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Digital Foundry vs Watch Dogs on Wii U

Stitch

Gold Member
Man people in the WatchDogs Wii U thread were saying it was alright, but I knew right away after that guy posted video of it that it was seriously borked. The framerate seemed straight slide show at times.

Yeah, even after several videos with absolute shit performance were posted many people still said that the framerate looked OK.

Thank god that it runs pretty decently on my PC and uplay keys are very, very cheap 😀
 

Exile20

Member
console. i could understand a few ports being bad, but not 90% of ports, it doesn't take much effort from Nintendo to make hardware that should easily out class 8 year old consoles.

It is not effort. It is cost and they put it in the gamepad. Simple.

They could easily make a console as powerful as a i7, 16gb console but shit will cost a shit lot more.

It was a design choice, so argue the choice.
 

Trago

Member
Yikes that frame rate. Leave it to Nintendo to take advantage of this console, because there's no reason third parties would touch it.
 

adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
So .. this is exactly the same case as Black Flag on WiiU.

When the games released we had individual posters claiming how it was such a huge improvement over PS3/360, but then the face/off's came out....
 
It is not effort. It is cost and they put it in the gamepad. Simple.

They could easily make a console as powerful as a i7, 16gb console but shit will cost a shit lot more.

It was a design choice, so argue the choice.

They clearly chose wrong as the gamepad did not become a huge fad like the motion controls.
 

marc^o^

Nintendo's Pro Bono PR Firm
Wii U's identity and good press strengthened, somehow in correlation with the end of mediocre 3rd party ports.

The return of such a DF article after few months is a reminder of how embarrassing non Nintendo games perform on this system.

So I could be wrong, but I'm not sure the absence of 3rd party support won't help Wii U, eventually. Wii U as an exclusives machine tells a better story.
 

lyrick

Member
Remember when Ubisoft said this port would be 'between gens' guys?

Good times! :lol

selectively:
vOKbieN.png
 
Can't say I'm surprised.

It's a perfect storm of the developer knowing no matter how much effort they put in they won't sell much, and the fact that this was made for 5 other platforms that are nearly identical or they have almost a decade of experience with, combined with the age old story of Nintendo only making hardware with themselves in mind.

Also general Ubisoft rubbishness, of course.

Huge shame to think that this may well be the last big budget multiplat on the WiiU though. Hell, if they don't start thinking about someone other than themselves it could well be the last one Nintendo gets ever.
 
So apropos that ninjablade would have the first post, lol

I admit that the other thread had me believing it might've been a bit of a better port, although inside I knew better.
 

MMaRsu

Member
Jesus christ Ubisoft. If you are going to put out a shit port then it's no wonder people aint buying it.

Put out a competent product or don't put out anythign at all.
 
I will enjoy the posts pointing out how "half assed" ubisoft worked on this. Of course ignoring that the Wii U in a couple categories actually is WORSE than PS360.
 

Amir0x

Banned
when i go pick up my Wii U later I should make a small index card and tape it in front of any Wii U copies of Watchdogs with the phrase "hazardous waste"

actually i should do that for all copies of Watch Dogs in the store, ugh ;P
 

BY2K

Membero Americo
I will enjoy the posts pointing out how "half assed" ubisoft worked on this. Of course ignoring that the Wii U in a couple categories actually is WORSE than PS360.

Lower specs and power shouldn't be an excuse for a bad port. You wanted to do the port, do it right.
 

phanphare

Banned
I will enjoy the posts pointing out how "half assed" ubisoft worked on this. Of course ignoring that the Wii U in a couple categories actually is WORSE than PS360.

I will enjoy posts that give a company like Ubisoft the benefit of the doubt. because seriously lol.
 

Seik

Banned
I will enjoy the posts pointing out how "half assed" ubisoft worked on this. Of course ignoring that the Wii U in a couple categories actually is WORSE than PS360.

There's a thing called optimizing in a game's development.

Clearly Ubi didn't give a fuck because they knew the game wouldn't sell.

And seriously, are you defending Ubisoft? They are king of shit ports.
 
Lower specs and power shouldn't be an excuse for a bad port. You wanted to do the port, do it right.
Perhaps that would mean taking out all of the stuff that makes it run poorly. Like the entire game.

It should not have been released though. I just doubt that the WiiU could have maintained a good framerate with the game's gameplay perogatives for graphics and CPU stuff.
Runs significantly worse than AC Unity - quite an impressive feat.
Ubisoft bests itself in releasing garbage.
I will enjoy posts that give a company like Ubisoft the benefit of the doubt. because seriously lol.

No benefit of the doubt to ubi, just completely doubt the WiiUs capability to run this game given its CPU.
There's a thing called optimizing in a game's development.

Clearly Ubi didn't give a fuck because they knew the game wouldn't sell.

And seriously, are you defending Ubisoft? They are king of shit ports.

The game was written in whatever weird open GL environment the Wii U has. It was not just dumped over from the 360 version or something.
Also, optimizing tends to mean "let's cut out stuff so this doesnt run like garbage." It isn't always, "Lets write some clever code that looks similar but performs way better."
 
It is not effort. It is cost and they put it in the gamepad. Simple.

They could easily make a console as powerful as a i7, 16gb console but shit will cost a shit lot more.

It was a design choice, so argue the choice.

come on now. they went for the bare minimum power wise, just to make the console smaller, A gpu with only 176 glops, and a weak cpu to boot, it wasn't just a choice, they just don't care for specs. it was all about being low power wattage, small, and gamepad, no effort was put making descent specs.
 

DedValve

Banned
Needs to be 24fps to be one.

Aside from that, this doesn't really bode well for Ubisoft's image to the Wii U owners.



Those are first party though and so will every first party game Sony and MS makes too. It still doesn't excuse how weak the hardware is compared to the the other consoles.

I'm pretty sure that Ubisofts image to WiiU owners has long since passed.

They certainly did give it their all at the launch of the WiiU but pulled out when it floundered. I'm still shocked that this version exists.
 
Wonder how much fps they could have produced with V-sync turned off.
(or at least some effort in porting it lol)

come on now. they went for the bare minimum power wise, just to make the console smaller, A gpu with only 176 glops, and a weak cpu to boot, it wasn't just a choice, they just don't care for specs.
Oh they care a lot for specs. - Just not the same specs as you do. Maybe they should have just taken a standard laptop cpu/gpu combi like the competition to prove their technical prowers!1.. but they didn´t. They put R&D in the gamepad and i am very happy with it.
 
Perhaps that would mean taking out all of the stuff that makes it run poorly. Like the entire game.

It should not have been released though. I just doubt that the WiiU could have maintained a good framerate with the game's gameplay perogatives for graphics and CPU stuff.

Ubisoft bests itself in releasing garbage.


No benefit of the doubt to ubi, just completely doubt the WiiUs capability to run this game given its CPU.


The game was written in whatever weird open GL environment the Wii U has. It was not just dumped over from the 360 version or something.
Also, optimizing tends to mean "let's cut out stuff so this doesnt run like garbage." It isn't always, "Lets write some clever code that looks similar but performs way better."




Let's not act like this port received meaningful efforts or budget.
 

baconcow

Member
Ubisoft showing, again, that they don't know how to program well for the Wii U. Maybe they could take a course from Nintendo programmers.
 
What a great topic for unnecessary Wii U bashing.
Did anyone really think the port of the underwhelming Watch Dogs was going to be in any form polished?
 
What a great topic for unnecessary Wii U bashing.
Did anyone really think the port of the underwhelming Watch Dogs was going to be in any form polished?



I'm sure it was ! I mean, it has been delayed for like 7 months, it must have been to polish it. There's no reason to think that the 7 months had nothing to do with Ubisoft not caring about this port, right ?
 

phanphare

Banned
No benefit of the doubt to ubi, just completely doubt the WiiUs capability to run this game given its CPU.

yeah that's pretty much what I mean. faulting the Wii U first instead of Ubisoft. given the company, their track record as a whole, and also their track record specifically regarding the Wii U I think that's foolish. no offense to you personally.

I also agree with you that this game should have never been made. it's certainly not going to sell well and we all knew Ubisoft would do a half-assed port so even the few people that buy the game won't be getting a solid product.
 

Windpower

Banned
lol if anyone even thought to buy this port of a terrible fucking game on a console that offers way better ones, it's like chewing on a picture of a hamburger when a steakhouse is right next door
 
yeah that's pretty much what I mean. faulting the Wii U first instead of Ubisoft. given the company, their track record as a whole, and also their track record specifically regarding the Wii U I think that's foolish. no offense to you personally.

I also agree with you that this game should have never been made. it's certainly not going to sell well and we all knew Ubisoft would do a half-assed port so even the few people that buy the game won't be getting a solid product.
I aggree 100% with you.
I fault Ubisoft for releasing it at all. It should not have been released. Anyone who buys it is being had.

But I get the feeling that no level of godly powers could get this game's cpu heavy stuff to run well on the wiiu. Given that, they should have never released it.
 
Ubisoft showing, again, that they don't know how to program well for the Wii U. Maybe they could take a course from Nintendo programmers.
Nintendo hasn't made any large, city based open world games for the WiiU and probably never will. I'm not going to blame lazy devs on this one. Frankly I'm surprised the WiiU version wasn't cancelled altogether.
 

Dr. Kaos

Banned
weak wiiu is weak.
and Nintendo studios are awesome.

Here's to hoping that the successor is beastly enough to hang with PS5/XB4. I'd love to see what those guys can do when you give them infinite gigaflops.
 

FLAguy954

Junior Member
Yeah, even after several videos with absolute shit performance were posted many people still said that the framerate looked OK.

Thank god that it runs pretty decently on my PC and uplay keys are very, very cheap 😀

Yeah I seen that in the Wii U thread too, how the version ran fine and even had slightly better textures. Good thing I can run this game maxed @ 1600p on my PC (after patches).
 

ozfunghi

Member
Well, i was thinking about getting it when it dropped to €20 or lower, but maybe i'll just pass alltogether.

Runs significantly worse than AC Unity - quite an impressive feat.

Could this in fact somehow raise the value of the WiiU version due to how rarely a game manages to pull that off? ;)
 

Crossing Eden

Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
I aggree 100% with you.
I fault Ubisoft for releasing it at all. It should not have been released. Anyone who buys it is being had.

But I get the feeling that no level of godly powers could get this game's cpu heavy stuff to run well on the wiiu. Given that, they should have never released it.
I'm not very tech savvy outside of animation, but what things should be the cause of the problems with the CPU? Cloth physics, debris and AI?
 
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