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Forums - Gaming Discussion - Shin’en Multimedia: Wii U Is Most Definitely A Next-Generation Console

F0X on 26 May 2013
TheJimbo1234 said:
EricFabian said:
TheJimbo1234 said:

Oh here we go, everything has to have two meanings when you mention something in a Nintendo thread. But to answer you question (which is not what I was implying, merely an annoyance as gamers misuse that term) I would go with what many large dev studios have said along with my own hardware knowledge which is no, merely due to the lack of new features it offers in power eg. dx11.1 30fps at 1080p with ~3-4 terraflops of power. And yes, this also means I would say the Wii was not current gen either, but heck, that sold well due to the cash cow casual gaming and motion controls Nintendo landed on.


so which determine a next gen is only power? -


Not just power, but gpu design eg. dx 9, dx 11 etc. All that combined would tell you were the consoles sit at in terms of correct technological generations.


Are you saying that Microsoft decides what is considered "next-gen"?



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Vinniegambini on 26 May 2013

*Reads thread*



curl-6 on 26 May 2013
jake_the_fake1 said:
curl-6 said:

Well, at a glance, (I have not played it) Super Stardust HD doesn't seem to do as much with shaders and fillrate-related effects as Nano Assault Neo does, so it looks like another case of priority; SSHD pushed for 1080p above all, (PS3 devs were still chasing the 1080p dream back then, Wipeout HD another example) while NAN went for the best overall look, which Shin'en found was better served by using their fillrate on extra post effects than extra pixels.

Also, the "harnessing the Wii U's power" tagline was not Shin'en's words, the website chose that as an attention-grabbing headline. ;)

The reason Killzone historically runs at 30fps because the series has always sacrificed framerate for detail. It's still a compromise. Every system has is resource cap and there will always be compromises because devs naturally want to push things as far as they can. Many of the best looking PS3/360 games run at sub-HD resolution for the same reason Nano Assault runs at 720p; devs decide it looks better at lower res with more effects versus higher res with less effects.

There's much more to graphics than just resolution. Being in 720p doesn't inherently make a game technically unimpressive, for example, the Samaritan demo at 720p would still be nothing to scoff at, and Angry Birds at 1080p would be nothing to wow at.

Likewise, this is my opinion, to take for what you will. Thanks for keeping this an intelligent and mature discussion, those are hard to come by on the internet. :)

True that, alas 720p content loses a little of it's flare when on a 1080p TV, TV's have such crap scalars, this is why I'm happy with the PS4 doing 1080p. It also means less jaggies even without AA, with AA the image quality will look even cleaner and sharper, hell we may even get close to Samaritan by the end of the 8th generation.

Hey not a problem, mature discussions are the best so thank you as well :)

I was around during the creation of this site when the PS3 and 360 launched and fanboys ran rampant, I played my part back in day as we all do at one point as a gamer, it's funny how people mature over a console generation. We become the peeps on the forums which try having civil discussions while our younger selves do as we did back in the day...ahh this is the great circle of gaming and console launches, don't ya just love it?  XD

Though I must say, the technical discussions are not as fierce as they once were when the PS3 and 360 launched, I still remember forums going nuts with CELL and the 360 having the first GPU with UNIFIED SHADERS, fun times they were lol

 

720p versus 1080p depends a lot on how close you are to your screen as well, which is why PC gamers are so keen on high resolution, cos they sit with their noses up against the screen... XD. Console gamers often sit a lot further back, and once you get to a certain distance, the human eye can have trouble distinguishing 720p from 1080p.

I would not be surprised if we get something on par with Samaritan by the end of PS4's lifespan, given the improvement typically seen over a console's lifespan.

Man, I remember the 7th gen hype back in 2006, about the Cell making PS3 a supercomputer that could bend time and space and all that, fun times. I was such a fanboy back then too, I almost cringe to read some of the stuff I wrote... XD



curl-6 on 26 May 2013
F0X said:

Nano Assault Neo

The best part is what you can't see in screens; that the game, like all Shin'en's games as far as I'm aware, (certainly all their console games) runs at 60fps. I like that they prioritize this in their games, just like Nintendo. It adds to the play experience more than shaders and such. Not that they skimp on graphical flourishes:




PullusPardus on 26 May 2013

"to be honest I think we’ve reached a point where we don’t need so much more hardware power – we need better games."

I ALWAYS said that, I rather play Persona 4 on my Vita than Crysis 3 on my PC (Maxed out) , P4 is a freaking great game, Crysis 3 is a glorified tech demo,

this is also where my argument about PC gaming comes out, I rather have games that have better performance (run better) than games that look better, so all the talk about console games that look "Amazing" (like Last Of Us) really irritate me , they should run better not look better, and play better, games like Uncharted sacrifice way too much gameplay elements to look better. (make everything linear, make smaller levels, very scripted, focus on graphics rather than gameplay)



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curl-6 on 26 May 2013
Kaizar said:

Well, the PICA200 has better shader abilities & textures then Wii. And it has 160 Mtriangles with Resident Evil Revelations pushing 130 million polygons. The Wii can push 30 million or so polygons out of unknown. And the 3DS also has around 50 to around 60 shader cores.

Plus it has a 4-core target up to 1 GHz CPU that is NOT a AMD CPU.

So it's not hard to believe that it can do that on pre-install firmware. Plus you can't underclock the CPU any lower then 350 MHz a core, but it seems to be no lower then 400 MHz a core on pre-install firmware.

I know the PICA200 drains 0.5 Hz when clocked at 400 MHz max clock frequency.

So don't be surprise about Jett Rocket 2 doing 60 fps on pre-install firmware, plus you got to remember that they upscale the images to 1080p for screenshot viewing on web browsers, but it will still look better in 240p 3D on 3DS, then the upscale 1080p 2D screenshots for other devices viewing. Only Sonic Racing Transformed screws you on frame rate on pre-install firmware. I had to break Sonic Racing Transfored in, to get it at 48 fps most the time on firmware 4.5.0-10, and that was after like the first 4 to 5 hours playing in world tour unlocking stuff to improve the frame rate of the game, but it now plays at 60 fps and practically never has any lag with firmware 5.1.0-11.

I wonder how poor Sonic Racing Transformed does on pre-install firmware.

There's no way Revelations on 3DS  is pushing 130m polygons. Where did you get that number?



jake_the_fake1 on 26 May 2013
Kaizar said:
jake_the_fake1 said:
curl-6 said:
jake_the_fake1 said:
curl-6 said:
jake_the_fake1 said:

My original statement stands, the developer hit a hard limit and compromised which is fine, however, After talking about harnessing the power of the WiiU they can hardly admit that they hit a limit so they just prettied up the words, turning a possible negative into a positive, typical PR spin. Honestly if the WiiU had the power to harness as he put it then 1080p with the same effects could have been possible, but that's not the case.

 

No matter what system you develop for, 1080p will always use more than double as many pixels as 720p, which means less remaining fillrate for other things. Even on PS4, you could push more post-effects on Killzone Shadowfall if it was 720p instead of 1080p.

In fact, speaking of Killzone, Guerrilla made it run at 30fps instead of 60fps for the same reason as Shin'en chose 720p; not that PS4 (Wii U) can't handle great graphics at 60fps, (1080p) but that they would rather prioritise detail over a higher framerate (higher resolution) many wouldn't notice.

You are correct that 1080p is resource intensive, so is 60fps, in fact even running 720p @ 60fps is resource intensive, surely they could of dropped it to 480p to put in more effects, but seriously, the thing in question here is the power of the WiiU, is the WiiU or is the WiiU not more powerful than the PS3/360?

1) If we assume that the WiiU is on par for the most part with the PS3/360, then Nano assault Neo as is, is perfectly fine running in 720p @60fps.

2) If we are to assume that the WiiU is, as some say x1.5 - x3 more powerful than then PS3/360, then a 1080p @ 60fps Nano assault neo game should exist seeing as a 2008 game of the same genre called Stardust ran in 1080p 60fps, surely a power console of 2012 could run the same with even more detail without breaking a sweat. Especially when the developer is claiming to harness the power of the WiiU.

Case in point, option 1 is the reality we live in, 2 is but a dream.

 

In regards to Killzone it is a franchise which histoyricaly runs at 30fps, killzone: Shadow fall is no different in this respect, it now runs in 1080p. Guerilla was not targeting 60fps, they were targeting 1080p with cinematic visuals. The difference here is that Nano assault neo actually ran in 1080p, before being downgraded to 720p, why would they develop the game to run at 1080p in the first place? if you read between the lines you will find that they wanted to target 1080p but couldn't achieve the look and feel of the game so they compromised on resolution to free up the resources as they were not going to compromise on frame rate. think about the excuse for one moment in what they said " We had the game also running in 1080p but the difference was not distinguishable when playing." why make such a statement if the game was designed to run in 720p?

Look at call of duty, they always target 60fps and always compromise resolution. Dropping resolution always reduces the image quality. Just ask any PC gamer who always wants to run the games at higher rez to make them look better. Just think about PS2/Wii games running on PC emulators at crazy high resolutions and see how good they look, allot of art is lost with low resolution, so for the developer to make such an excuse makes no sense unless the real reason is like I said, they talked big about harnessing the power of the WiiU, hit a limit, they compromised, and now had to do the PR dance to still hit their original claim of "Harnessing the power of the WiiU", thus making option 1 the reality above which answers the power question.

It is all my opinion so take it as you will :)

Well, at a glance, (I have not played it) Super Stardust HD doesn't seem to do as much with shaders and fillrate-related effects as Nano Assault Neo does, so it looks like another case of priority; SSHD pushed for 1080p above all, (PS3 devs were still chasing the 1080p dream back then, Wipeout HD another example) while NAN went for the best overall look, which Shin'en found was better served by using their fillrate on extra post effects than extra pixels.

Also, the "harnessing the Wii U's power" tagline was not Shin'en's words, the website chose that as an attention-grabbing headline. ;)

The reason Killzone historically runs at 30fps because the series has always sacrificed framerate for detail. It's still a compromise. Every system has is resource cap and there will always be compromises because devs naturally want to push things as far as they can. Many of the best looking PS3/360 games run at sub-HD resolution for the same reason Nano Assault runs at 720p; devs decide it looks better at lower res with more effects versus higher res with less effects.

There's much more to graphics than just resolution. Being in 720p doesn't inherently make a game technically unimpressive, for example, the Samaritan demo at 720p would still be nothing to scoff at, and Angry Birds at 1080p would be nothing to wow at.

Likewise, this is my opinion, to take for what you will. Thanks for keeping this an intelligent and mature discussion, those are hard to come by on the internet. :)

True that, alas 720p content loses a little of it's flare when on a 1080p TV, TV's have such crap scalars, this is why I'm happy with the PS4 doing 1080p. It also means less jaggies even without AA, with AA the image quality will look even cleaner and sharper, hell we may even get close to Samaritan by the end of the 8th generation.

Hey not a problem, mature discussions are the best so thank you as well :)

I was around during the creation of this site when the PS3 and 360 launched and fanboys ran rampant, I played my part back in day as we all do at one point as a gamer, it's funny how people mature over a console generation. We become the peeps on the forums which try having civil discussions while our younger selves do as we did back in the day...ahh this is the great circle of gaming and console launches, don't ya just love it?  XD

Though I must say, the technical discussions are not as fierce as they once were when the PS3 and 360 launched, I still remember forums going nuts with CELL and the 360 having the first GPU with UNIFIED SHADERS, fun times they were lol

 


Toshiba glasses-free 3D 4K HD TV has a great scaler for the lower resolutions.


Yeah some TV's have decen't scalars, but the best scalars are actually found on $5-10k AV receivers. It's actually cheaper and better if the content matches the display as close as 1:1.



ghost_of_fazz on 27 May 2013
F0X said:
TheJimbo1234 said:

Not just power, but gpu design eg. dx 9, dx 11 etc. All that combined would tell you were the consoles sit at in terms of correct technological generations.


Are you saying that Microsoft decides what is considered "next-gen"?


I thought it was Sony who decided when a generation started, hehehe... Like when the PS2 lacked many of the features the GC and Xbox had, Sony decided to start not only 6th generation with the PS2, but 7th generation too with the Xbox and GC... /sarcasm

Also, I've been wondering for a while... What's a terraflop?



MDMAlliance on 27 May 2013
TheJimbo1234 said:
Kyuu said:
The word Generation describes an era, not technology.

"and to be honest I think we’ve reached a point where we don’t need so much more hardware power – we need better games"

He's making a very good point. I don't think I'll ever see my X360 or PS3 as awfully weak consoles. But still, a more powerful system will expand the range of what developers can do.


Wrong - that is only (for some reason) consoles. Take tanks, jets, guns, cars etc. A generation is only met when certain requirments which surpass the previous ones are met, NOT the construction date.


I think you're just coming up with a definition yourself.  People only started THINKING this, as it is EXPECTED.  However, it isn't what DEFINES it.  Generation is, and always will be, about time/order.



curl-6 on 27 May 2013
ghost_of_fazz said:
F0X said:
TheJimbo1234 said:

Not just power, but gpu design eg. dx 9, dx 11 etc. All that combined would tell you were the consoles sit at in terms of correct technological generations.


Are you saying that Microsoft decides what is considered "next-gen"?


I thought it was Sony who decided when a generation started, hehehe... Like when the PS2 lacked many of the features the GC and Xbox had, Sony decided to start not only 6th generation with the PS2, but 7th generation too with the Xbox and GC... /sarcasm

Also, I've been wondering for a while... What's a terraflop?

A "Teraflop" is the ability to do a trillion floating point calculations in a second. If a system can do 1.8 TFLOPS, it does 1.8 trillion.