Rumor: Wii U final specs

Yeah, I know. 2-3X in power in GPU and RAM isn't a huge difference, but notable.


Really reminds me of last gen Vs Wii tbqh.

Actually wasn't the Xbox GPU superior to the Wii's in some ways? I think the Wii U may be a tad farther ahead of this gen than the Wii was ahead of last gen.
 
Pretty disapointing specs as seems to be the new normal from Nintendo.

Since Nintendo has to be so fucking cheap with everything and pass all the costs to its users if I was serious about this system just to get the same functionality of a PS3 I would be required to buy:

Ethernet adapter: My house is older with plaster walls. There is what would be akin to chicken wire under that plaster causing signal interference. I barely get a phone signal inside the house due to this. I have run cat5e cable throughout the house. So Ethernet is my best and really only option.

Portable hard drive/USB Key: I have bought far more than 8Gb of PSN titles so 8Gb isnt going to be enough. I don't have a device on hand that would be useful so an additional purchase is required.

HDMI audio receiver since there will be no optical support, it is HDMI LPCM 6.1 only. I have an older model receiver that is still in perfect functioning condition. This is the first device I have seen that doesn't support some sort of TOSLINK or SPDIF outputs. My current consoles, PC, cablebox, all support at least some multichannel alternative, even bargain basement Walmart Bluray players support them. It will be interesting to see if PS4/Durango support optical out or HDMI only. I bet ps4 supports it.

This system is looking shittier and shittier, im not even talking graphics I am talking ease of use. All of this shit could have been built into the system at a insanely cheap price. Even the welfare Walmart Bluray player for $50 can afford an Ethernet port and a toslink output. I think ill wait till the thing drops to under $150-200 or until Mario/zelda/metroid/SSB/Mariocart are all out before I even consider this thing.

So the system is "shittier and shittier" because you have a Goldilocks setup at your house? I think what you mean to say is that the system is less than ideal for your particular setup. Everyone else is going to take it out of the box, hook it up, and be fine.
 
Actually wasn't the Xbox GPU superior to the Wii's in some ways? I think the Wii U may be a tad farther ahead of this gen than the Wii was ahead of last gen.

Xbox GPU had the advantage of programmable shaders etc while Wii kept the fixed function shaders etc of TEV. While the Wii could match most of the other functions it took more work and wasn't as straight forward.

Wii U is without a doubt in much better position. Late join ports will have some issues due to time and effort but development that starts at the ground level at the same time as other versions as long as they don't understaff the team should shine.
 
HDMI audio receiver since there will be no optical support

For a company that prides itself on not being on the cutting edge of technology, it's strange that they would actually bottleneck consumers with HDMI audio only.

Toslink is outdated.

I think what you mean to say is that the system is less than ideal for your particular setup. Everyone else is going to take it out of the box, hook it up, and be fine.

Yup.
 
With the CPU being an evolution of the Gecko/Broadway CPUs and the GPU 3D graphics API (GX2) being an extension of the GX1 API, it's just like I said earlier: Nintendo made it that anybody who developed on the Gamecube or Wii will feel in many ways right at home with this system. That's a brilliant design imo, from what I can understand.
Except noone of note developed for Wii, apart from Nintendo themselves. Certainly noone pushed the hardware.
 
Xbox GPU had the advantage of programmable shaders etc while Wii kept the fixed function shaders etc of TEV. While the Wii could match most of the other functions it took more work and wasn't as straight forward.

Wii U is without a doubt in much better position. Late join ports will have some issues due to time and effort but development that starts at the ground level at the same time as other versions as long as they don't understaff the team should shine.

XGPU also had double the texture units per pipeline so its texel fillrate is almost double that of Hollywood.
 
man, am i glad i wasnt here when wii launched...i feel like everyone on this "its not next gen" camp needs a special tag, to save time in other threads.

just over a day from something official (though again, not spec-wise...im guessing that comes day 1 when someone opens it?)
 
Power7 is really powerful (no pun), the benchmarks we have got for the WiiU show it only being about half the speed per a core as an AMD Stars core @ 2.4Ghz.

A Power7 would have to be running at a very low clockspeed to lose to a Stars core.

That and the fact that if the WiiU CPU is based off Broadway then it can not be also Power 7.

well isn't power7 kindof an enhanced Broadway? Very enhanced...
 
What's your view of flattering in this case?

If you could run a particular Durango game on Wii U at 720 p vs. 1080 p at 30 fps with relatively minimal loss of detail (at least foreground detail, things may stream in closer up in open world games), good lighting, and still have decent texture quality. That would be flattering.

I could be wrong but I think most devs will either not bother with ports or they will be substantially downgraded. Sub HD, inconsistent frame rate, slashing details/object density, substantially lower texture resolution with pronounced texture streaming, tearing, dramatically reduced lighting.

Why would I even come to such a conclusion? Because so far, none of the ports from the previous gen are doing anything visually impressive thus far and we even have reports of some big ports currently looking like ass. So, if they are willing to show that, I really have no hope for ports from machines 10 times more advanced :/
 
So the system is "shittier and shittier" because you have a Goldilocks setup at your house? I think what you mean to say is that the system is less than ideal for your particular setup. Everyone else is going to take it out of the box, hook it up, and be fine.

Yes, I was conveying my personal experience. To me the nickle and dime build of this system probably cost them a sale for now. Like I said I will probably pick one up down the road but their cheap ass bullshit put me out of the market for one until I either change the points I made or they offer me some compelling software... Not a hard concept.
 
Except noone of note developed for Wii, apart from Nintendo themselves. Certainly noone pushed the hardware.

Madness. Shin'en worked wonders on the system, and many other companies like Square Enix and Capcom had some lookers on the console. Even Deadly Creatures and de Blob were great looking on Wii.
 
Toslink is outdated.
It's fine for everything except for uncompressed audio, which for 99.9% of people is worthless anyway. My mini receiver+speaker set has only toslink and SPDIF input, so I hope it stays on other consoles (or there's some conversion cable) because I see no value in buying new amp and speakers, which would cost more than the console that I couldn't use with existing ones.
 
Ugh, tell me about it. I don't understand why this is such a hard thing to do considering that many audio devices still interface with it. For a company that prides itself on not being on the cutting edge of technology, it's strange that they would actually bottleneck consumers with HDMI audio only.

Yup. I'm going to be listening to all my Wii U games in stereo it seems, or if I'm lucky Dolby Pro Logic II


If you could run a particular Durango game on Wii U at 720 p vs. 1080 p at 30 fps with relatively minimal loss of detail (at least foreground detail, things may stream in closer up in open world games), good lighting, and still have decent texture quality. That would be flattering.

I could be wrong but I think most devs will either not bother with ports or they will be substantially downgraded. Sub HD, inconsistent frame rate, slashing details/object density, substantially lower texture resolution with pronounced texture streaming, tearing, dramatically reduced lighting.

Why would I even come to such a conclusion? Because so far, none of the ports from the previous gen are doing anything visually impressive thus far and we even have reports of some big ports currently looking like ass. So, if they are willing to show that, I really have no hope for ports from machines 10 times more advanced :/

Here's an exercise. Take a current 360 game of your choosing. "Rebuild" it so that the code runs on the highest end PC you can find in the world - no optimising allowed. Try to notice any difference between the two. The PC is unlikely to MAGICALLY just make the game look better (Card config graphic overrides like force AA, not withstanding).
 
Maybe they'll have some sort of optical audio dongle. Isn't that what 360 had?
It's all moot to me seeing as I just use the speakers built into my tv, like I'm assuming a huge number of people do. Sucks for the people that don't though I suppose
 
well isn't power7 kindof an enhanced Broadway? Very enhanced...

Not in any meaningful way.

It would be like saying an Ivy Bridge is an enhanced Pentium 2, sure it is built partly on things they learned with older processors but it's micro architecture is not only a lot newer but completely different.
 
Nintendo needs to launch at $200 really. I don't think it will happen, we'll see, but the specs show a lot of cost cutting on the power, more than I thought they would do.
 
To me the nickle and dime build of this system probably cost them a sale for now. Like I said I will probably pick one up down the road but their cheap ass bullshit put me out of the market for one until I either change the points I made or they offer me some compelling software... Not a hard concept.

Fair points and good on you for standing up for how you feel. However, nickle and diming probably gets Nintendo 20 million more sales than they would have got from an expensive system. This is how Nintendo will be thinking.

If anyone wants a graphical powerhouse console, they will need to wait for the 720/PS4 - it's that simple.



Nintendo needs to launch at $200 really. I don't think it will happen, we'll see, but the specs show a lot of cost cutting on the power, more than I thought they would do.
You realise that those specs tell us NOTHING and I will repeat ABSO-FUCKING-LUTELY NOTHING about the power of the system. There's no mention of clock speeds, ALUs etc.
 
It's fine for everything except for uncompressed audio, which for 99.9% of people is worthless anyway. My mini receiver+speaker set has only toslink and SPDIF input, so I hope it stays on other consoles (or there's some conversion cable) because I see no value in buying new amp and speakers, which would cost more than the console that I couldn't use with existing ones.

At this point, optical cable only exists for older hardware. You will not see Toslink in the future. Why the Wii U currently does not support optical is another matter.
 
This thread is reminding me that I need a new receiver to go along with my eventual TV purchase this year. I've definitely been missing out on the full potential of Blu-ray audio tracks, but with the Wii U seemingly only supporting LPCM audio, that's another reason I need to dump my 10+ year old receiver.
 
This thread is reminding me that I need a new receiver to go along with my eventual TV purchase this year. I've definitely been missing out on the full potential of Blu-ray audio tracks, but with the Wii U seemingly only supporting LPCM audio, that's another reason I need to dump my 10+ year old receiver.

Man, my 5 year old receiver doesn't support LPCM nor HDMI. I'm screwed.
 
If you could run a particular Durango game on Wii U at 720 p vs. 1080 p at 30 fps with relatively minimal loss of detail (at least foreground detail, things may stream in closer up in open world games), good lighting, and still have decent texture quality. That would be flattering.

I could be wrong but I think most devs will either not bother with ports or they will be substantially downgraded. Sub HD, inconsistent frame rate, slashing details/object density, substantially lower texture resolution with pronounced texture streaming, tearing, dramatically reduced lighting.

Why would I even come to such a conclusion? Because so far, none of the ports from the previous gen are doing anything visually impressive thus far and we even have reports of some big ports currently looking like ass. So, if they are willing to show that, I really have no hope for ports from machines 10 times more advanced :/

Ehhh, I'm going to have to disagree with your conclusion due to things I've mentioned the past that I still stand by.

But what big ports are you referring to?
 
I can quote and snip things too to take them out of context. Sorry I am not joining the Nindendudes at launch. I am truly sorry I offended you.

You are well within your right to express your anger at a company that makes a product for millions of people but at the same time does not cater to your every need and expectation, while also letting us know you don't care about our needs, but only yours. You are also free to add that you won't buy such a product on launch, but will buy it later when you want, regardless of your previous complaints being resolved or not.

Is that more or less what you said, or did I take it out of context again? I am within my rights to quote you however you want. It's a free country, brah.
 
Plenty of people developed for the GCN/Wii and it's probably a well documented system by now.
GC yes. Wii no. And you've kind of proved my point there, since retention from GC->Wii was not all that hot, even though the CPUs were the same family.
 
It's obviously not going to get the AAA PS4 and 720 multi-plat ports with those specs. Look at Watch_Dogs and 1313, and these are going to be first generation PS4/720 games. One gig of ram and the rest of those specs isn't going to cut it. That's fine. Most of us will be buying it for the exclusives.
 
Man, my 5 year old receiver doesn't support LPCM nor HDMI. I'm screwed.

My receiver actually does support LPCM, but only 2.0. The lack of HDMI ports is more concerning to me right now, however; I've been using a HD selector to make up for the fact that my receiver has one (that's right, ONE) TOSLINK port, and I don't want to do that any more.
 
Here's an exercise. Take a current 360 game of your choosing. "Rebuild" it so that the code runs on the highest end PC you can find in the world - no optimising allowed. Try to notice any difference between the two. The PC is unlikely to MAGICALLY just make the game look better (Card config graphic overrides like force AA, not withstanding).

So like Dark Souls? Yeah, it doesn't do so by magic. But allowing the game to run much better is child's play. Just look at the 20 minute mod that allowed higher resolution which was not possible on the consoles it was developed for. With enough power, improving ports should be as easy as snapping your fingers (at least in regards to frame rate and resolution). It appears that improving a port takes some work on the Wii U.

Ehhh, I'm going to have to disagree with your conclusion due to things I've mentioned the past that I still stand by.

But what big ports are you referring to?

Comments regarding Batman Armored edition and Assassin's Creed builds which were shown running left a lot to be desired and were arguably the worst versions of said games. I imagine this will improve to being the best versions of said games by a small margin (not like either will run at 1080 p or anything).
 
Isn't that an optical cable slot?

wii-u-console-back.jpg
 
Maybe they'll have some sort of optical audio dongle. Isn't that what 360 had?
It's all moot to me seeing as I just use the speakers built into my tv, like I'm assuming a huge number of people do. Sucks for the people that don't though I suppose

The only signals that can pass through an optical cable and be recognized by a receiver are PCM2.0, DD5.1, DTS. The PCM2.0 is only going to give stereo and the games themselves would need to be encoded in DD5.1 or DTS to pass through the optical. If Nintendo's standard is going to be uncompressed PCM developers probably aren't going to supply a DD5.1 or DTS audio stream out of the goodness of their hearts.
 
When a dev says a game/demo can't run on other hardware, what underlying cause would there be to make it so? That's your answer and I think I'm done (for the hundredth time now).
For the "hundredth time" you've posted without actually answering anything.

Take this post.

When someone says something isn't possible, stuff must make it impossible. That's the stuff that makes it impossible. Ergo it's impossible.

This is "concrete"?

You may be "done" but your original post about the Zelda tech demo being beyond the PS360 remains unjustified and unsubstantiated.

We don't need to be like that.

We've had devs say on this very forum, guys that we post with imply that there is nothing about the reflections that are particularly special, we can see with our own eyes that the lighting isn't impossible on current gen systems. Koji's MGS demo shows that.

It's just using them all well. And that can make all the difference between a beautiful game, and an ugly one.
It's admittedly very pretty. But you and I both know that wasn't really the point.

The claim is that the Zelda tech demo is beyond current capabilities - and that this is apparently self-evident. When it's not.
 
Nintendo needs to launch at $200 really. I don't think it will happen, we'll see, but the specs show a lot of cost cutting on the power, more than I thought they would do.

What? I don't think you realize the costs involved with this. They would probably be taking a big loss at 200. Hell the 3DS just became profitable at 169. 250 is a good deal for what is offered even based on these extremely vague specs.
 
With the CPU being an evolution of the Gecko/Broadway CPUs and the GPU 3D graphics API (GX2) being an extension of the GX1 API, it's just like I said earlier: Nintendo made it that anybody who developed on the Gamecube or Wii will feel in many ways right at home with this system. That's a brilliant design imo, from what I can understand.

No one developed for those consoles.
 
You are well within your right to express your anger at a company that makes a product for millions of people but at the same time does not cater to your every need and expectation, while also letting us know you don't care about our needs, but only yours. You are also free to add that you won't buy such a product on launch, but will buy it later when you want, regardless of your previous complaints being resolved or not.

Is that more or less what you said, or did I take it out of context again? I am within my rights to quote you however you want. It's a free country, brah.

So your issue is that I am voicing my opinion of an upcoming video game system on a video game message board. Is this forum only for playing junior analyst and making broad statements or just trolling people with out of context quotes for opinions that differ from your own?. When a product doesnt meet my needs I dont buy it until there is sufficient reason to. A bunch of quality games for the platform or a price reduction would probably sway me to ignore all that shit and pick one up.
 
If handled smartly, the Wii U will eventually dish out some fine graphics. But I get the feeling it will be left out in the cold and down ports from PS4 and Durango will not be flattering.

I don't think the Wii U will get left that much behind with ports from the PS4/XB3. A developer that "tries" would probably be able to get a ported game that looks extremely close to the more powerful system using the custom strengths (or "tricks" inherent to every console) made especially for the Wii U to do more advanced shader effects & lighting. It depends on the type of game too, if it's some kind of geometry heavy game requiring thousands of objects on screen at the same time it might be a different story.

Only a small amount of developers will have enough money to burn on the PS4/XB3 to make exclusive titles that really shine on those platforms and still could make them a profit. We might be seeing a couple of "Lair" type titles from these companies who put too much faith in Microsoft or Sony and end up going out of business like Factor 5.

It's going to be a risky time for Third Parties and the Wii U might actually sound more safe than trying to hit the big budget expensive blockbusters that people may only expect from the next Xbox. Wii U ground-up and then up-porting to the other consoles would be more cost effective in the next gen. A win-win for Nintendo in my opinion.
 
Sounds disappointing on paper, but I'll let the games speak for themselves, since the spec sheet is so vague. Wait for the games coming from Retro or EAD Tokyo, I'm sure they'll be lookers and more indicative of the system's performance than this first wave of rush jobs and ports.
 
Comments regarding Batman Armored edition and Assassin's Creed builds which were shown running left a lot to be desired and were arguably the worst versions of said games. I imagine this will improve to being the best versions of said games by a small margin (not like either will run at 1080 p or anything).

That's what I was thinking you were talking about. But those are a part of why I disagreed in the first place as far as judging Wii U based on PS360 ports.
 
Wii U supports 8k textures. Day 1 for me. This gen needs to die already.

Supporting 8192 x 8192 textures means nothing.

Not only do we have many ways to have just as large textures on things (like virtual texturing and just splitting the textures), but you would also run out of RAM and TMU power if you tried to use a fair amount of 8192 x 8192 textures.
 
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