superchunk said: People keep making the same mistake. WiiU is not CPU centric... its GPU centric. That is why it has a modern architecture GPGPU. Same style will be in the neXtBox and PS4. Current and past gens did a lot with the CPU, while new gens will do almost all of it in the GPU and the CPUs role for gaming will be reduced, greatly.

Both NextBox and PS4 will have strong CPUs paired with strong GPUs, just like PS360 - so I really don't see any paradigm shift coming in game development - there is just no reason for that. They might decide to offload physics to GPU, but vast amount of code is still better suited for CPU. Given the choice to make games as they have been making them for years, and do that for 5 platforms (360/PS3/720/PS4/PC) vs 1 platform that requires special treatment cause some of its hardware is underpowered is, in my opinion, more than enough for most 3rd parties to stick to the current coding model (of course, some of the next-gen games will have less problem addapting to WiiU, and some devs will go extra mile).

In sumary...

- CPU @ 1.25Ghz (not idle clock); Tri-core PowerPC 750; 1 thread per core; OO design; shorter pipeline; better IPC; weak SIMD;
- GPU @ 550Mhz

For a PowerPC 750 the clock is fine (that's almost the max clock the 750 can run) and it's almost 2x the CPU clock of the Wii (@730Mhz).

It's a CPU way slower than 360 CPU and PS3 CPU.

HoloDust said: superchunk said: People keep making the same mistake. WiiU is not CPU centric... its GPU centric. That is why it has a modern architecture GPGPU. Same style will be in the neXtBox and PS4. Current and past gens did a lot with the CPU, while new gens will do almost all of it in the GPU and the CPUs role for gaming will be reduced, greatly. Both NextBox and PS4 will have strong CPUs paired with strong GPUs, just like PS360 - so I really don't see any paradigm shift coming in game development - there is just no reason for that. They might decide to offload physics to GPU, but vast amount of code is still better suited for CPU. Given the choice to make games as they have been making them for years, and do that for 5 platforms (360/PS3/720/PS4/PC) vs 1 platform that requires special treatment cause some of its hardware is underpowered is, in my opinion, more than enough for most 3rd parties to stick to the current coding model (of course, some of the next-gen games will have less problem addapting to WiiU, and some devs will go extra mile).

I agree, but it also depends on how good the WiiU dev kit is.  If it can do most of the work in optimizing for GPGPU for developers, then I don't see why multiplats wouldn't continue to still be made.

The system as a whole can run a game like BLOPS2 at the same fidelity of the PS3/360 with a second (lower res) screen at the same time, so really it doesn't matter too much what the clock speed is. As a whole the system is line with the PS3/360, probably better in some areas, a little worse in others, net effect is probably something comparable to the difference between the PS2 and GameCube. 

The clock speed "revelations" are only a big deal to people who built up the Wii U as some kind of direct line competitior to next-gen consoles.

Nintendo doesn't make any games that require the horsepower beyond what's offered by the 360/PS3, and even if they did, they wouldn't allow a game to have such a budget (ala Halo 4).

So this hardware does basically all Nintendo needs it to do. Whether third parties want to join in is their business, but Nintendo was never going to take a loss on hardware just to make third parties happy. No way.

Chrizum said: If true the CPU power is closer to the Wii's than to the PS3's. That's... underwhelming.

Black Op on the Wii U runs as good or better than the Xbox 360 or PS3 versions all while driving two displays.  How exactly is that closer to the Wii than the PS3?

BuckStud said: Chrizum said: If true the CPU power is closer to the Wii's than to the PS3's. That's... underwhelming. Black Op on the Wii U runs as good or better than the Xbox 360 or PS3 versions all while driving two displays.  How exactly is that closer to the Wii than the PS3?

Last I checked Black Ops II also runned on the GPU and RAM memory. Also, when lots of things happen at once the framerate takes a dive, indicating of a struggling CPU.

Crono141 said: HoloDust said: superchunk said: People keep making the same mistake. WiiU is not CPU centric... its GPU centric. That is why it has a modern architecture GPGPU. Same style will be in the neXtBox and PS4. Current and past gens did a lot with the CPU, while new gens will do almost all of it in the GPU and the CPUs role for gaming will be reduced, greatly. Both NextBox and PS4 will have strong CPUs paired with strong GPUs, just like PS360 - so I really don't see any paradigm shift coming in game development - there is just no reason for that. They might decide to offload physics to GPU, but vast amount of code is still better suited for CPU. Given the choice to make games as they have been making them for years, and do that for 5 platforms (360/PS3/720/PS4/PC) vs 1 platform that requires special treatment cause some of its hardware is underpowered is, in my opinion, more than enough for most 3rd parties to stick to the current coding model (of course, some of the next-gen games will have less problem addapting to WiiU, and some devs will go extra mile). I agree, but it also depends on how good the WiiU dev kit is.  If it can do most of the work in optimizing for GPGPU for developers, then I don't see why multiplats wouldn't continue to still be made.

Oh, I'm not saying they won't be made - I'm just thinking that developing model with remain the same as it was for so many years - which translates in performance issues in certain types of games - there is simply lot of code that is highly unsuitable for GPU, no matter how (reasonably) hard you try.

please put this in the op... so we can go back making DBZ jokes..

Yeah, I am conceding that the Wii U will get it's ass handed to them (specs wise) by 720/PS4 if the rumors are true. Still I think that given the GPU and CPU(despite lower clock speed) the Wii U is still superior to the current gen systems; albeit not by much. The Wii U difference to the PS360 is becoming more clearer...the Wii U's advantage is akin to Wii vs GCN, or PSP vs 3DS, instead of PS2 to PS3. I am still happy to see Nintendo enter the HD arena with a slightly better hardware than my X360 but for next gen I am sure to be gaming on both 720 and Wii U for me.

ok so the Xbox 360 would be like Krilin in Namek and the U would be Guldo from the Frieza special forces