Yeah, the Switch can only dream of getting titles as great as Xenoblade Chronicles X, Mass Effect 3, or Deus Ex.
On Wii U publishers could release 25 GB games early on without extra costs!
For Switch the maximum was 16GB. In fact we're still waiting for the first proper 32GB release.
And companies still go for the 4GB or 8GB cartridges because they're cheaper than the 16GB cartridges, so even games like Dark Souls Remastered are more downgraded than they needed to be. On Wii U no compromises had to be made.
Wii U games like Assassin's Creed III (17GB) were downgraded on Switch to fit the 16 GB cartridge, and they even have the guts to label the mess 'remastered'. Same for other Ubisoft games such as Rayman - Definitive Edition. The Wii U version was 6.7GB, the Switch version was heavily compressed down to 2.9 GB to fit a 4GB cart.
Xenoblade Chronicles X (25GB) wasn't possible on Switch for the longest time, we got a technically inferior sequel instead. And Monolith still says that it would be too expensive to port Xeno X. They don't want a downgraded low-res-texture 16GB port but they don't seem to have enough money to churn out a 32GB cartridge.
Other games like Batman: Arkham City (19GB), Mass Effect 3, Tekken Tag Tournament 2, and Deus Ex would also need to be downgraded to fit on a 16GB cart. Even Smash 4 Wii U (15,7GB) is too big for a 16GB cartridge and so they got rid of all the videos and extra games and trophys in Smash Ultimate.
The biggest downgrade was Breath of the Wild. That looked a lot better when it was a 25GB Wii U only production. Now it's downgraded to be in line with the muddy 16GB Switch version.
I'm not saying the Switch is bad. The Wii U was just a much better piece of hardware.
Yeah, the Switch can only dream of getting titles as great as Xenoblade Chronicles X, Mass Effect 3, or Deus Ex.
Switch is too busy with a much larger 3rd party base to dream of anything . Also, you really think it won’t get X?
On Wii U publishers could release 25 GB games early on without extra costs!
The cost was lower sales overall since the install base was pretty pathetic.
For Switch the maximum was 16GB. In fact we're still waiting for the first proper 32GB release.
Only a matter of time. Technology in storage is surprisingly fast. But also keep this in mind: Most Nintendo first party games are smaller than 16 GB.
And companies still go for the 4GB or 8GB cartridges because they're cheaper than the 16GB cartridges, so even games like Dark Souls Remastered are more downgraded than they needed to be. On Wii U no compromises had to be made.
Not entirely true. Wii U got Mass Effect 3 while everyone else got the Trilogy. Blame the publishers too. Also, Wii U has far fewer games than Switch, so the comparison is a bit off.
Wii U games like Assassin's Creed III (17GB) were downgraded on Switch to fit the 16 GB cartridge, and they even have the guts to label the mess 'remastered'. Same for other Ubisoft games such as Rayman - Definitive Edition. The Wii U version was 6.7GB, the Switch version was heavily compressed down to 2.9 GB to fit a 4GB cart.
This is also the same Ubisoft that has no problems releasing broken games at launch.
Xenoblade Chronicles X (25GB) wasn't possible on Switch for the longest time, we got a technically inferior sequel instead.
Not true. Switch had 32 GB cards since launch. Only one game that I know of uses it though.
And Monolith still says that it would be too expensive to port Xeno X. They don't want a downgraded low-res-texture 16GB port but they don't seem to have enough money to churn out a 32GB cartridge.
Monolith is owned by Nintendo. They are a first party studio. Nintendo would be in charge of that decision.
Other games like Batman: Arkham City (19GB), Mass Effect 3, Tekken Tag Tournament 2, and Deus Ex would also need to be downgraded to fit on a 16GB cart. Even Smash 4 Wii U (15,7GB) is too big for a 16GB cartridge and so they got rid of all the videos and extra games and trophys in Smash Ultimate.
Smash Ultimate reached 60 GB during development, but they somehow fit it on a 16 GB cart. It also has significantly more content than 4 despite the lack of trophies. I really think Nintendo should share their compression secrets with the other publishers.
The biggest downgrade was Breath of the Wild. That looked a lot better when it was a 25GB Wii U only production. Now it's downgraded to be in line with the muddy 16GB Switch version.
Nintendo is again the masters of compression. I doubt the downgrade made any difference.
I'm not saying the Switch is bad. The Wii U was just a much better piece of hardware.
Actually the Switch is superior due to the higher specs and newer technology. You seem to be solely basing “power” on disc size, which is too narrow. The Switch can potentially have larger game cards up to 64 GB, so even the Wii U could potentially pale in comparison in that regard.
@Zeldafan79 Aw, be still my aching heart. So much unnecessary Dreamcast hate. I'm certainly no Sonic Adventure fan, but I am a proud Dreamcast owner, and it truly is THE system to own, if you're a 90's arcade games lover, because it had some of the best conversions of arcade classics at the time.
'The console wars are like boobs: Sony and Microsoft fight over which ones look the nicest and Nintendo's are the most fun to play with.'
I know Dreamcast seemed cool at first. Heck i almost bought one. It wasn't long though before i realized it would not be a long lifespan. PS2 was just too huge at the time. Now Wii U on the other hand had a far larger library and some of the best first party exclusives and Indie titles ever! Plus it had GBA games on Virtual console and it was the first time i got to play earthbound legit without resorting to Illegal emulation or paying 300 dollars for a cart. No i don't regret owning a Wii U. Anybody who owned one more than a year ought to know what an underrated gem it really was!
"Freedom is the right of all sentient beings" Optimus Prime
SEGA still doesn't realize their sitting on a gold mine of potential Dreamcast ports/remasters. Instead they keep repeating the Genesis over and over again.
Dreamcast didn't fail because it was a bad console, rather because of previous mistakes (32X, Saturn) and Sony popularizing the use of games consoles for stuff other than games (PS2 was a cheap DVD player for a big chunk of its lifespan).
@Grumblevolcano Exactly. Most people just have no idea. The Dreamcast is probably the most underrated and overlooked console of all time. I'm certainly very glad that I didn't overlook it. There's literally tons of great games on there.
'The console wars are like boobs: Sony and Microsoft fight over which ones look the nicest and Nintendo's are the most fun to play with.'
@ThanosReXXX I'd say either Dreamcast or Gamecube. At least with the Wii U the vast majority of its legacy will live on via the Switch, Gamecube's library just like Dreamcast has barely been touched for remasters and remakes so some of the best games in Nintendo's franchises like Fire Emblem Path of Radiance and F-Zero GX will be lost to time.
The Wii U's lineup is vastly overrated. People constantly gush about the slew of generic linear platformers like 3D World, Tropical Freeze, and Woolly World, but those games were all retreads of previous ideas and didn't really bring anything new to the table. Furthermore, 2D platformers tend to be smaller/more limited games so they're really not ideal system sellers that show the power of a certain console. On the flip side, the Wii U sorely lacked bigger adventure games with Mario going all in on linear platformers, Zelda being delayed until the end of its lifespan, and Metroid being absent entirely. Besides BotW, the only games of that nature were what, Lego City Undercover and Xenoblade Chronicles X. Far too little. The Wii U's lineup feels like a bunch of B tier games that's lacking a true A tier game, the games were far too small scale and/or niche.
Again, in this respect the Switch feels like the Wii U done right. They came out of the gate with multiple large scale adventure games in BotW, Mario Odyssey, and Xenoblade Chronicles 2. It still has all of the B tier stuff the Wii U did, but unlike the Wii U it's not relying on those types of games, it's just one part of their lineup.
Wii U still had a heck of alot more variety than dreamcast. Plus it was on the market much longer. Dreamcasts best games are pretty much entirely playable elsewhere these days. All the worthwhile games have since been rereleased on other platforms. People trash Wii U and say disaster this and flop that. Yeah well it's production wasn't brought to a screeching hault not even three years after release either now was it? It hung in there despite 80 % of the population giving up on it. Must've been something keeping it afloat.
I feel like Wii U much like Gamecube and N64 before it got pushed aside way too easily. I remember a neighbor kid i knew in the N64/PS1 days saying playstation was better because the games had those FMV cutscenes and were on a disc instead of cartridges. Oh and the big boy thing too. Can't forget that. Nintendo is a baby console they'd say. I'm a big boy now cause i play on playstaion!
"Freedom is the right of all sentient beings" Optimus Prime
I maintain that the Wii U is a cool idea that was poorly executed. The Game Pad should have been a fully HD tablet and the system should have been able to work with your home router to allow the tablet to work anywhere in your home.
The Wii U also should have had a different name and been marketed as its own device that just happens to be backwards compatible with Wii titles.
If Nintendo had properly marketed the device and push the tech just a little bit further, it could have been very successful. It's clear they learned their lesson though, as the Switch is almost better than the Wii U in every way. The only thing Wii U still has over Switch is Virtual Console and streaming apps.
Nintendo Switch FC: 4867-2891-2493
Switch username: Em
Discord: Heavyarms55#1475
Pokemon Go FC: 3838 2595 7596
PSN: Heavyarms55zx
Didn't those gamepads cost upwards of 300 dollars as is though? Had they made em HD that price would've been even higher and the thing was overpriced anyway. I definitely agree on the name thing though. My goodness what a horrible thing to call a game system! Only Xbox one comes close to the levels of stupidity and confusion.
"Freedom is the right of all sentient beings" Optimus Prime
Wii U still had a heck of alot more variety than dreamcast. Plus it was on the market much longer.
The latter is probably the reason behind the former. The Wii U's first year lineup was dreadful, most of the games people like on the Wii U came in 2014/2015. If the Wii U only lasted as long as the Dreamcast, its lineup would be even worse.
People trash Wii U and say disaster this and flop that. Yeah well it's production wasn't brought to a screeching hault not even three years after release either now was it? It hung in there despite 80 % of the population giving up on it. Must've been something keeping it afloat.
That's like saying Three Mile Island wasn't as much of a disaster as Chernobyl. Just because it's not as disastrous doesn't mean it's not a disaster.
It hung in there despite 80 % of the population giving up on it. Must've been something keeping it afloat.
Yep, hardware sales may have been a flop, but it was very profitable software wise. Here are the top sellers:
Mario Kart 8: 8.42 million units
Super Mario 3D World: 5.80 million units
New Super Mario Bros. U: 5.77 million units
Super Smash Bros. for Wii U: 5.35 million units
Nintendo Land: 5.19 million units
Splatoon: 4.94 million units
Super Mario Maker: 4.00 million units
New Super Luigi U: 3.04 million units
The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD: 2.28 million units
Mario Party 10: 2.19 million units
Now to put that into perspective, BotW was required to sell 2 million units to be profitable. Considering none of those games would have incurred the same level of development costs, then it's easy to see a lot of money was made here.
In fact we're still waiting for the first proper 32GB release.
The only 32GB cart games I am aware of are Dragon Quest Heroes I + II (Japan exclusive), Final Fantasy X/X-II (Asian/Japanese versions only; English support included), and the upcoming The Witcher 3 port.
Wii U games like Assassin's Creed III (17GB) were downgraded on Switch to fit the 16 GB cartridge, and they even have the guts to label the mess 'remastered'.
You have to bear in mind that discs function differently than cartridges (mainly due to their slower read speed), and discs may need to contain duplicates of data throughout in order to make it possible for the drive to be able to quickly obtain the data it needs to render certain assets. I'm no programmer or software engineer, so I'm not sure how it all works, but it is certainly more complicated than the layperson gives discs credit for. Most of the time, I'm sure that a lot of the extraneous data has been excised for the Switch release as they are no longer necessary.
I think another reason why Nintendo opted for proprietary discs for the Wii U (other than cutting on licensing costs), was to engineer a disc with a higher read speed so that games can be read directly from the disc, unlike the PS3/360, which I believe required installations for most games (correct me if I am wrong) while all games that I am aware of for Wii U were playable directly from the disc without any installation whatsoever (apart from the occasional patch).
But the main problem I have with Assassin's Creed 3 on Switch is that they excised the DLC from the cartridge to avoid having to use a 32GB cartridge, and have instead made it an optional "free download" via the eShop. There are no excuses for not including that content on the cartridge. And if they had used a 32GB cart, they could have fit the language packs in there too (as only English audio is included on the cart, if I am not mistaken).
Another problem I have with Ubisoft is their treatment of the Just Dance franchise. 2017 shipped on a 16GB cartridge while subsequent installments (and presumably 2020) shipped on 8GB cartridges, and the visual disparity was immediately striking as the videos were basically rendered at less than half the bitrate and were littered with compression artifacts that were virtually unnoticeable in 2017. It's very poor form of Ubisoft to be DOWNGRADING subsequent installments of a franchise when every IP should strive for improvement, and by now, surely 16GB cartridges would be cheaper now than they were two and a half years ago.
The biggest downgrade was Breath of the Wild. That looked a lot better when it was a 25GB Wii U only production. Now it's downgraded to be in line with the muddy 16GB Switch version.
The Wii U version was 13GB if the information I have found online is correct (in fact, it appeared that the Switch version was only a few hundred MBs higher). Very few Wii U games come even close to filling up the disc, with most first-party titles being only a couple of gigs or so in size.
"Gee, that's really persuasive. Do you have any actual points to make other than to essentially say 'me Tarzan, physical bad, digital good'?"
@Grumblevolcano You put that perfectly is as little words as possible.
As someone who went the Sega route I totally know they are sitting on a serious pile of IP's that they just let "die". I don't think Sega is close to what they once were and really can't resurrect these games like they maybe should....? In the Master System days, they had to rely on their arcade hits and most titles were created in house because Nintendo had that illegal monopoly going where other game companies could only make games for them and no one else. So Sega had to rely on their skills as a game maker in most cases. I think that fire is long gone. It more than likely died with the end of the Genesis era and the rest when Dreamcast died....I wish the "old" Sega was still going at it, but sadly they are not. But if you hang in there, I'm sure we'll see another "yawn", Sonic game.
Most of your arguments shrink my brain. You don't seem to realise that Nintendo has to pay for bigger carts themselves, amongst other things. This is going nowhere.
The only 32GB cart games I am aware of are Dragon Quest Heroes I + II (Japan exclusive), Final Fantasy X/X-II (Asian/Japanese versions only; English support included), and the upcoming The Witcher 3 port.
Yes, I'm aware of them, but we're 2 1/2 years into the Switch now. My argument is about Wii U having 25GB right from the start for every game, for every developer, for every publisher, to no extra cost.
Compared to Wii U, Switch often proved that visual and audio quality were needlessly reduced just to fit a cheaper cartridge. Or, in other cases, you had to download huge chunks of the game. Almost every publisher tries to go as cheap as they can. 32GB cartridges like Witcher III are not a rule, but an exception.
You have to bear in mind that discs function differently than cartridges (mainly due to their slower read speed), and discs may need to contain duplicates of data throughout in order to make it possible for the drive to be able to quickly obtain the data it needs to render certain assets. I'm no programmer or software engineer, so I'm not sure how it all works, but it is certainly more complicated than the layperson gives discs credit for. Most of the time, I'm sure that a lot of the extraneous data has been excised for the Switch release as they are no longer necessary.
For a programmer, copying chunks of data from one part of the medium to another part is a waste of memory. It's not logical to have the same data twice, because a good program direction knows how and when certain assets are needed and are easily accessed. I understand that sometimes games need or want to be repetitive with their assets, that's right. You can still reduce the reappearing assets to a minimum instead of moving over whole databases of objects, because that is the lazy way to get around problems, and it's only acceptable when you have lots of empty space to fill anyway. But only amateurish programmers would do workarounds like that.
I think another reason why Nintendo opted for proprietary discs for the Wii U (other than cutting on licensing costs), was to engineer a disc with a higher read speed so that games can be read directly from the disc, unlike the PS3/360, which I believe required installations for most games (correct me if I am wrong) while all games that I am aware of for Wii U were playable directly from the disc without any installation whatsoever (apart from the occasional patch).
I don't know anything about PS3/Xbox360, but Wii U games were played from disc directly, that's correct, no need to install anything.
But the main problem I have with Assassin's Creed 3 on Switch is that they excised the DLC from the cartridge to avoid having to use a 32GB cartridge, and have instead made it an optional "free download" via the eShop. There are no excuses for not including that content on the cartridge. And if they had used a 32GB cart, they could have fit the language packs in there too (as only English audio is included on the cart, if I am not mistaken).
These trolls!
Skyrim also has those language packs as separate free DLC free. Each language is an extra 3GB (full voiceover).
However, English voiceover, and all the story expansion DLC packs are included on the 16GB Skyrim cartridge, so I'm ok with that.
I fortunately have Assassin's Creed III, Assassin's Creed IV, and Rayman Legens on Wii U so I don't need them on Switch.
Apart from Mario + Rabbids I haven't bought an Ubisoft game for Switch. It is fun but kind of rough around the edges for a Mario game. And if this is Ubisoft's best effort, I can skip the rest.
Another problem I have with Ubisoft is their treatment of the Just Dance franchise. 2017 shipped on a 16GB cartridge while subsequent installments (and presumably 2020) shipped on 8GB cartridges, and the visual disparity was immediately striking as the videos were basically rendered at less than half the bitrate and were littered with compression artifacts that were virtually unnoticeable in 2017. It's very poor form of Ubisoft to be DOWNGRADING subsequent installments of a franchise when every IP should strive for improvement, and by now, surely 16GB cartridges would be cheaper now than they were two and a half years ago.
I noticed them cutting the file size in half as well, but I thought it was because of putting almost all songs online behind the Just Dance Unlimited subscription wall. I didn't know they wanted to streamline the graphics to be on par with the Wii version.
The Wii U version was 13GB if the information I have found online is correct (in fact, it appeared that the Switch version was only a few hundred MBs higher). Very few Wii U games come even close to filling up the disc, with most first-party titles being only a couple of gigs or so in size.
I was not looking at the final 13GB Wii U version which is the downgraded Switch port, I was looking at the 25GB BotW Wii U development version that was shown multiple times during development, before they decided to make it a Wii U / Switch multiplatform game. BotW couldn't live off of the strengths of the Wii U anymore, and was limited by the limits of the Switch.
I'm glad Xenoblade X came out on Wii U before Switch was a thing.
Forums
Topic: The Wii u is absolutely garbage
Posts 61 to 80 of 86
Sorry, this topic has been locked.