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Forums - Nintendo - Iwata: “Wii U Is Not Over Yet”

curl-6 on 29 January 2015
Soundwave said:

It could be reasonably more powerful than a Wii U too, two Apple A8 processors (the ones in the iPhone 6) put into a tiny box would outperform a Wii U I think, three would be a good deal more powerful and this is a 2014 component, Nintendo will likely be able to get something better than that for 2016. 

I dunno, Nintendo also could have made a console much more powerful than Wii U for the same cost, but inexplicably chose to focus on other aspects, like power efficiency. The logical thing to do would be to make the Fusion a noticeable upgrade from Wii U on a horsepower level, but Nintendo rarely do the logical thing anymore.

I have a feeling Fusion will be in the same ballpark as Wii U power wise for the sake of portable parity, putting them not one but two generations behind when PS5 and Xbox Two launch.



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Soundwave on 29 January 2015
curl-6 said:
Soundwave said:

It could be reasonably more powerful than a Wii U too, two Apple A8 processors (the ones in the iPhone 6) put into a tiny box would outperform a Wii U I think, three would be a good deal more powerful and this is a 2014 component, Nintendo will likely be able to get something better than that for 2016. 

I dunno, Nintendo also could have made a console much more powerful than Wii U for the same cost, but inexplicably chose to focus on other aspects, like power efficiency. The logical thing to do would be to make the Fusion a noticeable upgrade from Wii U on a horsepower level, but Nintendo rarely do the logical thing anymore.

I have a feeling Fusion will be in the same ballpark as Wii U power wise for the sake of portable parity, putting them not one but two generations behind when PS5 and Xbox Two launch.

To be honest though if Nintendo games look great on the Wii U as is, then really do they even need a huge upgrade?

With the Wii it was neccessary because the Wii looked like ass on an HDTV set, but when I play Mario Kart 8 or something and then go to the PS4, it's not like I say "OMG, what a huge difference". 

Would I like another Nintendo megaconsole? Sure. But I think they're done with that. Though they could still probably make something that's a healthy upgrade on the Wii U -- 600 GFLOPS (3x the handheld) + 4GB LPDDR4 RAM with Unreal Engine 4 style shader/lighting effects for example would be a fairly nice upgrade on the Wii U and it could be made with the same exact components that are in the handheld (saving Nintendo money and scaling down in cost much more quickly). 

I get the feeling even if you gave Nintendo a PS4 level hardware, they would make more or less the same looking games, just running at 1080p instead of 720p. I don't think Nintendo wants to get into the pissing match of making games that have the budget of a Hollywood movie and could really hurt the company if the game didn't perform well. As for third parties, meh, the whole point of unifying the handheld and home variant is so Nintendo can support the entire platform on their own if need be. If they want to say the system doesn't have enough horsepower, no one's putting a gun to their head to support it. 



curl-6 on 29 January 2015
Soundwave said:
curl-6 said:

I dunno, Nintendo also could have made a console much more powerful than Wii U for the same cost, but inexplicably chose to focus on other aspects, like power efficiency. The logical thing to do would be to make the Fusion a noticeable upgrade from Wii U on a horsepower level, but Nintendo rarely do the logical thing anymore.

I have a feeling Fusion will be in the same ballpark as Wii U power wise for the sake of portable parity, putting them not one but two generations behind when PS5 and Xbox Two launch.

To be honest though if Nintendo games look great on the Wii U as is, then really do they even need a huge upgrade?

With the Wii it was neccessary because the Wii looked like ass on an HDTV set, but when I play Mario Kart 8 or something and then go to the PS4, it's not like I say "OMG, what a huge difference". 

Would I like another Nintendo megaconsole? Sure. But I think they're done with that. Though they could still probably make something that's a healthy upgrade on the Wii U -- 600 GFLOPS (3x the handheld) + 4GB LPDDR4 RAM with Unreal Engine 4 style shader/lighting effects for example would be a fairly nice upgrade on the Wii U and it could be made with the same exact components that are in the handheld (saving Nintendo money and scaling down in cost much more quickly). 

I get the feeling even if you gave Nintendo a PS4 level hardware, they would make more or less the same looking games, just running at 1080p instead of 720p. I don't think Nintendo wants to get into the pissing match of making games that have the budget of a Hollywood movie and could really hurt the company if the game didn't perform well. As for third parties, meh, the whole point of unifying the handheld and home variant is so Nintendo can support the entire platform on their own if need be. If they want to say the system doesn't have enough horsepower, no one's putting a gun to their head to support it. 

Don't get me wrong, I'm more than happy with Wii U graphics, and I concur that there really isn't a huge difference when comparing to PS4.

I'm simply saying that I don't think Fusion will be a substantial upgrade from Wii U graphically. It'll probably be another Gamecube-to-Wii incremental step.



Nem on 29 January 2015
curl-6 said:
Soundwave said:

It could be reasonably more powerful than a Wii U too, two Apple A8 processors (the ones in the iPhone 6) put into a tiny box would outperform a Wii U I think, three would be a good deal more powerful and this is a 2014 component, Nintendo will likely be able to get something better than that for 2016. 

I dunno, Nintendo also could have made a console much more powerful than Wii U for the same cost, but inexplicably chose to focus on other aspects, like power efficiency. The logical thing to do would be to make the Fusion a noticeable upgrade from Wii U on a horsepower level, but Nintendo rarely do the logical thing anymore.

I have a feeling Fusion will be in the same ballpark as Wii U power wise for the sake of portable parity, putting them not one but two generations behind when PS5 and Xbox Two launch.


You talk like new generations still mean a dramatic upgrade in graphical terms. From last gen to this, its already difficult to see the improvement. I expect next gen to be pretty unimpressive.

Aslong as it delivers 60fps on everything i would be happy though.



curl-6 on 29 January 2015
Nem said:
curl-6 said:

I dunno, Nintendo also could have made a console much more powerful than Wii U for the same cost, but inexplicably chose to focus on other aspects, like power efficiency. The logical thing to do would be to make the Fusion a noticeable upgrade from Wii U on a horsepower level, but Nintendo rarely do the logical thing anymore.

I have a feeling Fusion will be in the same ballpark as Wii U power wise for the sake of portable parity, putting them not one but two generations behind when PS5 and Xbox Two launch.


You talk like new generations still mean a dramatic upgrade in graphical terms. From last gen to this, its already difficult to see the improvement. I expect next gen to be pretty unimpressive.

Aslong as it delivers 60fps on everything i would be happy though.

I actually agree with you. I was speaking more as in purely techno-numerical terms, gigaflops and all that crap.



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Alby_da_Wolf on 29 January 2015

double post



Stwike him, Centuwion. Stwike him vewy wuffly! (Pontius Pilate, "Life of Brian")
A fart without stink is like a sky without stars.
TGS, Third Grade Shooter: brand new genre invented by Kevin Butler exclusively for Natal WiiToo Kinect. PEW! PEW-PEW-PEW!   


Alby_da_Wolf on 29 January 2015
Soundwave said:
Alby_da_Wolf said:

[...]

Although MS put a lot of money and resources into it, a 4 year cycle contributed to make the first version of XB360 horribly buggy.
Risking to throw Ninty's reputation for reliability down the sink wouldn't be a good bargain.
Moreover, releasing so early and with the usual Ninty conservative approach to HW power and profitability could result in a half-assed console, but half-assed in HW power would be the smallest problem, the biggest one is the possibility of a half-assed concept, either wrong or not refined enough. With neither noticeable HW power increases nor big and desirable new concepts, features and HW innovations, people and devs would simply say about it "so what?" and the new console would end up catering again for just those 20-30M die-hard first party Ninty fans.

It wouldn't be buggy if it's basically the same chip/architecture as the next Nintendo handheld. 

There won't be another traditional Nintendo console I don't think, I think people aren't getting that but it'll be fairly obvious in about 12-18 months if not sooner. 

They are shifting to a different model per Iwata's comments, more like the iPhone/iPad setup ... Apple doesn't care which of the two you buy, as long as you buy one you have access to the same apps and ecosystem and the performance/experience on both devices is relatively the same. 

This approach will let them sell a way for people to play all the Nintendo games at home on their TV if they want (if they don't then they can buy the handheld) and the device likely will be quite cheap and profitable from day one, unlike the Wii U. 

It could be reasonably more powerful than a Wii U too, two Apple A8 processors (the ones in the iPhone 6) put into a tiny box would outperform a Wii U I think, three would be a good deal more powerful and this is a 2014 component, Nintendo will likely be able to get something better than that for 2016. 

In this scenario though it doesn't really matter if the next 'console' only sells about 20-25 million for Nintendo. It would profitable all the way for one. For second there would also be another 55-70 million portable owners too ... so none of Nintendo's games would be stuck selling to only 20-25 million because every game could sell to both (same way iPhone/iPad apps can be sold to consumers on both devices in most cases). 

This would surely help, but possible mistakes can happen anyway, XB360 too used a very well known and tested architecture, it had a tri-core PowerPC CPU and a mid-range Radeon GPU, but it botched mobo design, materials and cooling.
A phone CPU can be a good start to keep power consumption and heating low, and the portable version will be fine, but the home variant will consume more power, and as surely Ninty didn't desire Wii U half failure, surely that version is in a less advanced state ov development than the portable one, that's the reason why I think rushing it is a risk anyway. Not to mention that Ninty could still manage to make Wii U sell better, and this would make Ninty more relevant on home console at the time of launch.
OTOH, a 2016 launch for the portable version wouldn't be rushed, but a normal, not stretched 5 year cycle. Moreover, with the correct marketing Ninty could already create hype for the home version at portable launch, helping boosting the latter's probably already good sales, people would buy it knowing in advance of the imminent enlargement of the family towards the living room, with total compatibility.

Yep, if all this worked so well for PSV and PSTV, why shouldn't it for Ninty Next?   



Stwike him, Centuwion. Stwike him vewy wuffly! (Pontius Pilate, "Life of Brian")
A fart without stink is like a sky without stars.
TGS, Third Grade Shooter: brand new genre invented by Kevin Butler exclusively for Natal WiiToo Kinect. PEW! PEW-PEW-PEW!   


AZWification on 29 January 2015

I'm glad to hear that, but I'm also more curious to know when the next Ninty console will come out!



                
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Pavolink on 29 January 2015

He promise for 2 years a steady stream of games. So, yeahhhh...



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Multishanks on 29 January 2015
SJReiter said:
Ugh. The fact that he has to reassure people that they won't discontinue their console after only 2 years on the market is pretty pathetic really...I love the Wii U but you cannot overstate how much of a disaster it's been for Nintnedo.


You can.