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Forums - Nintendo - Mario Kart 8 pushes Wii U to the limit?

curl-6 on 12 May 2014
Putin said:
curl-6 said:

GT5/6 do indeed have some very good looking premium cars, I was simply pointing out that they can also be held up to scrutiny in the graphics department; I don't agree that they slam dunk MK8.

He was pointing out the graphic capabilities, not quality of the content. If you take 12 premium cars, on some great looking track, like london or something, it will be much more challenging graphics-wise. Each premium car in GT6 have same amount of polygons, as all carts in MK8 race(roughly speaking)...

MK is just flashy and colorfull, with good lightning and reflect vfx.

Source?

And GT5 and 6, just by nature of the system they're on, have memory footprints smaller than 500MB. MK8 would have to use less than half Wii U's memory not be more intensive in this regard. Not to mention they'd have to completely neglect the DX10/11 features the Wii U GPU is confirmed to have.

If Nintendo's aim was to make the prettiest kart racer they could, I can't see any reason for them to use less than half the available RAM and none of the GPU's more modern abilities.



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PigPen on 12 May 2014
bonzobanana said:
While the wii u may not be that powerful, you have to factor in the huge jump in performance from wii to wii u. I personally thought Mario Kart wii was very good. I really liked the graphics but that console had a gpu of 12 gflops performance (4 gflops more than gamecube). At the bare minium the wii u gpu is 176 gflops that's 15x as powerful, then you have 32MB of very high speed video memory, over 10x as much. The 32bit cpu is 5-6x as powerful and instead of 24MB of main memory (with a 64MB sound buffer and disc cache) it has 1GB of main memory over 44x as much. Then a optical drive which stores 3x as much as wii. It's a huge upgrade. Yes cpu performance is weak compared to 360 and PS3 and the main memory bandwidth is low at 12.8GB/s and there is no hard drive to assist loading or caching important game files but the overall jump from wii to wii u is huge and Nintendo achieved a lot with the humble wii. Mario kart is not a game that will need high cpu resources and cartoon graphics don't feature sophisticated physics engines but do use a lot of repeated textures which makes it easier. AI is basic for driving games.

I see no reason why this game shouldn't outperform 360 and PS3 there main advantage if cpu resources which aren't needed here. wii u has loads more memory and superior gpu architecture.

I think games like Sonic transformed which perform poorly on wii u is basically because it was a rushed port for the launch of the wii u but also a conversion from the ps3/360 versions which have higher cpu resources and that may have been factored into the code. In the end the programmers had to use a lower resolution on wii u than 360 and PS3 to keep the frame rate up. Nintendo would have written this game to work with lower cpu resources but max out superior graphics hardware and additional memory. It doesn't mean the wii u is more powerful than 360 and PS3 though. They still have more versions of games which are superior on those platforms when you look at eurogamer face offs etc.

Ultimately all I know is Mario Kart 8 looks utterly beautiful and the type of game I bought my wii u for. The 2 month offer of a free game is incredible value too.

Anyway my point is mario kart is exactly the type of game that should perform well on wii u but should not be used to indicate that the wii u is capable for other genres of games. Cartoon graphic games with low cpu requirements are a good fit for wii u. We will still see games like Watchdogs struggle to perform as well as 360 and PS3 I'm sure. The wii u in technical performance terms is still below 360 and PS3 overall for game experiences and graphics going by games released so far and selecting the best titles for each format.


The Wii U is powerful.  



Zekkyou on 12 May 2014
PigPen said:

The Wii U is powerful.  

Not particularly. It's definitely a fair bit more powerful than the PS3/360, but you certainly couldn't call it powerful when comparing it to the PS4/X1.

Heck, i wouldn't even describe the PS4/X1 as powerful when considering what's available on the market. Perhaps excluding the PS4's RAM (dat sweet sweet GDRR5).



PigPen on 12 May 2014
Zekkyou said:
PigPen said:

The Wii U is powerful.  

Not particularly. It's definitely a fair bit more powerful than the PS3/360, but you certainly couldn't call it powerful when comparing it to the PS4/X1.

Heck, i wouldn't even describe the PS4/X1 as powerful when considering what's available on the market. Perhaps excluding the PS4's RAM (dat sweet sweet GDRR5).


Sorry, the PS3 & X360 is not in the Wii U's ballpark.  It's not even close.  Look up "Retro Studios & Shin'en" (developers that actually develope for Nintendo's console) about the Wii U's power.  Look at the Zelda E3 demo.  Hell, look at the Bayonetta 2 trailer.  You're getting information from the wrong people.



g911turbo on 13 May 2014
ps4tw said:
g911turbo said:
globalisateur said:
TheLegendaryWolf said:

Yabuki shared these remarks while speaking with EDGE this month. His full comments can be found below, which came about when asked how he thinks the team pushed the Wii U hardware.

"Our aim was to create a game that used HD graphics and played at a smooth 60fps. We pushed Wii U’s capabilities to their limits to achieve this. [But] I think it still has a lot of potential left, and I suspect there are more ways to make use of its capabilities that we haven’t even imagined."

 

Mario Kart 8  supposedly runs 60 fps at 1080p. Do you think Mario Kart 8 reaches the limits of The U?

Please stop repeating this lie, even "supposedly" tagged. Mario Kart has always been 720p from the first screenshots we had maybe one year ago to the screenshots that are currently uploaded everywhere on Internet now.

Also the game has zero AA, very poor textures, low geometry and is just saved graphically by the usual Nintendo sharp colors & art direction. Technically it's very similar to Little big planet karting on PS3 and very far away from GT5, GT6 on PS3 and Forza 4 on X360, also at 60fps.

The game will probably be great, fun and have great reviews but won't be remembered for its graphics, like all previous Mario Kart.

Wow, congrats on bringing everything off topic into this thread.  Litearlly you were the first post to mention anything about other consoles and their games... especially when the original post was talking about the wii u and what the wii u could do, nothing more.  And he DOES use the word supposedly.  What are you, a ninja blade alt account?

LAME.

He speaks the truth though so man up and deal with it instead of crying into a corner that the WiiU has less juice than machines from the distant past. 

Ah, another ninjablade alt I see... There is a broad line between speaking the truth and going out of your way to troll, but I don't expect you to understand.  Why would I cry when I own more than a Wii U.  I can play every single great game this generation (AND last generation).  Fanboys can't do that.



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curl-6 on 13 May 2014
ps4tw said:

He speaks the truth though so man up and deal with it instead of crying into a corner that the WiiU has less juice than machines from the distant past. 

Nice try. Wii U is confirmed to have a GPU several generations ahead of PS3/360, (with DX10/11 features) as well as twice as much RAM available to games and more thean 3 times as much eDRAM as the 360. We've already seen Wii U games confirmed by their developers to be beyond PS3/360 capabilities.



Zekkyou on 13 May 2014
PigPen said:


Sorry, the PS3 & X360 is not in the Wii U's ballpark.  It's not even close.  Look up "Retro Studios & Shin'en" (developers that actually develope for Nintendo's console) about the Wii U's power.  Look at the Zelda E3 demo.  Hell, look at the Bayonetta 2 trailer.  You're getting information from the wrong people.

"Powerful" is defined as something of great power or strength. "Great" is defined as something considerably above the average.

As a point of reference, the PS4's GPU peak is more than 5 times higher than the WiiU's (1.84tflops/s vs 0.352tflops/s). The capabilities of the PS4 are just above average compared to those of a high end PC, thus it can't be considered powerful since it fails to hit the "considerably above average" level needed to fit the definition.

I'm sure you can understand that if even the PS4 can't be considered powerful, there is no way in hell the WiiU can be :p Nintendo specific developers can dress it up however which way they like, it won't change the WiiU's hardware, nor stop it being outclassed by both its competitors, who are in tern outclassed by what is available on the market.



ICStats on 13 May 2014

We pushed it to the limits, but there is more left! Logic rulez.



My 8th gen collection

d21lewis on 13 May 2014
DevilRising said:
Nintendo said that Mario 64 pushed the N64 hardware to near it's limits too. And it probably did. Yet, look what they and other developers accomplished later on.

There will be far more impressive games (visually and otherwise) on Wii U than MK8, bank on it.


Nah.  I remember they said Wave Race pushed it to like 80% of its limits.  It was in an issue of EGM back in the day.  They were saying that other games would push it further.  Some games did, thanks to some clever tricks (Expansion Pak, better compression techniques) but after the N64 finished and the Gamecube was coming out, there was an interview where some guy (the interviewer, I imagine) said something like "We expected a large leap in performance over Super Mario 64 but that never really happened, did it?"

Of course, I disagree.  A lot of N64 games looked better.  I think Conker alone was amazing, as was the Rogue Squadron/Battle for Naboo titles.  I don't know.  I'm just rambling now.  I forgot the point of this post.



rolltide101x on 13 May 2014
Mystro-Sama said:
No, that will be X.


X does not look very good graphically imo