@Niveleia

Have you or anyone in your group did any prototyping of MS Cloud Compute. If so what are the pros and cons and do you think it will be a viable solution in game development.

I can somewhat answer that one. I'm doing PS4 development right now but I checked out the Wii U a while ago.

Wii U is a lot stronger than most people on forums think, but there's still a big difference between it and the PS4.

Well, if you can answer this one, please go a head and do so =) I know that Wii U is weaker than PS4, but what I'm wondering is what kind of things could we expect to be cut from the PS4 version as it's ported to Wii U?

Probably the game will just be scaled, instead of getting things completely cut. Lowering the resolution would probably be the main one since then other things can be scaled down with it. But again I can only somewhat answer this since my experience with the Wii U is limited.

Also you have the whole issue of "lazy" ports in which the Wii U could handle things, but they simply aren't ported due to the cost.

At least that gives me SOME comfort and hope that if when Wii U picks up it'll get some true nexy gen multi plat games ;)

(HEY! Let me dream, ok?)

Right now, the most we can use it for is manipulated cloud-stored profile data, managing consistent AI for online worlds (updating things an npc says or does on the servers, then everyone playing online being able to access these updates right there and then, this isnt too dissimmilar from mmorpgs where npc interactions are done server side rather than using local client scripts.

We can also use it to compute much bigger things, but it doesnt always work out well as the latency from cloud compute makes a lot of what you send it to compute redundant, for example if you send it the task of calculating something graphical, if the player changes the scene either through distrubtable environments or placement, that data becomes redundant, we have 2gbps fibre optic in the office before anyone chimes in and tells me "you must not have good enough net".

And this is in a development environment, imagine somewhere down the line with 4 or 5 million users connected at once all playing different games and those games sending jobs of various sizes, and much of that data becoming redundant, what you end up with is bogged down servers and a lot of wasted bandwidth, so while cloud CAN do graphics directly, for the most part when MS or devs close to MS say "cloud computing will be used to improve graphics" what they are actually saying is the tasks that have nothing to do with graphics but still eat up cpu cycles without being time critical, can be passed to the cloud to compute, as its not time critical redundancy is reduced and latency a non issue, that reduces load on the console and allows more of its processing power to be used for games.

But we are talking very minor differences in performance here, often less than a single frame per second increase, as Frequency has said at one point, cloud processing does not make up for the availability of resources locally, thus does not bridge the performance gap between consoles.

This has nothing to do with how fast your internet is, or "evolution of the technologies", and before someone points me to the video of nvidia technology streaming low resolution data directly and using that on lightmapping, yes that is indeed possible, but the likelyhood of Microsoft ever setting up the software needed to handle parralel compute is extremely slim, near zero for this generation infact.

If you are not familiar with a programming language of some sort, i would suggest learning unity or unreal engine, beyond that you are in the zone of write your own engine or license someone elses, both routes require extensive programming knowledge to use effectively.

Minimum skills needed to make a game, i am assuming by yourself from your question. basic artistic ability, optionally decent knowledge of a 3d modelling program that can export to DAE, FBX or ASE, basic knowledge of audio editing, basic scripting knowledge, and lots of free time.

Its new hardware, nobody breaks out of the starting gate at full tilt, Battlefield 4 can run on the same hardware high end rigs available at the time Battlefield 3 launched, so you could ask then, "why didnt battlefield 3 look as good as 4?", its less about the hardware and more about the evolution of a games engine and familiarity with a platform.

If Dice came back to Battlefield 4 in a few years time and redid it, it would hit 1080p/60f on both consoles quite easilly, we just dont have the benefit of hardware experience without actually experiencing it.

it handles games designed for PS3/360 quite well, even improving in some areas, but that is primarilly due to the additional ram, it can fit better textures and benefits from a few hardware advancements made since the hd twins were born, porting over a game from PS4/PC/XO would work, but it would be notably cut down compared to the other versions, it would be too costly to craft a specific version for the WiiU for little return, so rather than craft for the hardware the general route will be to cut things out, drop resolutions, simplify meshes, chopping down resolutions, anything they can do to get the same game running roughly the same, I am sure one or two games will end up being ported extremely well to the WiiU, and even throw in decent hardware support, but for the most part you are looking at chopped down versions if they make one at all.

If nintendo launched the WiiU in 2009 it would have done much better, but right now developers generally lump it with the PS3 and 360, platforms we are all progressively moving away from.

OS

I don't believe you ^^

What is your main language you use in your team? C? C++? Do you often use intrinsincs and is it worth to use them or do the compilers (generally) do a good job?

Why on earth would developers use C when C++ is the standard ? (Even for 3D graphics engines.)