GPU to do that work. That's a lot less strenuous for the system, and it evens the load a ton. If there's going to be only one controller EVER supported, then that probably won't be the case - it'll probably strictly be an image transmitted wirelessly, no computing at all in the controller.

RAM and CPU power are the cheaper of the three to upgrade. Additionally, the rumored specs show the system having a multicore processor and a lot of very high-speed RAM. With a multicore processor, supporting the extra screens is very easy. There can be one core specifically dedicated towards processing the data to send to the controllers, then the controllers process that data graphically. That spreads out the burden drastically, and makes it REALLY easy to support extra controllers without sacrificing performance.

From a product perspective, it makes far more sense to have the controller be a "Dumb Terminal" and have the graphics generated by the console ... Especially if you're planning on supporting  multiple controllers. The reason for this is simple, it would probably cost more to add the functionality to 1 controller than it would be to support 4 controllers from the console; so you would have a $350 system with $100 controllers rather than a $325 system with $75 controllers.



Pyro as Bill on 07 June 2011

Anybody have any idea how the new controller compares in size to the DSi XL?



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BoneArk on 07 June 2011

This thing looks revolutionary, I think Nintendo and 3rd party developers are going to make some awesome games and re-invent gaming as we know it.
BTW: The price does worry me.



                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   

TruckOSaurus on 07 June 2011
Smeags said:
NJ5 said:
Smeags said:
It's like the guy said in the conference, the Wii U controller is the Swiss Army Knife of controllers. I love all the amount of options that are present, and I'm even more excited to see how devs will use them in their games. ^_^

If it's the Swiss Army Knife of controllers, can it play a game like Metroid Prime 3 without having to aim with analog stick (or slider, pad or whatever they're calling it)?

I suppose they could use the touch screen as the aiming reticule, but you're right in that the lack of a IR pointer in the controller is a bummer. But with the console also supporting the WiiMote... there's no telling what they could do.

Now we have to wait another year to find out...

Maybe you'll be able to plug the wii remote in the new controller. I thought that's what they were doing for that "shooter" game with the new zapper (new controller as display, wiimote in zapper to point and shoot)



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mysticwolf on 07 June 2011
thetonestarr said:
My only complaint is that it doesn't appear that the GCN controllers will be supported anymore, but since they didn't concentrate on the console AT ALL, there's a good possibility that it does and it'll just be revealed at a later conference.

The GameCube will not be compatible with the Wii U, Nintendo's new system to be released in 2012, according to Nintendo of America Director of Public Relations Marc Franklin.

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/news/26632



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KungKras on 07 June 2011

What keeps bugging me is that Nintendo didn't even have games ready.

Wii has had dry first party support for years, and 3DS has about half a Nintendo lineup.

How haven't they made any games for it yet?



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KungKras on 07 June 2011

Oh, and that controller is enormous.
They can't really be serious about that, can they?
...
Can they?



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thetonestarr on 07 June 2011

Did some digging. WiiU's CPU is the Power7 (many of us already knew this).

What many people DIDN'T know is that a Power7 clocked at the same speed as the 360's CPU or the Cell is supposedly overall more powerful - because it's a much newer architecture. It's also more traditionally-designed than a Cell, which means it's easier to develop for.

Power7 comes at a low-end clock-speed of 2.4GHz, and a high-end of 4.25. It comes with 4, 6, or 8 cores.

The most reliable rumor about the WiiU's Power7 is that it's a 3.5GHz quad-core, but with how many Power7s there are that're more powerful than that, I wouldn't be surprised at all if WiiU's is better than that. But even if it's not? It's still vastly more capable than either current HD consoles.

We still know nothing about the other tech specs, however.

To read some more:
http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/07/ibm-puts-watsons-brains-in-nintendo-wii-u/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power7



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sc94597 on 07 June 2011
thetonestarr said:



To read some more:
http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/07/ibm-puts-watsons-brains-in-nintendo-wii-u/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power7

In the comments of the link you posted. I wonder if this is true.