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[-Pyromaniac-]

Didn't Microsoft spend 50 million dollars just on goddamn DLC exclusivity for GTA4. Imagine the actual game.

 

[Smiles and Cries]

It would be in the 200m range based on the rumors of what they wanted for GTA4.

Nintendo would be better off Buying TAKE TWO

 

[Shiggy]

heh, at least its not in Tomb Raider land of no dice

Are we still not getting Tomb Raider despite its recent delay?

 

[Smiles and Cries]

Are we still not getting Tomb Raider despite its recent delay?

they have not said anything has changed on that front... I am just saying based on how negative the response for a WiiU version was

Square calls the shots right? Do you trust them to give Nintendo anything?

 

[kami_sama]

Beyond Good & Evil 2?

I would love the game for the Wii U. They specifically said that it needs to be on a next generation console, so I think it fits.

 

[SolidSnakex]

Nintendo would be better off Buying TAKE TWO

I was probably low balling the number there. After looking at this i'd imagine that it'd be a lot more than 200m

Grand Theft Auto IV, the latest iteration of the hit video game franchise, racked up first-week sales of $500 million, Take-Two Interactive, the game’s publisher, plans to announce on Wednesday. The report exceeded the sales expectations of analysts.

The company is expected to report it sold six million copies of the graphically violent game, 3.6 million of them on the first day.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/07/technology/07game.html

 

[lordfroakie]

I said exclusive though...

but non-exclusive megatons

GTA V



Nintendo still needs an exclusive in this department

Can you at least wait til E3 and not jump to conclusion? Be patient -_-

 

[Daschysta]

Probably. Plus the hardware and its shader capabilities will be more modern/more standard than the GCN and Wii were. Still, there's the chance that 3rd parties will struggle with releasing (downscaled) UE4 games on the WiiU, or at the very least that they'll look worse so that the average consumer would prefer to buy a different console (or PC, if he's got any wits) to play those games.



Do I need to end each and everyone of my posts with "IN MY OPINION" now? Of course it's just speculation instead of fact.

PS2 Multiplats looked significantly worse on average than GCN/XBOX, didn't stop consumers from buying loads of multiplats on the system. The bought the system for exclusives, and then purchased other games on the system they owned (PS2).

WII was an anomaly, the WII-U will look much closer to the other systems than the WII did. The resolution will be the same for the most part, and diminishing returns is more pertinent than ever it has been before this generation. Even gaffers are admitting that what we've seen of UE4 isn't a quantum leap visually (of course it's doing lots of cool things, but they are things that the average consumer isn't going to look at and say WOW that looks WAY better than my 360/PS3.

Remember the UE3 unveil? That was a TRUE generational leap, noone, I mean noone could pretend that it made the previous generation look disgustingly bad in comparison, UE4 looks nicer, but it doesn't make Uncharted, GOW3 or any other high end console game from last gen look ugly by any means, and WII-U games will look like upgraded versions of those games (for games with decent effort put into them)

That is why Nintendo is in such good position, they have without a doubt, the most high profile exclusives in the industry, they sell more of their own games than any other publisher, and it isn't close, many people buy a nintendo console solely for these, even people that prefer the other systems for various reasons, if they can get Nintendo's games, Downports of the 3rd party multiplats, that still look very good, especially to a non-enthusiast customer, then many of them may decide to buy just one console this time around, Call of Duty, Assassins Creed, Mario, Zelda, Metroid, Kart and Smash will be more appealing to many people compared to Call of Duty, Assassins Creed, Uncharted, Ratchet and Clank and Jak or those multiplats and Microsoft's poor (sans halo, but even with it compared to Nintendo's) first party lineup.

If Wii-U takes off then Publishers will have to update their engines to accomodate the featureset of the it, and it could become the baseline if it is a huge success, meaning upports of Wii-U games to the other two in many cases, which may make sense if the Wii-U offers more affordable development, and they can just throw some bells and whistles onto the next generation of games.

 

[SaintMadeOfPlaster]

My god.
Do I really have to put "I think" or "Probably" in front of every post now?
Geeze, guys, mellow out.

Pretty much, yes.

If you don't know something for sure, that's what people do to let others know. When you don't say "maybe" or "I think" or "probably," it implies that you are stating a fact that you know. This is ESPECIALLY important in the form of written communication. You seem smart enough to know this.

Whether you like it or not, Ace, you are notorious for posting your opinion/speculation as fact, and it's why there is a large number of posters here who don't take you seriously.

 

[Smiles and Cries]

Can you at least wait til E3 and not jump to conclusion? Be patient -_-

then why would we need this thread? -_-

and what conclusions exactly is being jumped here?

 

[Thraktor]

Metro: Last Light is focusing on PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. A Wii U version is in the works, but is unlikely to launch alongside the others. See here.

Hopefully this means they're going to put a bit of effort into the Wii U version. Metro 2033 can look amazing on PC, so it'd be a shame if the Wii U edition of Last Light were to look exactly the same as the Ps360 versions with zero improvements.

 

[Neiteio]

Posted "Forgot About K. Rool" in its own thread but was ignored. Feel this shit, yo.

(Mashup of DKC2 and Dr. Dre -- destroys the Snoop Dogg mashups, I must say!)

 

[blu]

I'm not nearly knowledgable enough about low-level GPU hardware to contribute much here, but I would say you should be looking for the sort of functionality that DirectX and OpenGL don't support, because if AMD came up with any improved hardware units that are supported by DirectX and OpenGL they'd be in their PC GPUs by now. If you have the time it may be worth going through the OpenGL and DirectX APIs and asking yourself "What useful functionality isn't in here?". There's also the possibility of TEV-style units in terms of combining multiple operations together, but while I understand things like tesselation and texture sampling from a theoretical perspective, I don't know how they're actually implemented in GPU hardware, so I'm not much help there.

On the subject of combined ray-traced/rasterised rendering, although it would be interesting, there are two reasons I consider the inclusion of a hardware ray-tracer for it extremely unlikely. The first is simply that hardware ray-tracers have yet to be commercialised, and there's a big difference between an academic design and actual commercial hardware that could go in a GPU and be properly utilised by programmers. The second issue is that, as blu said, the actual ray-tracing (or traversal) is only half the problem; the scene that's being rendered has to be formatted in a particular way for the ray-tracer to operate efficiently. Usually the scene is stored in memory in what's called a KD-tree, which makes finding intersections between rays and polygons nice and efficient. Unfortunately KD-trees don't play well with movement of objects in a scene, so for a videogame you basically have to recompute the KD-tree for every frame, which is hugely computationally expensive. This kind of thing is best performed by a many-core processor with a big coherent cache (something like Larrabee, basically).

In fact, while I'm going well off topic here, Intel are a company worth looking at as far as real-time ray-tracing is concerned. They've shown off real-time ray-tracing running on servers using their Knight's Ferry/Knight's Corner architecture, and they've also got a joint research institute called the Intel Visual Computing Institute in partnership with Saarland University, which is home to quite a few researchers who focus on ray-tracing, including the creators of the hardware ray-tracer which I referred to previously. So while it's a bit early now, I wouldn't be surprised to see a console come out around 2020 doing full ray-traced rendering on Intel hardware.

See guys, if it wasn't for Thraktor's (quite elaborate and eloquent) response I'd have never seen bg's original paging. Who said something about WUSTs slowing down on the community side? Anyhow, let me try and answer the darn question.

I largely share Thraktor's take on dedicated/primarily raytracing-targeting silicon in the wiiU. We are very close to the next threshold in visualisation where quantitative accumulations will bring to the next qualitative change (see http://raytracey.blogspot.com, http://igad.nhtv.nl/~bikker/, IMG's raytracing SDK, et al), but that will most likely not happen during this pending console generation. Or at least I don't expect anything large or paradigm-shifty ..Well, save for the odd ambitious indie dev toying with relatively low-res output devices coupled to relatively powerful console units *wink-wink nudge-nudge*.

Speaking of what viable enhancements nintendo might have got into their amd-grown gpu, a possibility there that has been largely neglected over the past WUST talks is that it could be something *not* ALU-related. We have already discussed the role a gpu-local edram pool could have. But everything so far has been largely inferred from the way Xenos used its edram - i.e. as a very performant fb. The advent of GPGPU has brought to the gpu landscape some very non-graphics tweaks like local storages/caches shared between ALU clusters, and basically all kinds of niceties mainly addressing the *data paths* in the gpu rather than what gpu ALUs constitute (ok, those too, but that's been rather evolutionary).

Surely Thraktor is absolutely correct to say that whatever nintendo might have come up with, amd & nv must have already considered, or even implemented, into their current/future architectures. But let's not forget what nintendo are bargaining for here: they are not ordering some unheard-of tech integrated in an off-the-shelf part, no - they are bargaining for the best bang for transistor. To translate that into simple terms, you can think of nintendo cherry-picking from the amd gardens to a fruit basket that best suites nintendo's fruit salad (aha! and you thought bad metaphors were only cars-related ; ) What does that mean? Not any alien tech, that's for sure. That simply means that:
a. U-GPU will have its own ISA (derived from known amd ISA(s), but still unique), and
b. U-GPU will put its (rumored) fat edram pool to the best possible use, i.e. beyond Xenos' use case.

Will that make U-GPU extraterrestrial, omnipotent, etc? - Nope. Will it make it a very darn impressive gpu for the amount of transistors it has? - Quite likely.

Oh, and btw, did I ever mention GFLOPs do not a gpu constitute?

 

[magash]

Hopefully this means they're going to put a bit of effort into the Wii U version. Metro 2033 can look amazing on PC, so it'd be a shame if the Wii U edition of Last Light were to look exactly the same as the Ps360 versions with zero improvements.

Maybe Nintendo can shoulder the burden of Marketing. By doing so it allows THQ to release more resources for further improvement on the Wii U version. God knows THQ needs all the help that it can get.

 

[TheChits]

Posted "Forgot About K. Rool" in its own thread but was ignored. Feel this shit, yo.

(Mashup of DKC2 and Dr. Dre -- destroys the Snoop Dogg mashups, I must say!)

Holy cow this is great. Thanks for this

 

[Oddduck]

Posted "Forgot About K. Rool" in its own thread but was ignored. Feel this shit, yo.

(Mashup of DKC2 and Dr. Dre -- destroys the Snoop Dogg mashups, I must say!)

Since I enjoy a lot of older rap, I find this to be pretty damn awesome.

 

[Smiles and Cries]

Posted "Forgot About K. Rool" in its own thread but was ignored. Feel this shit, yo.

(Mashup of DKC2 and Dr. Dre -- destroys the Snoop Dogg mashups, I must say!)

my love for Dre is his sound... his rap comes second but all of his beats make the song bang so changing that rubs me the wrong way

 

[magash]

Oh, and btw, did I ever mention GFLOPs do not a gpu constitute?

Can you please elaborate?

 

[lordfroakie]

then why would we need this thread? -_-

and what conclusions exactly is being jumped here?

Sorry, got the impression you were though lol

 

[Roo]

Plus

Hello, Cookie_Aroma from GameFAQS here. I'm surprised nobody else has debunked this Twitter post yet. The person who made up this tweet made one little mistake (actually two as Yani pointed out). Take a look at the screen capture that the person who saw the tweet took:

http://i.imgur.com/oGhal.png

Let's compare that to Sakurai's Twitter page now:

http://i.imgur.com/5sTHX.jpg

Do you see it yet? See the Tweets count in the upper-right-hand corner? It reads "8807 Tweets" for both images. This is the problem. The tweet with the 2 of 3 message should say 8808 tweets if it was actually legitimate. That coupled with the fact that the only witnesses to this tweet were 2 people from the same board (And as Yani pointed out, the tweet says expand instead of view conversation), I'm positive this is a fake.

This kind of thing is actually very easy to photoshop (or gimp in my case). See?

http://i.imgur.com/0yVQc.jpg


(Saw it at Smashboard)

Sorry, what's the deal with this?
I mean... what happened? it says it's fake but I don't understand what "Sakurai" is talking about lol

 

[kami_sama]

blu, could you tell me what's an ISA? I've understood everything besides this.

Sorry, what's the deal with this?
I mean... what happened? it says it's fake but I don't understand what "Sakurai" is talking about lol

The post I wrote earlier:

http://nsider2.com/forums/index.php?...ic=596270&st=0

There some guy asks Sakurai about the new characters on Smash Bros. He asks if Geno from SM RPG, Isaac from GS or Megaman is going to be in the game. Moments later, Sakurai responds "2 of 3".

So guys, who are the 2 that are going to be in the game?

 

[Smiles and Cries]

Sorry, got the impression you were though lol

there is very little solid conclusions in these threads just hopes and speculations and a lot of crazy talk lol

 

[Roo]

The post I wrote earlier

Oh I see. Thank you so much
Didn't see your post earlier.
I'm trying to avoid all the Smash Bros talk because the game
is at least 2 years away, so it's painful

 

[ColdBlooder]

Things just got weird in here since the thread moved to community...

Spoiler

No offence, weird

 

[Fantastical]

Plus

Hello, Cookie_Aroma from GameFAQS here. I'm surprised nobody else has debunked this Twitter post yet. The person who made up this tweet made one little mistake (actually two as Yani pointed out). Take a look at the screen capture that the person who saw the tweet took:

http://i.imgur.com/oGhal.png

Let's compare that to Sakurai's Twitter page now:

http://i.imgur.com/5sTHX.jpg

Do you see it yet? See the Tweets count in the upper-right-hand corner? It reads "8807 Tweets" for both images. This is the problem. The tweet with the 2 of 3 message should say 8808 tweets if it was actually legitimate. That coupled with the fact that the only witnesses to this tweet were 2 people from the same board (And as Yani pointed out, the tweet says expand instead of view conversation), I'm positive this is a fake.

This kind of thing is actually very easy to photoshop (or gimp in my case). See?

http://i.imgur.com/0yVQc.jpg


(Saw it at Smashboard)

Yeah, this smells pretty fishy.
I have a hard time believing
1.) 2 out of 3 of those characters are actually in the game
2.) Sakurai would just say that.

Also, why would that guy start a thread about a tweet to Sakurai? At the time that he started that topic, Sakurai had not responded.

 

[Oddduck]

I'm guessing this trailer has been posted here before, but man, Metro Last Light is looking more and more as one of my must buy games for 2013.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReRv_BR6XdA

I like that they want to take their time on the Wii U version and not rush it out with the other versions.

 

[Chet Rippo]

Things just got weird in here since the thread moved to community...

Spoiler

No offence, weird

Welcome to community!

 

[HylianTom]

I'm guessing this trailer has been posted here before, but man, Metro is looking more and more as one of my must buy games for 2013.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReRv_BR6XdA

I like that they want to take their time on the Wii U version and not rush it out with the other versions.

Indeed, I might have to check it out. It looks like the lull that sometimes comes after the launch window might not be as bad this time. I think 2013 is already seeming like it'll be more than OK.

 

[Smiles and Cries]

I'm guessing this trailer has been posted here before, but man, Metro is looking more and more as one of my must buy games for 2013.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReRv_BR6XdA

I like that they want to take their time on the Wii U version and not rush it out with the other versions.

the amount of little things you have to manage could work very well with the uPad so it seems like a pretty good fit, so I am glad they are willing to be patient about it

 

[Fantastical]

Metro: Last Light is focusing on PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. A Wii U version is in the works, but is unlikely to launch alongside the others. See here.

Damn, that doesn't encourage me about the Wii U version. It was announced last year and it's not coming out in 2012 and it still won't launch on Wii U?

EDIT: Or I suppose you could interpret that another way.

 

[ColdBlooder]

Indeed, I might have to check it out. It looks like the lull that sometimes comes after the launch window might not be as bad this time. I think 2013 is already seeming like it'll be more than OK.

Would be nice if all the announced games were spread from launch into june next year until the next wave gets announced!

Would be bad if we get a ton of games on launch but then none for the following month.

 

[Oddduck]

Damn, that doesn't encourage me about the Wii U version. It was announced last year and it's not coming out in 2012 and it still won't launch on Wii U?

EDIT: Or I suppose you could interpret that another way.

People should interpret it that the Wii U version isn't being treated as a sloppy port.

 

[blu]

Can you please elaborate?

Gpus' flops ratings are a somewhat abstract metric - a best-case scenario. Basically, a gpu rated at N zettaflops cannot handle a workload that requires N + M zettaflops guaranteed, but said gpu is not guaranteed to handle any most many workloads that require ~N zettaflops either. At the end of the day a X yottaflops gpu can underperform to a Y yottaflops gpu, where Y < X - it's all in the workloads people throw at them (and the persistence, ingenuity and sheer luck of the people performing the throws).

blu, could you tell me what's an ISA? I've understood everything besides this.

Instruction Set Architecture. What and how a particular processor does. Also, what it doesn't, and how not.

 

[HylianTom]

Would be nice if all the announced games were spread from launch into june next year until the next wave gets announced!

Would be bad if we get a ton of games on launch but then none for the following month.

The only good thing about your second scenario is that at least the Launch Day games are almost certain to last us through the first few months or so. I'm usually much more worried about that hazy four-to-six months later time period.. but one by one, we seem to be getting a trickle of titles that'll be showing-up at some point in 2013.

And I'm not one bit worried about Holiday 2013.. with the other consoles almost assuredly launching in that time frame, we can bet that Nintendo is going to bring some heavy hitters of its own for that quarter.

 

[ColdBlooder]

The only good thing about your second scenario is that at least the Launch Day games are almost certain to last us through the first few months or so. I'm usually much more worried about that hazy four-to-six months later time period.. but one by one, we seem to be getting a trickle of titles that'll be showing-up at some point in 2013.

And I'm not one bit worried about Holiday 2013.. with the other consoles almost assuredly launching in that time frame, we can bet that Nintendo is going to bring some heavy hitters of its own for that quarter.

And most likely a 3D Mario Holiday 13 would be about 4 1/2 years after Galaxy 2, so its possible

 

[Sadist]

Can't argue with this. A lot of it will depend on how third parties respond to UE4 too. Microsoft will be all over it. But if third parties shift their focus to in-house engines to save licensing money, Epic mind find themselves with a smaller market share than they had this generation. But, if they do have something substantial, it will absolutely be within Nintendo's interest to make sure the engine runs on their hardware.

What are the chances of third parties developing their own engines again? I'm not very knowledgeable in the whole engine area, but would it save developers time and money to manufacture their own inhouse engine? I don't know if the licensing costs are that high, but I'm just wondering.

Capcpom for instance has their MT Framework engine; they released Lost Planet and Dead Rising on 360 and those two generated enough sales to break even.

 

[AceBandage]

What are the chances of third parties developing their own engines again? I'm not very knowledgeable in the whole engine area, but would it save developers time and money to manufacture their own inhouse engine? I don't know if the licensing costs are that high, but I'm just wondering.

Capcpom for instance has their MT Framework engine; they released Lost Planet and Dead Rising on 360 and those two generated enough sales to break even.

A lot have already announced plans for next gen engines.

 

[magash]

Gpus' flops ratings are a somewhat abstract metric - a best-case scenario. Basically, a gpu rated at N zettaflops cannot handle a workload that requires N + M zettaflops guaranteed, but said gpu is not guaranteed to handle any most many workloads that require ~N zettaflops either. At the end of the day a X yottaflops gpu can underperform to a Y yottaflops gpu, where Y < X - it's all in the workloads people throw at them (and the persistence, ingenuity and sheer luck of the people performing the throws).

Thank you.

What are the chances of third parties developing their own engines again? I'm not very knowledgeable in the whole engine area, but would it save developers time and money to manufacture their own inhouse engine? I don't know if the licensing costs are that high, but I'm just wondering.

Capcpom for instance has their MT Framework engine; they released Lost Planet and Dead Rising on 360 and those two generated enough sales to break even.

I think most major developers and publishers have their in house engines. Whether its Ubisoft, EA, Acivision, Koji Pro, SE, Nintendo, Sony etc

 

[JoshuaJSlone]

But it won't REQUIRE dx11 cards, because a lot of people still have older cards, and PC developers don't like throwing away huge chunks of their potential audience.

Already DX11-capable cards have been around for a few years, and it will probably be a few more before games made with UE4 really start to hit. At that point I don't think there will be much of the PC game buying crowd without it. Well, maybe the segment who just buys a lot of Popcap games, but I don't think those types of games are clamoring for UE4.

And most likely a 3D Mario Holiday 13 would be about 4 1/2 years after Galaxy 2, so its possible

3 1/2; SMG2 was mid-2010.

 

[HylianTom]

And most likely a 3D Mario Holiday 13 would be about 4 1/2 years after Galaxy 2, so its possible

Yup. You said what I'm so quietly, fervently hoping for.

Thinking ahead a bit - if forced to pick - I'd bet that the next console Zelda won't be out until 2014, with the next big 3D Mario title coming in 2013. That Mario game would be a leading candidate for my vacation time that year; a whole week off for Super Mario Universe sounds wonderful. I kinda hope that they bring it in a cold weather month.. it just feels right.

 

[Terrell]

Agree. One of the top things I wonder about regarding this system is whether Japanese support is going to show-up in a big way. The ingredients are in place. The companies (well.. the ones who are still around, hehe..) have hopefully learned a lesson or two about betting solidly against Nintendo over the past generation. And it's a "safer" step in power/features for those companies who are uncomfortable with going all-in as far as power and development expenses are concerned.

If Nintendo gets Japanese third-party support to increase notably while Western third-party support remains anemic, I'd still consider the Wii U a solid victory as far as that arena of progress is concerned.

My prediction will hold true, mark my words. You have every right to be excited about this prospect, if nothing else. I'm excited about E3 just to see everything I've predicted thus far pan out.

they have not said anything has changed on that front... I am just saying based on how negative the response for a WiiU version was

Square calls the shots right? Do you trust them to give Nintendo anything?

They were considering mainline Final Fantasy as far back as E3 2011. So we'll see.

 

[BY2K]

My prediction will hold true, mark my words. You have every right to be excited about this prospect, if nothing else. I'm excited about E3 just to see everything I've predicted thus far pan out.
.

And what might that prediction be?

 

[Smiles and Cries]

My prediction will hold true, mark my words. You have every right to be excited about this prospect, if nothing else. I'm excited about E3 just to see everything I've predicted thus far pan out.



They were considering mainline Final Fantasy as far back as E3 2011. So we'll see.

a main Final Fantasy on WiiU although interesting would be kind of a let down... if they want to give the WiiU a bone Tomb Raider is what I would want

 

[Christberg]

Damn, that doesn't encourage me about the Wii U version. It was announced last year and it's not coming out in 2012 and it still won't launch on Wii U?

EDIT: Or I suppose you could interpret that another way.

Yeah, for me this is a big fat "it depends."

It being a late port means it isn't developed in tandem with the other versions. This could mean they're taking extra time to polish it up and it'll be the best console version of the title. It could also mean that they haven't even started porting it over or started well after the other versions which wouldn't bode well for its quality. We had a really nice podcast with Slightly Mad Studios explaining why just this morning!

I generally take a dim view of late ports, especially if they're months behind. Unless you can show me something special before the other versions launch I'm not likely to wait. Half the time you wind up with inferior garbage. Why wait for that or possibly on par when you can just buy the game elsewhere now?

So yeah, if I get this it'll probably be PC but even releasing a late port like this is a strike against them in my book. If it turns out they're releasing an inferior product on Wii U chances are high that I'll skip it entirely because it means they don't have their shit together.

ARE YOU LISTENING 4A?

 

[HylianTom]

My prediction will hold true, mark my words. You have every right to be excited about this prospect, if nothing else. I'm excited about E3 just to see everything I've predicted thus far pan out.

Every time we talk about this topic, I associate it with you, as you were the first person I saw to bring it up in a big way in the Speculation Threads.

Watching the shift - and the resulting split, along with media adjustments and "too eastern" becoming a common point of mockery - is going to be very fascinating to watch. I'm excited, because it would mean more games that I tend to like.. and because I'd love to see a change from this holding pattern we've seemed to be in over the past decade.

 

[ColdBlooder]

3 1/2; SMG2 was mid-2010.

You´re right. My bad.

But with Nintendos latest hiring spree, we may still se a new 3D Mario in Holiday 13! Its their biggest gun! (And maybe even together with Mario Kart U, like last year on the 3DS)

 

[BD1]

Yup. You said what I'm so quietly, fervently hoping for.

Thinking ahead a bit - if forced to pick - I'd bet that the next console Zelda won't be out until 2014, with the next big 3D Mario title coming in 2013. That Mario game would be a leading candidate for my vacation time that year; a whole week off for Super Mario Universe sounds wonderful. I kinda hope that they bring it in a cold weather month.. it just feels right.

I am in the minority, but I think Wii U Zelda comes out next Holiday. I think it's been in development since mid 2011.

 

[Nibel]

I am in the minority, but I think Wii U Zelda comes out next Holiday. I think it's been in development since mid 2011.

Art takes time - homeconsole Zelda is not Call Of Duty. Forget homeconsole Zelda for now.

 

[AzaK]

See guys, if it wasn't for Thraktor's (quite elaborate and eloquent) response I'd have never seen bg's original paging. Who said something about WUSTs slowing down on the community side? Anyhow, let me try and answer the darn question.

I largely share Thraktor's take on dedicated/primarily raytracing-targeting silicon in the wiiU. We are very close to the next threshold in visualisation where quantitative accumulations will bring to the next qualitative change (see http://raytracey.blogspot.com, http://igad.nhtv.nl/~bikker/, IMG's raytracing SDK, et al), but that will most likely not happen during this pending console generation. Or at least I don't expect anything large or paradigm-shifty ..Well, save for the odd ambitious indie dev toying with relatively low-res output devices coupled to relatively powerful console units *wink-wink nudge-nudge*.

Speaking of what viable enhancements nintendo might have got into their amd-grown gpu, a possibility there that has been largely neglected over the past WUST talks is that it could be something *not* ALU-related. We have already discussed the role a gpu-local edram pool could have. But everything so far has been largely inferred from the way Xenos used its edram - i.e. as a very performant fb. The advent of GPGPU has brought to the gpu landscape some very non-graphics tweaks like local storages/caches shared between ALU clusters, and basically all kinds of niceties mainly addressing the *data paths* in the gpu rather than what gpu ALUs constitute (ok, those too, but that's been rather evolutionary).

Surely Thraktor is absolutely correct to say that whatever nintendo might have come up with, amd & nv must have already considered, or even implemented, into their current/future architectures. But let's not forget what nintendo are bargaining for here: they are not ordering some unheard-of tech integrated in an off-the-shelf part, no - they are bargaining for the best bang for transistor. To translate that into simple terms, you can think of nintendo cherry-picking from the amd gardens to a fruit basket that best suites nintendo's fruit salad (aha! and you thought bad metaphors were only cars-related ; ) What does that mean? Not any alien tech, that's for sure. That simply means that:
a. U-GPU will have its own ISA (derived from known amd ISA(s), but still unique), and
b. U-GPU will put its (rumored) fat edram pool to the best possible use, i.e. beyond Xenos' use case.

Will that make U-GPU extraterrestrial, omnipotent, etc? - Nope. Will it make it a very darn impressive gpu for the amount of transistors it has? - Quite likely.

Oh, and btw, did I ever mention GFLOPs do not a gpu constitute?

Ah well, hope dashed . I don't care too much for bang for the buck, I just want as awesome looking games as possible, so alien tech is what i would have wanted . However if this keeps the unit small and price down it's at least something.

 

[ColdBlooder]

Every time we talk about this topic, I associate it with you, as you were the first person I saw to bring it up in a big way in the Speculation Threads.

Watching the shift - and the resulting split, along with media adjustments and "too eastern" becoming a common point of mockery - is going to be very fascinating to watch. I'm excited, because it would mean more games that I tend to like.. and because I'd love to see a change from this holding pattern we've seemed to be in over the past decade.

I really like the total unpredictability of next gen

Anything can happen. Heck, Wii U and PS4 could be the new HD Twins!