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Forums - Nintendo - Black Ops 2 Launch Guide (Wii U 720p 60fps, 360/ps3 SUB-HD)

Squilliam on 08 November 2012
curl-6 said:
Squilliam said:
z101 said:
Squilliam said:

Yes the Wii U is efficient but that does not in any way make it powerful. The next generation consoles from Microsoft and Sony are going to be both more efficiently designed and more powerful than the Wii U and this is likely in the order of 4-6 times. So from this perspective it is appropriate to say that people won't really care that the Wii U is more capable than the Xbox 360 and PS3 especially given the fact that a significant proportion of the advantage will be wasted on the new development paradigms which come about as more performance is made available as a baseline. 

All we heard from PS4 is that is using an APU10 that is hardly more powerful than the Wii U. I don't know where you get the "4-6 times more powerful" than Wii U. Perhaps it is two times more powerful (but only if PS4 really gets a great extra GPU, otherwise it will be slower than Wii U in some cases).

The PS3 was not efficiently designed, it has a great CPU (even with todays standards!), but the GPU and the overall technical design was inefficiently, so the developers could never really use the CPU power efficiently. Same goes for the Vita, great tech specs on paper, but the graphical games like Uncharted or AC:Liberation runs only with half screen resolution and look only a bit better than Revelations on 3DS, but they run only without 3D of course.

The chances of Sony releasing a console which is anything less than half a dozen times more powerful than the PS3 is slight. The chances of Sony releasing a console which is inefficient is also slight. The most likely rumours point to an APU plus a GPU which is why I said slight instead of impossible because it is still only a rumour.

They did it with the PS2 and PS3...

http://arstechnica.com/features/2000/04/ps2vspc/

The PS2 wasn't inefficient, see above.

The PS3 was doesn't spend much time twiddling its thumbs either given low latency main memory and efficient interconnects. If it was that inefficient it wouldn't be able to produce a broad range of artistically brilliant titles.

 





Tease.

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Squilliam on 08 November 2012
Viper1 said:
Viper1 said:
Player1x3 said:
Viper1 said:

Not as big as the jump from PS2 to PS3.  That was just an insane jump that will not likely ever be repeated.

I believe we will see a similar jump from ps3 to ps4, but that's another topic

I do know that a game designed wholly from the ground up on Wii U with the intention of being highly graphical in presentation developed by a team with some years of experience on the system with sufficient budget and resources would defintely stand out graphically above what is seen on PS3/X360.  

Ok, so why is that none of the U exclusive games look nowhere near as good as some of the best 7th gen games? On Ps3, on all launch games you could see a clear difference between last gen and next gen? That's not the case with U. That was really my original point.

Quantifying how much more is where things get difficult.  Not just in simply not knowing the peak potential yet but in the mere fact that "how much better" tends to be subjective to each viewer.

I agree.

 

Go back and read that first post you quote me on.   Read if carefully.  Notice the context of what is being said.   Then compare that circumstance to the one I just described above.  It's such a vastly different situation.  Again, they can and eventually will look better.   How much better is unknowna nd may depend on whether developers want to put in the extra work to show it.   Nintendo stated recently that the reason that NSMBU is in 720p rather than 1080p is because it would cost a lot more to develop the game in 1080 yet it wouldn't change the amount of sales at all....so why bother?   If this remains the situation for most developers on Wii U, we may not see many games that really push the system until the PS4/X360 arrive.

I agree that they will eventually look better. Im just not sure the difference would be ''generation ahead'' big, like it should be.



I'll give a full reply to this later.  Just marking it now so I know to come back when I have time.

 

Squilliam said:

Yes the Wii U is efficient but that does not in any way make it powerful. The next generation consoles from Microsoft and Sony are going to be both more efficiently designed and more powerful than the Wii U and this is likely in the order of 4-6 times. So from this perspective it is appropriate to say that people won't really care that the Wii U is more capable than the Xbox 360 and PS3 especially given the fact that a significant proportion of the advantage will be wasted on the new development paradigms which come about as more performance is made available as a baseline.

Neither of those companies have designed an efficient console...ever.  How in the world do you assume they'll start now and be more efficient than the very efficiently designed Wii U?

PS2 was a beast spec wise.  As is the PS3.   Can either console use all that power?  Not at all.  Not even close.    Look at the GC.   The way the console moves data is efficient.  Devs could tap the full power of the console without leaving wasted clock cycles along the way.  That's efficiency.

Neither? Not efficient? Given tradeoffs they are both very efficient in what they do. The same trade-offs apply to Nintendo. Given the results on screen and the ability for instance for the consoles to perform multiple different workloads at different stages of the piplelines they can achieve very high utlilization of their resources, if they couldn't they simply would not have been more than the sum of their parts as we have seen by the performance achieved by developers as compared to inefficient architectures like the PC.

Both Microsoft and Sony have the option of using faster memory which enables them to use more data per frame, is this not efficient? They also have the option of using lower clocked Jaguar cores which use very little power and does this not make them efficient? They also have the option of combining the GPU and CPU onto the one die and again is this not efficient and this is something Nintendo didn't do.



Tease.

curl-6 on 08 November 2012
Squilliam said:
curl-6 said:
Squilliam said:
z101 said:
Squilliam said:

Yes the Wii U is efficient but that does not in any way make it powerful. The next generation consoles from Microsoft and Sony are going to be both more efficiently designed and more powerful than the Wii U and this is likely in the order of 4-6 times. So from this perspective it is appropriate to say that people won't really care that the Wii U is more capable than the Xbox 360 and PS3 especially given the fact that a significant proportion of the advantage will be wasted on the new development paradigms which come about as more performance is made available as a baseline. 

All we heard from PS4 is that is using an APU10 that is hardly more powerful than the Wii U. I don't know where you get the "4-6 times more powerful" than Wii U. Perhaps it is two times more powerful (but only if PS4 really gets a great extra GPU, otherwise it will be slower than Wii U in some cases).

The PS3 was not efficiently designed, it has a great CPU (even with todays standards!), but the GPU and the overall technical design was inefficiently, so the developers could never really use the CPU power efficiently. Same goes for the Vita, great tech specs on paper, but the graphical games like Uncharted or AC:Liberation runs only with half screen resolution and look only a bit better than Revelations on 3DS, but they run only without 3D of course.

The chances of Sony releasing a console which is anything less than half a dozen times more powerful than the PS3 is slight. The chances of Sony releasing a console which is inefficient is also slight. The most likely rumours point to an APU plus a GPU which is why I said slight instead of impossible because it is still only a rumour.

They did it with the PS2 and PS3...

http://arstechnica.com/features/2000/04/ps2vspc/

The PS2 wasn't inefficient, see above.

The PS3 was doesn't spend much time twiddling its thumbs either given low latency main memory and efficient interconnects. If it was that inefficient it wouldn't be able to produce a broad range of artistically brilliant titles.

Like any console, the PS2 is obviously going  to have an edge versus a PC in terms of bang per MB/clock cycle due to the fact that it's designed for gaming first and foremost, and ever console is the same so games can be more specifically optimised. For a console, the PS2 is definitely not efficient.

Getting the most out of its CPU and GPU required massively parallel processing that was incredibly hard to accomplish. Its RAM was slow, its L1 & L2 caches were miniscule, (1/10 that of the Xbox and 1/20 that of the Gamecube) and having only a 4MB eDRAM with no hardware texture decompression made it quite bad at handling texures. It was also at very inefficient at multitexturing for shaders and such.

The PS3 has issues as well. Its CPU has enormous raw horsepower, but again, tapping that power is far less convenient than it should be. Its SPUs may be able to emulate an 8-core CPU, but they lack a local cache and require a vectorized instruction set. Its GPU is relatively subpar, and its divided RAM (Two banks of 256MB each) presents problems too.

The PS2 and PS3 produce great looking games not because they are efficient, but because some of the most skilled developers on the planet devoted huge amounts of time, effort and money to working around their inefficiencies.



Player1x3 on 09 November 2012
cunger said:
Player1x3 said:
cunger said:
Squilliam said:
cunger said:
Squilliam said:
The Wii U is designed to run games at 60FPS given that is Nintendo's target and this game also targets 60FPS. The game itself is quite a good match to what the Wii U is capable of. In the end however this all doesn't matter given the fact that the next gen consoles from Sony and Microsoft are considerably more powerful again.


More powerfull but will have nowhere near the same type of advantage as they had over the original wii.  The main benifit will come from the ability to have brilliant graphics and stable performance in stereo 3d but he wiiu will hang in there in 2d performance for the majority of Nintendo's 6 year lifecylce.

The Wii U is more efficient than current generation consoles yes; however it isn't outright a performance beast. Having modern shaders and 32MB of embedded memory makes it a good fit for a game which targets 60FPS as these are simply extensions of the advantages the Xbox 360 GPU bought to the table which allowed it great performance next to the PS3. When the next generation of consoles from Sony and Microsoft are out noone will care about how the Wii U outperforms the Xbox 360 and PS3 for the same reason that the idea that the Wii was more powerful than the Xbox gained little traction, if you wanted the performance you're already looking elsewhere.

When the developers finally have to start tapping the GPU to make up for the lack of performance in the CPU which is absolutely tiny to run next generation titles, people will start calling them lazy. The performance isn't free, if you take it from rendering then you won't have nearly as pretty a picture as you'd expect.


 Wow in 2013 the ps4 will launch with a graphics card from 2011.


Huh?


The graphics card rumored to power ther PS4 is a 2011 graphics card.  Pretty pathetic compared to previous generations where they were already years behind pc when they launched a new system.


Pretty pathetic that you base your argument on one of the countless worthless rumours



Player1x3 on 09 November 2012
Viper1 said:
Viper1 said:
Player1x3 said:
Viper1 said:

Not as big as the jump from PS2 to PS3.  That was just an insane jump that will not likely ever be repeated.

I believe we will see a similar jump from ps3 to ps4, but that's another topic

I do know that a game designed wholly from the ground up on Wii U with the intention of being highly graphical in presentation developed by a team with some years of experience on the system with sufficient budget and resources would defintely stand out graphically above what is seen on PS3/X360.  

Ok, so why is that none of the U exclusive games look nowhere near as good as some of the best 7th gen games? On Ps3, on all launch games you could see a clear difference between last gen and next gen? That's not the case with U. That was really my original point.

Quantifying how much more is where things get difficult.  Not just in simply not knowing the peak potential yet but in the mere fact that "how much better" tends to be subjective to each viewer.

I agree.

 

Go back and read that first post you quote me on.   Read if carefully.  Notice the context of what is being said.   Then compare that circumstance to the one I just described above.  It's such a vastly different situation.  Again, they can and eventually will look better.   How much better is unknowna nd may depend on whether developers want to put in the extra work to show it.   Nintendo stated recently that the reason that NSMBU is in 720p rather than 1080p is because it would cost a lot more to develop the game in 1080 yet it wouldn't change the amount of sales at all....so why bother?   If this remains the situation for most developers on Wii U, we may not see many games that really push the system until the PS4/X360 arrive.

I agree that they will eventually look better. Im just not sure the difference would be ''generation ahead'' big, like it should be.



I'll give a full reply to this later.  Just marking it now so I know to come back when I have time.

Most PS3 launch games were either built on the PS3 or ported over the already next gen X360.   Wii U ports are coming over from last generation consoles.  Again, if the assets are the same, it won't look better.   PS3 also had the advantage of a huge jump in resolution over last generation consoles.   That won't be nearly as noticable even going from 720p to 1080p.  The jump from 480 to 720 was huge.  The jump from 720 to 1080 is not (visually speaking that is).  The other factor is that the PS3 was touted as the most powerful console ever and developers were tasked to prove it graphically.  So every game was pushed.  On Wii U, the focus is far more on the GamePad (which also has a screen with 410k extra pixels).  

 

The main thing to consider is are the assets.  If developers are using the exact same asset (and they usually will because it's much cheaper than creating a whole new set of art assets), you will not see a marked improvement in graphic quality.    Think about a game being rendered on a very high end graphics card on the PC and the same game rendered on a middle ground card.   The former will give you much better frame rates but the game will essentially look exactly the same because the art assets are exactly the same.   Even a low end card can look the same...just run like shit.

 


You make a good point with 720p/1080p decreasing the visual jump but that shouldn't stop us from seeing the graphical and technical advance on the console. But let's say you're right about the ports. That still doesn't explain why none of the exclusives look better than this gen games. Or are the assets same there as well? Surely, the asset argument doesn't work on exclusive games And PS3 was a complete bitch to develop for in the beginning so lots of developers had insane issues with it in the beginning and couldn't get the wished results with it.  That's not the case with Wii U, so there's no reasons why exclusives dont look noticeably better than this gen, except for having only minimal updated over this gen.



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curl-6 on 09 November 2012
Player1x3 said:
Viper1 said:
Viper1 said:
Player1x3 said:
Viper1 said:

Not as big as the jump from PS2 to PS3.  That was just an insane jump that will not likely ever be repeated.

I believe we will see a similar jump from ps3 to ps4, but that's another topic

I do know that a game designed wholly from the ground up on Wii U with the intention of being highly graphical in presentation developed by a team with some years of experience on the system with sufficient budget and resources would defintely stand out graphically above what is seen on PS3/X360.  

Ok, so why is that none of the U exclusive games look nowhere near as good as some of the best 7th gen games? On Ps3, on all launch games you could see a clear difference between last gen and next gen? That's not the case with U. That was really my original point.

Quantifying how much more is where things get difficult.  Not just in simply not knowing the peak potential yet but in the mere fact that "how much better" tends to be subjective to each viewer.

I agree.

 

Go back and read that first post you quote me on.   Read if carefully.  Notice the context of what is being said.   Then compare that circumstance to the one I just described above.  It's such a vastly different situation.  Again, they can and eventually will look better.   How much better is unknowna nd may depend on whether developers want to put in the extra work to show it.   Nintendo stated recently that the reason that NSMBU is in 720p rather than 1080p is because it would cost a lot more to develop the game in 1080 yet it wouldn't change the amount of sales at all....so why bother?   If this remains the situation for most developers on Wii U, we may not see many games that really push the system until the PS4/X360 arrive.

I agree that they will eventually look better. Im just not sure the difference would be ''generation ahead'' big, like it should be.



I'll give a full reply to this later.  Just marking it now so I know to come back when I have time.

Most PS3 launch games were either built on the PS3 or ported over the already next gen X360.   Wii U ports are coming over from last generation consoles.  Again, if the assets are the same, it won't look better.   PS3 also had the advantage of a huge jump in resolution over last generation consoles.   That won't be nearly as noticable even going from 720p to 1080p.  The jump from 480 to 720 was huge.  The jump from 720 to 1080 is not (visually speaking that is).  The other factor is that the PS3 was touted as the most powerful console ever and developers were tasked to prove it graphically.  So every game was pushed.  On Wii U, the focus is far more on the GamePad (which also has a screen with 410k extra pixels).  

 

The main thing to consider is are the assets.  If developers are using the exact same asset (and they usually will because it's much cheaper than creating a whole new set of art assets), you will not see a marked improvement in graphic quality.    Think about a game being rendered on a very high end graphics card on the PC and the same game rendered on a middle ground card.   The former will give you much better frame rates but the game will essentially look exactly the same because the art assets are exactly the same.   Even a low end card can look the same...just run like shit.

 

 


You make a good point with 720p/1080p decreasing the visual jump but that shouldn't stop us from seeing the graphical and technical advance on the console. But let's say you're right about the ports. That still doesn't explain why none of the exclusives look better than this gen games. Or are the assets same there as well? Surely, the asset argument doesn't work on exclusive games And PS3 was a complete bitch to develop for in the beginning so lots of developers had insane issues with it in the beginning and couldn't get the wished results with it.  That's not the case with Wii U, so there's no reasons why exclusives dont look noticeably better than this gen, except for having only minimal updated over this gen.

It's simple, none of them are trying to. They either go for a simplistic look and/or simply don't prioritize high end  visuals. Plus none of the devs have experience with the hardware yet.



Viper1 on 09 November 2012
Player1x3 said:
Viper1 said:

Most PS3 launch games were either built on the PS3 or ported over the already next gen X360.   Wii U ports are coming over from last generation consoles.  Again, if the assets are the same, it won't look better.   PS3 also had the advantage of a huge jump in resolution over last generation consoles.   That won't be nearly as noticable even going from 720p to 1080p.  The jump from 480 to 720 was huge.  The jump from 720 to 1080 is not (visually speaking that is).  The other factor is that the PS3 was touted as the most powerful console ever and developers were tasked to prove it graphically.  So every game was pushed.  On Wii U, the focus is far more on the GamePad (which also has a screen with 410k extra pixels).  

 

The main thing to consider is are the assets.  If developers are using the exact same asset (and they usually will because it's much cheaper than creating a whole new set of art assets), you will not see a marked improvement in graphic quality.    Think about a game being rendered on a very high end graphics card on the PC and the same game rendered on a middle ground card.   The former will give you much better frame rates but the game will essentially look exactly the same because the art assets are exactly the same.   Even a low end card can look the same...just run like shit.

 

 


You make a good point with 720p/1080p decreasing the visual jump but that shouldn't stop us from seeing the graphical and technical advance on the console. But let's say you're right about the ports. That still doesn't explain why none of the exclusives look better than this gen games. Or are the assets same there as well? Surely, the asset argument doesn't work on exclusive games And PS3 was a complete bitch to develop for in the beginning so lots of developers had insane issues with it in the beginning and couldn't get the wished results with it.  That's not the case with Wii U, so there's no reasons why exclusives dont look noticeably better than this gen, except for having only minimal updated over this gen.

Look at the two sentences I bolded.   If a developer isn't using art assets of greater detail than the last generation consoles, then it won't look any better.

You have to consider the expense of art assets.  They actually make up the bulk of development costs these days.  It used to be program coding.   Though a game with a brand new game engine can still evenly split the costs.   But let's look at how many launch games are coming out and how many units each developer expects ot sell of their game at launch.   Even exclusive games.   Do you expect many of them to sell in the high single digit millions?   Not likely.  Developers know this too.  Not just because it's a new console with a brand new install base starting at 0 but because there are so many games coming out that gamers' budgets will be spread very thin.   That means it's not a good idea to invest heavily in the art assets given the return on investment won't likely cover such an expensive direction.  Look, 50 games before next March 31st and Nintendo expects to sell 24 million games.   That averages to about 480,000 per game over that time period (naturally some will sell much more and others much less).   That means it is not economically feasible yet to push the art yet.   If just 20 games were coming out in that time period, it might be more worth the effort.    This is actually one of those rare occasions were you can actually have too many games coming at one time.

 

And, as I already noted, devs are pushign the GamePad rather than graphics.  What is the selling point of the console?  The GamePad.   What was the selling point of the PS3?  Graphics.



The rEVOLution is not being televised

DieAppleDie on 10 November 2012

So according to you Viper, grafix are a gimmick? more concretely, SONYs gimmick to sell the PS3?



Viper1 on 10 November 2012
DieAppleDie said:
So according to you Viper, grafix are a gimmick? more concretely, SONYs gimmick to sell the PS3?


Well, under certain definitions of the term gimmick, yes.



The rEVOLution is not being televised

DieAppleDie on 10 November 2012

ok mods come and get him, hes badmouthing the PS3