Graphics are scalable the Wii U would only get in trouble if physics ai get to such a high level that the core gameplay somehow relies on Power/Ram.

Aslong as the devs will just use the Ram for cosmetic stuff Wii U will not have a problem.

But that doesn't even matter I doubt we will see many AAA 3rd party games on the Wii U so its not really a problem.

It's half for games, the other gig is locked to OS.

Besides though, if you want to claim PS360 games were reasonably transitioned down to a system with 1/6th the amount of ram, I think they can manage 1/2 just fine... Not to mention faster CPUs (yes, I realize the idea is the Wii U CPU could possibly have better architecture, but we haven't proven that yet like we've proven the clock rates) and years of dev experience give the PS360 their own edge over the Wii U as well.

The simple answer is, it WON'T, but I'll go into a little more details why it won't get the same versions if any.

The WiiU will continue to get any PS4/720 ports as long as they keep coming to the PS3/360, however, Once we're 1-2 years into the PS4 and 720 life, the WiiU will find it harder and harder to get down ports because of the limited GPU/CPU but more so with ram.

Think about this, the Wii has 88MB of ram, the PS3/360 has 5.8 times that with 512MB of ram, now the WiiU has 1GB of ram for games, but now the PS4 has 7 times that amount with 7GB usable for games, the disparity has increased and this can only spell disaster for the WiiU in terms of 3rd party games.

I'll give you a recent example with Skyrim on the PS3 and 360 versions to illustrate how insufficient ram causes problems. The PS3 has 512M, removing the OS of about 56MB leaves it with 456MB for game data, the 360 also has 512MB with 10MB of EDram, so it's got 522MB, we then remove the OS (32MB) and it's left with 490MB for games. The 360 in effect has 34MB extra the devs can play with. Now what most people who played skyrim on PS3 found out when it first came out was that the game eventually became unplayable after about 80 hours depending on how much one interacted with the world. It turned out that the games was designed to store in ram what was touched so it remains that way if you came back, unfortunately the PS3 simply ran out of ram so it thrashed the hard drive and caused the game to be unplayable as frame rates dropped to almost zero. The game was eventually patched multiple times to fix this issue, and they did so by minimising exactly what was stored on ram, and to only have the critical in ram...the 360 never suffered from this issue.

I understand that one could argue that perhaps the game wasn't coded in the most proficient way, but the developers initial goal was to ensure a progressive game world that reflected your interactions with it, hence it recording what was touched and how, removing this approach would give a lesser experience, and although the developers optimised it to finally work, they did have to change certain things, lucky the disparity of the PS3 and 360 was only 34MB so it wasn't noticeable between versions, now if we balloon the difference from 34MB to 7GB......an open world games as detailed and expansive as skyrim was made to use 7GB, it could not be ported to the WiiU without significant changes, and there for the final product would be noticeably different from the PC/PS4/720 versions. This isn't even taking into account the massive loss of high fidelity textures as well as variety of textures.

I'd also like to point out that procedural animation, real time destruction, texture variety, or any interactive objects needs ram. Their location, and the rest of the details need to be stored, so if the player comes back the world would be as they left it rather than having it reset it's self....basically it effects immersion.

How many you have notices that allot of games have very little interactivity on random items, how many of you have noticed the repeated textures or enemies, how many of you have noticed how things just disappear like rubble form an explosion, and how many of you have noticed how bodies just disappear...think how different a game would be if bodies didn't just disappear but remained and how that may impact the way you play when you realise that you have left a death trail of corpses as opposed to seeing nothing but a clean space despite you knowing you just wiped out 20 dudes....this is what more ram allows, and now that PS4 and 720 have lifted the baseline, well start seeing less of what we saw on PS3/360 and hopefully more of what I just mentioned.

In any case, the above things I mentioned is why the WiiU will either get really crappy ports when the PS4/720 kick off into their second year, or they'll simply have a different version which may be the same versions of the handhelds, as what we saw happen with the Wii, there’s also the possibility that the WiiU will simply get its own unique version or like it has been currently happening with new games being announced, they'll simply miss out.

That’s my 2 cents, I hope Nintendo fans understand what I’ve written as I simply don't want them to underestimate the disparity as being a non-issue when it clearly is. Don't get me wrong, the WiiU in time will get very nice looking games, that will definitely be above par from the PS3/360 graphics level, it's just when we look at or speak of PC, PS4, 720, they won't be the same. It's just the way things are, only time with the assistance of Digital foundry and lens of truth will eventually reveal that state of affairs. So let’s buckle up and enjoy this journey.

It's simple if any games from ps4 go to wiiu they'll be watered down HEAVILY.

multiplatform games will bomb on wii u anyway , so it doesnt matter

With texture compression, the textures wouldn't suffer too badly. The part that won't be up to par due to lower amount of RAM would be lower res shadows and not as impressive lighting if you are only talking about RAM, and not raw power alone, which Wii U would obviously not be on par with the PS4 either.

Title is weird BTW, it's more like "How will PS4 games fit on the Wii U" lol...

I'm aware the Wii U loses half its RAM to the OS. It still has more than double the RAM of the PS3 and 360.

Of course some PS4 games could theoretically be scaled to PS3/360, but the game would have to be chopped down further than on Wii U; reduced draw distance, lower resolution textures, less detail, etc.

The Wii U vs PS360 CPU debate is still up in the air.While the latter may be clocked faster, Criterion have said that:

"[The Wii U CPU] is a different kind of chip and it's not fair to look at its clock-speed and other consoles' clock-speed and compare them as numbers that are relevant. It's not a relevant comparison to make when you have processors that are so divergent. It's apples and oranges."

and

"while [the Wii U CPU] is a lower clock-speed, it punches above its weight in a lot of other areas."

The Wii U also has a GPGPU to handle tasks traditionally handled by the CPU.

At any rate, with 7GB vs 1GB/less than 500MB, memory will be the main problem, devs will hit that wall long before they have to worry about CPUs.

All you have to do is trim the fat and increase the performance of the memory management of the engine of the Wii U, by reducing things that sit of the ram which can be easily done. First what is rendered smaller, as in the loaded size of the stage, by either making the game more modular or if you are using dynamic loading reducing the draw size. Also you can prioritize textures and other assets if its not being used load it out, or if you can eliminate it. The developer who get a hold of how to program for the Wii U before the other systems go into full swing will have no to little trouble doing this since they will have a working engine that can do that. And if they are using a caned engine most of the work is done for them.

You can also go the route of Lego City and require a Hard Drive to play the game. It may cut your potential user base but then you also can use the hard drive to cache much like they had to do with PS3.

This is very simular to asking how a game can work on a system with only 1GB of memory availbe but is made to run the most effectivly on a system with 7GB of RAM, you turn off or dial down memory eating resources. The PC market has been doing this for decades.

Not wrong since most third parties did not know the system had these specs and it can take years to get the most out of consoles.

The trick is going to be sales. If games sell well on the Wii U, developers and publishers will find a way to take the money. Just like Activision did with Cod on Wii.

How comparable will the games be between the Wii U and PS4? That is a good question, and so far we don't know the answer. As others have correctly pointed out, the difference in H/W between Wii U and PS4 is of the same order as the Wii vs PS3, *but*, does that translate into the same difference in game quality? Perhaps increasing graphics is a function of decreasing returns - maybe you'll need 10 times more H/W power to produce 3 times "better" graphics. The Wii's lack of shader support was a big drawback for its graphical ability - just look at how the 3DS, which is hardly more powerful than the Wii, can produce much better looking games. Will the PS4 have a similar killer feature that elevates it above the Wii U?