Vigil in 2012: Wii U "has been on par with what we have with the current generation"

he didn't say 5 tablet player games. Nintendo showed off a lot of games (such as the incredibly fun looking Chase Mii) where one player uses a tablet and the others use Wiimotes. keep in mind he was responding to the premise that if there is only one tablet per system the party game is dead. Demonstrably false.

Also they have been working on getting 2 tablets to work together with the system, that could lead to some interesting team games that are 3 on 3.
 
This doesn't surprise me in the least

I'd say there's a good chance 'next gen' mirrors this generation, Nintendo with the underpowered hardware and unique control scheme, Microsoft with better hardware and Kinect 2.0 and Sony with technically the best hardware (but only exclusives will be evidence of this)

Whether Nintendo get that lightning in the bottle or not with the control scheme like the Wii is probably what they're banking on, and even if they don't there probably will be some multiplatform title crossover from both PS3/360 and PS4/Next Xbox because of where the Wii U launch is positioned

It's not underpowered unless you want to call the jumps most of have confirmed as that. The next xbox is definitely underpowered considering it to won't be besting the current amd card, the next nvidia card, and the cards that are coming out by the time it launches.

Sony hasn't been a clear generation winner yet even with the PS3. Thinking they are going to do something basically only nintendo and ms have done since 3d gaming has started is not realistic one bit and should be called on each time it's suggested.
 
Posting in this thread purely to bookmark it. I guarantee there is a twist to the reality that makes the entire thread and some of the things people are saying in it very premature indeed. There's an air of ambiguity around this quote. Personally, I think there's no way its technologically 'on par'. We don't have to wait long to find out!
 
We will see, but very sad if true. Chances of Wii U missing all third-party games in 2013 are very high (no next-gen engine support). :(

This is so totally wrong. It's probably been pointed out already, but next-gen engines are current-gen engines. CryEngine 3, Frostbite 2 and Unreal Engine 3.5 are all brand new and aren't going anywhere anytime soon.
 
I'm not talking about 5 tablets.
I'm talking about 5 players.
How can the party scene be dead when they actually support more people playing at once?

Because none of those party games can benefit from people having their own padlet controller. That is where the potential for innovative party games is at.
But instead, it'll be one "real" player VS 4 wiimotes, which quite frankly, sucks. Proper local multiplayer on the U simply requires multiple tablet controllers.
 
Asymmetrical gaming is so awesome. I still watch the Chase Mii vids on occasion whenever I get tired of hearing people bitch and moan about hardware specs on this forum.

Definitely. I think more than anything the Wii U has the potential to offer a totally different experience than the other systems with asynchronous control capabilities. Something like Chase Mii would be boring on a regular system but is genius for the Wii U because of the single screen.

Also they have been working on getting 2 tablets to work together with the system, that could lead to some interesting team games that are 3 on 3.

absolutely. I think they'll get 2 tablets working with it out of necessity (for games like Madden) and when they do it will spawn a whole new variety of possibilities.
 
The Wii wasn't "on par" with the PS2 was it?

Seriously, the quote means different to what people think, whether its intentional or not.
I would say they were 'on par' personally. Certainly there is a notably difference, but they share much of the same library, looking roughly the same.

If you think of it in Golf terms, to go from on par to a birdie, is a huge improvement for a golfer, there is wide range of skills just within the 'on par' levels (lets just ignore handicaps for the point of this).

Of course the Wii U will outperform the other two, they would have to go out of their way to make something exceptionally shitty for it not to. If it will be 'on par' is another question I think. All signs currently seem to point to yes, but we'll see when the time comes.
 
Because none of those party games can benefit from people having their own padlet controller. That is where the potential for innovative party games is at.
But instead, it'll be one "real" player VS 4 wiimotes, which quite frankly, sucks. Proper local multiplayer on the U simply requires multiple tablet controllers.

Chase Mii proves you wrong. It looks awesome whether you're the player with the UPad or the guys with the Wii Remotes. Honestly, I'm still taken aback by this mentality even after all this time.
 
Because none of those party games can benefit from people having their own padlet controller. That is where the potential for innovative party games is at.
But instead, it'll be one "real" player VS 4 wiimotes, which quite frankly, sucks. Proper local multiplayer on the U simply requires multiple tablet controllers.

they have 2 "padlets" running on the Wii U currently.
 
Because none of those party games can benefit from people having their own padlet controller. That is where the potential for innovative party games is at.
But instead, it'll be one "real" player VS 4 wiimotes, which quite frankly, sucks. Proper local multiplayer on the U simply requires multiple tablet controllers.

Do what? So playing on a TV screen means your not a real player anymore?

GAF... you confuse the fuck out of me...
 
Copied my post from the Wii U speculation thread, figured some people might actually need some context for Vigil's statement.



I also find it bloody frustrating from our perspective, because we saw the bird demo, we can tell that it is a step up from what the PS360 can do, no one believes that it is a giant leap, but we know some things, like you can basically drag and drop 360 code into the original under clocked devkits and the games would run, which means that it has to be more powerful, because writing that close to the hardware, means you are tailoring the game to run on that hardware, it's just not possible for Nintendo's console to only be on par...

Wii U's Hardware that we actually know and how it compares to 360:

Wii U:

Processing node: 32nm (for those who think the box is too small)
Ram: 1GB+
Edram on GPU: 32MB
Shader model:4.1+
GPU processing:1000+ GFlops
CPU: 3 cores, ppc7 based @ ~3ghz

360:

Processing node: 90nm (for comparing sizes of the box to their power potential)
Ram: 512MB
Edram on GPU: 10MB
Shader model: 3.0+
GPU Processing power: 240 Gflops
CPU: 3 cores, ppe based @ 3.2ghz (3 slightly modified cell processors)

We don't know everything, like the clocks for the GPU, or how much over 1GB ram the system has, but we know that the GPU is very custom and that early dev kits used R700 series GPUs, the parts in the Wii U is many years ahead of the current consoles, it isn't going to be a huge leap over what the current consoles can do, but there will be clear differences:

Better lighting: The bird demo has some amazing examples, just watch the bird's underbelly as he flies over the water. (just make sure you are watching the floor version, and not the conference version) The Zelda demo and just what we know about how newer GPUs work, they will show off lighting that is natural that was done only prebaked before, and really is not possible on the current consoles.

Higher res textures: More ram means higher textures, also the large amount of edram on the GPU is very capable of producing higher resolutions than what we saw with the sub hd (in a lot of games) from the current gen.

Newer shader models: This improves a lot of effects, such as shadows.

Tessellation units: We know that the devkit's GPU had a Tessellation unit, but the custom one would likely have a more up to date unit.

I list all this stuff, because everyone coming into this thread to post the doom and gloom just don't know or understand what we have found out in the past 3 threads, Wii U won't be the jump that the industry is looking for, but the likely hood of the PS4 and Xbox3 to hit those goals if launched before the end of 2014, is very small, there is just not a radical change in performance on the horizon, so in the very worst case scenario, Wii U is a little less than half as powerful as the other consoles, that would allow it to still get down ports of every game on those consoles, likely lowering the resolution to 720p from 1080p would be enough to hit it.

I don't follow this thread as much as all of you guys but, could you show me links to all that info(Tesselation Units, RAM, Shader model etc?)
 
Its far easier to gamble on the price than gamble on the specs, having shitty specs will again lead to no third party support . Nintendo will take a loss-lead strategy this time around, its a smaller price to pay than having a Wii situation again. Their software sales makes up for money loss and will also be the reason people will buy the Wii U early on, until the console has established as the console with all the games you want, whether Nintendo or third party.

What do people not get about the fact that Nintendo is very serious about getting proper third party support this time around? In order to achieve this, they have to participate in the technical race, even if its in last place, as long as its able to compete and not able to participate at all like the Wii.
 
I'm not saying the asymmetric thing doesn't work, i'm saying local multiplayer could be way, way better if people each have their own tablet controller.
The gameplay potential of multiple people having a private handheld display can bring much more to the table. It can finally make proper card battling games a reality, or superior interactive boardgames, local multiplayer FPS, local multiplayer strategy games, etcetera.
 
I don't follow this thread as much as all of you guys but, could you show me links to all that info(Tesselation Units, RAM, Shader model etc?)

Since E3 last year, we have collected that from developers working on the actual dev kits posting in the thread.

Tesselation unit comes from the fact that the Dev Kit's GPU had one.

RAM comes from lherre, a member on this forum working with a Wii U dev kit, it's also been repeated from other sources, such as Ideaman.

Shader model 4.1+ can be matched up with whats in the dev kit and is very clearly noticeable from the tech demos.

That is off the top of my head, but I hope this helps you, the CPU btw is also from lherre and IBM itself.
 
Chase Mii proves you wrong. It looks awesome whether you're the player with the UPad or the guys with the Wii Remotes. Honestly, I'm still taken aback by this mentality even after all this time.

How anyone can see the chase mii video and not see the potential of the Wii U is quite shocking.
 
Its far easier to gamble on the price than gamble on the specs, having shitty specs will again lead to no third party support . Nintendo will take a loss-lead strategy this time around, its a smaller price to pay than having a Wii situation again. Their software sales makes up for money loss and will also reason people will buy the Wii U early on, until the console has established as the console with all the games you want, whether Nintendo or third party.

Where are you people getting this thought from? The Wii U can run the same engines that next-gen games will be made on. It will receive ports. It's not the same situation as the Wii.
 
The GPU was designed in 2009-2011, so nope.
Only reason why they went for custom GPU is to fit it in that tiny box. You can't take something like HD1950xtx and put it in that box. But you can go to AMD for GPU with same performance but with much better performance/watt ratio and thats what they've done. They didn't go for 1+ TFLOP card, they went for 2006 performance in much much smaller package.
 
Doesn't matter to me. Its WAY more powerful than the Wii, and that's all I care about. I think the PS3/360 and Wii U could go on for another 5 years, but thats just me.
 
Its far easier to gamble on the price than gamble on the specs, having shitty specs will again lead to no third party support . Nintendo will take a loss-lead strategy this time around, its a smaller price to pay than having a Wii situation again. Their software sales makes up for money loss and will also reason people will buy the Wii U early on, until the console has established as the console with all the games you want, whether Nintendo or third party.

What do people not get about the fact that Nintendo is very serious about getting proper third party support this time around? In order to achieve this, they have to participate in the technical race, even if its in last place, as long as its able to compete and not able to participate at all like the Wii.

Specs don't really equate to better or worse support. Look at the Vita, it's not exactly teeming with a huge number of major titles that move the sales needle from third parties, in fact it LOST the biggest franchise it's predecessor had to a weaker system and it's competitor.

Architecture is the real key because that is what makes porting easier and the Wii U's architecture from everything we've heard is modern.
 
Since E3 last year, we have collected that from developers working on the actual dev kits posting in the thread.

Tesselation unit comes from the fact that the Dev Kit's GPU had one.

RAM comes from lherre, a member on this forum working with a Wii U dev kit, it's also been repeated from other sources, such as Ideaman.

Shader model 4.1+ can be matched up with whats in the dev kit and is very clearly noticeable from the tech demos.

That is off the top of my head, but I hope this helps you, the CPU btw is also from lherre and IBM itself.

The CPU is about what people are expecting. I leaked CPU data the last two generations and the sources that are leaking this time are on spec or close to from what I've been hearing from two different people.
 
How anyone can see the chase mii video and not see the potential of the Wii U is quite shocking.

I see the potential of having fun with that for 10 mins and then getting bored and never touching it again, and I see the potential of the same thing being true for most of the 'Wii U inovations'.
The only good thing to come from the Wii-mote was Boom Blox.
 
Specs don't really equate to better or worse support. Look at the Vita, it's not exactly teeming with a huge number of major titles that move the sales needle from third parties, in fact it LOST the biggest franchise it's predecessor had to a weaker system and it's competitor.

Architecture is the real key because that is what makes porting easier and the Wii U's architecture from everything we've heard is modern.
They're one and the same to me.

Regarding Vita though, why it has worse support is a whole nother matter. Sony's ignorance is magnified by Nintendo's aggressiveness to court third parties, low userbase, late to the game, nothing much to differentiate itself other than "more powerz", western parties not big on handheld consoles and its predecessor is still outshining it giving people even less reason to upgrade to the Vita itself.
 
They're one and the same to me.

Still totally different though.

Regarding Vita though, why it has worse support is a whole nother matter. Sony's ignorance is magnified by Nintendo's aggressiveness to court third parties, low userbase, late to the game, nothing much to differentiate itself other than "more powerz", and its predecessor is still outshining it giving people even less reason to upgrade to the Vita itself.

Which of the bolded will be different with the PS4 compared to the Wii U? (and that's ignoring low userbase since that's part and parcel with late to the game)
 
Well, if it ends up being not much more tech-wise than my 360 or PS3, then I probably will not even bother unless there are some new an interesting exclusives that interest me. Not talking Mario and Zelda, either. I surely am not going to buy it just for the controller, which is what they seem to be putting the focus on yet again.
 
Which of the bolded will be different with the PS4 compared to the Wii U?
The PS3 and so the PS4 does have at least decent support from third party and first party, its pretty much a given as long as the consoles are powerful enough, and thats a pretty realistic assumption to make. Couple that with the fact that home consoles is a bigger market than handheld consoles.

Anyway, this has nothing to do with Nintendo outdoing the PS4, its about Nintendo sorting their shit regarding third parties.

I also don't know why you brought that up though, everything I have said regarding Nintendo's plans is to get a jump start on the generation before their competitors are even out (this is what you're trying to say right?), its the 360/PS2 strategy only revved up, either on killer first party support + decent third party support, or cheap price.
 
This would certainly explain Pachter's comments about the Microsoft exec from CES.

The exec told him the next xbox wouldn't be shown in 2012 and Pachter said he asked him if they were worried about Nintendo getting a head start and the exec just laughed.
 
I'll be the 58th person to say this but; back in 2005/2006: Wii U hardware "has been on par with what we have with the current previous generation". 6 years of progress...

Pac Man VS was already a broof back on GC... Damn that was great with friends. I wonder how many people bought R: Racing Evolution just for this "bonus".
I did (along with Burnout 2 for £20 total) and ended up playing R: Racing more (well okay the story with the ridiculous pressure system)...maybe if I had better sim racers or friends to play pac-man with that wouldn't have been true
 
Well, if it ends up being not much more tech-wise than my 360 or PS3, then I probably will not even bother unless there are some new an interesting exclusives that interest me. Not talking Mario and Zelda, either. I surely am not going to buy it just for the controller, which is what they seem to be putting the focus on yet again.

Unless you're totally clueless you can't expect most who know about WiiU specs to take that seriously. The gpu and cpu are a decent step up especially considering it's in a closed box. You can't compare the 360 gpu which is about xt1950 to 4XXX series architecture. Same for comparing to PP7 cpu to the 3 core ppe cell setup. Google the gpu vs each other in pc realm and what they could run it's noticeable difference.

This would certainly explain Pachter's comments about the Microsoft exec from CES.

The exec told him the next xbox wouldn't be shown in 2012 and Pachter said he asked him if they were worried about Nintendo getting a head start and the exec just laughed.

Anything taken from pachter or MS exec should be laughed at equally. MS won't have a headstart this time on nintendo and barely one with sony. The hardware difference will be nowhere near as great. Nitnendo still has casuals and courts them better. Nintendo exclusives still sell better. If MS is laughing I don't see why this will be the first generation they won't have a real leg up and it's doubtful sony will be as confident or arrogant about platform performance which makes them hungry to win.
 
Also Wii sold 94.97 million...Did Mario, Zelda, and Metroid sell 94.97 million Wii's?
Did GTA 3 and FFX sell 150 million ps2s? This is a stupid argument. Did Uncharted and Infamous sell 65 million PS3s? Did Halo Reach sell nearly 70 million 360s? Even taking your lackluster point, you know Mario Kart Wii sold over 30 mill right.
 
Well done Nintendo.

I don't give a crap about you, but the fact that (once again) you're going to limit my new Zelda and Metroid games into last-gen experiences, really outrages me.
 
So, I have a question then.
Why are we believing a program director, over everyone else?
Well, for one because his is the most recent we've heard about this. And even then, given Nintendo's MO with the Wii and DS/3DS, if we get conflicting information/statements, I'm personally more likely to believe the low end estimates than the high end estimates, sorry.


Anyway, it's all speculation and hearsay until E3.
 
Did GTA 3 and FFX sell 150 million ps2s? This is a stupid argument. Did Uncharted and Infamous sell 65 million PS3s? Did Halo Reach sell nearly 70 million 360s? Even taking your lackluster point, you know Mario Kart Wii sold over 30 mill right.

LOL. What is this argument about?
 
Copied my post from the Wii U speculation thread, figured some people might actually need some context for Vigil's statement.



I also find it bloody frustrating from our perspective, because we saw the bird demo, we can tell that it is a step up from what the PS360 can do, no one believes that it is a giant leap, but we know some things, like you can basically drag and drop 360 code into the original under clocked devkits and the games would run, which means that it has to be more powerful, because writing that close to the hardware, means you are tailoring the game to run on that hardware, it's just not possible for Nintendo's console to only be on par...

Wii U's Hardware that we actually know and how it compares to 360:

Wii U:

Processing node: 32nm (for those who think the box is too small)
Ram: 1GB+
Edram on GPU: 32MB
Shader model:4.1+
GPU processing:1000+ GFlops
CPU: 3 cores, ppc7 based @ ~3ghz

360:

Processing node: 90nm (for comparing sizes of the box to their power potential)
Ram: 512MB
Edram on GPU: 10MB
Shader model: 3.0+
GPU Processing power: 240 Gflops
CPU: 3 cores, ppe based @ 3.2ghz (3 slightly modified cell processors)

We don't know everything, like the clocks for the GPU, or how much over 1GB ram the system has, but we know that the GPU is very custom and that early dev kits used R700 series GPUs, the parts in the Wii U is many years ahead of the current consoles, it isn't going to be a huge leap over what the current consoles can do, but there will be clear differences:

Better lighting: The bird demo has some amazing examples, just watch the bird's underbelly as he flies over the water. (just make sure you are watching the floor version, and not the conference version) The Zelda demo and just what we know about how newer GPUs work, they will show off lighting that is natural that was done only prebaked before, and really is not possible on the current consoles.

Higher res textures: More ram means higher textures, also the large amount of edram on the GPU is very capable of producing higher resolutions than what we saw with the sub hd (in a lot of games) from the current gen.

Newer shader models: This improves a lot of effects, such as shadows.

Tessellation units: We know that the devkit's GPU had a Tessellation unit, but the custom one would likely have a more up to date unit.

I list all this stuff, because everyone coming into this thread to post the doom and gloom just don't know or understand what we have found out in the past 3 threads, Wii U won't be the jump that the industry is looking for, but the likely hood of the PS4 and Xbox3 to hit those goals if launched before the end of 2014, is very small, there is just not a radical change in performance on the horizon, so in the very worst case scenario, Wii U is a little less than half as powerful as the other consoles, that would allow it to still get down ports of every game on those consoles, likely lowering the resolution to 720p from 1080p would be enough to hit it.
You are going to be severely disappointed when E3 comes...
 
The PS3 and so the PS4 does have at least decent support from third party and first party, its pretty much a given as long as the consoles are powerful enough, and thats a pretty realistic assumption to make.

The PSP had monster hunter. The Vita does not. the fact that one system had decent support is not itself reason to assume the next system will have it. I think there is a VERY strong analogy here.

Couple that with the fact that home consoles is a bigger market than handheld consoles.

Sure, but how many companies lost money this generation only supporting Sony and MS? How many smaller developers closed and consolidated this time?

Anyway, this has nothing to do with Nintendo outdoing the PS4, its about Nintendo sorting their shit regarding third parties.

I think Nintendo has done what they needed to do to attract third parties. As long as the architecture is modern that means up porting and down porting is possible with relatively minimal work, and that's really all many 3rd parties care about
 
LOL. What is this argument about?
I think that the Wii had a better library than people on GAF tend to give it credit for. :p


I think Nintendo has done what they needed to do to attract third parties. As long as the architecture is modern that means up porting and down porting is possible with relatively minimal work, and that's really all many 3rd parties care about
Straight ports with minimal work until they have to start thinking on how to accomodate the unusual controls and extra screen.

Most straight ports not taking advantage of the Wii's unique controls have gotten flak for laziness and have gotten their existence questioned (and rightfully so). I can't help but think that Nintendo has lost so much mindshare in the home console space among both the developers and the audience that people hoping to catch all the big third party multiplats on the Wii U will have a rude awakening.


Also, Nintendo has not done "all it can" to court third parties when Microsoft and Sony are actively subsidising big Western devs to get exclusivity windows or additional content. It's not Nintendo's style to go above and beyond financially to entice devs - but since the competition does it it's easy to imagine them getting left behind.
 
Only reason why they went for custom GPU is to fit it in that tiny box. You can't take something like HD1950xtx and put it in that box. But you can go to AMD for GPU with same performance but with much better performance/watt ratio and thats what they've done. They didn't go for 1+ TFLOP card, they went for 2006 performance in much much smaller package.

making a graphics processor around 2006 tech for a 32nm process would cost more and be dramatically less powerful than using 2009 tech for a 32nm or even 40nm process... this is what is called going out of your way to look like a fool.

Seriously if you believe that they targeted 2006 performance, you should really try taking yourself out of that Nintendo hate circle, because what you said makes ZERO sense, and you could probably see that if the name Nintendo wasn't attached to it.
 
Copied my post from the Wii U speculation thread, figured some people might actually need some context for Vigil's statement.



I also find it bloody frustrating from our perspective, because we saw the bird demo, we can tell that it is a step up from what the PS360 can do, no one believes that it is a giant leap, but we know some things, like you can basically drag and drop 360 code into the original under clocked devkits and the games would run, which means that it has to be more powerful, because writing that close to the hardware, means you are tailoring the game to run on that hardware, it's just not possible for Nintendo's console to only be on par...

Wii U's Hardware that we actually know and how it compares to 360:

Wii U:

Processing node: 32nm (for those who think the box is too small)
Ram: 1GB+
Edram on GPU: 32MB
Shader model:4.1+
GPU processing:1000+ GFlops
CPU: 3 cores, ppc7 based @ ~3ghz

[


most of that stuff is just speculation as far as i know. and the process node is confirmed 45nm, at least on the cpu, in one of the press releases. http://www.kotaku.com.au/2011/06/whats-under-the-wii-us-hood-ibm-spills-the-chips/

28/32nm on the gpu would likely be too cutting edge for nintendo. amd and nvidia are currently having great struggles getting good production out of it, while nintendo will need to produce many millions of wii u's. plus, it's probably not even cheaper currently due to low yields. the fact is process nodes are no longer an automatic win, often the prior node can remain cheaper for some time (amd, intel and nvidia chase nodes because their lives depend on cutting edge performance).

1000 gflops on the gpu is likely wishful thinking. thats 4x the 360 gpu, and if it was the case, it certainly wouldnt be described as "on par" with current gen. we've heard pretty much no developers speak of the wii u as an exciting, hi tech box, and i think we'd be hearing a lot more of those rumblings at 1 teraflop.

i believe one rumor i even heard (cant remember where or how good the source was) put the cpu at three 1.6 ghz cores! now, these wouldn't be as weak as 360 cores, they'd likely be nice out of order, but my point is theres lots of rumors, the low spec ones just tend to get ignored.
 
You are going to be severely disappointed when E3 comes...

This is actually known specs... it's not some fantasy, and it's also not what the industry wants next generation consoles to be, they actually want about 4 times those specs on the conservative side, they just don't realize how ridiculous that is.
 
most of that stuff is just speculation as far as i know. and the process node is confirmed 45nm, at least on the cpu, in one of the press releases. http://www.kotaku.com.au/2011/06/whats-under-the-wii-us-hood-ibm-spills-the-chips/

28/32nm on the gpu would likely be too cutting edge for nintendo. amd and nvidia are currently having great struggles getting good production out of it, while nintendo will need to produce many millions of wii u's. plus, it's probably not even cheaper currently due to low yields. the fact is process nodes are no longer an automatic win, often the prior node can remain cheaper for some time (amd, intel and nvidia chase nodes because their lives depend on cutting edge performance).

1000 gflops on the gpu is likely wishful thinking. thats 4x the 360 gpu, and if it was the case, it certainly wouldnt be described as "on par" with current gen. we've heard pretty much no developers speak of the wii u as an exciting, hi tech box, and i think we'd be hearing a lot more of those rumblings at 1 teraflop.

i believe one rumor i even heard (cant remember where or how good the source was) put the cpu at three 1.6 ghz cores! now, these wouldn't be as weak as 360 cores, they'd likely be nice out of order, but my point is theres lots of rumors, the low spec ones just tend to get ignored.
Welcome to the Wii-U speculation thread, my friend.
 
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