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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - Wii U specs and performance matter, and Nintendo knows this

Hisiru on 13 August 2012
darkknightkryta said:

No I'm not

Then you probably have some kind of source to support your claims about how engine development works. Can you share it with us?

Oh yes he did: "Ummmmm, well, this is kinda a high definition engine. Designed for a certain level of graphics card and certain amount of CPU. You know, I'm sure one of our licensees will squeeze it down into the Wii. The way Ubisoft squeezed Unreal Engine 2 into the PSP," - http://www.joystiq.com/2007/03/08/mark-rein-says-no-unreal-engine-3-for-wii/

Wii had a VERY outdated hardware even for it's launch. WiiU is going to use an updated GPU, decent CPU and decent ammount of RAM. The main problem on the Wii is that it lacked a lot of important features (it has nothing to do with ammount of ram or CPU power) like programable shadders for example. Even a 2010 GPU has all the feature sets needed for the next engines. I think you should stop reading joystiq and start reading sites like neogaf. And youre just saying that I am right. He never said you would be able to port UE3 games for the Wii, but now he is saying you will be able to port UE4 games for the WiiU. It's not about power anymore, it's about money. If the WiiU is successful, UE4 will be there. Youre just proving my point.

Arkham City runs great, my GTX 560 Ti has a bit of trouble at high settings, tesselation and gpu based physics set to medium.  Which is also running on Unreal 3, what do you think Unreal 4 at higher settings are going to do?  Games running on current mid range cards are going to have to downgrade textures, lighting, effects, physics etc to run at smooth framerates.

Do you think we will see the same PC quality, textures, effects, lighting, physics on PS4/WiiU/x720? 

Yes scalable, which means things have to go to make it run well on lower specs.
Just like it will run better on high end PCs and worse on PS4/x720/WiiU. This is how things works.

There's a difference between porting Unreal 2/3 games to the Wii-U as Epic has already ported Unreal 3 over and Ubisoft has hacked the Unreal 2 more times than I can count.
But I am not talking about porting engins here and how difficult it is, I am saying it's obviously worth it.

Again you can't port a game anywhere without the underlying technology with it, it does not work like that.  If a game is made with Unreal 4 and they want it on the Wii U they either re-write the game to run on Unreal 3 or port Unreal 4 over.  It's like saying a 360 game can have a raw port over to the PS3 despite the PS3 not having Direct X.
Exactly, and Rein already knows that you need the tech, don't you think he is a smart guy? if he said devs will be able to port UE4 games for the WiiU it's because the tech is already supported or he knows something that we don't know. Youre trying to put words in his mouth with this "UE3" talk.







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Soundwave on 13 August 2012

Even if the Wii U can run some version of 720/PS4 ports ... are hardcore gamers really going to care?

Would you buy the XBox 360 version of a game if it had 1/2 the resolution and had many effects and general visual fidelity scaled back quite a bit over the PS3 version?

Of course most people are going to pass IMO. Hardcore players want a large jump from the 360/PS3, they've already had those systems for 5+ years in most cases.

IMO the best thing Nintendo can do is sell the console for cheap now but have a option to upgrade the machine in the future (Crossfire port on bottom of unit, no problem for AMD). By the time 2014 rolls around, a 2 TFLOP GPU + even a few more CPU cores will be dirt cheap and a very small 22nm size.

You could probably have something that plugs in nice and tidy to the bottom of the Wii U and sell it for a reasonable price (like say $99 throw in a game bundled, same price Wii Fit was, if soccer moms can afford that, then hardcore gamers on Wii should man up and pay it).

Otherwise Nintendo would have to pay $450/system to have hardware comparable to Sony/MS and launch this year ... that's just not gonna happen. I do genuinely think Nintendo would like hardcore gamers. But they can't very well bankrupt themselves in a hardware race vs. Microsoft/Sony. 

Yes, 32X failed, but it had no great games and it was 1994 where most gamers had to ask their mommy to buy them every new piece of hardware. Times have changed, Nintendo shouldn't shy away from looking at other hardware options that make sense fiscally. The RAM Expansion Pak on the N64 was relatively popular too. 



selnor on 13 August 2012
TWRoO said:
selnor said:
spurgeonryan said:
Sal.Paradise said:

"it's clear that the company is taking HD seriously this time around."

Are they? I mean, you have a 2d platformer and a game originally planned for Wii and they don't even output 1080p?
I see people defending this as, well....you know..it's hard, cut 'em some slack! Or, hey, casuals don't care about the difference in resolution! Well that's not taking HD seriously enough for me.


I was going to be impressed that you read through the whole thing, but then I realized you copies and paste the first sentence. Sort of.

They are bringing over a hell of a lot of ports from the HD consoles and jazzing them up a bit. Zombie U looks nice, and there are a lot of other games coming out that are looking pretty Niiice as well. I think for Nintendo they are taking it seriously, but the other guys are still sort of in a league of their own when it comes to dealing with Power.

I remember when Nintendo were top in power. Nes, Snes and N64. For me Nintendos best years. Mario 64, OOT, DKC, Perfect Dark, Super Metroid, Starfox, Starfox 64, 1080 Snowboarding, Waverace 64 all blew me away. And still imo not beaten by Ninty themselves to this day. I loved Nintendo then.

The NES was not the top in power, the SNES was also not top in power due to the NeoGeo, and given it released 2 years after the Megadrive it's quite easy for it to top that. The N64 was the top dog at least but similar to SNES release it launched 1.5 years after the other two major competitors (1 year late could be a delayed machine, but 1.5 probably indicates the console development started later than competitors... though we don't need to make that assumption with N64 as we know a little of the history in that Nintendo was working with Sony to make a SNES CD, the origins of the PSX date well back before the N64, although it was slow to develop due to being a new project a lot of work was done before the N64 even started development).

Nintendo have never strived to be "bleeding edge" like Sony have... they haven't made a leap as deliberately small as with the Wii before but the doesn't mean the opposite is true for their earlier consoles, it's more the staggered nature of the generation leap as well as Nintendo's own success that caused them to be at the graphical high end for SNES to GC (meaning competitors were releasing consoles considered as part of the new gen while Nintendo was still able to sell NES and SNES)

Even if Nintendo went bleeding edge with the Wii U, with it releasing a good year before Nextbox/PS4 the best it could be is equal in graphical capability to the other two (and that's assuming that Sony/MS didn't push any boundaries)

Woe your way off base with neo geo.

Snes had a better processor, double the ram and better audio.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo_Geo_(console)#Graphics

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Nintendo_Entertainment_System#Central_processing_unit



Soundwave on 13 August 2012

Yeah the SNES and N64 were quite capable machines and were far more powerful than the previous generation consoles (NES/Sega Master System and N64>>>>>> SNES/Genny).

I think when Microsoft and Sony opted to adopt business models that involved taking on large losses on hardware upfront, Nintendo kinda just said "we're out" and got out of that race.



Hisiru on 13 August 2012

Soundwave said:

Even if the Wii U can run some version of 720/PS4 ports ... are hardcore gamers really going to care?
 Would you buy the XBox 360 version of a game if it had 1/2 the resolution and had many effects and general visual fidelity scaled back quite a bit over the PS3 version?
I don't think we know how well the WiiU or the other consoles are going to perform, but we can be sure it won't be another Wii situation.  And we can't really say the WiiU will have a problem to attract hardcore players just because it won't have the same graphics. As far as I can tell, games like Black Ops sold 1 million on the Wii (which is enough for profit) even with crap graphics, lack of HD resolution and zero marketing, which means a lot of people want to play those games on Nintendo systems or they simply doesn't care and on the WIiU they will care even less about the other consoles, because as I already showed you, we won't have another Wii situation. x720/PS4's gpu needs to have at least 12TFlops (which is just not going to happen) in order to produce the same Wii x x360/PS3 difference. A lot of Nintendo fans started gaming on HD consoles because they bought an HD TV or because the Wii lacked a good third party support. Now, apparently, WiiU is going to have a much better third party support and some of those people won't need to abandon the platform like they did with the Wii because now it's an HD platform with better support (but we will see if it's good enough).


Of course most people are going to pass IMO. Hardcore players want a large jump from the 360/PS3, they've already had those systems for 5+ years in most cases.
And how can we say for sure what the WiiU or even the x720/PS4 will produce?


Otherwise Nintendo would have to pay $450/system to have hardware comparable to Sony/MS and launch this year ... that's just not gonna happen. I do genuinely think Nintendo would like hardcore gamers. But they can't very well bankrupt themselves in a hardware race vs. Microsoft/Sony. 
Actually, that's not possible, at least not in this next generation. I think it's easier for Sony to bankrupt than Nintendo. They could very well forget about the WiiU gamepad and focus on graphics, but I don't think it will be interesting to focus on graphics in this next generation, I don't see a lot of difference coming and if people expect x720/PS4 to have high end PC quality, then I think (my opinion, not fact) people will be disappointed.

Also, Nintendo also sold 150M DS units, almost 100M Wii units and they already sold 20M 3DS units and it’s just the hardware side. If we talk about software, Nintendo is doing even better. Games like New Super Mario Bros Wii sold 25M copies worldwide 25m x $30 (I know the game was launched for a higher price, but let’s use $30) = 750 millions in revenue with just one game. There is more than 5 games on DS which sold more than 10 million copies and the same goes for the Wii. Nintendo can lose money for years and years:
http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2012/03/nintendo_reportedly_has_8128_billion_yen_in_the_bank 

Now the 3DS is doing ok, selling very well worldwide, software sales are really good for first party titles.
At the same time, Sony lost 5 billions with PS3, they can't trust in software sales like Nintendo, PSV is doing poorly and they are aiming for a high end PS4, but Microsoft probably stole a part of Sony’s userbase. All their divisions are doing very bad and the gaming section is in trouble imo.

I think Sony is in a much worse position than Nintendo but yet, people say it's Nintendo who could go bankrupt if they invest in graphics, I don't understand. Maybe they say it just because Sony is a conglomerate? I don't know.

However, you have some great ideas, If I was Nintendo, I would listen to some of your ideas, but I think this is not going to be necessary. Everything I saw on neogaf makes me think the Wiiu's graphics will be good enough and it won't be blown away by x720/PS4 like the Wii situation, it's just not possible. Maybe people think it's going to be the case because they are used to what happened to the Wii, and I can understand that, but it's a totally different situation.

There is a BIG problem for all the three companies. I can't really defend any of the 3 companies or say for sure they will be successful.

Nintendo: Needs much more third party support and third party sales. They also have a very bad online (I am talking about digital support, digital options, lack of achievements/trophies) etc. Nintendo also needs to make different types of games. Games like Uncharted/Gears of War, I don't really care about it but some people do. Maybe they should buy a new studio just for this kind of game, I don't want Retro Studios developing something like that.

Sony: Already lost a lot of money on PS3, PSV isn't doing well and if they go with a powerful PS4, maybe it means they will lose money again. They need to balance price x hardware on the next PS4 and do something very "un-Sony" or else they will just have another PS3 situation.

Microsoft: I don't have a time machine/crystal ball but I think it will be hard to sell consoles with montly subscription IF true.



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Soundwave on 13 August 2012

There will be a pretty significant gap between the Wii U and PS4/720, what we know of the leaked PS4/720 specs show them to be well beyond the Wii U.

It may not be quite as bad as last gen, but that doesn't mean there won't be a pretty large difference.

A lot of hardcore gamers are already biased against Nintendo to begin with, lets be honest, so that doesn't help either. 

If a game like Star Wars 1313 is available on Wii U, 720/PS4 ... and 720/PS4 versions run at 1080p + better graphical effects, higher poly count, higher frame rate, etc. not many people are going to buy the Wii U version, then the excuses from developers will start ("oh the Wii U version didn't sell great, so we're pulling resources away from it"), etc. etc.

This is all so predictable, happens to Nintendo over and over (and over) again.



Hisiru on 13 August 2012
Soundwave said:

There will be a pretty significant gap between the Wii U and PS4/720, what we know of the leaked PS4/720 specs show them to be well beyond the Wii U.

It may not be quite as bad as last gen, but that doesn't mean there won't be a pretty large difference.

A lot of hardcore gamers are already biased against Nintendo to begin with, lets be honest, so that doesn't help either. 

If a game like Star Wars 1313 is available on Wii U, 720/PS4 ... and 720/PS4 versions run at 1080p + better graphical effects, higher poly count, higher frame rate, etc. not many people are going to buy the Wii U version, then the excuses from developers will start ("oh the Wii U version didn't sell great, so we're pulling resources away from it"), etc. etc.

This is all so predictable, happens to Nintendo over and over (and over) again.

I was going to show you some neogaf posts explaining all the specs (looking at what you said, you probably need it) but it's better not continue it. I will let you have your opinion and I will let you expect it to be a large gap with all your hasty assumptions about sales, you probably have a time machine/crystal ball or something.

Happy gaming.



wfz on 13 August 2012

Graphical fidelity and raw power are the most important aspects of video games. That's why the biggest growth area in the gaming industry (for consumers and developers) is the mobile sector, because the mobile devices have the strongest computing power.

Oh, wait a minute...



Soundwave on 14 August 2012
wfz said:
Graphical fidelity and raw power are the most important aspects of video games. That's why the biggest growth area in the gaming industry (for consumers and developers) is the mobile sector, because the mobile devices have the strongest computing power.

Oh, wait a minute...

 

If anything the explosion of mobile gaming has hurt Nintendo. They opened Pandora's Box and profited immensely from it for a few years, but what cell phones have done is co-opt that experience and cheapen it down to a $1-$2 price point and flooded the market with all sorts of Brain Training/crossword puzzle/etc. style apps.

And we've seen pretty dramatic leaps in processing power for cell phone devices in the span of 5 years.

That's why Nintendo is now trying to find some kind of middle ground, by trying to come back towards the core market, where whether you want to admit it or not, visual fidelity definintely matters. Call of Duty and Battlefield 3 are pretty high end visual engines.

If that's not important, then why not just make another 'Just Dance/Wii Sports' console and cut the chipset in half and pocket the profit margin? Because Nintendo knows they can only get so far on that style of gaming (see also: Wii sales falling off a cliff the last two years).



selnor on 14 August 2012
Soundwave said:

There will be a pretty significant gap between the Wii U and PS4/720, what we know of the leaked PS4/720 specs show them to be well beyond the Wii U.

It may not be quite as bad as last gen, but that doesn't mean there won't be a pretty large difference.

A lot of hardcore gamers are already biased against Nintendo to begin with, lets be honest, so that doesn't help either. 

If a game like Star Wars 1313 is available on Wii U, 720/PS4 ... and 720/PS4 versions run at 1080p + better graphical effects, higher poly count, higher frame rate, etc. not many people are going to buy the Wii U version, then the excuses from developers will start ("oh the Wii U version didn't sell great, so we're pulling resources away from it"), etc. etc.

This is all so predictable, happens to Nintendo over and over (and over) again.

if the rumours are true about Wii U specs and 720 then the gap will be bigger next gen than this.

Wii U rumoured 1.5 gb ram. 720 rumoured 4gb minimum 6gb max.

Wii U rumoured 3 core 3.2ghz. 720 rumoured 12 core 3.2ghz.

Wii U maybe able to 1080p most games as native atandard. 720 1440p - 2140p.

Those figures are much broader than 360 - Wii.

But those are rumours and we will wait and see.