ps4 is 1 gen ahead of ps3... Wii u is several generation ahead of ps3.... Wii u mmore powerful than ps4/xi confirmed?

GPU generations, not console generations.

Doesn't matter if the GPU DirectX level is 2 generations ahead of PS3/360 when the sophistication of the shaders used is barely what PS3/360 games use.

Still...

The game looks fantastic but the Wii U is capable of way more IMO.

The ignorance in this thread is surreal, but unfortunately par the course for this site.

@Faust

Xbox One/PlayStation 4 is one generation ahead compared to Wii U while Wii U is 5 generations ahead.

@Putin

Comparing Mario Kart to Grand Turismo and vice versa is difficult and unfair as there are obvious differences in artstyoe, visual and technical direction while we could try make some comparison, why bother?

Car color/paint in Grand Turismo 5/6 and 3/4 is a single texture that is exactly one pixel so it is not resource intensive at all in terms of memory and need of processing power since the texture is like less than 1KB for sure which is 1/1024 of MB. Its that small, it practicaly equals colored polygons of Virtua Racing for Sega Genesis and was primary reason why 3D games were possible in early 90-is because it was not resource intensive as it would have been with a texture. So the trick that nowadays nearly all racing games use are allowing much higher polygon count than it would have been if it was textured so visually in terms of polygons it might look impressive, but technically it isnt. Its just a cheap trick.

If you want a fair comparison(which you do not) then compare Mario Kart 8 with either Modnation or Little Big Planet Kart and you can see for yourself how those games look pale in comparison to it and they run at half the frame rate that Mario Kart 8 is running on Wii U. Mario Kart 8 demolishes both of those games in every way imaginable in terms of textures, polygon count, draw distance, number of players on screen, effects, etc...

Stop comparing Grant Turismo 5/6 that looks pale in comparison to Mario Kart 8. Just because Artstyle of Grand Turismo is realistic does not mean it is visualy better, Grand Turismo is vastly inferior to Mario Kart 8 technically also. Wii U is 2.3 API generations ahead of PlayStation 3, it does not have severe technical limitations.

@Bonzobanana

Processing power/performance of Wii U's GPU is 352 GFLOPS and not 176 GLOPS, since when an intentional misinformation is something factual? 176 GFLOPS theory came from Beyond 3D which foundation/reason of existence of that theory was based on performance of ports rather than exclusives which is laughable to me as PlayStation 3 had nearly all ports considerably inferior to Xbox 360 in first few years of its life and when 3rd party developers started finally utilizing the system the ports were more and more on par to 360 or even better such as Battlefield 3 and GTA IV being better on PlayStation 3 than Xbox 360.

So you can not judge capability of a console based on ports and Wii U has ports that are superior in comparison to HD Twins, prime example is Need For Speed Most Wanted U which uses better lightning system that is not possible and also uses some high quality PC textures.

Just because developers are unable to properly use system capabilities does not mean it is weak also I think Borderlands 2 could have been in a better shape, but hey its Bethesda.

I suggest you stop spreading misinformation and folks at Beyond 3D admitred that they were wrong(sort of, they dont really say plainly because of embarrasement...).

If you did not knew, Mario Kart GP DX is running on a board with tops considerably PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 hardware and yet MK GP DX only has 4 players versus Mario Kart 8 which has 12 and MK8 looks way better.

@rolltide101x

Only footage we have from Monolith Softs X is from Nintendo Direct's and snapshots taken from it, so there is compression and only very few of those snapshots(frames taken from video) dont suffer as much from cimpression as others.

Compare X with Knight Chronicles 1 and its sequel.

X is an open-world game versus Knight Chronicles 1/2 which has fragmented world or to be more precise levels rather than single large level akin to open-world games(earlist example is Legacy Of Kain Soul Reaper). Draw distance of KC1/2 is puny in comparison to X, same for vegetation, textures, enemies and also X's dolls blow away in detail those "Knights".

@ICStats

Same is valid for Wii U and even more when comes to shaders...

What are you, stupid or something? What about racing cars, with commercial, multilayer banners, multi colored fonts, e t.c. Go somewhere else and say stupid things about 1KB texture...

And for the record, I did not start that comparison, your damage control collegue did.

Of course modnation racing and LBP karting look worse than MK8. It'a given, I think even on PS3 there would be difference, modantion and LBP karting was half-assed games, without big budget or long development time. MK8 is a main nintendo title, like Driveclub for PS4(for example).

And one more thing, making realistic looking game is way harder and power demanding than cartoon looking like MK8, modnation, LBP karting. It's a given too.

User was moderated for this post - Conegamer

You cannot compare the capabilities of one processor (WiiU's GPU) to another processor of a completely different architecture (Xbox 360) with only Gigaflops, there is so much more to graphics processing than floating point math.

For instance the WiiU has 3dc+ texture compression, it can compress more texture-types/maps, with a higher compression ratio, which conserves a massive amount of bandwidth and allows for more detailed assets to be used in the same amount of space.
It's pipelines are also probably more efficient than the Xbox 360 or Playstation 3's and probably uses a VLIW5 design.

It's shader pipelines can handle longer and more complex shaders, where-as on the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 you might have to use various tricks (Which costs performance) to do the same thing.

And that's just for starters.

Essentially, even if the WiiU had the EXACT same amount of "Gigaflops" as the Xbox 360, it's performance will still be vastly superior, it's a far more efficient and flexible design.

I am pretty sure you're talking about a "Texel". - Aka, textured pixel.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texel_(graphics)

It's not a rare technique used in 3D graphics.

What?
You can run the same "Generational" API on the WiiU as you can on a Nintendo 64.
It's a piece of software, a program or "Application Programmable Interface". - A layer of software that sits between the hardware/drivers/game to abstract features to make them easy to program for.

Like hsrob said, GPU generations. For instance, Wii U's GPU has DX10/11 level features while PS3/360 are DX9 level.