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Forums - Gaming - Bethesda: Wii U is "not on our radar". "It's largely a hardware thing."

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justinian on 11 August 2013

Maybe I am barking up the wrong tree but is it not similar to pretty much any graphical intense PC game?

For example my old PC has the minimum recommended specs to run Battlefield 4 - I know the specs are always overhyped to make the game come across as more appealing to graphic whores.

The PC is a Dual-core, 2GB RAM, 256MB Video. Minimum spec.

The recommended spec is Quad core, 8GB RAM, 1GB upper range video card.

My point is that Bethesda doesn't really have a point. This is all to do with qii u current sales and probably also that the wii didn't really sell buckets in the multiplat department. If the wii u was selling well and sold multi-plat games close to the PS3 and x360 sales I am willing to bet hardware would not have been an issue.






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RazorDragon on 11 August 2013
HoloDust said:
zorg1000 said:
HoloDust said:
zorg1000 said:

i know nothing in terms of tech specs and u seem to know quite a bit, could u explain to me the power difference between Wii U, One and PS4?

ive heard some people say in comparison to PC, Wii U-Low setting, One-Medium, PS4-High. ive also seen Wii U=PS2, One=GC, PS4=Xbox. Are either of those close to reality?


Don't want to get (once again) into full tech breakdown (known so far), not sure if it would mean to you much anyway, but, when similar tech that is in those platforms is compared, let's say that if something is running on PS4 @ 30fps,  it would run (on average), with same settings, at some 20fps at XOne, and some 3-5fps at WiiU (jury is still out on that)...so, as a dev, you would need to lower your res/details to get to same 30fps on those platforms - for the sake of comparison, TITAN 3-way SLI would run at 180-200 fps.

So for the most part a game can be ported to Wii U just with minor downgrades depending on how much developers want to put into it?

The amount of things you'd need to downgrade to get to that 30fps from 3-5fps is anything but "minor". Is it possible - it theory, why not, just as it's in theory probably possible to put Halo 4 on original Xbox. Is it feasible or sensible? Not really, specially with this traditional Nintendo user base.

That's why WiiU is really badly designed for console that was supposedly going after better 3rd party support - you either need to have user base that will heavily support 3rd parties on your platform, so that publishers will put extra work to port their titles to your platform no matter the raw power of hardware, or you need to have easy and powerful enough hardware so they can port easily, no matter the user base.

WiiU, sadly, doesn't have either...and I really mean sadly - if they made WiiU=PS2 when comparing with 6th gen in terms of raw power, they would have all they need to fight with the big boys and still be cheaper, if only it wasn't for another attempt in "innovating" with that Gamepad.


Crysis 3, for example, needs a Core i7, a HD 7970 and 8GB RAM to run maxed out, but it's minimum specs are a Athlon II X2 CPU/Pentium Dual Core, HD 6450 and 2GB RAM. That's a far higher power difference than the one between Wii U and PS4/XOne and no geometry is changed between low and high settings. You play the exactly same game on high or low, it's just that lightning, textures, shadow, water quality, resolution, etc., are different, the experience is the same since the overall polygon count is the same, therefore, the game isn't any different from a gameplay perspective. Halo 4 on Xbox simply wouldn't be possible because we're comparing a Geforce 2 GTS to a Radeon X1800. Power difference is to big to simply change the textures and lightning. Not in Wii U's case, though, based on current high-end PC releases.



oniyide on 11 August 2013
think-man said:
oniyide said:
bobgamer said:
oniyide said:
Hynad said:

In this thread, I learned that since a Radeon HD 5770 and a 7990 offer the same DX11 features , they're both in the same performance range. That's really nice to know. Now I can save a lot of money when I finally get my next PC build.

As for Zero999... He reminds me quite a bit of lilbroex. I don't know why...

I thought i was the only one who noticed that, lilbroex was a little worst, but i think when his insane predictions dont come true, he might bounce just like Lilbroex did, people nowadays dont stick around and eat crow.

I sure hope so... Ugh, it doesn't get any worse than this... 

And do you have any links to lilbroex's predictions? Laughs are always welcome :)


it was so long ago i dont remember any of his threads, i think most people dont want to remember, needless to say none of them came true(to be fair most people got it wrong when it came to Wii U including me)


The Last of Us sales page, Scroll down towards the bottom of the comment section.....

oh ok, that makes sense, the sales pages for individual games seem like a place where the mods dont really check and people can show just how ignorant they really are.



oniyide on 11 August 2013
Hynad said:
zorg1000 said:
HoloDust said:
bobgamer said:
Zero999 said:
HoloDust said:

You're just wasting perfectly good bytes on him...he has no comprehension about hardware, and that GFLOPS are not the way to compare GPUs, so he would not understand that 7770 is some 30% faster than 5770 although they are rated about the same when it comes to GFLOPS...just as he does not want to  accept that you can't get his self-proclaimed 500-600 GFLOPS out of such a small silicon based on VLIW5 architecture, 550 MHz clock and 40/45nm fab.

His "estimate" that WiiU's GPU is "equal to or above" 5770 just shows how ignorant on this matter he actually is.

I thought 5770 was in the range of 600 gflops, must have confused it for another 5xxx gpu. still doesnt change the fact that the guy insinuated that I said a 5770 would perform in the same level of a 7990.

And I advise you to stop this persecussion on me. If you continue, it won't take long before you make a mistake.

Seriously? I mean, seriously? That must be the weakest excuse i have ever seen for someone to try and escape a loosing arguement (i can see that you are going to respond bragging about how you are humilliating us). 
HoloDust, i give you my official authorization to keep flooding him with good sense and knowledge of technology :P, it's funny to see him squirm :)

@underlined - Haha, he's starting to get paranoid, it seems - I couldn't care less for his general lack of understanding of all things hardware if he wasn't persistent in proclaiming his misguided beliefs as gospel so often.

I generally ignore him, I tried few times to explain to him what would his claim "WiiU is half XOne, and third PS4" mean in terms of number of SPUs on that clock and architecture, TDP and fab, but he just keep banging his drum on and on. (if only it was true - that was what lot of us were expecting/hoping for after those first rumours about WiiU and 4850 level GPU back in days)

Anyway, that's why I jumped earlier in with my comparison - WiiU is as close to PS4 as PS4 is close to TITAN 3-way SLI...which is, according to some, "negligible".

i know nothing in terms of tech specs and u seem to know quite a bit, could u explain to me the power difference between Wii U, One and PS4?

ive heard some people say in comparison to PC, Wii U-Low setting, One-Medium, PS4-High. ive also seen Wii U=PS2, One=GC, PS4=Xbox. Are either of those close to reality?


The gap is wider than that for the Wii U. PS2 was weaker than the Gamecube, but the difference wasn't nearly as big between them as it is between the Wii U and the XBO.  As for the PC settings analogy, each PC games are different in that regard. But if one game has its low settings as outputting less polygons per frames, less intricate lighting effect, less taxing AA solution (if at all), low setting AO or none at all, etc... Then yes, this analogy would work for the most part. Although the difference in power between PS4 and XBO won't be that noticeable at first.

finally someone explained it in a way that makes sense.



Multimedialover on 11 August 2013

I dont get why many people are surprised by this.

The Wii U is significanttly underpowered compared to PC, Xbox One and PS4. Maybe the game mechanics themmselves not just visuals would not work? After all Elder Scrolls is memory intensive forr example.

Im not surprised at all. Some developers games just wouldnt be the same if downscaled THAT much.



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bobgamer on 11 August 2013
Multimedialover said:
I dont get why many people are surprised by this.

The Wii U is significanttly underpowered compared to PC, Xbox One and PS4. Maybe the game mechanics themmselves not just visuals would not work? After all Elder Scrolls is memory intensive forr example.

Im not surprised at all. Some developers games just wouldnt be the same if downscaled THAT much.

Try telling that to Zero999...

And yes, i don't think many devs are going to want to support a plataform that doesn't reward them so much (3rd parties don't do well on nintendo's hardware normally...) while still having to deliver a gimped experience (which can result in backslash) because of hardware issues... It doesn't seem like a very nice place to be in (i am completely speculating, i - like many of us - don't actually know that much about the industry...  I wish devs could be more transparent on their bussiness)



Not-so-proud owner of every current-gen system. 

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oniyide on 11 August 2013
bobgamer said:
Multimedialover said:
I dont get why many people are surprised by this.

The Wii U is significanttly underpowered compared to PC, Xbox One and PS4. Maybe the game mechanics themmselves not just visuals would not work? After all Elder Scrolls is memory intensive forr example.

Im not surprised at all. Some developers games just wouldnt be the same if downscaled THAT much.

Try telling that to Zero999...

And yes, i don't think many devs are going to want to support a plataform that doesn't reward them so much (3rd parties don't do well on nintendo's hardware normally...) while still having to deliver a gimped experience (which can result in backslash) because of hardware issues... It doesn't seem like a very nice place to be in (i am completely speculating, i - like many of us - don't actually know that much about the industry...  I wish devs could be more transparent on their bussiness)


some people dont understand that its not just abouy graphics, draw distance, AI, whole game mechanics are affected when porting a game to a conosle that it was never meant to be on.



Zero999 on 11 August 2013
oniyide said:
bobgamer said:
Multimedialover said:
I dont get why many people are surprised by this.

The Wii U is significanttly underpowered compared to PC, Xbox One and PS4. Maybe the game mechanics themmselves not just visuals would not work? After all Elder Scrolls is memory intensive forr example.

Im not surprised at all. Some developers games just wouldnt be the same if downscaled THAT much.

Try telling that to Zero999...

And yes, i don't think many devs are going to want to support a plataform that doesn't reward them so much (3rd parties don't do well on nintendo's hardware normally...) while still having to deliver a gimped experience (which can result in backslash) because of hardware issues... It doesn't seem like a very nice place to be in (i am completely speculating, i - like many of us - don't actually know that much about the industry...  I wish devs could be more transparent on their bussiness)


some people dont understand that its not just abouy graphics, draw distance, AI, whole game mechanics are affected when porting a game to a conosle that it was never meant to be on.

quite the contradiction here, isn't it?

And since 3ds can get a decent port of a ps360 game, certainly the wii u can get a great port of ps4/xone since it is much closer to ps4/xone than 3ds to ps360.



oniyide on 11 August 2013
Zero999 said:
oniyide said:
bobgamer said:
Multimedialover said:
I dont get why many people are surprised by this.

The Wii U is significanttly underpowered compared to PC, Xbox One and PS4. Maybe the game mechanics themmselves not just visuals would not work? After all Elder Scrolls is memory intensive forr example.

Im not surprised at all. Some developers games just wouldnt be the same if downscaled THAT much.

Try telling that to Zero999...

And yes, i don't think many devs are going to want to support a plataform that doesn't reward them so much (3rd parties don't do well on nintendo's hardware normally...) while still having to deliver a gimped experience (which can result in backslash) because of hardware issues... It doesn't seem like a very nice place to be in (i am completely speculating, i - like many of us - don't actually know that much about the industry...  I wish devs could be more transparent on their bussiness)


some people dont understand that its not just abouy graphics, draw distance, AI, whole game mechanics are affected when porting a game to a conosle that it was never meant to be on.

quite the contradiction here, isn't it?

And since 3ds can get a decent port of a ps360 game, certainly the wii u can get a great port of ps4/xone since it is much closer to ps4/xone than 3ds to ps360.


sure cause a 2d fighting game is just as taxing on hardware as a HUGE open world WRPG is. Not to mention even in the 3ds case they still had to cut some stuff back( no moving backgrounds) you're still not getting it.



HoloDust on 11 August 2013
RazorDragon said:
HoloDust said:

The amount of things you'd need to downgrade to get to that 30fps from 3-5fps is anything but "minor". Is it possible - it theory, why not, just as it's in theory probably possible to put Halo 4 on original Xbox. Is it feasible or sensible? Not really, specially with this traditional Nintendo user base.

That's why WiiU is really badly designed for console that was supposedly going after better 3rd party support - you either need to have user base that will heavily support 3rd parties on your platform, so that publishers will put extra work to port their titles to your platform no matter the raw power of hardware, or you need to have easy and powerful enough hardware so they can port easily, no matter the user base.

WiiU, sadly, doesn't have either...and I really mean sadly - if they made WiiU=PS2 when comparing with 6th gen in terms of raw power, they would have all they need to fight with the big boys and still be cheaper, if only it wasn't for another attempt in "innovating" with that Gamepad.


Crysis 3, for example, needs a Core i7, a HD 7970 and 8GB RAM to run maxed out, but it's minimum specs are a Athlon II X2 CPU/Pentium Dual Core, HD 6450 and 2GB RAM. That's a far higher power difference than the one between Wii U and PS4/XOne and no geometry is changed between low and high settings. You play the exactly same game on high or low, it's just that lightning, textures, shadow, water quality, resolution, etc., are different, the experience is the same since the overall polygon count is the same, therefore, the game isn't any different from a gameplay perspective. Halo 4 on Xbox simply wouldn't be possible because we're comparing a Geforce 2 GTS to a Radeon X1800. Power difference is to big to simply change the textures and lightning. Not in Wii U's case, though, based on current high-end PC releases.

Difference between 7970 and 6450 is about 16x. X360 to XBox 1 is some 8x (it's not GF2 GTS btw, it's derived from GF3, and compares to GF3 Ti500/GF4 Ti4200, and Xenos has actually more in common with R600 than X1800).

And, at least to my eyes, Cryisis 3 Low on 6450 does not look anything like Crysis 3 Ultra on 7970. Just as Fallout 3 (since we're speaking of Bethesda here) on Ultra looks completely different than Fallout 3 on Low (which is actually much better example than Crysis, so I'd suggest to everyone who owns the game to try it out).

But yes, XOne to WiiU difference is not that big, 4-5x most likely, so considering that's the lowest performing console of two next-gen offerings (power wise), it boils down to what that great DICE interview on EG was all about - it is a tech thing, and it is a user base thing. Move one out of the way, and you'll get support.