Let's be honest — the Wii U is going to be left in third place in technical terms when the PS4 and Xbox One release later this year. Nintendo's system simply isn't as powerful as Microsoft and Sony's machines, so it's reasonable to expect something of a graphical disparity between the platforms — just as was the case with the Wii, Xbox 360 and PS3.
However, Shin'en's Manfred Linzner insists that the console is perhaps more capable than people give it credit for, and that it actually offers considerable benefits over the previous generation of hardware. (Warning: The following quote contains more than its fair share of technical mumbo-jumbo.)
The Wii U eDRAM has a similar function as the eDRAM in the XBOX360. You put your GPU buffers there for fast access. On Wii U it is just much more available than on XBOX360, which means you can render faster because all of your buffers can reside in this very fast RAM. On Wii U the eDRAM is available to the GPU and CPU. So you can also use it very efficiently to speed up your application.
The 1GB application RAM is used for all the games resources. Audio, textures, geometry, etc.
Theoretical RAM bandwidth in a system doesn’t tell you too much because GPU caching will hide a lot of this latency. Bandwidth is mostly an issue for the GPU if you make scattered reads around the memory. This is never a good idea for good performance.
I can’t detail the Wii U GPU but remember it’s a GPGPU. So you are lifted from most limits you had on previous consoles. I think that if you have problems making a great looking game on Wii U then it’s not a problem of the hardware.
It's almost certain that we've not seen the best the Wii U is capable of yet — better looking games will appear as developers learn to exploit the hardware in new and exciting ways — but it's clear that some third-party titles on the system aren't pushing it enough. Hopefully as sales pick up towards Christmas we'll see fresh support from publishers and developers, resulting in a stronger indication of the console's graphical prowess. There's also Nintendo, of course — the company is sure to produce more visually stunning Wii U games as the years roll by.
[source gonintendo.com, via hdwarriors.com]
Comments 141
Show me your new Wii U games Shin'en, SHOW ME THEM
If you claim that the WiiU can do more than it's given credit for, I say you have to prove it Shin'en. Words can only take you so far.
They can't make games that don't freeze on the system. The only two titles I've played on Wii U that have not had performance issues have been Mario Bros. U and Nintendo Land. Every third-party title simply hasn't worked. Here's a list:
Assassin’s Creed 3: Froze twice within a couple of hours, other general bugs/clipping issues.
Mass Effect 3: Multiple times the game would fail to load from the initial loading screen; the music would simply loop indefinitely.
Darksiders 2: Froze numerous times, encountered an un-solvable puzzle when I was within 30 minutes of the final boss.
Lego City Undercover: Froze once in 54 hours of gameplay.
Need for Speed Most Wanted U: Froze at least 10 times within 30 hours of gameplay, and once 4 times within 5 minutes.
Ninja Gaiden 3: Twice a boss would fail to disappear when defeated, meaning the cut scene would not trigger, leaving me stuck.
I can't wait for the PS4 to slaughter this system.
@Pachterkid
Over half the things you listed are programming errors (which occurs often when you're inexperienced with new hardware), not a fault in the hardware itself.
Can't wait for their new games on WiiU to arrive. Would personally love an Art of Balance HD, with extra puzzles available via dlc. Roll on Q4.
@Pachterkid Most things you listet do fall into the category of "lazy ports and sloppy programming", so you could blame the dev instead of the hardware.
Look at your own Lego City statement. 1 crash in roughly 60h of gameplay. Thats not an exception, thats a rule. Every game has a hicup eventually and if that margain is so low, consider it a job well done by the devs.
And regarding your PS4 statement, its like comparing apples to pears. The WiiU uses slightly enhanced but well known and prooven tech, while the two upcomming consoles are stepping onto new ground. Please dont tell me that you are expecting flawless games on these system right from the get go ? Sure, games on these systems will look much nicer, but if devs cant adept to the used tech (and they even seem to have problems doing that with the WiiU, a system that isnt that drasticly different from current systems), you have games that are nice to look at but play like table tennis with golf clubs until they figure out what to do with it.
And while thsese systems try to reinvent the wheel, ill enjoy the upcomming Nintendo blockbusters
And talking about letting games look good on the WiiU. I guess if anyone can do that, its Shin´en. And supposedly Monolith, since "X" looks unbelievably good.
Pachter has a kid... we're all doomed
as for nintendo games, we have yet to see a game that is build from the ground up for the wiiU. pikmin 3 was already in developement for wii. and i am sure MK8 and SSB run on modifed last gen engines
I just want more games with vibrant art styles, and in HD. Those are the games which visually impress me the most.
@6ch6ris6
MK8 looks stunning still, and for a game that's apparently hindered by the simultaneous development of a 3DS version Smash Bros.seems to make good use of the WiiU's graphical capabilities.
@Einherjar New ground? They are using x86, the PC standard for years, shouldn't that make it easy to program for, as most third parties already know the hardware very well?
If developers have to take a fair amount of time to fully learn and be able to utilize a new console's power, then I don't want any more consoles to come out, otherwise we'd have to wait at least two years for games on an expensive new system to look and play to their full potential.
Now, I'm no businessman to be able to judge the profit and other financial benefits of new hardware, but I certainly wouldn't mind if the Wii U would be the last stop for Nintendo, meaning that we'd only get new software/content and free updates, seeing as how the graphics (visually speaking) for any standard couldn't get much better anyway. It would be great to at least have the Wii U's lifespan be something like 10 years as opposed to the usual 5-6 year-lifespan of a console generation. Once the developers get used to the tech and what not, which is I assume within 2 years or so, then there would be plenty of life left for the console to gradually get filled with enough content.
I feel as if the Wii had a shortage of content, especially in the later years where they seemed to have mastered the 'art' of developing for it. In my opinion, if the Wii was in HD, it could have lasted longer. Therefore I see the Wii U as the perfect console, one that can last longer than the standard 6 years, since I can't really point out what other additions and improvements could be done to it. To me, it has everything. The GamePad is a HUGE bonus that I haven't expected myself, and makes the interface much more sped up, user-freindly and fun. It's only logical, since the two screens of the DS were a massive hit.
As for the 3DS, I can easily point out what should be done for the generations to come. Even though the 3DS is currently the top selling console, and easily one of my favorite consoles of all time, the next step would obviously be dual analogs. Although not necessarily needed for my standards of handheld gaming, having two slide pads simply means more options, similarily to the Wii U with the GamePad. Another upgrade I could point out for the next gen of Nintendo handhelds is the move to HD. According to my observations, Nintendo is always one step behing with the HD, and it would be logical for the next iteration of the 3DS to be in HD (as well as keep the 3D obvi).
Clearly this should come in 5 years time, as the 3DS is pretty much a beast of its own at the moment. That all being said, the Wii U is, I feel, at the final stop (or at least very near) of traditional home gaming. I couldn't think of any more ways to improve or upgrade the gaming experience, perhaps only with virtual reality somehow
To briefly summarize the main point I wanted to bring across, the Wii U should have a lifespan of at least 10 years imo, since it takes 2-3 years for devs to begin and fully exploit the graphical capabilites, and therefore I don't want to have to keep buying a new console every 5 or so years just as the rock nicely got rolling. So in order to keep the momentum, Wii U ..10 years please
Additions/add-ons are welcome, such as what the MotionPlus for the Wii was.
..oh, one more thing, I haven't played WW HD yet, I heard the framerate can slightly drop at boss battles..hmm :/ anyone else a bit bothered by that??
@Bliquid To be fair the majority of Wii U 3rd party games are ports from inferior hardware.
Plus I read an article where the devs behind Killer Instinct described running the game at 60 frames a second on xbone as "a challenge"..
well, i haven't had a single third party Wii U game crash or freeze on any game yet. but i guese it's because i mostly have the downloadable versions. But yeah, we have yet to see a third party title built from the ground up for Wii U, So hopefully sales will pick up later this year so we can see more games.
on a side note, i will be playing Wonderful 101 this weekend. (hopefully)
@Pachterkid um, didnt the ps4 lagg/froze when they were showcasing ac4?
Dont expect everything to be perfect on the other consoles as well. There will always be freezes, glitches, bugs, lagg etc
It's the Wii all over again: Low budgets for titles that big companies expect won't sell as good as the other versions and we will end up with buggy, ugly, shovelware games faster than Atari back in 1983.
it's not a matter of whether they can make good looking games on the Wii U, the problem is that they don't want to make games only for the Wii U and its too different from PC/XBONE/PS4 so porting is not as cheap as it needs to be to worth third party developers while
@b23cdq If you compare it with PC standarts, nothing is exactly "new ground" here. But a PC is much more flexible in that regard. You technically have infinite possibilitys for workarounds. Switch the hardware around, tinker with driver settings or even tinker with the OS itself. You may have the processing power of a PC with these new systems, but you are completely stuck with the hardware and the OS. Its like building your own gamer PC just using the most powerful devices and ending up with a powerhouse that doesnt suit your needs at all because all the components just dont work well enough with each other. That wont be the case with these consoles, dont get me wrong, but power alone isnt the solution here. Knowing the enviroment on a PC, a flexible system, is something completely different than doing the same thing on fixed hardware. You still have to find new loopholes and workarounds to get your vision running on the hardware youre given and thats the point where the familiarity with this enviroment ends.
Look at chefs for example! The best ones can make you a great dinner in a bone fire.
@cookiex oh yeah sure MK8 looks really great. it looks like what would be a cgi for an old MK game. i didnt say those games look bad. i just think the wiiU can do so much more.
@Pachterkid I can't understand why so many games crash the system, but I have not yet had a problem with Lego city, the others you mentioned, yeah I have had my fair share of crashes. But it should be mentioned that so far (195 hours of "so far") Monster Hunter has never had one hiccup in my machine and neither has wonderful 101, splinter cell, Injustice or pikmin3. I'm hoping the bad crashes are becoming a thing of the past.
Well, we do know this isn't the peak of the Wii U, so I'll be waiting..
You can say the Wii U is the most powerful console on the planet and it wouldn't make a difference, if it's harder to develop for the less time you actually spend developing the game as you get to grips with the hardware. And most of these dev's are not making one version of a game, Sony had the same problem with the PS3. Hence the PS4, and because of the harder hardware development costs went through the roof.
And why do you think Sonys made a Third Party Production Team?
Well, we do know this isn't the peak of the Wii U, so I'll be waiting..
@Pachterkid
cool, I still have yet to see my system freeze since December of 2012. But yeah, PS4 man... it doesn't freeze....Oh wait..... E3. Damn, I guess we will have to deal with the high chance of that system freezing as well.
@Shiryu One of the best looking games on the Wii was F-Zero GX and that was a Gamecube game
My WiiU has frozen twice as far as I can recall. Once when it got stuck between menus, and once with Street U. Never during any game I've played (Pikmin 3, Mario Bros U, Nintendo Land, ZombiU, Wondeful 101, Rayman Legends, Tekken Tag Tournament, Trine 2 and numerous VC titles).
We have enjoied nes games , snes n64 gamecube wii games, and they are still great games. So graphic is only an aspect and the wii u will be more powerful of a wii where there was mario galaxy, zelda, metroid and xenoblade which had great graphic and were great game.
So I know that graphic can also evolve slowly, there's no need to rush, wii was 2 times powerful a gamecube.
But the problem is third party support. If have an hardware with less power means don't have support then this is a problem, also if we know that graphic isn't everything because we were happy also with nes.
I agrre on the fact that many third parties aren't capable to use the wii u properly, see ninja gaiden frame rate problems, d&d stats bug in the title screen, batman frame rate iussues. etc
On the other side nintendo and platinum games worked well, so it is clear that tecmo and other weren't capable to use the hardware that is sufficient to make great games
I also think that in the future graphic will reach a top photorealism so it will be impossible to improve, at that point nintendo and other will have the same capabilities and there will be no more excuses for third parties.
But I think that third parties don't support nintendo for other reasons, infact square and konami didn't work enough on gamecube when the gamecube was more powerfull than ps2.
I think third party want to boicott nintendo while don't need to boicott sony or microsoft because they haven't great first party games like nintendo as concorrent
But I thin that third parties are stupid because nintendo gamers would buy both nintendo and not nintendo games if they could have both.
See for example rayman legends.
At this point I think that we have to support nintendo indipendently from what third parties do.
We have games like mario , zelda , metroid , xenoblade , fire emblem, mario kart, donkey kong, bayonetta 2, the best games, we can survive also without them. Yes it would be a great thing to have support from 3rd parties but if they don't want then it is useless to continue to pray.
I only suggest nintendo to change the controller for the next console because the gamepad has battery low capacity and it is heavy as pad, so if the wii u was been a simply wii 2 with a wii motion plus probably would have cost less and sold better
@Bliquid But yet the Wii U can do all of those things that you listed, very well infact. The problem is that people are looking at the specs (which are still rough estimates for the most part) and then forming an opinion based off numbers with no idea how the RAM, the CPU and GPU actually work together.
In performance terms all the "credible" information that's out there suggests that the Wii U is a very capable console.
@Pachterkid I've got most of those and haven't had any real issues with any of them, maybe some kind of problem with your wiiu? Or were those problems occurring before the update?
It comes down to money. The development costs for third parties are too great to take chances. One false step can be the end of the company which is exactly why GTA 5 came out on last gens consoles. Thing is Xbox and PlayStation are money losing ventures for their companies.......it's only a matter of time before a CEO decides his bonus isn't big enough and cuts ties with the gaming market. So developers better learn to work with all the systems because the chances of there being 3 next gen aren't that good.
@Bliquid how could a day one 3ds purchase have lost you?
I love nano assault. One of the best looking games on the WiiU!
To address the freezing some of you speak of, I've only encountered it on Skylanders giants.
I'm quite interested in the eDRAM.
Nintendo is managing to pull off 1080p at 60fps, which is something the infamous neoGAF articles on the CPU and GPU said wouldn't be probable for "advanced 3D games."
If the frame buffers gain that much speed from being kept in eDRAM interconnected with the CPU and GPU, which are after all on the same die, then maybe Nintendo went and did the smart thing again performance wise.
@Pachterkid
The freezing is very unfortunate. I wonder how much of it has been solved by the "system stability" updates, and how much remains from the fact that those games all are either ports or first gen software in general.
@Pod
He doesn't really have most of those problems or might not even have a Wii U, look at his name.
Hm, Nano assault sure is pretty, but it's not exactly GTA V as far as graphical complexity goes.
@Sceptic I doubt Nano Assault took over 4 years to make..
@Pod There isn't a single Nintendo game out there running at 1080p and 60fps. Heck, not a single one of them actually renders at 1080p - they already said numerous times that they output at 720p. The image is just stretched then to match the set screen resolution. Even the Wii U menu renders in 720p, at least that is what my personal investigation shows, based on pixel size measurement.
As for the console freezes - I had about three in Zombi U, and two in eShop during video playback. The latter was exactly the same as freezes of Nintendo Channel back on Wii, so I'm guessing that someone is making the same mistake over and over again. But honestly - my PS3 froze on me exactly as often, so nothing new for me here...
And I think we just need to wait for what Shin'En has in store - once Jett Rocket 2 is out in glorious 3D and 60fps at the same time (which was once said to be impossible on 3DS), whey can shift resources to the two mysterious Wii U projects. Remember - JR had stuff going on on screen unseen in any other Wii game, so I'm slowly preparing to have my mind blown...
Despite all the "nintendoom" talk and everything i'm still looking forward to what nintendo and third parties (when they eventually jump on ship) will bring to the table. Yea i've only had a freezing problem once with need for speed u but not with any other game. Yea the ps4 and xbox one are graphically superior but if need for speed u is any indication of what the wii u is actually capable of count me excited.
The Wii U is a turd. If it wasnt we wouldnt be having this discussion on a weekly basis, simple as that.
@b23cdq Hardly anybody knows the PC hardware very well at all. The next gen are using AMD's follow on to bobcat in an 8 core version. (6 for games). At the moment there is nothing that works as well as it should on AMD's existing high end 8 core parts. A 4 core Intel hammers it because the game developers don't code for it properly. Commercial developers can and do but game developers never bother and not much will change.
If you get someone properly using something like SSE / Altivec with a good choice of algorithm it destroys everything else.
Nobody used the SPU's properly in the PS3. (Potential to do loads of really great stuff).
@ljb88 I have not have any of these issues either.. my log reads way more than 54 hours of play on LEGO CU... No issues there. Truth be told he's always on this forum hating on Wii U, can't wait for the MS and Sony systems to come out. This way we won't have to hear speculative (possibly even made up) issues about the Wii U, they'll be far too busy playing on their new system! My only issue this far, is that the battery on the gamepad is short lived, so I cannot play longer
@Bliquid I wasn't comparing the Wii U to 7 year old hardware, it's quite interesting that you bring that up as obviously the problem here is that both the last gen systems are holding the Wii U back in performance terms.
Like I said before 3rd party ports to the Wii U are mostly from last gen hardware with different architecture, obviously 3rd parties are not going to go to all that trouble of developing games for the Wii U from the ground up when they can get away with basically what they are doing now..
As a matter of fact the PS4 and Xbone have more similar architecture to the Wii U which will make porting games to the system much easier.
Also the Wii U was built just for gaming, the PS4 and Xbone have a lot more going on than just games, so obviously they are going to need more resources..
No doubt the PS4 and Xbone will be more powerful, there's no doubt about that, but there's nothing to suggest that the Wii U isn't capable of doing some pretty awesome things either.
well its not like shin'en is making such complex graphics with their games either, I remember the last gen companies like epic games show people how to make awesome graphics on 360 and they marked a new standar on how to use the hardware, similar thing happened with rare on the snes with DKC, I mean, I dont want to undervalue the good job this guys are doing with their games, just saying...
To be honest, I haven't heard anyone deny that you can make great looking games on the Wii U. The problem devs have is a combination of it not being easy to port to, and not enough software sales to make it worth the extra money it costs to work on that tougher port. I'm sure if Nintendo give us a proper 3D Mario game it will be a thing of beauty. Zelda will probably look pretty nice too.
@jayclayx 360 used properly should be able be directly ported to the Wii U with very few changes. Nobody uses it properly so they can do quick and dirty ports to the PS3 though. (Means only using 1 core instead of 3). Wii U video hardware is loads more powerful.
(Any game that is not even running at 60fps is not worth bothering with as is a game that they don't put the same amount of quality all the way through. They advertised it as 1080p but it is upscaled from 720p hence looks like dirt on a 1080p TV).
Basically every game is not worth having.
I dunno about anyone else, but I thought the graphics for nano assault neo were fantastic
@kasplat Everything I have played from them has been spot on in what I care about. (They are an indie and the type of indie worth having not the ones who do awful ports from PC or use Unity).
Another one of these samey run of the mill 'grafix rawr powah faq yeah' articles with the same old troll comments from over 5 years ago
Well so much for showing some respect for the dead. We're just gonna jump back into bashing Nintendo because of graphics, eh?
@Bliquid All my points are specifically to do with the hardware, pretty much everything else you point out I agree with except maybe the gamepad and a few Wii U games.
Of course, potential is only potential if nobody takes advantage of the hardware and that goes for all next gen hardware not just the Wii U, but there is a lot of misinformation out there regarding the Wii U in terms of performance.
It's going to be very interesting when the Xbone and PS4 hit, I don't think that some people are going to be as "blown away" as they expect to be. but in saying that I'll certainly be keeping an eye on the PS4..
@peach64 something wrong with you? Normally u are always putting heat in the fire but lately u kinda comfort the wii u.
@topic: shin en does always make my they just gotta love these guys and their love for nintendo and videogames in particular
I bought all Nintendo consoles + gameboy, BGA and virtual boy (none of them broke) Owned all Playstations. PS1 was broken when i bought it new (broken lens), PS2 could not play DVD and music cd's after 6 months, PS3 (fat) would overheat (1time smoke came out of it).
I do suffer freezing from non-Nintendo WiiU titles but this is programming errors! The Nintendo titles do not have this issue!!
I have 29 hard copy games and only the Nintendo IP's keep me interested. The other are just not worth my time.
I used to play alot of fallout 3 on PS3 and it froze like every 45 minutes.
Beside a devoted Nintendo fan I am also a pure gamer and I follow the whole industrie. PS4 is build with off the shelve PC parts. Believe me the first batch of PS4's will have some issue's because Sony had to rush it to compete with Nintendo and microsoft.
@Pachterkid hahaha good luck not finding even more bugs hahahaha. Ban this Guy not for our sake but for his lol.
I love how the sony troll suddenly gets burried by statements of logic and witt
Anyone that's interested in how everything works inside the Wii U should check out this article, a very good read...
@Pachterkid My Nintendo Land froze on me too, but Game and Wario worked fine aside from one glitch in the game itself. I don't think any of your examples have to do with the system. Heck, my PS3 froze a lot even when I wasn't doing anything.
Comparing the performance of the Wii U to the 360 (which came out nearly 8 years ago) and the PS3 (which came out nearly 7 years ago) isn't really helping anything.
@Grubdog As far as I'm aware he worked on Nano Assault EX for the Wii U, which is a great game. Still it would be good to see more. I am under the impression that developers are shunning the Wii U now because it has a limited install base and game firms don't see enough potential return for their investments so they end up coming out with half baked ports and complain when those don't sell. The Wii U has a lot of potential, and unfortunately until Nintendo's first party content comes out (much is available now, but I'm talking Mario 3D World, Mario Kart, Smash, and Zelda) then developers are going to complain about the same things they have been.
@The_Fox I've been thinking that for a while now since I've joined this site. Why are you all comparing the Wii U to the last gen consoles. That doesn't make the Wii U sound to great when you do that. In fact, it basically solidifies what people are already saying about it.
At the same time, the graphical and computing jump from the current gen to next gen isn't a tremendous jump. Still, of course the Wii U is going to be more powerful than the PS3 and 360. That's a given.
Now just because the Wii U isn't as powerful as the next Sony and MS consoles doesn't mean that the games won't look great on the Wii U. Like people have said here, the Wii U is capable. Pikmin, Smash, and MK8 all look great. I love my Wii U (just waiting for the games I want to play on it), and I'm also getting both the PS4 and Xbox One. Each console offers something to gamers and entertainment alike.
Any game can freeze on a console no matter how powerful and new it is. It's the developers....not the console.
Then why not show us a game with this "powerful" hardware,Shin'en? I'll believe it when I see it.
@MeowGravy Sums things up perfectly.
@Freakazoid Peach's comments are always reasonable. Only the biased ever take offence.
@coren Calm down.... Trolls can easily be ignored, but don't be foolish enough to think anybody you disagree with is one.
what's with the flame bait articles? how is this some bold statement? This is an idea as old as gaming. If you spend a lot of time picking through the hardware, of course you'll learn it's in's and out's and eventually make awesome efficient use of it and great games.
This doesn't change the reality that game development is expensive and takes TIME and research already. Then you add all the secrecy and releasing without letting 3rd parties in on it until just before launch and what would you expect?
the NES, superNES, N64 had the benefit of a smaller, somewhat slower market for these games, but it's a different world now. You have other powerful consoles that make it easier to make great games that you can't afford not to include in your plans, and the sticky outlier (WiiU) that is slower, has a screen thing to deal with and a low install base; why would you dump all that time into it with little to gain? Even if this "dedication, efficiency makes a good game" idea is so true?
It's a cute, self righteous statement to make for them since they're the masters of efficiency and great compression but you need to take into account whats at stake for most developers before talking trash.
@Ren This person gets it
@Zael Those same 3rd parties are not capable of doing anything properly. Put all the money into the wrong areas and don't even get the basics right. Go for overworked (80 hours a week) young developers as well. If they really cared about being the best they would be competing with the high frequency trading guys for the best low level coders and paying accordingly they should be able to with the budgets they have they just choose not to for whatever reason.
Why is it that 90% of the flame bait articles are posted by Damien, the editor of this site? I think you guys need to hire a "Nintendolife editor editor"
I hate how these ''TROLLS'' like @Pachterkid make there stupid comments but then don't have anything else to say after.
What a douche!
What also annoys me is he is a Nintendo fan but feels the need to ''TROLL'' still
@Nico07 yup I know, I love Nano Assault Neo. I've spent 30 hours playing it. It's been almost a year now and their new titles should be just around the corner, I'm excited to see them!
Shin'en is an awesome developer. I'd really like to see what they could do with more time and a bigger budget.
As for the PS4 talk, well these people are deluding themselves if they think it isn't going to have just as many issues (if not more) than the Wii U had. Pretty much everything Sony has boasted about won't be available at launch and most of it has a vague 'available sometime in 2014 date'. It'll have the same game droughts as Wii U had too, Sony are going to try and cover them up with indie games but who is really paying $400 to play indie games that could run on any system (some could have almost been on 8bit consoles). So the PS4 will no doubt eventually be a very good system, but it isn't going to be the flawless system with weekly AAA games that some people think it will be.
@CaPPa Wii U owners seem to boast about Indies all the time like they're the best thing since sliced bread, so...
They can't make games that don't freeze on the system. The only two titles I've played on Wii U that have not had performance issues have been Mario Bros. U and Nintendo Land. Every third-party title simply hasn't worked. Here's a list:
Assassin’s Creed 3: hasn't froze on me once.
Mass Effect 3: I like to complain because it's on a Nintendo system that is all..
Darksiders 2: Encountered a hard part and could not get past
Lego City Undercover: Ran fine
Need for Speed Most Wanted U: Didn't do nothing.. but want to bash Nintendo so here..
Ninja Gaiden 3: I got it before it was patched.. so naturally I need to complain because no game in the history of gaming has had any problems and needed patches.on any other systems... and instead of blaming the company that made the game I am going to say Damn you to Nintendo. Because everyone knows no company releases lousy ports.. or games with bugs.. so it has to be Nintendo's fault..
I can't wait for the PS4 to get slaughtered by this system..
Sorry had to fix it.. LOL
Damn, Shin'en has huge balls for saying that.
@Kifa You have it confused in your first line. They render in 720p and output in 1080p. It'll make your whole comment contradictory if you don't fix that.
My suspicion is that the reasoning behind this is that most of the games they've released so far are using old assets which weren't created originally for 1080p for example Pikmin 3 and New Super Mario Bros. That and just jumping into HD probably doesn't give them enough experience yet.
A better time to check again may be when Mario Kart 8 comes out early next year.
While it's true that Nintendo knows its hardware capabilities and architecture best, since they designed it and it's basically two Wiis "glued" together, it's also true that they really don't know how to use their new high-tech efficiently. It's something that will happen through time. Combine this fact with Nintendo's pretty efficient code, and games in a couple of years will be lightning-fast, pretty good looking, and hopefully with lots of content.
The fact that the GPU is general purpose might help do higher order computations while not very heavy graphics are being rendered on screen, like advanced encryption, heavy data compression, or collision detection. I agree that it's up to developers to use "tricks" to speed up their games, instead on just loading up everything in RAM like the "more powerful consoles" do (i know, i know, that is exaggerated). In some cases this means recoding the game completely for adjusting it to the new architecture and its limitations, meaning more resources poured instead of just coding once and releasing on two different platforms.
Question. Why does Linzner say that "Bandwidth is mostly an issue for the GPU if you make scattered reads around the memory"? I knew that read times from memory were equal to a constant, irrespective of which memory direction was read... Why does bandwidth vary? What am i missing there?
@doma oh no that wasnt meant as an offence but i just felt like, hmm... lets call it peach64 was/is a tiger but got tamed lately. I didnt want to say i dislike her ways or something. I was just curios.
To all:
I'm sorry that I'm not going to address every comment I wanted to react to personally, but there's just too much negativity on here right now, not to mention stupidity, so I'll skip all those.
As far as people wanting to see where the heck Shin'en think they are coming from, talking trash about other developers, well, they have a very good right to do so, seeing as they have been long time supporters of Nintendo hardware. Here's a list: http://www.shinen.com/games/ and of course there are some very simple games on there, but Jett Rocket, FAST Racing League and even Fun Fun Minigolf are perfect examples of what they were able to do with the limits of Wiiware and Nano Assault on Wii U does indeed look VERY good. Also, if you still have a GBA lying around anywhere (or a DS that plays GBA carts) you should look for their GBA game series called Iridion. It's GBA games in 3D rendered graphics that really push the system to it's limits and they show what can be done with 'weaker' hardware as long as you completely apply your knowledge to it.
Here's a few videos of the games:
Also, they got their dev kit alongside a lot of other developers so the argument that a lot of time needs to be invested to get games to run the right way on Wii U is mostly wrong, since they all had about the same amouunt of time to make and/or optimize their games.
Also, the bullpoopiedoodledingdongdoggiepoopleloviedoodoo remark (pardon my French) about Wii U only being good compared to 7 or 8 year old hardware is so beaten to death by now, people should really try and learn a new answer to be taken seriously. And as for comparing the system to the two 'oldies' to which some of you seem to be against: we HAVE to, since the other two new consoles aren't there yet so there simply is no way to compare the Wii U to those, so NATURALLY you end up comparing it's output to systems that are already there. And yeah, the Xbox One and PS4 will be quite a bit better in the graphics department AND in bigger levels, better AI, smoother animation and so on but that definitely does NOT make the point about what Wii U will definitely be able to do more valid. And since all are able to perform in HD, the difference (for the umpteenth time, ffs) will NOT be as big as the last generation, when Wii was in a completely different zone with it's SD graphics and a difference in capacity of about 10 to 12 times. (which, by the way is a smaller step than from Wii to Wii U, so yeah, the system is DEFINITELY very capable and for Nintendo it's a HUGE leap forward) The difference now is about 3 to 4 times at the most, which (with the right level of programming and graphical tricks) is ABSOLUTELY possible to bridge. With of course the limits in things happening on screen and so on, but that's a given for even the stupidest of persons...
@Koto thanks for the link, very good and objective article, everybody (especially the people talking out of their back ends without actually having any factual knowledge and the negative people) should give this a read.
@coren you do have a point, but like Doma said you should try and calm down, although I do agree that Pachterkid is a troll.
What it all comes down to, smart people and people open to others' suggestions, is MONEY.
Nintendo has a VERY humble install base, has some rules that not every third party developer wants to bow to and they especially use the install base fact as an excuse to not bring their game to the Wii U. Or they come up with a gimped version and state 'if it sells we will see how we will proceed next with more titles' and if that (naturally) doesn't work because we don't want to buy gimped titles that had almost twice the content on inferior consoles (looking at you, Sniper v2) then said developer can start acting very self righteous and say: 'you see? it doesn't work on Wii U, let's skip the Nintendo platform all together and make bro bang games for real next gen consoles' even though they don't have ANY installed base yet as we speak, and no pre-orders do NOT count, the Wii U had plenty of those as well, so be smart and don't go there...
Like Shin'en said the developers need to optimize their game for the GPGPU oriented hardware and they WILL be able to get much more out of it. All the early ports were CPU based, hence the sloppy operation and freezing/glitching. Firmware updates on Wii U can, for the most part, only fix OS issues or issues on games developed from the ground up on this hardware platform. They can NOT change old CPU based software into GPGPU based software so the real difference, or lack there of will only be shown in later titles and trust me, the graphics won't differ that much, it will be all things I already said: better AI, bigger worlds/more happening on screen and smoother animation or minor cosmetic enhancements. If they could make bro shooters on Wii, they can do the same on Wii U and make them look and play good pretty good as well.
Oh and people that are able to 'measure' pixels on a TV screen, or can 'clearly' see the difference between 720p and 1080p on a normal TV in a normal setting (TV in your room/living room, you sitting or standing at the appropriate distance of about 3m/10 feet) must have bionic eyes, because normal human eyes are far too weak to be able to make anything from all these small details and will therefore NOT be able to see what's what. Especially not if there aren't two images side by side to compare, which would help somewhat, but has already proven to still be difficult, unless you're trained and know what to look for, which of course, most of us are not. Nature has dealt us a real blow there, because human eyes must definitely be in the lower ranks of 'who has the best vision' if we compare them to (other) animals.
@Albertoc that's three Wii's, thank you.
And as for your bandwidth question: did you read the player essence article that Koto linked to? That might give away a bit more. Otherwise try tweeting the guy, he's quite a nice person so he'll probably take the time to answer you.
And at everyone calling a console some form of excrement (or more likely the contents of their own brain or the worth of their comments): well done, now go and eat your cereal and be mad at the world. And for f**** sake, sell the console you're crying about, you're not worth it and in doing so you may be able to let someone that does, enjoy it way more than you'll ever do...
@AlbertoC I meant tweet the Guy @ Shin'en by the way...
@TheRealThanos
Heads up Thanos, I believe you're crediting and thanking the wrong person here. I don't think I've commented here today.
That'd be Cohort, comment 65. And thanks for pointing that they're basically three Wii U connected together TheRealThanos.
@Koto Oops, sorry for the mix up. Of course I meant @Cohort.
@AlbertoC You got me second, but thanks for pointing that out.
@AlbertoC Three Wii U's stuck together? Now there's an interesting thought...
@Ernest_The_Crab I have not got it confused, just made a thought shortcut. Sorry for that.
Assets have nothing to do with framebuffer. Look on the PC - you don't have separate stuff for every resolution possible. You can render everything in any resolution you like without special preparation. Nintendo said, if I'm not mistaken, that they use 720p because it is far easier to attain 60 fps at this resolution. It may be just as you say - that they lack in experience - but certainly has nothing to do with the assets themselves.
And I am pretty sure I've read somewhere that Mario Kart 8 will run at 720p too, but can't find it now...
@Pachterkid The only game that's ever frozen for me was Assassin's Creed III, and even then it got ironed out in an eventual patch, a /common/ practice for games since the PS3/360's libraries came into fruition, especially with companies like Ubisoft and EA. And your evident bias in favor of Sony systems shows that you're most likely exaggerating your experiences in favor of trolling. I own all of those games you mentioned except for Mass Effect 3 and Need for Speed and, as I've said, I've only ever had a freezing issue with AC3 on a couple of occasions which stopped happening after updates.
My opinion, you've either gotten a crop of faulty games, the rare chance of a faulty system, you're being disingenuous for a broader/pro-PS4 agenda, or you're just trolling.
The name Pachterkid doesn't really help your cause either, all things considered. Sorry, the pro-Nintendo avatar ain't fooling anyone.
@PinkSpider : Who said he was a Nintendo fan?
@Grubdog You know that they can make so specific assumptions only if they are working on something?
So, just you wait, they will show something when it's ready enough to be shown.
TheRealThanos: Three Wiis... Today's not our day, is it?
@Pachterkid So the games you buy have bugs, so therefore the console will fail. Seems legit. Oblivion had bugs, did the 360 fail? Games will always have bugs, and having 1 bug in 54 hours for lego city is pretty damn good for a open world game.
@Pachterkid I love my PS3, but it had its share of freezing issues. And my PS3 is a Super Slim model that is not even a year old. I've had games like Playstation All-Stars Battle Royale, Call of Duty: Black Ops II, Fallout: New Vegas, God of War: Accession ,and several others freeze on me and force me to do a hard reset on my system.
If you honestly think the PS4 or the Xbox One are going to be free of crashes, then you are deluding yourself. The combination of the PC based hardware and the fact that games are often put out without proper testing will ensure freezes will happen to all the systems.
This is most likely not even a problem with the hardware itself. The main problem is that developers are pushed to get a game out the door quickly, and they no longer have the time to quality test games that are getting bigger and more complex. Also, since many games are now being developed on several platforms at once, that further splits resources that could have gone into quality control.
Plus, publishers have little reason to care about quality control as long as they get your money. Some may push for a patch, while others just won't care. Not to mention, consumers(myself included) often buy they games and solider through the bugs and crashes because we want to play the latest and hottest titles.
The Wii U, PS4, and Xbox One will keep having issues with games crashing and bugs thanks to a push for faster development cycles and the mindset that they can just patch the game later on to fix any issues. Why do you think we see so many games(and systems) get huge day one patches?
I don't see things changing on any of the next-gen systems, but to call out Nintendo and the Wii U alone is foolish when other platforms have their own problems with this issue.
And as much as a I love my PS3, I would not be waving the flag of quality control when they put out an update that bricked systems. Do you think the PS4 is going to be any better? Its one thing to have a rushed game, but where is the quality control for an update to a system?
All three companies in my opinion have tons of work to do when it comes to system stability.
@Pachterkid I beg to differ those games that you mentioned have never frozen on me and I have had my WiiU since day one.
@MasterGraveHeart
Pachterkid will never stop trolling because a lot of people keep replying to his comments. "Don't feed the troll" is a saying as old as "who cares about the power? Let's care about the games!" , and both seem to be lacking in this comments section.
Regarding Shin'en, they are very talented developers and I wish them the best of successes. That combination of talent and passion is something this industry needs more of. Well, any industry, I guess.
Never doubted that Wii U can push graphics further than ps3. I mean just look at ZombiU. That game looks so realistic. Simply WOW. And that is a launch game. We all know launch games are half as good looking as what systems can do
@AlbertoC Aye, truer words have never been spoken...
@Pachterkid
>implying devs have several years of working with the Wii U
@Rafie On point here, there really is no need for worthless console parading. Just have fun and enjoy one or all of them. Personally, I'm set and very happy on my Wii U purchase. I've been using it regularly and look forward to the games that are coming out and already out.
I have a friend who for some reason kept getting on me for liking the Wii and that the 360 is way better and all that rot. I look at him and bluntly said I really don't give a damn about his opinion. I have a large library I enjoyed it was the first console I played so much that I wore it out and had to get a second. The 360/PS3 had offered me nothing good or innovating to enjoy. To me, graphics mean squat if you do not have a good game to go with it.
In all seriousness, If you like the 360/PS3 and their successor then good, enjoy them, but if you piss and whine over people liking the Wii U or, heaven forbid, not liking the PS4/XBOne then I hate to say, you have an entirely different problem. Most likely people foolishly put their sense of self worth in a piece of equipment, and frankly that's just sad and messed up. No person should derive their value on any of this console nonsense. Play your fav or favs and be happy. Anyone's opinion really should not have the power to steal your fun in gaming. But given the response from some people it seems to be not the case.
@CaPPa Feels the same about the Wii U having nothing but indies and hardly no 3rd Party titles in my opinion and the core gamers still aren't convinced to buy the system.
@Bliquid "Then came the void of games, the price drop, the continuous delays of the games i wanted, the ever lasting lack of an independent account,the region lock, the uncertainty to be able to play interesting games coming from Japan, the archaic OS, the pathetic battery and other minor issues."
Way to list the same problem multiple times to pad out your list. Effective argument that.
"So many series left in a dark they don't deserve; gimme Metroid, Starfox,F-Zero,Earthbound. Stop thrusting Mario down my throat."
A series that had a new game 3 years a go, a series that has sold like balls since the N64 and a series that's come to a natural conclusion. What a totally legit list of series to complain about not getting a continuation to. Only in the world of Nintendo does not getting a release in a couple years make people think a series is dead. -shrug-
"For now, all i see is too many average Mario games, sequels to games i don't give a damn about, remakes, ports and 1 game that COULD be interesting (X)."
Yes the two Mario games for the Wii U are totally overdoing it, and you can totally tell that an unreleased game is "average." As for sequels, you don't care about new Pikmin, Zelda, Bayonetta, Sonic Racing, Assisn's Creed, the Lego Games series, Rayman, Donkey Kong Country, Sonic, COD, Splinter Cell, Mario Kart, Monster Hunter, Oddworld, Pokemon Rumble OR Tekken Tag tournament? Have you ever actually played a video game in your life?
As for no interesting games that aren't sequels or ports, A Hat in Time, Child of Light, CLoudberry Kingdom, Disney Infinity, Injustice, Project Cars, The Wonderful 101, How To survive, and Zombi U (Unless you cound Zombi U as a Sequel to Zombi, but I don't think it's meant to be).
I'm just scratching the surface here. The tired argument that there's nothing to play on the Wii U and nothing exciting coming is, if I may be polite, CRAP.
Seeing how some of these developers are making a game for the PS3/360/PC & WiiU sometimes, on a budget off a publisher and also on a deadline & pressure off the publisher also in some cases. I would like to see some developers put there money where there mouth is & do the same with a AAA title, but running on all platforms top notch like suggested.
Some developers spend 5 years making a game for just two platforms for a reason. And there is also a reason 1st parties dev's make great looking games on just on platform, never mind 3-4 different platforms.
@Pachterkid
"I can't wait for the PS4 to slaughter this system"
What about, um, like, hanging out on PushSquare then?
Hahaha!
@MadAussieBloke (of course)
@Pachterkid
"Darksiders 2: Froze numerous times, encountered an un-solvable puzzle when I was within 30 minutes of the final boss."
There is no un-solvable puzzles...is your fault in no solving them.
I'm waiting for a massive RPG for the Wii U.
Nintendo should buy Shin'en and gives them a good creative director, I think that's their only weak point.
@LDXD that's cool but I haven't had that problem. I have had a problem with Darksiders 2 but that was the only one I had a problem with.
look at Nano Assault Neo. it has some of the best looking graphics on the Wii U - and how big is the file size??? 71MB. that's it. Shin-en KNOWS how to utilize the hardware available to it's full extent.
I just can't wait to see what Shin'en's new engine for Wii U can do. I also like to see how the new CryEngine will run on Wii U.
Words of truth coming from Shinen who have proven themselves thus far with Nano Assault for the Wii U. Extremely Impressive visuals considering that game is an early first attempt of what they were able to achieve with the Wii U's hardware. Imagine what they and other (imaginative) parties will do very soon in the near future.
@Jahir How so? There's nothing wrong with Shin'en, they make great games and have a right to say this because they actually make an effort on Nintendo consoles.
@uhhhhhhhh Precisely. More than likely that experience comes from them being able to squeeze everything out of the extremely ridiculous small size of Wiiware games, so for Shin'en it was probably a blessing, to be able to go from 40MB to 71MB, hence the way better visuals.
@Koto and @Jeremyx7 Agreed on the future prospect, and on the CryEngine as well.
I agree with Shin'en. What is the standard for graphics anyway? PC always beats out consoles every time. I really don't understand why people aren't happy with graphics as they are now & seem to always need more & "better". I can play N64, PS2, SNES etc. games & have just as much fun & enjoyment as playing any latest high-end AAA game, so I don't see why people get obsessed with graphics personally. I understand the need for upgrading of graphics but at the rate technology is currently advancing? Wayyy over the top imo.
@TheRealThanos Wait, I'm just saying they're not the best creative-wise. As WaveBoy says, they make really good looking games and I love that, I also enjoyed playing FAST and Nano Assault EX, but they can be better.
I said "Nintendo should buy Shin'en" because they both can benefit with a deal like that.
And yeah, they have the right to say that, I never said they didn't.
The problem is they can't make great looking games that looks as good as PS4 and the Xbox One. And he only compares it with the current-gen, look how this is not a next gen lol. Somehow I feel ridiculous seeing Nintendo fans saying this is next-gen. 2gb ram compared to 8gb ram for the truly next-gen, that is a lot of miles different. I have a Wii U too but it is certainly not next gen. Just saying.
@Jahir Agreed. These guys not only respect Nintendo, but they have such great knowledge of their hardware. With more resources and manpower, they have the potential in becoming a powerhouse developer in Europe, which Nintendo desperately needs.
It's been proven before, the GBA has a few amazing looking games on it.
@Rei7 You know, if you're going to argue about one console's RAM capacity over another, you probably should make sure you're using the right numbers. Wii U has 2GB, not 1GB, but if you're going by overall usage for games, well, better take away 3-3.5GB from the PS4's RAM and 3GB from the XB1's RAM, because their OSs and "extras" don't magically use no RAM.
@Discostew Developers for PS4 however could get 1 additional GB of RAM from the 3.5 reserved, provided the OS has sufficient amount of it. Same goes to Wii U which uses 5-10% of the RAM for their OS. Do not forget about that. You know in future updates they will optimize it for a less usage of RAM. They always do at least for PS that is not sure about Xbox. The 8GB is a bit of too much anyway but it gives freedom for the developers to develop without that much limitation and the need to optimize and compress.
@Rei7 That is true. Currently the Wii U allocates half of its RAM for OS operations and its side-apps, just like the PS4 and XB1 will allocate a certain amount for their non-game features. They all will in time be able to reduce that footprint because they first need (or needed) to get them out the door. Heck, 3 years after the PS3 launched, its OS went from 120MB to a 50MB memory footprint. That's over half the OS size, and a 70MB increase of RAM for developers.
Anyways, to be honest, I'm thinking the Wii U's 1GB allocation for non-game use was because Nintendo had intended it for something (possibly the EA Origin theory, but let's not go there) and it never panned out. So, is that full allocation not being used? Have they reduced the memory footprint since they've been patching it? Is that why it's going faster? Have they set more RAM for games since launch?
Sorry, this is kinda off-topic.
@Discostew
Going off rumours not fact thats actually not true either, as dev's can take back an extra 1GB if needed. Then going off another rumour not fact from a developer the PS4 has 6GB for games, meaning the OS has to have 2GB. I'm just doing the smart thing actually waiting for Sony to say how big there OS is.
@Discostew That is true about Wii U. It's very fast after the latest update, and i'm really loving it. It's pretty slow before and everything seems to be fine now. I wish they told us what the number was and hopefully people will be able to utilize the amount of RAM is has. So far I don't see them using it that much and pushing it to the limit, maybe Project X and the new Zelda tech demo but that is pretty much it.
The Wii U just needs better games I guess, with more Nintendo stuff. I bought it solely for Nintendo games and about 3rd party games, not much love from me as I have those on PS3 and PC. But having it isn't bad either considering it will definitely boost sales. So far I find a lot of 3rd parties abandoning it which is a shame. Only Ubisoft seems to be the one that is supporting it until now with so much love. So little love for Wii U, even I who owns it has mix feelings about it.
@Pachterkid Hi, i've played lego city and i've nevere experienced a freeze. Nevere seen a freze with zombi u, pikmin 3, rayman and all other games.
In the other hand i must admit that i've exchanged my console becouse a defective (noisy) fan, and that unit did freeze more than one time.
May your freezes be an hardware freeze?
@pachterkid I hope you take good care of your console eg keep it away from dusty/hot areas, hold the discs properly ie hold by the edges with CLEAN hands and so on? Is your internet fast? Cuz slow broadband also delays load times.
Yes, the U has crashed on me;
So... some of the freezes are kinda my fault but whatever. So what's your deal? Just coming to troll? Bad trolling, dude.
By the by, the PS4 will not slaughter the Wii U. Have fun with your 'flawless' consoles...
@Platypus101 I keep my gamepad plugged in while I'm in the loungeroo, and only rely on the battery when I play off tv in another room. Since I did this, I've never had my gamepad go flat.
@Discostew especially Xbox One with lots of RAM in use by their 3 OSs, the Kinect and their TV and app switching stuff.
Its like having a powerful PC run slower than an older model because the user has 300 programs running in the background - anyone who has a clue about computers would not have them wasting resources.
@MadAdam81 Windows 8 doesn't do that (It is designed so that you are not supposed to bother closing anything at least the Metro stuff).
Plus all the other stuff has 2 cores and a certain amount of ram dedicated to it. The Microsoft parts of it will be fine the only thing is whether they do something to stop the developers having to write for 6 AMD cores. (Hardly anybody can do that right). Might even use a hypervisor for the small overhead.
Problem Microsoft has is their 3rd party developers don't do the job properly ever and no interesting games. (That are not going to get a PC port that will be readily available at 1/12 of the cost or so).
Be interesting if Valve makes a steambox with about twice the specs at £200 in a year or two's time. (Think they will do something to stop Microsoft strong arming the Windows store and destroying their business model). Both the PS4 and Xbone are cheap junk hardware so it should be doable.
@WiiLovePeace
I think a lot of it is because graphics are the easiest and most obvious measure of power. If you compare the NES and SNES or N6$ and GC the latter obviously must be more powerful, right? People like "knowing" theirs is better than yours.
Not only is the race to better graphics futile thanks to the law of deminishing returns, but they don't matter as much to the core experience once you get into the action and everything sorta melts away.
I have a feeling a lot of people will be disappointed with the leap in visuals and the main "innovation" this new generation will bring is better physics, AI, and other things going on on-screen that couldn't be done before due to previous hardware limitations.
@LDXD okay Sonic has never froze on me and neither has AC3. so I don't know what to say about that.
Can we please go three days without an article being posted on here with the Wii U's downfalls that are just bait for comment hordes that just honestly make me hate the Nintendo fanbase more and more day by day
Talk about a misleading title, you totally misquoted what he said!
@Jahir Ah, my bad. Had a long night...
@Pachterkid
a pretendo at its finest
@TheRealThanos No problemo.
@Senario I agree with ya idiotic comments come from people that cannot keep nothing to themselves and needs the attention akin start a bunch of BS for everybody to argue just because he's bored just ignore.
Any modern GPU can be a GPGPU....
With the RAM, CPU, and GPU constraints it'd take masters (like Naughty Dog or for us hopefully Retro Studios) to make something comparable to the other next-gen systems' exclusives like FFXV and such, and even then only after years and at lower resolutions and frame rates. Stop expecting miracles. Wii U is what it is, a good chunk more powerful than PS360, much less powerful than XB1 and especially PS4.
@Pachterkid
"Lego City Undercover: Froze once in 54 hours of gameplay."
Once?! Thats AMAZING for a LEGO game. Those games usually freeze like crazy! Nintendo must have solved that issue for TT. I love their LEGO games, but every single one of them suffers from frequent freezes. (I still need to pick up LEGO City. Thanks for the reminder.)
Yeah, I get it. WiiU is much better than Xbox360 and PS3. But people are comparing them to Xboxone and PS4. Certainly PS4 is better, sexier console than WiiU. Don't know about XBoxOne.
What's with all the WiiU crashes? I was tempted to buy Pokemon special edition, but changed my mind. My 3DS crashed twice, both on Castle Conqueror. I dumped that game and refused to download any sequels. No more crashes. That's the way it should be.
@Grubdog That comment made my day!
@6ch6ris6 MK8 is going to built from the ground up.. in fact every game you play today, has an engine built from a bygone era... Call of Duty still uses a modified Quake 3 engine.
MK8 is built from the ground up for the Wii U, its why its visually are far more stunning on a technical level than anything released for the Sub HD twins... Dynamic Lighting, out in the open, while running at 60fps, split screen WHILE rendering a secondary screen (Gamepad)..... I'm sorry but the Wii U completely and utterly outclasses the sub hd twins.
@element187 Still calling the other 2 sub HD twins I see I read your opinion and I agree about COD being a lazy engine but I just don't understand the rest of your comment because how is MK8 even different besides HD and 60fps and please I don't need a boring lecture about "how PC is the dominant force over Sony/MS or Nintendo is the best when it comes to HD" I hear and read this crap countless times I just wan't a friendly comment of opinion without the console bashing.
@WaveBoy Jett Rocket was made within the constraints of a 40MB Wiiware package, so besides the fact that you do or do not like the game, it's quite an achievement and more so because besides being quite playable it also looked quite a bit better than a lot of full blown Wii titles that had an option to use more than a hundred times more data because of the discs they were on. I think if you look at it from that angle (so besides your own taste, which is made pretty clear) you can appreciate the effort and in the case of this article also the man's comments because he really does have a point.
@BanjoThreeie 'Any modern GPU can be a GPGPU....'
Ehm... that's both a yes and a no, but in this case mostly the latter. I get a sense that most people talking about hardware here are simply looking at it with PC or standalone hardware in mind. Yes, most modern GPU's can be configured as a GPGPU, but this must be done BEFOREHAND, or algorythms must be written in specific software and even then there are limitations because normal GPU's, due to their design, are only effective for problems that can be solved using stream processing and the hardware can only be used in certain ways. Both the Wii U and the PS4 use a heavily modified GPGPU, which is not comparable to 'any GPU' so therefore that comment is invalid.
And your other comment is, sorry to say, complete BS.
The comparisons in strength/capabilities are: Wii U = 10 - 12x Wii, Wii U = 2 - 3x Xbox 360/PS3 and Xbox One/PS4 = 3 - 4x Wii U.
Because of all the next gen consoles being able to easily render in 1080p, there simply isn't going to be such a big difference in the graphics department alone, that will be only in minor details and effects. The bigger difference will be in other areas, such as AI, bigger worlds/more things happening on screen at the same time, more fluid animation and things like that, so if Battlefield will ever be published on Wii U, don't expect 64 players online...
Still, seeing as the other consoles are 'only' around 3 times stronger than the Wii U, it will not be 'much less powerful' because you have to look at the bigger picture, and mainly graphics will only be marginally better.
It is a similar step up as from PS360 to the Wii U, only now ALL consoles will be able to handle true HD and at a more stable fram rate.
The main wonderful tool that will help us discover this fact is the human eye, which is actually totally inadequate to see all these things unless trained to do so, which means that the average Joe living on this planet (or visiting NLife) will definitely NOT be able to identify most of the differences.
That also negates the 'much lower resolutions' comment, because of most people not truely being able to see between 720p or 1080p. And besides that, 720p is hardly a low resolution...
Your mind, heavily influenced by the media will tell you that graphics on the other two systems will be much better, and accordingly or subsequently, your brain will complement that idea by actually letting you see what you think you should be seeing, and that is the so called 'much better graphics'. I've been selling high end graphics workstations to companies for the better part of my 15 year run as an IT sales professional and it is actually one of the tricks I have used. Saying 'See? This system produces a much cleaner/sharper image' or something similar will work miracles in certain situations...
And as far as PS4 vs Xbox One goes, that difference too, will be marginal or even negligible because even though similar in architecture, the Xbox has recently been modified to an extent that the race between the two will be bumper to bumper and it will once again be up to the deals struck. A ploy that helped the previous Xbox beat the supposed superior PS3 last time around and may well happen again, but who cares, this is a Nintendo site...
@Snkfiend I can kind of go along with what you're saying, seeing as I am also getting very tired of all this console bashing but element187 does have a point: several Wii U titles like Pikmin 3 and also the upcoming Mario Kart 8 have dynamic, realtime lighting which is rendered live instead of the 'hard baked' lighting that you see in the games of the current generation. There are some tricks you can do in current hardware to make lighting appear dynamic and/or realtime, but in reality it is not. And of course there is the comment about rendering both on TV (@720p or 1080p) and simultaneously on the GamePad (@480p) with only 1 in 60 frames lag, which is unnoticeable to the human eye. The frame rate/stability is up for debate, but will probably be fixed in later updates and/or games and to my mind is mostly applicable for bad ports or ports of games that are CPU based.
I meant to say the frame rate on the console itself, not in communication with the GamePad, so those two comments have to be read separately.
@TheRealThanos Even though most multiplats looked better on Xbox 360 than PS3, it is not an a foregone conclusion that the Xbox 360 was more powerful than the PS3. Xenos was very slightly more powerful than the RSX but games that used the extremely confusing Cell CPU in the PS3 effectively, such as exclusives built exclusively around the console like The Last Of Us could output graphics that are the best the 360 could ever hope to output at best, and outside of its capabilities at worst.
I doubt the ATI Radeon HD-based GPU in the Wii U has remotely comparable GPGPU performance to the PS4/XB1. The other two are built on a single more expensive chip with a CPU and high-end tablets tablets in mind the AMD "Jaguar." GPGPU is disingenuous, it'd be worrying if a next-gen console didn't offload compatible calculations to their GPU's because all of their CPU's are quite weak.
@BanjoThreeie I never said the Xbox360 was stronger than the PS3. The main reason I brought that up is to show that it certainly doesn't have to be all doom and gloom for the Wii U, because it is indeed a quite capable machine, BESIDES the fact that it's obviously weaker than the other two newcomers.
As for the example: I quite clearly stated that the Xbox 360 came out on top because of them having made better deals. This time around, Sony seems to be in a better place than Microsoft, but we'll see.
Oh, and I wasn't too impressed by The Last of Us. There's quite a few simple textures in there. It's a good game, but should definitely not be heralded as the be all and end all, which so many people seem to think.
As for the point you made about the GPU: you said any GPU, implying that you meant GPU's in general, and that is what I responded to, NOT the capabilities of the GPU in the Wii U or in the other two consoles. Hell, I even mentioned the PS4 as an example of the significant difference between console and PC GPU's.
@WaveBoy I was trying to get you away from opinion, but you jumped right back in unfortunately. Take away the rather negative verdict that you gave all of their games (have you actually played them all? As in also on other systems?) and you'll see that we are actually in agreement, because the only thing relevant in light of this article is that technically impressive things (console-wise) are possible on the Wii U and that is EXACTLY what Manfred Linzner from Shin'en is saying and all the nay sayers are coming up with ridiculous excuses and bogus examples while it's all just a question of them worrying about the Wii U's installed base, and the insufficient amount of cash they will be able to generate from that if they publish their triple A title on it. Funnily enough they are willing to bet on two consoles that aren't even out yet, so there's no user base there at all. Go figure...
If the Wii U will be more successful in the coming year, they'll reconsider, and of that I am about 99.99% sure.
@Kifa
Really, not one yet?
I was pretty sure that Windwaker HD was reported to be 1080p, but then I didn't follow that game close enough to be all sure. And now the reviews are even talking about frame-rate drops, despite Nitnendo's claims that framerate was a priority. Well well.
Shinen just might be the team to impress everyone. All their stuff looks amazing.
@Bliquid Really? you're joking right? slightly better? more like leaves them for dead! Wii U is a tri-core architecture and barely one of those cores have been utilized to this point. don't be fooled by the sloppy vanilla ports you've seen thus far. ps4/xbone are powerful beasts but Wii U can hold it's own no doubt about it.
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