Nah, the bear's still sleeping, dreaming about the reveals of F-Zero Wii U and Metroid Prime 4 Wii U
Wii U Speculation Thread of Brains Beware: Wii U Re-Unveiling At E3 2012
- Thread starter bgassassin
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My main doubts about the Wii U is if it the tablet controller is really enough can keep the casual gamers that made the Wii and it's family oriented games a tremendous success. As the Kinect sales showed, casual games don't have exactly a fidelity to a brand like core gamers, there needs to be an interesting feature so it can keep them attached to the Wii brand.
So there it comes the controller with a touch screen to be "next Wiimote". The Wiimote motion sensory is what catched the crowd and mainstream's media attention, because up until then, there were few products that made use of motion sensor. But the touch screen is not a new feature, it's already common in many products including Tablets and smartphones. It opens a lot of gaming design possibilities, but it's not a mindblowing innovation like the Wiimote and Kinect controllers were.
If the tablet controller fails to grab the crowd's attention and the third party developers keep focusing the development of their new games on higher capable platforms (like it happened this gen with Wii, where 3rd didn't bother to make downgrade ports of X360/ps3 games). Wii U gets in a uncomfortable position.
So there it comes the controller with a touch screen to be "next Wiimote". The Wiimote motion sensory is what catched the crowd and mainstream's media attention, because up until then, there were few products that made use of motion sensor. But the touch screen is not a new feature, it's already common in many products including Tablets and smartphones. It opens a lot of gaming design possibilities, but it's not a mindblowing innovation like the Wiimote and Kinect controllers were.
If the tablet controller fails to grab the crowd's attention and the third party developers keep focusing the development of their new games on higher capable platforms (like it happened this gen with Wii, where 3rd didn't bother to make downgrade ports of X360/ps3 games). Wii U gets in a uncomfortable position.
Honestly I don't care about the casual gamers one bit if I'm truly honest.
There are very few gamer games that appeal to me on the Wii, and I hope the Wii U is a complete opposite of this.
MadOdorMachine
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Retro is working on a project "everyone wants them to do." That could mean a lot of things, but I think an original IP that's a FPS is more likely than another Prime game, but we'll have to wait and see. If they were to do another Metroid game, I'm sure everyone could agree that the campaign would probably be top notch. To sell systems to hardcore gamers they need multiplayer though. They would either have to re-invent that idea for the series or create something completely new. That's my thinking behind it anyway.
On another note. Does anyone know which developers have Wii U dev kits? There are some pretty big games coming out next year (Tomb Raider, Metal Gear Rising, GTA V, Max Payne 3, etc.) that Nintendo needs on Wii U if they want it to succeed.
On another note. Does anyone know which developers have Wii U dev kits? There are some pretty big games coming out next year (Tomb Raider, Metal Gear Rising, GTA V, Max Payne 3, etc.) that Nintendo needs on Wii U if they want it to succeed.
This year man.
bgassassin
Member
Grampa Simpson
Banned
-Pyromaniac-
Member
I'm curious as to whether or not games that are scheduled to come out late in 2012 will have upscaled Wii-U versions (not just ports), to utilize the extra power over ps360. I would love that for the next call of duty (though that won't happen, it'll somehow look worse on wii-u/ps3 than 360 for some reason), but yeah games like tomb raider and gta 5 and whatnot would be sweet to have better versions of.
We're probably looking at direct ports though :/
We're probably looking at direct ports though :/
-Pyromaniac-
Member
Is it that much work to upscale whatever can be upscaled though on whatevers respective engines?
lwilliams3
Member
The Wii-U is apparently alot closer in architecture to the 360 than the PS3, so it should be easier to start with the 360 version then simply port-up to the Wii U. This is not like when games were "ported up" from the Xbox 1 to the Wii, since Xbox's shader capabilities were a bit more modern than the Wii's.. Kind of sad when it is put like that.
Some engines are fine tuned to run at the resolution they are at. But since CoD already has a PC port, it's more generic and should handle being made to render at 720p native (or 1080p native) much more readily.
Thanks! Clears a few things up.
Smash Bros.
-Pyromaniac-
Member
you'd think that, but activision developers seem obtuse
should be interesting to see what happens I guess.
Treyarch did some amazing things with the Wii, actually.
Lowest common denominators will happen.
The main CPU (PPE) in the PS3 is pretty much exactly the same as the 3 main CPUs inside the 360 (also PPE).
lunchwithyuzo
Banned
So Level-5 confirmed Yokai Watch will be a 2012 Japan release, anyone else think this could be their big Wii U debut? We know they've had kits awhile (Hino even mentioned Layton would work well on it iirc) and using the U-pad for screen look ghoul hunting seems like the perfect interface match. Getting a big L5 cross media project (and an RPG) so early for Wii U could also be a nice little coup for Nintendo.
The similarity of one execution core in the CPUs is made irrelevant by everything else in the system. The Wii U will have Power-based CPUs (though maybe out-of-order), unified RAM (though larger in size) and an AMD based GPU with EDRAM (more powerful, but the Xbox architecture is ancestral to what's in the Wii U). That makes it easy for developers to port their code to the Wii U.
On a PC, Modern Warfare 2 runs at very high settings on 1080p at 50+ fps on the Radeon HD 4830, the same GPU as in the Wii U devkit. That's pretty much a non-optimized setting. So if CoD Wii U isn't significantly better looking than the 360 version, they will have screwed up big time.
I'd say so, but even though the architecture is pretty much the same between the two consoles, all XBox360 software is going to be coded using the DirectX API for graphics, whereas Nintendo are most likely going to require OpenGL instead. PS3 versions of software will use the OpenGL API, but of course with extensions particular to its Nvidia GPU. Creating a Wii U branch of a PS360 game engine wouldn't be particularly difficult, but it would be laborious, so I wouldn't be surprised if it was handed to a couple of rookie programmers who screw up all the optimisations and end up with something that actually runs worse than the XBox360 version.
As you can tell, I'm pretty cynical about how much effort third parties are going to put into games for the system.
Grampa Simpson
Banned
Compile time options and abstraction layers.
Ifdef PLATFORM=WIIU ( this );
Elif PLATFORM=360 ( that );
Elif PLATFORM=PS3 (something else);
Fi
Gah. Note to self - never mock up code on my droid again.
StreetsAhead
Member
Yes, sensible. Metroid isn't that big of a franchise - especially in Japan. Prime was a great game (the only one in the franchise I've played besides Other M and Metroid II) it just doesn't appeal to a large audience for whatever reason. Retro, talented as they are, should either be working on something an existing property that does appeal, like Donkey Kong, or developing one that will appeal to lot's of people. No other studio could have produced DKCR the way Retro did and the game was, by all accounts, pretty darn solid. All the awards in the world are great, but that's hard sell to stock holders, especially when you're losing money and not meeting targets.
Speaking of Monolith as last reported, Xenoblade sold 160,000 copies in Japan. Disaster Day of Crisis sold 33,000. From a purely business point of view, it would be more sensible to have them working on titles that sell better than that. Or advertise the titles they are producing better, I don't know. Ironic that you bring up Mario Party, since 8 sold worse in Japan than Xenoblade. In fact, that they bothered making 9 which seems like even more of the same annoys me a little bit. The potential for 10 on Wii U, though, is exciting.
I'm not suggesting they limit themselves to Mario and Wii X titles. Sure they made Sin and Punishment 2, but I won't be holding my breath for number 3.
Not everything has to crack a million and it's good that they're making games for every one (or, trying), but priorities are important.
AceBandage
Banned
I wouldn't expect S&P3 any time soon either.
But at the same time, I wouldn't be surprised to see something new from Treasure funded by Nintendo.
It's not like they put big budgets into these games. Hell, even games like Zelda don't get monster budgets.
Nintendo is an overly efficient company, and they'll make games that can profit on fairly low sales.
But at the same time, I wouldn't be surprised to see something new from Treasure funded by Nintendo.
It's not like they put big budgets into these games. Hell, even games like Zelda don't get monster budgets.
Nintendo is an overly efficient company, and they'll make games that can profit on fairly low sales.
Cosmonaut X
Member
So Xenoblade blew past 1.4 million in Japan, then?
Jaded Alyx
Member
lol that did have me raising an eyebrow for a moment.
Do you by any chance know how much it cost for nintendo to make a zelda game?
AceBandage
Banned
No specifics, no.
But given the small size of their teams and general design philosophy it's likely much less than say a new CoD game.
Cosmonaut X
Member
They seem to operate with small teams working on prototyping and early development, before moving into the later phases of development where the team swells and members of other teams drift into contribute so even a simple "dev time x average salary" (I think we have those figures) would be deceptive.
Yes, but my point was that you have to get people to actually write "this", and my belief, cynical as it may be, is that those people are going to be significantly less experienced and capable than the people who wrote "that" and "something else". Most publishers aren't going to be willing to pay a penny more to port their games to Wii U than necessary, and if that means handing the entire project to someone barely out of college who's paid pittance and has never even written graphics code before, then that's what they'll do.
Small teams? The teams are huge. Even the 3DS teams have been huge.
I wonder how much Nintendo is going to be influenced by news about the next Xbox and Playstation. It seems Nintendo is much more concious about the moves their opponents are making this time around, since they can't be so much behind on power and features again. I still have my fingers crossed they'll go for 2GB in the Wii U, I have a feeling that could make such a big difference for ports and for first party games as well.
You can check Twilight Princess credits for example, I got impressed for how short it was, compared to walls and walls of text displayed in CoD games.
According to MCV both MS and Sony will reveal their next gen consoles in this year E3, I think it's good news because the technology available for the three shouldn't be too different, except of course Nintendo goes Wii route again.
They're certainly be keeping their eye on them, and probably have feelers out in third parties to see what Sony and MS are planning. I imagine their goal for the coming generation, spec-wise, is to get the console to the level necessary for cross-platform games get a Wii U version by default, ie to be in that sort of ballpark where porting is relatively cheap and easy, unlike this gen. They do have two disadvantages in that they have to bundle an expensive controller in, and the likely fact that they'll be releasing about a year before the competition, both of which, all else being equal, mean they wouldn't be able to put quite as powerful hardware in there. There is the argument that Nintendo sells consoles at a profit, while the others sell at a loss, but I don't think that'll hold to the same extent this gen, as the Wii U may well be sold at a small loss, and I don't think Sony will be willing to sell the PS4 at anywhere near the loss they sold the PS3 for. That said, there's always the possibility that the next XBox will be launched this year with Kinect bundled in, which wouldn't be far off Nintendo's position, so the machines could be closer spec-wise than I think.
When it comes to RAM, Nintendo's history leans to them spending money on faster RAM rather than more RAM. Even the Wii, underpowered as it was, still used GDDR3 as its main memory, the same type as in the XBox360 and PS3. They might bump it up, but my guess would still be ~1.5GB in Wii U vs ~2GB in next XBox/PS4.
Edit: In fact, I think Nintendo will only increase the RAM if they find out MS/Sony are planning on far higher amounts, for instance if MS is planning on 3GB of RAM we might see Nintendo bump the Wii U up to 2-2.5GB to keep within the ballpark necessary for ports.
In my opinion, I think Nintendo HAS to start trickling out Wii U information now. Thinking about it, it should be a no-brainer that MS and Sony weren't going to let Nintendo have this E3 to themselves. I still think Microsoft will have a LOT more to show than people expect, if not a full 2012 launch. Sony is clearly playing catch-up. I bet they aren't the least bit prepared to show some substantial PS4 stuff. Expect bullshit target renders, batarangs, and Sony vitality sensors.
But if Nintendo continues to play coy they will get swallowed this E3.
Start giving enthusiasts some reasons to go into this E3 super hyped for your console, Ninty.
Jorok Goldblade
Member
I would imagine this will be cancelled out by Microsoft bundling in Kinect 2.0. Not sure what Sony's play in the controller field will be.
bgassassin
Member
Considering this point in time, not much if at all. They probably don't have enough wiggle room for any changes if they heard something in the next few months.
If Nintendo is using fast RAM, a RAM increase probably won't be possible at all :-/ The Wii U motherboard will be simple, probably with only 4 memory chips. Only DDR3 has such a high density that it will allow 2GB in a console. Maybe DDR4 or XDR2, but that'll be some very pricey stuff.
You're probably right. It's a shame though, I have a feeling 2 GB would put it in another class.
I keep mentioning memory chips because it's really a non-invasive move. They keep the exact same memory design, but just replace the chips with higher density ones.bgassassin said:
Yep, as I said a bit later in the post, the next XBox being bundled with Kinect and released in 2012 would be pretty much equivalent to what Nintendo's doing. I'd see the Wii U pad and streaming tech being a bit more expensive than Kinect, but that's just a hunch on my part. Sony is a bit of a mystery when it comes to motion controls next gen. I can't see them bundling Move, as it didn't gain anywhere near the traction the Wiimote and Kinect did this gen, but I can't see them sitting out on motion controls either. Some sort of Kinect-like Eyetoy with Move compatibility is a possibility, but risks the same problem they had this gen; being seen as reactionary. There's always the possibility that they'll go for broke and we'll get something completely out of left-field from them, but you never know.
As DCKing says above, RAM is the one thing that you can increase at pretty much the last minute. So long as final hardware assembly hasn't started, and so long as the RAM manufacturer can produce enough higher-density chips (and they exist, for that matter), you can simply swap out lower density chips for the higher density ones. Doesn't affect already written code in any way either. In theory at least, depending on manufacturing timetables, you could change the amount of RAM anywhere up to a few months before launch.
Yeah, more RAM would always be nicer, but considering what Nintendo managed to squeeze out of the comparatively RAM-starved Gamecube and Wii, even 1.5GB should allow them to produce some god-damn glorious stuff.
bgassassin
Member
http://www.destructoid.com/pachter-wii-u-all-but-assured-of-poor-dev-support-219167.phtml
Seems like Pachter is huge on the console's future
Seems like Pachter is huge on the console's future
-Pyromaniac-
Member
Meh I think Pachter is off on that one. If 3rd party support is limited it won't be because the controller has a screen on it, it'll be because Nintendo is Nintendo. It's not like you're forced to put something epic on the screen. Put a logo on it if you want. Devs are free to do what they will.
Great news! It's good to know that Wii U will get good third-party support for sure!
That's not what you said in the e3 thread... wait, *are* you pachter?
Yeah, but that was before this news!
Also, I said nothing about third parties in that thread.
The problem I have with Patcher is that because of his minor celebrity he now makes statements/predictions like a video game fan or Neogaf poster instead of as a market analyst. His phrasing and word choice is out of sync with what you expect from a professional analyst.
Fourth Storm
Member
Nintendo need to get with the program. Metroid is never gonna be a huge hit for them. If they're smart they have Retro working on a new IP which will come out not too long after launch (this is key for new franchises). Then, they release yearly upgrades ala Activision/Ubisoft, rake in the dough, and bask in the the adoration of their western users.
If Retro's talent is wasted on annual $60 expansion packs I WILL DIE.
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