Dave Meltzer
Banned
Yeah. The best Wii games would have worked on Gamecube.
Thing is, the Wii's design wasn't motion controls over good graphics, it was massive profits over good graphics.
EA Sports Engineer: Wii U is crap, < powerful than 360. No $ 3party. [Tweets Deleted]
- Thread starter Horse Armour
- Start date
Yeah. The best Wii games would have worked on Gamecube.
Thing is, the Wii's design wasn't motion controls over good graphics, it was massive profits over good graphics.
Thunder Monkey
Banned
Well yes, but we can't all have the eloquence of a monkey tapping on a keyboard can we?
And honestly... I think I'd be scared if they changed. Hyperbole seems endemic in human behavior. Immutable. It's never "Well that was disappointing." especially now in the internet age it's "Worst fucking thing I've seen in my life!"
All that extra work for 10k or less on the NPD (apparently)
Any publisher jumping ship is completely justified.
I don't think the Wiimote had anything to do with the Wii's graphics.
Keeping their GCN era tech/assets/costs - as well as maintaining an affordable price to their primary market (families that at that time weren't willing to shell out $499/599 for an HD console) - were bigger factors in the Wii's graphical capabilities.
Thunder Monkey
Banned
And a big factor in where WiiU sits on the technical spectrum. Especially since we've gained a little context into tweaks. It's like taking the GCN design giving it a few modern parts, and modernizing older parts into a cohesive whole. Probably entirely so they wouldn't have to change much of anything in their development pipeline.
Yep.
My understanding is that the Wii U's CPU is sort of weird/outdated because of its GCN roots... is that correct?
I agree with your points. I'm a Nintendo fan, but we have to be realistic, graphical improvement does matter, it is one of the benefits of evolving technology, besides new opportunities for game design when there are less limitations.
As i've said before, i expect the difference between WiiU and PS360 to be something like PSP-3DS, where the graphics are improved mostly because of some new effects, but overall it's not like a generational leap.
I think from what i've seen of the WiiU's design, that Nintendo simply decided to make an HD console that would minimize the cost of migrating to a new architecture, and i believe 3rd party support was maybe an afterthought or just wishful thinking from their part.
It seems that they wanted to move to HD as painlessly as possible, while improving their engines but not beginning from scratch.
Almost every design choice shows that they built the WiiU thinking just about making their own games in HD, i'm pretty sure they got no feedback from 3rd parties. They simply made an HD Mario machine, and if 3rd parties were on board, it's cool.
The gamepad is cool, and i really like it, but it's not a mainstream hook for casual gamers, and Nintendo themselves have failed to show how it could improve gaming and inspire new gameplay mechanics.
So given these design choices and the current market position of the WiiU, it doesn't seem strange that 3rd party publishers are avoiding the risk of putting games on the platform.
It's a device without a clear market target, the hardcore don't really want another PS360-like machine just for a tablet controller, and the casuals don't care for another tablet gaming experience when they already have iPads and Android tablets.
DragonSworne
Banned
But the amount of money Nintendo sunk into modifying and upgrading the gamecube architecture was not cheap. They could have easily taken that money and gone the same route Sony has and largely used off the shelf parts.
Yet Nintendo prioritizes system size and power draw over graphical capabilities.
People keep saying the gamepad is what makes the Wii u expensive. what makes the Wii u expensive is the small form factor with the power of a supercharged 360 stuffed into it.
If given a high power draw and system size, the Wii u could be more powerful and still have the gamepad with the same budget.
Thunder Monkey
Banned
In some ways it's almost literally like they slapped 3 together and used the die size drop to increase speed. It apparently has larger pools of L2 RAM which were not small on the prior incarnations, but it's very much a legacy design. Simple and efficient, but really not suited for modern design imperatives.
Uncle Rupee
Banned
Same thing with 3DS, it could easily be as powerful as the PS Vita if it didn't have to render every frame twice to achieve the 3D effect.
Not exactly the same situation. You're asking 3DS to lose it's USP. Dragonsworne is agruing that Wii U could have retained it's USP plus it's budget by foregoing different priorities. No clue how much validity is in his argument, but it is what it is.
Dave Meltzer
Banned
The 3D of the 3DS hasn't been a selling point since the first 2 weeks it came out.
Little Green Yoda
Member
Their fixation over winning over the Japanese console market first and foremost is baffling to me. Surely, they see what everybody else sees (Japan trending more and more towards handhelds). What's even more disappointing is how they haven't even garnered much Japanese support for their new console (aside from SEGA, apparently).
Thunder Monkey
Banned
Tookay and I kind of were covering that.
They designed the system so they would have to change very little in their own development pipeline. This is a blessing to them, but damning to the industry at large. Especially in the case of larger publishers and developers. Smaller devs and Indie devs will work on whatever they get access to. If that happens to be iOS they are there. WiiU? They'll be there.
This in the end is why the costs of the innards are higher than you'd expect for some fairly outdated in the CPU's case designs. Because its based on something that only Nintendo really buys anymore. And they marginally updated it.
It's weird, it hinders, but it makes sense for Nintendo.
Irrelevent. It's still the unique aspect of the 3DS.
Dave Meltzer
Banned
Well it's not irrelevant, is it? Because nobody cares about the 3D and they don't even market it as a 3D system anymore. Would anyone care if a new 3DS game didn't support 3D?
Thunder Monkey
Banned
Ok... marginally updated it is not the way to say it.
That Power branded CPU was never meant to be a tricore design or clocked higher than 1.1GHz. So there has to be some fairly stark differences.
That Power branded CPU was never meant to be a tricore design or clocked higher than 1.1GHz. So there has to be some fairly stark differences.
Because it's integrated in the design of the system, something that will directly effect the end user. Power consumption indirectly affects them, that's the difference.
Still, is all this modification work worth it, if the end result is underwhelming compared to cheap available mainstream chips?
The funny thing about this is that people would flip their shit if a game was released on the 3DS and the 3D slider meant no change in the game's visual dynamic.
Thunder Monkey
Banned
If you're Nintendo?
Maybe... I mean their devs wouldn't really need to understand much on the CPU end aside from "It's faster and you can do more with it." Modern asset creation and highly programmable shader tech might cause a few pauses.
Dave Meltzer
Banned
Would they? I mean, really? When I had a 3DS I had the 3D effect on full. I kinda liked it. But if they released a new Mario game for it that looked as good as Galaxy (hypothetical) but no 3D? I wouldn't give a shit. And I can't imagine many other people would either.
Little Green Yoda
Member
It's a minor issue for most people when we're talking about a console plugged into the wall. Not so much when it's a handheld - portability and battery life are key features. As unique of a selling point glasses-free 3D may be, it's clearly not enough to sell the system to the average consumer and the opportunity cost of including it is probably fairly significant.
I would, 3d makes kid Icarus and pilotwings
Dave Meltzer
Banned
It's not a case of if you like it, it's a case of if you wouldn't buy games for the system if they dropped 3D from them. I find it hard to believe anyone would.
Same thing with Blu ray support for the PS3 and backwards compatibility for the next gen. Doesn't have to do with anything close to what DragonSworne was talking about.
That is my understanding too.
I read somewhere (I wish I could remember where) that with PS720 have such a standard architecture that we will not see the huge improvements that we saw with last gen because the learning curve will be relatively small. The previous gen for both 360 and PS3 required a lot of work on the part of developers, and it took years to fully understand the hardware.
If the wii U is going to take years to fully understand for developers, and they have the option of ignoring it and developing on 3 very similar platform architectures that they already understand (PC/720/PS4), then I fully understand what that DICE guy meant when he said "we did some tests on the wii u, and decided not to go down that road."
TheMagician
Member
Pikmin 3 was being demonstrated with the Wiimote on the recent Nintendo Direct. Pretty much summed up one of the U's biggest problems.
That's a good question but I don't think there's a definitive answer. I'm a big 3D fan, and my daughter hates it. 3DS is what it is, I think differentiation from what you can find elsewhere is always a good thing.
Dave Meltzer
Banned
I think a lot of people wouldn't have bought a PS3 in its first year or so if it hadn't had blu ray.
3D was just a bad decision. Just like the tablet was for Wii U. Their budget would be much better spent on hardware and infrastructure than trying to come up with novelties.
Very sensible analysis.
Why exactly does it matter, let alone greatly? It's just his opinion - some developers might share it, others don't.
The_Player
Member
It's good to have this honest people in game industry. I hope he won't be punished for real talk.
haha, no that train ended on page 54. it is been pretty reasonable since then.
TheDrowningMan
Member
"Real Talk" = "What I want to hear"
Cross gen games exist for a reason, there's still a big(ger) market for HD twins, and Nintendo dared to position Wii U on that ground because devs will continue supporting it for a while. I don't see it as damning the industry, just sticking to the part of it that fits their strategy.
Dave Meltzer
Banned
If Nintendo came out saying "yo fuck EA those bastards promised us x but then did y" I doubt anybody would be opposed. It'd be fun.
PR talk is bullshit and the fact so many people want companies to be "professional" all the time is baffling to me.
No, real talk = no p.r. intermediary. not 'truth' or whatever, just real.
edit: it is like the polar opposite of politician speak.
The_Player
Member
I want to hear truth, not some licorice PR bullshit they're so proud of.
Even 10k sales would have made them money, iirc there was a 5 man team working on the port (for 3 months) and I doubt the world wide sales won't reach 100k sales. Not too bad for a half year late and buggy port.
Thunder Monkey
Banned
If they'd have actually done that it might have been genius.
But they did some fairly strange things with the design in the interim. There's a reason devs call the system "weak". Because it could not achieve parity in certain ways. I have no doubt it's the physics engines. Designed for brute force number crunching. Something Espresso is not built for. It is not Cell. It is a die dropped, tricore, 4 stage pipeline CPU from 1998.
Cell is expected to do these physics calculations all the while assisting RSX on visual computations. Espresso comes up lacking in almost every way to Cell, and apparently Xenon. It has some pretty large L2 cache though, and it's notoriously simple pipeline going for it.
But it's not a Cell analog. Which will require rethinking, which requires money, which takes publisher and developer interest.
opportunity cost.
TheMagician
Member
Nintendo should have just gone with an advanced Wii remote Nunchuck. Thrown in the pro controller for the standard set up.
Thunder Monkey
Banned
They probably could have launched at $249 and been in a much better place going forward.
Depends on which core. Espresso cache sizes are asymmetric. And Jaguar cores don't seem to have private access to L2 at all.
http://forwardthinking.pcmag.com/none/308360-amd-details-jaguar-preps-chip-for-playstation-4
"Jaguar has four CPU cores instead of two, it doubles the size of Level 2 cache to 2MB, and it makes the cache shareable among all the cores."
That disparity seems minimal. A launch game like AC3 or NFSMW show it. With games starting now on final kits there should be no issue at all to achieve same results.
Or in a worse one. Gamecube tanked, and that thing was even cheaper and offered comparable performance.