Kotaku: The Wii U Won't Be Getting Unreal Engine 4
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Saint Gregory
Member
I'm trying to figure out who at NoA would have the vision to design and brand a Nintendo console. Reggie? The guy that seems to think American consumers don't want localized Japanese games?
SmokedMeat
Gamer™
Going back to Gamecube, Nintendo had a system on par with the competition. It still was passed up for a number of games that were only "Xbox and PS2". Gamecube's install base was pretty much the same as the Xbox.
Dave Meltzer
Banned
To clarify, I mean there's no reason Wii couldn't have got a port of GTA4 if it had been powerful enough to do it and the cost of doing it low enough to justify it.
Obviously nobody is going to take a chance on exclusive titles for Nintendo consoles besides a few smaller projects.
Sure, but it got a hell of a lot more support than Wii did while selling next to nothing in comparison.
SmokedMeat
Gamer™
If Nintendo opened that fabled "War Chest" up, moths would fly out.
AstroNut325
Member
I would definitely buy a Wii U if it could run PS3 level graphics at 1080p/30fps with 2xMSAA. You know... something that a CHEAP (sub $100) videocard can do today!
But more than power, as it has already been mentioned, developers and publishers don't have faith/confidence in software sales on Nintendo platforms. The mantra "Nintendo consoles are for Nintendo games only" has been the ghost haunting Nintendo after the SNES.
I hope it changes one day. I was really hoping the Wii U would sport a GCN architecture GPU to minimize porting and optimization. But even THAT is asking too much of Nintendo. They want to rely on controller gimmicks thinking they'll strike gold again like the Wii.
But more than power, as it has already been mentioned, developers and publishers don't have faith/confidence in software sales on Nintendo platforms. The mantra "Nintendo consoles are for Nintendo games only" has been the ghost haunting Nintendo after the SNES.
I hope it changes one day. I was really hoping the Wii U would sport a GCN architecture GPU to minimize porting and optimization. But even THAT is asking too much of Nintendo. They want to rely on controller gimmicks thinking they'll strike gold again like the Wii.
ClovingWestbrook
Banned
It also had a propriety mini disc format which didnt help.
Never going to happen, but NOA should have tried to recruit Cliffy B to be a Czar of Third Party Relations. He could have been the go to guy on the console design side, too. Well, at least for their upcoming console. He's the only currently available guy with that kind of clout that I can think of.
Barack Lesnar
Banned
Yeah i was just thinking it's not the same as Sony has big NA studios, not sure if N has any.
Beer Monkey
Member
It got key ports of games in franchises like Splinter Cell, Call of Duty, Ghost Recon, Spider-Man, SSX, and so on, and the games were in the ballpark graphically to its peers in the generation.
Not happening this time.
I agree that Nintendo should go back to being a normal competitor instead of running underpowered hardware. Good ports plus Nintendo exclusives is a good reason to own a system.
1) Everybody had a proprietary format.
2) Most PS2/360 games would fit on a mini-DVD.
Anticitizen One
Banned
We all knew this was going to happen when wii u was announced I don't know why everyone is so shocked now. The games they showed barely looked like ps360 games and that bird demo they showed looked like ninja Gaiden on the original Xbox. I only bought the wii u to play HD Nintendo games. Anyone who thought it was going to be a true next gen system that is on par with ps4 and Xbox 3 is foolish.
JordanN
Banned
I think the only way to settle this third party issue once and for all, is for Nintendo to make a console that does everything right.
Online is perfect, hardware is powerful, controller is "standard", sales for third party games are good (better than competition even), media format is big, marketing is good, a Nintendo rep visits third party studios once a week for encouragement.
If third parties still skip that then I'll admit. There's a secret third party illuminati out to stop Nintendo.
If they don't, I'm right.
Online is perfect, hardware is powerful, controller is "standard", sales for third party games are good (better than competition even), media format is big, marketing is good, a Nintendo rep visits third party studios once a week for encouragement.
If third parties still skip that then I'll admit. There's a secret third party illuminati out to stop Nintendo.
If they don't, I'm right.
Can't wait to see ps4 price...pple saying it will be close to the wiiu one...one word: lol
I'm surprised this thread is still alive. Are people that surprised by this news or are people arguing that it's possible, but Epic doesn't want to bother?
Seeing how the Wii-U is lacking support in so many other areas, I don't see this as a big deal.
I think that has more to do with the lack of power in the Wii than anything else. Table Tennis is a simple game and Bully was a PS2 game. I'm not surprised the two games missing in action here are the two designed around the PS360 level of performance.
Seeing how the Wii-U is lacking support in so many other areas, I don't see this as a big deal.
I think that has more to do with the lack of power in the Wii than anything else. Table Tennis is a simple game and Bully was a PS2 game. I'm not surprised the two games missing in action here are the two designed around the PS360 level of performance.
You would think so. But pushing technology does not guarantee success. Remember the Neo Geo AES? The thing cost $650.00 and the games were like $200.00, back in the days when that was still a lot of money. The thing made SNES and Mega Drives games look like they were scribbled on by kindergarten kids.
In truth anyone could put out the most powerful console hardware known to man, if they wanted, the only prohibition is cost. As the NeoGeo, 3DO, N64 and Xbox have shown - having the most bleeding edge hardware doesn't guarantee the best games or even market success. Even the Amiga was far superior to PC's for gaming. There's a lot more involved in creating a successful platform that consumers want to buy and developers want to make games for.
Teletraan1
Banned
I was really hyped for the WiiU before any actual information came out for it. Every bit of leaked news and then actual specs were like a kick to the groin. No Ethernet, no optical output what a joke. I might pick one up at the end of the generation when it is cheap to play the handful of games I would have missed out on otherwise.
I always figured pre-release that Nintendo wouldn't make a system that was going to be PS4/720 levels of power. I did however think it would be a nice jump from current gen and that people who were sick of this extended console generation would get on board with a noticeable jump in power. Why they went all in on power consumption and BC with an expensive gimmick controller is beyond me. They should have just played it safe, went to Epic/EA/Crytek and figured out what the lowest possible spec'd machine they could have put out that would still be able to run these engines, lured fatigued console owners away with a better product and tried to get as much sales as possible in their 1 year head start.
I always figured pre-release that Nintendo wouldn't make a system that was going to be PS4/720 levels of power. I did however think it would be a nice jump from current gen and that people who were sick of this extended console generation would get on board with a noticeable jump in power. Why they went all in on power consumption and BC with an expensive gimmick controller is beyond me. They should have just played it safe, went to Epic/EA/Crytek and figured out what the lowest possible spec'd machine they could have put out that would still be able to run these engines, lured fatigued console owners away with a better product and tried to get as much sales as possible in their 1 year head start.
ClovingWestbrook
Banned
$400. Want to wager?
Didn't the PS2 as well as Xbox play regular DVD-5 and DVD-9?
And is your claim of most games fitting on Mini-DVDs actually true? Less than 1,4 GB seem very restrictive.
Late system, low sales numbers, not as easy to work with as the Xbox.
megabytecr
Member
Yes everyone knew this! I also bought a Wii U for Nintendo HD games and I love the off tv play.
In the Wii U tech threads it has been said that at least the first couple of years porting from the next gen machines could be possible as the Wii U GPU has feature parity with the next gen machines, a different situation than the Wii. The difference lies in power and I guess it is a big difference. But all evidence right now is pointing at business decisions, most 3rd partys are not finding it worthwhile to port to Wii U, and I don't think it is because of sales but the idea that 3rd party games dont sell on Nintendo consoles.
At this point I would not change the Wii U power for the gamepad, love the gamepad so far.
edit: Also very important, dont forget Nintendo is very incompetent in HD programming, just look at Pikmin, man release the damn game now!! So the low power machine and being behind also makes sense for them taking this into account.
Beer Monkey
Member
Oh goodness, yes. Look at how compromised linear games like Call of Duty ended up on Wii. Open world stuff like RDR and GTA IV, forget about it. Wii was more Xbox than Xbox 360.
Nintendo's philosophy is actually "lateral thinking with withered technology." That's what they themselves call it (or at least Gunpei Yokoi did). You have to admit it's a very economical way of doing things which has probably kept them profitable all these years while Sony bleeds cash. They're not for hardware power for the sake of hardware power, but rather they're always thinking about what kind of gameplay that hardware will make possible.
On your last paragraph, I actually disagree that it's mainly the hardware that's turning people off. We aren't comparing televisions or computers there that all play back the same content with varying results based on power. We're comparing independent platforms and operating systems that get varying software support mainly based on business. Being "underpowered" should only directly matter to the developers, not consumers.
The 3DS maybe a poor spec compared to the Vita, but the 3DS has a lot of unique software which is probably partly why it's winning over the Vita right now. Same goes for the DS compared to the PSP. The main problem with the Wii U is, indeed, "no games." I think this is regardless of hardware power, otherwise it'd at least be getting current gen games like Tomb Raider and BioShock Infinite, but it isn't.
Nintendo's main problem right now, as it has been for the last 15 years, is third party support. Everything else is secondary to that.
Saint Gregory
Member
Nintendo as a whole has serious managerial problems right now but for the last several years I've felt that specifically NoA has to be a weak link in the company. Unless NoJ is just ignoring the obvious the NoA heads have to be giving them a lot of bad information for these kinds of missteps to be happening with 3rd party developers/publishers.
The Wii U's lack of an identity seems to stretch into all territories so maybe it's unfair for me to place all the blame at NoA's feet but lately it almost feels like there's an invisible war going on between Nintendo and the western gaming community and NoA is supposed to be the one building the bridges between those two parties.
AZ Greg
Member
Did you laugh at people that suggested the Vita could launch at the same, or close to, price as the 3DS?
SmokedMeat
Gamer™
Was it really a hindrance? Gamecube had True Crime, so I don't see GTA being an issue. It didn't get some FPS titles, but yet there was Time Splitters 2 & 3. The disc had nothing to do with it as far as I'm concerned.
SmokedMeat
Gamer™
I'm expecting $399. Unlike Nintendo Sony and Microsoft are used to taking a hit on hardware to get the system into the hands of consumers. I doubt it would be as high as $450.
Even if it's at a premium, and sales aren't gangbusters, they're still at an advantage because they have the 360/PS3 to carry them for the budget concious consumer looking for a console. As 360/PS3 sales dry up, their next gen offerings will come down in price and more and more consumers will jump onboard.
For many games I don't think it'd be an issue, but there are always those select cases. I just remember FMV usually being more compressed on GC games.
Beer Monkey
Member
There was a really active scene involved in shrinking games down to squeeze as many as possible onto the HDD of a hacked Xbox. There was a tremendous amount of bloat out there. In many cases just deleting foreign languages could save multiple GB. Most games weren't really that big.
MDSLKTR
Member
wiiu price should be <200$ lol
Saint Gregory
Member
A lot of people did, and then strangely a lot of those same people thought that price was suddenly too high when they expected $399+ before.
Honestly, if either the 720 or PS4 is more than $299 both are going to struggle after the holidays. There's just not a market beyond hard core gamers for dedicated consoles at that price. I do think that they will launch much better than the Wii U unless their sales cannibalize each other.
JordanN
Banned
I think this is myopic thinking.
The Wii U has already gotten current gen games like Batman AC or Darksiders. If you remove the hardware from all of this, you only jeopardize its chances more.
This is the problem I see around here. It's either one extreme or the other.
Good luck getting the games I mentioned running if the Wii U were a NES.
Syphon Filter
Member
in terms of power but its in the same gen as ps4 and 720 in terms of latest system out to compete with each other.
Beer Monkey
Member
FMV is the usual culprit.
Hell, if you take the FMV and foreign languages out of Alan Wake (360), you get 2.41GB of game.
Of course power concerns will matter to consumers, they are buying it and investing £300 on a machine with a comparable spec to 7 year old machines is a waste of money, especially when most gamers are "upgrading" when buying a new console.
3rd party support is an obvious and well known issue and Nintendo have only themselves to blame.
My comparisons between the 3DS and Vita was to highlight that Nintendo release machines that are expensive, especially in relation to the cheap silicon and build quality of their machines.
Nintendo are cheap and charge high, £300 for the Wii U? ........ £20 more expensive than the 360 launch price with comparable hardware.
Most 360 and PS3 gamers will not buy a Wii U, even for Nintendo games ......... 25 million Gamecubes and N64s compared to PS1 and PS2 numbers displays very few buy a Nintendo console as a 2nd, Nintendo have been trading on the same core numbers for years.
Nintendo handhelds are bought by / for kids, that's where Nintendo success in the handheld market comes from, their home consoles are now a niche product, the Wii being an anomaly that won't be repeated.
I still think we're way past the point where hardware power, in itself, would convince western third parties that their games will sell on a Nintendo console.
kingkaiser
Member
Sigh, they are already making a loss on every WiiU sold, just because they invested heavily in R&D and implemented state of the art streaming tech inside the gamepad.
The thing is, if they would have gone a more traditional route combined with their lacking skills in multimedia in web-gaming, they still would have built a Game Cube 2, but people would call them just lazy.
Now they chose a more difficult route to repeat the Wii miracle and failed, and people accuse them being too careful...
It is laughable and in the end it doesn't even matter what they do because in the opinion of many people everything will be false and the company is already doomed...
The Wii U is the same generation as the PS3 and Xbox 360 in terms of "latest system out to compete with each other".
Should we congratulate Nintendo on creating an unappealing system? "Not going the traditional route" isn't commendable in itself.
Saint Gregory
Member
This is an incredibly GAF-centric way of thinking. I can assure you that when the general gaming public heads out to buy a console the system's library is their number 1 concern, not how many FLOPS it can flip.
Syphon Filter
Member
what?
JordanN
Banned
It was never about hardware by itself. It was hardware working together with everything the console has to offer.
You cannot attempt to sell a game if there's no console to run it (or you could, but you'd end up with vaporware).
If you can't understand my message because of that little typo, I don't need to argue with you.
The allure of power certainly does sell systems, it was a big part of PS2's message. Obviously, other factors are at play as well.
But the Wii U's continued lack of sales success will certainly deter people looking for the system with the most appealing library.
Syphon Filter
Member
wiiu is in the same competition with ps4 and 720.
They are obviously not going to know the "hardware specs", rather when you see the graphics on the TV advertising the new consoles and then you see a Wii U game .......... it's going to look like yesterday's shit.
Kids see displays in stores, or adverts and they will be able to see the new power with their own eyes, Wii U looks old already.
We all know it isnt "next gen" powerwise, but it does have some pretty significant advantages over 360 doesnt it ?
- Shader model 4, Directx 11 equalent feature set.
- Twice as much ram for games, likely to be inchreased by at least 256 mb when the OS is optimized.
- 3 times as much EDram.
- Overall more efficient architecture.
Arent those pretty significant ? Or am I being a deluded fanboy ?
- Shader model 4, Directx 11 equalent feature set.
- Twice as much ram for games, likely to be inchreased by at least 256 mb when the OS is optimized.
- 3 times as much EDram.
- Overall more efficient architecture.
Arent those pretty significant ? Or am I being a deluded fanboy ?
Wait for the updated dev kits
And to this day people argue this and that if the Wii U is running current gen games, though admittedly without much improvement, then imagine what it can do in 7 years. Completely ignoring that in previous generations ports would routinely run with dramatic performance improvements implying there was room to grow. :/
I'm with most in while that is sensible I don't expect devs to spend time to make those features really pop. On a nintendo platform only except a few handfuls of devs to take time to take advantage of what it offers.
Thats not delusion you're just hoping for the very unlikely.
If a port like NFS: Most wanted can show decent improvents in fps performane, lighting, and texturing that it becomes a mixture of a console and pc port than that is damn good for machine that supposedly is barely just more powerfu than the hd twins. They did port in a few months which shows it's not hard to really work with the system and see what it can do. Certain devs won't bother or won't be given resources to exploit this system like they should be when making products.
AstroNut325
Member
Hooked up to 50"+ televisions in Best Buy, Frys, Costco and other places... you really think that the general public won't notice a difference between Wii U and the PS420?
SmokedMeat
Gamer™
Personally I think it was foolish to pump so much money into a controller. Cool or not, it's the sole reason the system is as expensive as it is, and in a console first, you can't go to a store and purchase/use a second one. It's really crazy if you ask me.
Had they gone with a more powerful system akin to what we expect from a next gen system I think a lot of gamers would've been estatic. With free online and whatnot, only a fool would be knocking it as "Gamecube 2".
Saint Gregory
Member
If this is true then why did the PS60 combo get off to such a bad start this gen? Could people not tell that they were big improvements over the previous gen? And why did they suddenly take off and become successful a few years ago? Did they suddenly become more powerful or were people blind before?
The HD systems are successful now because they have the libraries of games that people want to play. Earlier this gen casual/motion/music games were popular and the Wii was home to these types of games and it thrived. The last few years those types of games lost popularity and were replaced by online shooters and action games and the PS360 was the perfect home for those experiences. I can't stress enough that most people (not all) care very little about what's in the box as long as it entertains them. I would have thought that this last gen would have taught everyone that if nothing else.
Again, that's not the point. Of course you can tell the difference but what matter does it make without the games to back it up. People could tell the difference between a PS3 and a Wii in 2006 too.
The thing is that companies *needed* that additional space for multi language support. That hacking groups were able to create smaller ISOs by deleting movies and language files doesn't mean that Nintendo made the right decision with those proprietary mini DVDs. Those files were put on the DVD for a reason. Any reduction in disk space comes with challenges for devs - or additional costs if the only way out is a multi-disc game.
Nintendo chose for an extra small disc format so they could reduce the size of the Gamecube and create a purple lunch box. Both decisions were wrong. The same can be said of Nintendo's decision to go minimum power consumption for the Wii U design. As if gamers cared about that. They do care about fan noise, but not power consumption.
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