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Topic: People are too quick to blame Nintendo for not going X86

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iKhan

I think we can all agree that the Wii U not being X86 had a substantial negative impact on 3rd party support this gen. The other two 8th gen home consoles did go that route, so porting a game over from one to the other became simple. It was more complicated with the Wii U.

But can we really blame Nintendo for that call? They had no way of knowing what SonySoft would do, and considering the approach that consoles have traditionally made, it wasn't really an obvious choice. I think Nintendi just lost the luck of the draw in that area.

Though that does get me thinking how the Wii U would be different if it launched in 2014.

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SCRAPPER392

It really depends. PowerPC is the reason why it's not being supported as well, but that's not a reason why it should lack support, either. If PS4 or Xbox One would have been PowerPC, we would probably see more balance of support between everything, but the hardware each company has released is exactly what they wanted to do. Nintendo wanted PowerPC, Microsoft specializes in x86, because of PC, and Sony wanted x86 tech to compete with Xbox One and get a good jump on graphics.

Ultimately, PowerPC is just as relevant, from a hardware perspective. Wii U is the newest PowerPC machine from a line that goes back to Xbox 360 and PS3, while Xbox One and PS4 get immediate benefits from PC, which is developing all the time. That is why Xbox One and PS4 will have gained immediate support, regardless. The whole audience thing actually comes second to which console is naturally easier to support via hardware.

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Bolt_Strike

I don't speak tech. What's x86?

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ultraraichu

Bolt_Strike wrote:

I don't speak tech. What's x86?

I was going to ask that same question. I'm not too savvy on specs.

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Bolt_Strike

Kodeen wrote:

It's the Intel processor architecture.

Oookay. Why does x86 matter? Why do the third parties want it?

Bolt_Strike

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dumedum

Kodeen wrote:

iKhan wrote:

But can we really blame Nintendo for that call? They had no way of knowing what SonySoft would do, and considering the approach that consoles have traditionally made, it wasn't really an obvious choice. I think Nintendi just lost the luck of the draw in that area.

The reason that the other two consoles ended up with x86 and Nintendo didn't is that the other two companies asked third parties what they wanted out of a console. Nintendo didn't bother.

Or they knew they would bail anyway because they're cowards and liars, and Nintendo needed to stick to its own game plan, because ultimately it knows that its exclusives will sell, while 3rd parties make half assed efforts or one good game and that's it.

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DefHalan

dumedum wrote:

Kodeen wrote:

iKhan wrote:

But can we really blame Nintendo for that call? They had no way of knowing what SonySoft would do, and considering the approach that consoles have traditionally made, it wasn't really an obvious choice. I think Nintendi just lost the luck of the draw in that area.

The reason that the other two consoles ended up with x86 and Nintendo didn't is that the other two companies asked third parties what they wanted out of a console. Nintendo didn't bother.

Or they knew they would bail anyway because they're cowards and liars, and Nintendo needed to stick to its own game plan, because ultimately it knows that its exclusives will sell, while 3rd parties make half assed efforts or one good game and that's it.

Another reason why could be that when Nintendo Spoke to 3rd Parties the 360 and PS3 were very strong in the market and 3rd Parties told them to keep PowerPC to get the same support, then when Microsoft and Sony came around 3rd Parties looked towards PC for the future. We really have no idea.

Edited on by DefHalan

People keep saying the Xbox One doesn't have Backwards Compatibility.
I don't think they know what Backwards Compatibility means...

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DualWielding

Of course Nintendo should be blamed for it, it was not a secret that developers wanted all consoles to be x86 so porting would be cheaper....... Nintendo probably thought keeping backwards compatibility with the Wii (which probably would not have been possible if they jumped to x86) was more important than third party support..... they thought wrong

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MysticX

Bolt_Strike wrote:

Kodeen wrote:

It's the Intel processor architecture.

Oookay. Why does x86 matter? Why do the third parties want it?

x86 is the type of processor architecture that PCs use (From the processor types 8086, 80286, 80386 and 80486, after that came the pentium and the lines between processor versions blurred a bit), and that means that porting to PCs becomes easier too, maybe that was a part of the consideration on the third parties' end...

As for Nintendo misjudging the situation or not: i think Nintendo underestimated the third parties' lust for convenience, they're incredibly port-happy, but costs have to remain low, i think Nintendo didn't expect to get entirely dropped over it by the third parties and got blindsided when that exact thing happened

Edited on by MysticX

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dumedum

DualWielding wrote:

Of course Nintendo should be blamed for it, it was not a secret that developers wanted all consoles to be x86 so porting would be cheaper....... Nintendo probably thought keeping backwards compatibility with the Wii (which probably would not have been possible if they jumped to x86) was more important than third party support..... they thought wrong

I think it's pretty obvious that whatever Nintendo did, third parties would bail anyway. They'll say the demographics are not there, just like they're saying now. Nobody really is saying that the Wii U isn't powerful enough. I think Batman was the only game they said that. Most after all are available on the 360 and PS3 and still didn't come to the Wii U, so it's an irrelevant point.

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CanisWolfred

Bolt_Strike wrote:

Kodeen wrote:

It's the Intel processor architecture.

Oookay. Why does x86 matter? Why do the third parties want it?

It's related to the coding, and it is the reason some ports can be buggy - different architectures can mean that the entire code needs to be rewritten from scratch, which means lots more work on the development end. By having the same architecture, it makes the process of developing games easier. Games always get ported from a PC architecture to a console's, but X86 is already a PC architecture. So not only does it mean porting to other consoles is less costly, it also means development in general can be quicker and more effecient. Nintendo really got screwed by not going with x86, but to be fair, I doubt even Sony and Microsoft even figured they'd both be going with the same architecture - outside of rumors, it seemed more like great minds just happened to think alike.

There are drawbacks, obviously - by having a PC architecture, the PS4 and Xbox One are theoretically more likely to be hackable. I can't say this for sure, but I have a feeling the "always online" stuff Microsoft was going with was more of a pre-emptive measure to try and stop people from turning the Xbox into a Pirate machine...of course, now all they have to do is force regular updates down our throats...

Edited on by CanisWolfred

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dumedum

BinaryFragger wrote:

Bolt_Strike wrote:

Kodeen wrote:

It's the Intel processor architecture.

Oookay. Why does x86 matter? Why do the third parties want it?

Xbox One, PS4 and PC all use x86 which makes porting games to these platforms relatively easy.

And porting to 360 and PS3 is so hard, right? Which is why almost all the "next-gen" games appear on these platforms as well.

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CanisWolfred

@Dumedum It was hard at first. It took 3 years before we started getting decent PS3 ports. Developers just did it because they didn't have a choice, PC was looking like it was getting less profitable and people were saying it was "doomed" to piracy, so they needed console owners as their main market. Meanwhile budgets and demands for greater profits were going up, so they needed to make sure their games could stretch as far as they could. Thus, we got lots of cross-platform ports, even they had to deal with the high learning curve involved with the PS3's "horribly complicated" architecture. They also tried to make a lot of games for the Wii as well, only to find that for most of them, the audience wasn't there, and they had to deal with loads of hurdles on top of just the architecture.

As for why there are PS3 and Xbox 360 ports of next gen games, the market for those are simply huge, and a lot of the early PS4 and Xbone games were initially developed for the PS3 and/or 360, thus why they're still playable. Now that we're reaching the end of the first year for the next gen consoles, we'll start seeing more games developed for the PS4 and Xbone first, and them putting out rushed, B-Grade cash-ins for the 360 and PS3.

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iKhan

Kodeen wrote:

iKhan wrote:

But can we really blame Nintendo for that call? They had no way of knowing what SonySoft would do, and considering the approach that consoles have traditionally made, it wasn't really an obvious choice. I think Nintendi just lost the luck of the draw in that area.

The reason that the other two consoles ended up with x86 and Nintendo didn't is that the other two companies asked third parties what they wanted out of a console. Nintendo didn't bother.

ultraraichu wrote:

Bolt_Strike wrote:

I don't speak tech. What's x86?

I was going to ask that same question. I'm not too savvy on specs.

It's the Intel processor architecture.

It's not Intel exclusive. Both the PS4 and XB1 have AMD processors. Actually, given their higher cost, I doubt consoles will ever use Intel.

But in regards to reaching out to 3rd Parties, if the 2012 press conference is anything to go by, they did reach out to 3rd Parties at some point in development. But reaching out to 3rd Parties =/= conforming to their every demand. Some things that 3rd Parties prefer can be in conflict with the console maker's interests. This has always been the case in regards to ease of programming. Making a harder to program console can extend the life of the console, with more potential unlocked over time. It also creates better quality control, and gives 1st party games a distinct advantage.

So there was really no reason for Nintendo to think both competitors would conform to the degree they did.

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Jazzer94

Been plenty of cross gen games like Destiny that skipped Wii U, it being PowerPC based is not the problem more so the user base don't buy most 3rd party games in a sufficient quantity.

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Peach64

I think it's valid to question why they didn't. There would definitely have been a lot more, higher quality ports of 360 and PS3 games in the first year or two if they had (well, technically ports of the PC versions of those games), and who knows how things would have turned out now. Instead, ports are expensive, which means they have to sell high quantities to make them worth doing. Xbone ended up getting a lot of multi platform titles by default, just because there's so little work involved in porting from PS4 code. Maybe they wouldn't be hitting PS4 numbers, but maybe somewhere between Gamecube and N64 could have been possible, although Nintendo would have had to back that up with some more first party games too, as trying to sell your expensive new console with just games on the much cheaper 360/PS3 wouldn't haven't been smart. Getting all the multi platforms AND a few Nintendo games would have made it appealing though.

If Nintendo had good reasons for building the Wii U the way they did, then fine, but Nintendo have a history of being stubborn for the sake of being stubborn. It's well known that Yamaguchi told them to make the N64 a pain in the butt to develop for, as he figured it would weed out the weak developers. In practice, people just opted to make their games on the far more user friendly PS1 instead. Not because they were bad, or lazy developers, but why make your job so much harder for no reason at all? Yamaguchi figured they'd all still WANT to develop on N64 as Nintendo were so dominant at the time. It's no surprise that people are assuming the same has happened again. We know Sony went around 3rd party developers asking them what they'd like to see in a console, what would make a system that was a dream to develop for, and they did their best to make it happen. I don't think Nintendo did any of that, because maybe once again, they figured they were Nintendo and people would just want to make games for their machine.

Edited on by Peach64

Peach64

unrandomsam

I am interested to see how the new Atom (That is in the Nexus Player) compares to the CPU's in the PS4/Xbone. (Sony could have had something similar to (But say 4 cores and hyperthreading) that and Nvidia if they weren't trying to be too cheap).

As far as I know that Atom fixes everything that was wrong with it up until now.

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dumedum

CanisWolfred wrote:

@Dumedum It was hard at first. It took 3 years before we started getting decent PS3 ports. Developers just did it because they didn't have a choice, PC was looking like it was getting less profitable and people were saying it was "doomed" to piracy, so they needed console owners as their main market. Meanwhile budgets and demands for greater profits were going up, so they needed to make sure their games could stretch as far as they could. Thus, we got lots of cross-platform ports, even they had to deal with the high learning curve involved with the PS3's "horribly complicated" architecture. They also tried to make a lot of games for the Wii as well, only to find that for most of them, the audience wasn't there, and they had to deal with loads of hurdles on top of just the architecture.

As for why there are PS3 and Xbox 360 ports of next gen games, the market for those are simply huge, and a lot of the early PS4 and Xbone games were initially developed for the PS3 and/or 360, thus why they're still playable. Now that we're reaching the end of the first year for the next gen consoles, we'll start seeing more games developed for the PS4 and Xbone first, and them putting out rushed, B-Grade cash-ins for the 360 and PS3.

Agreed, but the bottom line is that the "horribly complicated PS3 architecture" never hurt it one bit. Maybe it got some bad ports etc but it got all the ports, all of them. So like you say, it's the "the audience wasn't there" problem (or rather excuse, because I don't think that argument is true.) Having a different architecture wouldn't have convinced third parties to make more ports. After all, if they wanted to, they could, and Ubisoft was right there with ACIV, Child of Light etc until they decided on policy that they don't sell as well as they wanted, not because the architecture sucked. And another proof is that 3rd parties still support the Wii U for games they want to like Skylanders, Lego, Disney Infinity and Just Dance. If it was hard to port them, they wouldn't bother either.

Jazzer94 wrote:

Been plenty of cross gen games like Destiny that skipped Wii U, it being PowerPC based is not the problem more so the user base don't buy most 3rd party games in a sufficient quantity.

Exactly. The architecture has nothing to do it. It being slightly harder for third parties to develop for is utterly meaningless and the costs are negligible. If they think the game will sell they will port it. They are too lazy in thinking how to draw that audience for Wii U. Obviously that audience can be drawn in. People are buying Bayonetta 2 for example. It just demands some creativity. And laziness and recklessness (no DLC support, modes dropped etc) aren't going to help the sales.

Peach64 wrote:

I don't think Nintendo did any of that, because maybe once again, they figured they were Nintendo and people would just want to make games for their machine.

That doesn't make sense since third parties already bailed generations ago and especially on the Wii. Maybe that "story" could be true on the N64 but not since then. They wanted to draw third developers in for the Wii U and they did at first (huge Batman showcase in E3 etc), but they also knew how unreliable they are ("unprecedented cooperation" etc) and that ultimately it didn't matter. If third parties saw a market (in their minds) they'd develop for it.

Edited on by dumedum

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CanisWolfred

dumedum wrote:

CanisWolfred wrote:

@Dumedum It was hard at first. It took 3 years before we started getting decent PS3 ports. Developers just did it because they didn't have a choice, PC was looking like it was getting less profitable and people were saying it was "doomed" to piracy, so they needed console owners as their main market. Meanwhile budgets and demands for greater profits were going up, so they needed to make sure their games could stretch as far as they could. Thus, we got lots of cross-platform ports, even they had to deal with the high learning curve involved with the PS3's "horribly complicated" architecture. They also tried to make a lot of games for the Wii as well, only to find that for most of them, the audience wasn't there, and they had to deal with loads of hurdles on top of just the architecture.

As for why there are PS3 and Xbox 360 ports of next gen games, the market for those are simply huge, and a lot of the early PS4 and Xbone games were initially developed for the PS3 and/or 360, thus why they're still playable. Now that we're reaching the end of the first year for the next gen consoles, we'll start seeing more games developed for the PS4 and Xbone first, and them putting out rushed, B-Grade cash-ins for the 360 and PS3.

Agreed, but the bottom line is that the "horribly complicated PS3 architecture" never hurt it one bit. Maybe it got some bad ports etc but it got all the ports, all of them. So like you say, it's the "the audience wasn't there" problem (or rather excuse, because I don't think that argument is true.) Having a different architecture wouldn't have convinced third parties to make more ports. After all, if they wanted to, they could, and Ubisoft was right there with ACIV, Child of Light etc until they decided on policy that they don't sell as well as they wanted, not because the architecture sucked. And another proof is that 3rd parties still support the Wii U for games they want to like Skylanders, Lego, Disney Infinity and Just Dance. If it was hard to port them, they wouldn't bother either.

Difficult =/= impossible. It's all about effort vs. return. If you can reduce the effort required, the lower return they're guaranteed to get on the Wii U would be lessened, perhaps to a degree that would make it worth their time.

Also, the PS3 missed plenty of games early on. You have a terrible memory, Dumedum.

Edited on by CanisWolfred

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SCRAPPER392

Backwards compatibility isn't the main reason, though. Nintendo has been using PowerPC since GCN. If anything, Nintendo is using PowerPC, because developers should be knowledgeable about it. Considering 3rd parties know how to use Xbox 360 to its fullest, but take months upon months of a delay to get a port running on Wii U, that should be a pretty clear indicator that Wii U is actually a very different machine. They have no clue how to support Wii U, hardware wise, content wise, and all of it relates to money, along with sales.

Nintendo chose to use PowerPC, but it ultimately doesn't effect the bottom line of what the Wii U can actually do. It's not that hard to realize that developers chose Xbox One and PS4 as priorities, simply because of the fact that PC has the ease of use and resources that are immediately available without as much effort. The last widely available PowerPC machines before Wii U, were Xbox 360 and PS3, so all that development that has happened from PC on a consistent basis, from the past 7-8 years only applies to x86.

@Jazzer94
It does matter, because they still hardly know how to port some games over. Watch Dogs has taken them 5 extra months to get developed for Wii U, and a year for Project Cars once they realized it was taking enough time to develop on x86, as it is. Regardless of the audience, it is still taking them a handful of time to get a game running on Wii U. Even if everyone in the world wanted Watch Dogs on Wii U, they still would have had to delay it, because that's how different the machine is from last gen, and 8th gen.

Qwest

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