Rumor: Wii U final specs

...why does it need 1gig for system? o_O

From all guesses, Nintendo will probably give up more of the space, but probably don't want to end up in a situation like Sony where they didn't have RAM to add a feature the competition implements.

For now, developers already have a little over 2X the usuable ram of the PS3 and 360, so Nintendo doesn't need to be in a rush to slim down the OS when devs are still targeting 512MB systems.

They did the same with 3DS, they freed up some RAM for developers post-launch from their reserved system RAM.

There's also the potential it's to be used for multitasking or suspending a game and starting the browser, etc.

Don't be surprised when MS and Sony have a ton of RAM relative to the rest of the console set aside for the system in their new consoles as well.
 
It concerns me that Emily Rogers shit is still being posted on gaf.

Who is this lady, by the way?

Saw it on another website, didn't look to much into it until now (which I should know better by now :/). From what I can see, she's a writer for some website and not a dev.

I thought she was from Take-Two. My bad.

Was this already posted on GAF btw?
 
I'm very happy with the RAM. 1 GB for gaming and 1 GB for OS and reserve is fantastic from the strategical point of view. If consumers demand more service and multitasking, they could go crazy with the OS, if the devs reach the limit, they could try to cut more RAM for gaming.

Realistically, Nintendo is still trying to figure out what the optimal balance might be, but I wouldn't be surprised if the gaming side gets a decent chunk from the 1 GB OS down the road. People will be surprised by late Wii U games (three/four years from now).
 
That number is a complete hypothetical based on the GFLOP/TDP performance of the 700 line, easily shown here (I know.. wikipedia bla bla bla, but i lost my original source from ArsTechnica)

from the chart, the best performer is the 4770 (R740 core), at 12 GFLOP/Watt, at a TDP of 80W for a GFLOP performance of 960.
Fair enough. Both the R700 and the 40nm moments are disputable (and the fact those wiki ratios are not really about shader FLOPs per se, despite the fact they're labeled as such), but for now we can take the '14GFLOPs/W' as a better-than-nothing estimate.
 
Wasn't she the one who wrote Ten years decline of Sony?

Yes she is. A year or two ago she was given bad "insider information" and blogged about it, now she checks her sources and links to them directly, so she only posts stuff on the site when we can source it. She also wrote Raise of costs, fall of gaming. Which was our debut article for the site (only mention it because of how well sourced it is)

But now that I have mentioned it, I don't know if devs are going to find the budgets to bring people the next gen some of us are expecting, I mean Red Dead cost over 100m to make. Could you expect that to move into next gen with the fidelity everyone is expecting for the same price? and a lot of games already have to sell 3-5million copies just to break even at $60. What if PS4 and XB3 games cost $80? or even $100? So I'm not convinced these specs will really look far behind at all, especially with trailers like MGS:GZ coming out for the PS3. Wii U has a lot of tricks up it's sleeves that will push graphics further than we have seen with these 6+ year old consoles. The main one being more RAM and all of the modern effects you find on PC hardware.
 
IBM reps keep saying Power 7 based.
No, they don't. The only thing on record in that direction is "based on some of the same technologies". All it takes for this to be true is something like this, maybe:
45nm process
eDRAM cache

Those are "some of the same technologies" alright. But it's not by any means full-on Power 7. Let me just point out how ludicrous this idea is:
*Power 7 is a 567mm², 1.2B transistor monster chip
*Power 7 has twelve execution units per core
*Power 7 has a frequency range target from 3.0 to 4.25GHz
 
Yes she is. A year or two ago she was given bad "insider information" and blogged about it, now she checks her sources and links to them directly, so she only posts stuff on the site when we can source it. She also wrote Raise of costs, fall of gaming. Which was our debut article for the site (only mention it because of how well sourced it is)

But now that I have mentioned it, I don't know if devs are going to find the budgets to bring people the next gen some of us are expecting, I mean Red Dead cost over 100m to make. Could you expect that to move into next gen with the fidelity everyone is expecting for the same price? and a lot of games already have to sell 3-5million copies just to break even at $60. What if PS4 and XB3 games cost $80? or even $100? So I'm not convinced these specs will really look far behind at all, especially with trailers like MGS:GZ coming out for the PS3. Wii U has a lot of tricks up it's sleeves that will push graphics further than we have seen with these 6+ year old consoles. The main one being more RAM and all of the modern effects you find on PC hardware.

You are very wrong if you think next gen games are necessarily much more expensive than current games. Do you know what costs a lot of money? Optimization on old hardware. Faking visuals to achieve a certain look. That costs money. Assets are already produced in very high quality. The workflow will not change drastically. You have less limitations with new hardware, and if the new consoles from Sony and MS really are as similar as some rumors suggest, multiplatform games will be even cheaper to develop. And that's the problem with the Wii U: It may be simple to port current gen games to the Wii U, but it will be difficult and expensive to port next gen games to the Wii U. And Budgets won't make drastic jumps - they are getting bigger, but only because the gaming market grows.
 
Everyone really needs to stop worrying about the U getting a SKU of multiplatform titles next gen. The main problem with the Wii this gen is that Hollywood, thanks to its fixed functions, has a nonstandard rendering pipeline. The U isn't going to have this problem.

All engines these days are scalable. You won't have U games looking quite as pretty as PS4 and 720 games - you'll have more jaggies, screen tearing, more pop in, less draw distance and maybe lower native resolution resulting in textures not being as good but we will see U SKUs of next gen titles.

Pre-orders are appearing to be strong so far and publishers aren't going to be leaving money on the table now that Nintendo have ditched fixed functions in favour of traditional programable shaders. The sales of the likes of ZombiU, Rayman Legends, Assassins Creed 3, FIFA, Madden, Black Ops 2 and Aliens Colonial Marines are going to show publishers that 'hardcore' titles can be successful on the Wii U if publishers put in a little effort and market U titles properly.

Honestly, you really don't need to worry about it. By the time the PS4 and 720 are released the U will have anywhere between 10 and 15m consoles sold with some big first party system sellers being released that Christmas in an attempt to scupper their launches. My money would be on Mario Kart and Retro's new title. And you've also got to take into account that with multiplatform titles around the launch of the PS4 and 720 (as with U titles now) the majority of work done for PS4 and 720 will have been done on underpowered/unfinished dev kits and developers will have more experience developing on the U.
 
Gemüsepizza;42186538 said:
You are very wrong if you think next gen games are necessarily much more expensive than current games. Do you know what costs a lot of money? Optimization on old hardware. Faking visuals to achieve a certain look. That costs money. Assets are already produced in very high quality. The workflow will not change drastically. You have less limitations with new hardware, and if the new consoles from Sony and MS really are as similar as some rumors suggest, multiplatform games will be even cheaper to develop. And that's the problem with the Wii U: It may be simple to port current gen games to the Wii U, but it will be difficult and expensive to port next gen games to the Wii U. And Budgets won't make drastic jumps - they are getting bigger, but only because the gaming market grows.

This is not true, for instance... character models are only 10-30k polygons, but the next gen jump would easily allow 10x that number, so you could end up with character models being 300k or maybe even half a million polygons (if you want cut scene fidelity) And environments would also have a similar "improvement" buildings, cars, level design in general would all see a polygon increase with models, that takes time, and allows for more detail, which requires more artists.

Content creation also will take more time, and games might again get shorter... Development from generation to generation always goes up, and Microsoft has already mentioned "AAAA" titles I don't know how much clearer it has to become. Longer development cycles with bigger budgets and more people working on them, not every game can be AC3 (with ~600 developers working on some aspect of the game)

Also your last point is backwards, Wii U XB3 and PS4 are all much more similar in architecture then previous gens, in fact XB3 is closer to Wii U's architecture than PS4, considering PS4 is going x86 while XB3 and Wii U will be sticking with PowerPC chips, all three are using AMD GPUs, all custom, and all with their own API's... But they will still be built on the same technology and a lot of the GPU's hardware will be designed around patents from AMD.
 
A whole gigabyte for the OS is surprising. I can only imagine two reasons for that:

1) true multitasking for non-gaming applications, with 3rd parties being allowed to develop such applications (unlike the 3DS where only one MT application can run at once and they're all Nintendo developed.) Maybe media apps like TVii (which included Netflix and Hulu) can be run while the game is suspended.

2) A large part of the RAM might be used for file caching, to speed up loading speeds in both disc and downloadable games. 256~512MBs would provide a big speed increase. Such RAM could be given back to developers later if they decide to opt-out from the caching service.

We had a console where games could only use half the available RAM before: the PSP got upgraded from 32MB to 64MB from 2nd revision forward, which was also used as disc cache.
 
This is not true, for instance... character models are only 10-30k polygons, but the next gen jump would easily allow 10x that number, so you could end up with character models being 300 or maybe even half a million polygons (if you want cut scene fidelity) And environments would also have a similar "improvement" buildings, cars, level design in general would all see a polygon increase with models, that takes time, and allows for more detail, which requires more artists.

Content creation also will take more time, and games might again get shorter... Development from generation to generation always goes up, and Microsoft has already mentioned "AAAA" titles I don't know how much clearer it has to become. Longer development cycles with bigger budgets and more people working on them, not every game can be AC3 (with ~600 developers working on some aspect of the game)

Also your last point is backwards, Wii U XB3 and PS4 are all much more similar in architecture then previous gens, in fact XB3 is closer to Wii U's architecture than PS4, considering PS4 is going x86 while XB3 and Wii U will be sticking with PowerPC chips, all three are using AMD GPUs, all custom, and all with their own API's... But they will still be built on the same technology and a lot of the GPU's hardware will be designed around patents from AMD.

No he is right, hi-res models are in the millions of polygons, that's what they use for the normal maps on the lower polygon models, for example the characters in Gears of War. Same for the buildings etc..
 
A whole gigabyte for the OS is surprising. I can only imagine two reasons for that:

1) true multitasking for non-gaming applications, with 3rd parties being allowed to develop such applications (unlike the 3DS where only one MT application can run at once and they're all Nintendo developed.) Maybe media apps like TVii (which included Netflix and Hulu) can be run while the game is suspended.

Yes.
 
No he is right, hi-res models are in the millions of polygons, that's what they use for the normal maps on the lower polygon models, for example the characters in Gears of War. Same for the buildings etc..

If the consoles could push millions of polygons per character, this would be great but it's not possible to jump from ~30k polygons to the full hi-res models "millions of polygons" without pushing a similar increase in graphics processing and all rumors point under 2TFLOPs, which isn't even the 10X increase I graciously gave in my example.

This means new character models will be made and the hi-res models will be used just as they are now (as normal maps for the lower polygon models that sit at a fraction of those polygon numbers)
 
This is not true, for instance... character models are only 10-30k polygons, but the next gen jump would easily allow 10x that number, so you could end up with character models being 300 or maybe even half a million polygons (if you want cut scene fidelity) And environments would also have a similar "improvement" buildings, cars, level design in general would all see a polygon increase with models, that takes time, and allows for more detail, which requires more artists.
Nope, characters are already made with millions of polygons. Most of those polygons are baked into normal maps, however. And they will continue this way in the PS4 and Xbox8, because the only viable way to drastically increase polycounts over current gen consoles is by using tesselation.

With tesselation, models will still be exported with 10-30k polygons (or even less), but they'll use displacement maps instead of normal maps and shaders will reconstruct the polygons from the original million polygon model. This saves massive amounts of VRAM and bandwith (vertices are not weightless).
 
If the consoles could push millions of polygons per character, this would be great but it's not possible to jump from ~30k polygons to the full hi-res models "millions of polygons" without pushing a similar increase in graphics processing and all rumors point under 2TFLOPs, which isn't even the 10X increase I graciously gave in my example.

This means new character models will be made and the hi-res models will be used just as they are now (as normal maps for the lower polygon models that sit at a fraction of those polygon numbers)
Wtf? It means the million-poly models artists already create as part of their current workflow can be respun to new runtime target polycounts with a few different parameters given to already existing tools. Amazing how completely opposite you go with your conclusions.
 
Nope, characters are already made with millions of polygons. Most of those polygons are baked into normal maps, however. And they will continue this way in the PS4 and Xbox8, because the only viable way to drastically increase polycounts over current gen consoles is by using tesselation.

With tesselation, models will still be exported with 10-30k polygons (or even less), but they'll use displacement maps instead of normal maps and shaders will reconstruct the polygons from the original million polygon model. This saves massive amounts of VRAM and bandwith (vertices are not weightless).

ah forgot about the tessellation factor, you are correct. We will see just how well it turns out, but I'm going to be pleasantly surprised if I'm wrong and we get shorter dev cycles with more content. That has really been a huge problem with this generation, game content has shrunk and only expanded with simple fetch quests.

Wtf? It means the million-poly models artists already create as part of their current workflow can be respun to new runtime target polycounts with a few different parameters given to already existing tools. Amazing how completely opposite you go with your conclusions.

That is pretty much the conclusion I came up with as well? though I didn't know that the low polygon models were "respun" (do you mean they are produced automatically? that would in fact simplify it, it also would mean that Wii U could get a similar treatment, and have "auto-scaled" models, unless you were just "being cute" with words, and devs actually create those models manually)
 
That is pretty much the conclusion I came up with as well? though I didn't know that the low polygon models were "respun" (do you mean they are produced automatically? that would in fact simplify it, it also would mean that Wii U could get a similar treatment, and have "auto-scaled" models, unless you were just "being cute" with words, and devs actually create those models manually)
Tools that take arbitrarily detailed models and spit out not-so-detailed models plus normal maps to visually reconstruct the difference are a dime a dozen these days. This is HL2/Doom 3 era tech, and any modern modeling package supports it natively now.

http://amber.rc.arizona.edu/lw/qemloss.html
http://amber.rc.arizona.edu/lw/normalmaps.html


Now, if you want to target a machine that can do 200k poly models comfortably, you just start again with the same super-detailed source model, and tell your tool of choice to bake you a 200k version (instead of the 30k versions you had it build for you before). You don't need to learn anything new at all.
 
Tools that take arbitrarily detailed models and spit out not-so-detailed models plus normal maps to visually reconstruct the difference are a dime a dozen these days. This is HL2/Doom 3 era tech, and any modern modeling package supports it natively now.

http://amber.rc.arizona.edu/lw/qemloss.html
http://amber.rc.arizona.edu/lw/normalmaps.html


Now, if you want to target a machine that can do 200k poly models comfortably, you just start again with the same super-detailed source model, and tell your tool of choice to bake you a 200k version (instead of the 30k versions you had it build for you before). You don't need to learn anything new at all.

Well this is good news (sorry I've never done any 3D modeling) thing is, the post above ours, is also correct in saying tessellation could easily be used to make that difference. Those models might actually end up bring brought into the game thanks to tessellation hardware.
 
Tools that take arbitrarily detailed models and spit out not-so-detailed models plus normal maps to visually reconstruct the difference are a dime a dozen these days. This is HL2/Doom 3 era tech, and any modern modeling package supports it natively now.

http://amber.rc.arizona.edu/lw/qemloss.html
http://amber.rc.arizona.edu/lw/normalmaps.html


Now, if you want to target a machine that can do 200k poly models comfortably, you just start again with the same super-detailed source model, and tell your tool of choice to bake you a 200k version (instead of the 30k versions you had it build for you before). You don't need to learn anything new at all.
The picture with tessellation is not as simple (artists do have to learn new skills), but we're steadily getting to the stage where tessellation-based asset pipelines are getting to a similar level of complexity as the old normal-map ones. Furthermore, normal maps are not leaving the scene this gen either - displacement + normal maps will likely be the norm.
 
Tools that take arbitrarily detailed models and spit out not-so-detailed models plus normal maps to visually reconstruct the difference are a dime a dozen these days. This is HL2/Doom 3 era tech, and any modern modeling package supports it natively now.

http://amber.rc.arizona.edu/lw/qemloss.html
http://amber.rc.arizona.edu/lw/normalmaps.html


Now, if you want to target a machine that can do 200k poly models comfortably, you just start again with the same super-detailed source model, and tell your tool of choice to bake you a 200k version (instead of the 30k versions you had it build for you before). You don't need to learn anything new at all.


This is good to know. This tells me that even if the PS4 and Nextbox do outclass the WiiU it shouldn't be a problem at all when it comes to ports.The WiiU isn't in the same situation as the Wii was to where it just flat out couldn't do what the other systems were doing. You have people in the know on this board that work in the business that are excited to see how games built from the ground up for the WiiU will look and have said that is when you will really see it shine. What more do some of yall want? I look forward to seeing how much the PS4 and Nextbox cost looking at some of these expectations. Just because the Wii was blown out of the water spec wise this gen everyone is expecting it to be the case again. I think Iwata was being pretty honest when he said that he couldn't guarantee that they would be the most powerful machine out but that it would be more than capable in the upcoming gen. I guess we will all see...Here is my prediction. Nintendo are holding their big games close to their chest. Just waiting. So that when PS4 and Nextbox game footage is finally shown. Nintendo will say well here you go! Looks just as good to us! :) Retro, Monolith, EAD...thats what their mission is LOL. They don't want to show those games to compare with the current gen. They are saving those for the upcoming gen. Just my thoughts :)
 
This is good to know. This tells me that even if the PS4 and Nextbox do outclass the WiiU it shouldn't be a problem at all when it comes to ports.The WiiU isn't in the same situation as the Wii was to where it just flat out couldn't do what the other systems were doing.

The ability to scale down are assets has never been the barrier, other than the cost/benefit analysis of generating multiple detail levels of every single asset for the purpose of an additional port. But there will be games that, based on the hardware demands created by their design, will not be practical on the WiiU.
 
The picture with tessellation is not as simple (artists do have to learn new skills), but we're steadily getting to the stage where tessellation-based asset pipelines are getting to a similar level of complexity as the old normal-map ones. Furthermore, normal maps are not leaving the scene this gen either - displacement + normal maps will likely be the norm.

Isn't it a trade off of computation Vs storage/bandwidth? Drawing a 100k character should be faster than drawing a 25k character and using tessellation to make it into 100k, but it requires more storage to hold those vertices and more bandwidth to transfer.

I thought tessellation units weren't all that fantastic yet, or is that just inefficient PC engines not being used to using them properly?
 

TwoTribes has since said that this statement is not the company's stance and was meant to be posted on an individual's twitter account as it was merely one person's opinion.

http://twitter.com/TwoTribesGames/status/247299409203822593

Also posted this:

"As a developer we don't have opinions such as the one tweeted by @watdoetcollin. We simply make games and tell you about what we're doing."
 
Yeah it's only a co-founder's view after all (lol).

But I think he basically feels it will be another Wii like situation in a few years. Which is bad for some people, good for others.
 
Yeah it's only a co-founder's view after all (lol).

But I think he basically feels it will be another Wii like situation in a few years. Which is bad for some people, good for others.

It's up to the publishers to determine how WiiU will end up. They forced the Wii situation by acting like it's a bubble or fad and then came in too little too late.

WiiU is in much better position architecture to be compatible with MS and Sony's next gen system and it is coming out first. The excuses won't be there.(atleast any valid ones)

The only way WiiU will become like Wii is if publishers want it to.
 
The excuses won't be there.(atleast any valid ones)

The only way WiiU will become like Wii is if publishers want it to.

Most of the Wii excuses were pushing the boundaries of validity already.
Yes it is up to publishers but some publishers will never change, and already don't seem to put Wii U in the same class as unannounced consoles.

I know it was about the PS4/720 ports & I didn't say Casual was a curse word I just found it crazy that someone who make the type of games they make are saying that.

I just think.. what if he was making a dudebro shooter, and said the console would be a haven for dudebro shooters, and casual games wouldn't get a look in?
 
Most of the Wii excuses were pushing the boundaries of validity already.
Yes it is up to publishers but some publishers will never change, and already don't seem to put Wii U in the same class as unannounced consoles.

Then they will die off. We have reached the point of no return. Either these game companies find a way to control their budgets or face the possibility of a meltdown in the gaming industry.
 
WiiU is in much better position architecture to be compatible with MS and Sony's next gen system and it is coming out first. The excuses won't be there.(atleast any valid ones)
How can you say that when there are zero official reports on Sony's and Microsoft's next system out? If their systems are much more powerful the devs could just say that WiiU isn't powerful enough for their games and they would have a valid excuse. :/
Personally I definitely think the Wii U could end up getting none or crappy/lazy PS4/720 ports in a few years. But hopefully not every great developer can afford billion dollar AAA movie style productions and they'll use Wii U instead.
 
How can you say that when there are zero official reports on Sony's and Microsoft's next system out? If their systems are much more powerful the devs could just say that WiiU isn't powerful enough for their games and they would have a valid excuse. :/
Personally I definitely think the Wii U could end up getting none or crappy/lazy PS4/720 ports in a few years. But hopefully not every great developer can afford billion dollar AAA movie style productions and they'll use Wii U instead.

The thing with Wii U compared to Wii is that developers won't have to make new versions of their games the ground up for Wii U like they did for Wii. Take CoD for example. They had to have separate team entirely dedicated to the Wii version of the games because it had to be built for the Wii pretty much from the ground up to get it to work. Simply downscaling the resolution, textures, etc. wasn't enough.

The Wii U should be powerful enough in comparison to 720/PS4 so that a separate version entirely won't have to be developed and the same assets used in the other versions can be used on wii U.
 
It's also one thing that is abundantly clear without any source at all. Unless they had decided to go with an overclocked Wii GPU, literally every sane choice they could make is capable of general purpose computation.

But there's absolutely no reason for Iwata to specifically mention that capability if it wasn't an important feature to Nintendo. Seriously Iwata basically focused on only one aspect of the GPU, he mentioned nothing else about it. Yet people here are actually trying to argue that it was just some random thing he threw out there, its quite bizarre.
 
The thing with Wii U compared to Wii is that developers won't have to make new versions of their games the ground up for Wii U like they did for Wii. Take CoD for example. They had to have separate team entirely dedicated to the Wii version of the games because it had to be built for the Wii pretty much from the ground up to get it to work. Simply downscaling the resolution, textures, etc. wasn't enough.
COD is the wrong example as it's of the few games that (past 3) got actual ports, and good ones at that, while they were clearly underfunded and understaffed going by reports. Games like Ghostbusters are good examples although in some cases it was a blessing in disguise. But the guy is right in that we don't know if that's going to be the case with WiiU yet since we don't know anything solid about the other next gen systems. It's natural to assume that it's going to be much better than the Wii situation since you basically have the difference between DX10 and DX11 (as there's nothing newer coming up) level hardware rather than the gigantic architectural gap between Wii and the PS360 but performance wise the difference could still be too great to make real multiplatform efforts any more possible. It's like some beautiful looking games run and look great on lower end PCs because they were made with those in mind as well but others don't scale down nearly as well despite the obviously similar architecture. It remains to be seen if developers will need and if they do need then if they will care to do that effort to downscale to the WiiU.
 
The ability to scale down are assets has never been the barrier, other than the cost/benefit analysis of generating multiple detail levels of every single asset for the purpose of an additional port. But there will be games that, based on the hardware demands created by their design, will not be practical on the WiiU.

I think that if something like that were to happen it would come from a 1st party so it wouldn't matter anyway. I really do look forward to seeing the best of what each new platform can do though. I look forward to the 3way comparisons again LOL. Going back to the ps2/gc/xbox gen there were some serious differences with some of the games. Not all though. It also didn't stop the PS2 from crushing the competition. But just going by tech specs. I'm really excited. I look forward to seeing how 3 different setups compete against each other again. I know when this gen started ps3 was supposed to more powerful than the x360 but we never really saw that when it came to 3rd parties. My personal opinion is that there will be lots of crow served when looking at the final games 2 or so years from now. I can see people blaming it on the WiiU being the lead platform haha, kinda like some folks blame consoles for holding back
PC games lol. I could be wrong. I ate crow with the wii :( but was still happy with my purchase in the long run.
 
But there's absolutely no reason for Iwata to specifically mention that capability if it wasn't an important feature to Nintendo. Seriously Iwata basically focused on only one aspect of the GPU, he mentioned nothing else about it. Yet people here are actually trying to argue that it was just some random thing he threw out there, its quite bizarre.
Exactly.
 
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