Vigil in 2012: Wii U "has been on par with what we have with the current generation"
- Thread starter Nirolak
- Start date
Well, you take that, and I'll take what he actually said.
gaming_noob
Member
No. It's really not. I read the OP several times trying to figure out what you're talking about. Pull off those Nintendo glasses.
BishopLamont
Banned
Nintendo are sneaky bastards. You'll see.
If all Nintendo cares about is a series of short-term profits pinioned solely on its ability to come out with system after system as innovative as the Wii, they're more than free to do that. But it's a horribly short-sighted point of view given the sacrifices made in order to take that gamble.
Understand I'm not suggesting that Sony and MS did it right this gen. Far from it. But there's a middle ground that the Wii could've hit that would have kept it viable for longer and with far more 3rd party support than it received otherwise.
So the question isn't, 'Was Nintendo insanely profitable with this strategy with the Wii?,' as the answer is clear. The question is: 'Could Nintendo have been even more insanely profitable with a modified strategy that would have simultaneously given its system more steam to continue going and given the company a stronger relationship with 3rd party developers for future generations?'
If Nintendo feels it can continue to be remarkably innovative and pump out 20 million sellers time after time, that's fine - more power to them. But it's a gamble.
That said, I'll finish like this again: Wait for E3, people. You are driving yourselves crazy.
<sigh> On that note, I'm jumping out of this thread. You guys want to believe that it's possible for this system to be simply "on par" with the 360/PS3, then you're welcome to continue to believe that.
I think the question though is who is making these "mistakes"? Nintendo made a FORTUNE with the Wii this generation. Sony's struggles for YEARS with the PS3 are well documented. Their PSP sales were sluggish enough compared to the DS that Nintendo stole Monster Hunter away from Sony. The 360 has been solid but how long did it take Nintendo to catch and then pass it after a year's head start?
Gaming companies erred in ignoring the console market leader, that's their fault and their mistake, not Nintendo's. It should also be said that Sony and MS would be making another big mistake if they're not immediately competitive on price. Look what happened with the 3DS and the Vita right out of the gate.
ThoseDeafMutes
Member
Right, his statements, as interpreted by many in this thread, are simply inconsistent with other sources we have that are equally trustworthy (and possibly better informed in technical matters).
I didn't believe it was possible for the Wii to be inferior to the Xbox, and yet Nintendo didn't fail to stun me. I shall not underestimate them this time.
StoppedInTracks
Member
While making $3B in the meantime while Sony and MS keep losing money.
Uno Venova
Banned
Ah phooey, the possibility of multiplats on par with the other current gen consoles plus Nintendo exclusives was so beautiful.
Those are pretty old comments.
Those are pretty old comments.
JoshuaJSlone
Member
I'm sure dude would've had his words checked over by a committee first if he knew that's how we were going to be parsing them.
Anasui Kishibe
Banned
I'm actually with you on this. He said what he said, there are no implications about DS2's engine or anything else than WiiU's horsepower
still, I think he's just justifying the fact DS2 will be a lazy port. Wasn't it basically ready last E3? I'll eat my bowler hat if they spent more than two months porting the game and adding some crappy touchscreen based inventory system
AceBandage
Banned
So, you think Nintendo has actually gimped their dev kits since E3?
Well, that's a bold prediction, and goes against everything we've been hearing which, oddly enough, state the exact opposite.
I'd like to hear why you're dismissing these people?
Because they don't suit your agenda, perhaps?
No one thought that.
It is, was and always will be a fact that it will be in a the middle ground between the two generations.
ThoseDeafMutes
Member
So Nintendo dropped the power in the later dev-kits, or what? A statement disagreeing with numerous past statements from equally valid sources makes this one dubious, not authoritative.
cyberheater
PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 Xbone PS4 PS4
Well, the WiiU has to render to two targets, the screen and the tablet. But given that. I don't think we're going to see anything on the screen that looks significantly better the PS360. In that sense. It's going to be on par.
Nintendo has always been a company willing to take risks and it's led them to being consistently profitable. Take a look at Sony and MS's gaming division profits compared to Nintendo's. This is not a hard concept.
I think Nintendo was concerned about pricing issues and a consumer friendly entry price to undercut the market since they WERE also legitimately taking a huge risk.
I think the problem is that Nintendo can only reach out to 3rd parties, they can't convince them to support what very probably could be the market leading console again. As long as the architecture is modern that should relieve many of developers concerns though regardless of the power of the system.
How do we know? It's not even out yet. And I would say it's getting decent support, even if some of these will have been out for a while when wiiU comes out.
Arkham City, Darksiders 2, and AC3. I imagine it will get solid ports, like mini-PC ports if you will, until the new systems come out and everyone just stops bothering like they did with Wii.
Glorified G
Member
I never believed for a second that the Wii was anywhere close to the 360 or PS3. People hyped themselves up to the sky and those stupid bullshots of Red Steel didn't help either. Nintendo dodged that question everytime it came up. This time they're telling (as well as other developers) us that it will be powerful so don't worry about that front. Even showed off a tech demo to prove that. I don't remember them doing that with the Wii. They showed off their tech and developers seem pretty happy with the power, so this crazy quote from a director who is not a programmer is just telling us that they're not doing anything special with the hardware and it's going to be a lazy port with controller tweeks shoehorned in. Yeah. Good stuff there.
Is it possible only to have a single tablet?
If not they will have to have more than couple of render targets.. (IE. 4 tablets.)
Uno Venova
Banned
Well, you did ask why people were believing this over past comments, and it's more likely that the more recent comments are easier to believe for most people over the comments made a year ago.
BishopLamont
Banned
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.
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 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.
IIRC the console only supports one tablet or was that complete bogus?
AceBandage
Banned
I'd hardly call last August a year ago.
But, hey, whatever.
If I made a report that said clouds were made out of Lime Jell-o, would everyone believe it simply because it was said recently?
Barack Lesnar
Banned
I'm sorry but I laughed out loud when I saw the thread title and read the accompanying OP. A slightly more powerful PS3/360... jesus christ, how can anyone defend this (if true)? To the Nintendo fans: how can you possibly rationalize this news in a good way? How can you support a company that does this, outside of it's handful of great 1st party games? This is hilarious. I feel bad for all the posters that got torn apart in a condescending and snarky way by the Nintendo crowd whenever they mentioned that the Wii U would be slightly more powerful than the PS3 and the 360. Just lol.
Lol at this logic. AceBandage, you never fail to deliver.
Lol at this logic. AceBandage, you never fail to deliver.
BishopLamont
Banned
bububububut you're no expert!
Apparently, some devs have complained at this and Nintendo's said it's technically possible to have more than one tablet at a time. But it'll probably impact framerate/rez. We'll have to wait till E3 to actually know.
AceBandage
Banned
Hey, I watch clouds.
That makes me as much of an expert on them as this guy is of technical details.
We still have no information about that. Maybe it'll support two or more controllers, but I figure that's something we won't find out until E3.
Of course not. But that might be because it's Lemon Jell-o, not Lime, silly Ace.
And this topic is funny. Yes, let's believe one off hand comment, despite the fact that most other things we've heard say otherwise...
Cerebral Assassin
Member
The quotes from DICE, CD & Kojima recently are similar to the quotes about the Wii (special controller needs special games, not ports), & outside of Ubisoft I expect that to be the norm from western publishers (If GTA V is not announced at E3, Wii U support is dead in the water as I'm sure that will be the game NOA want the most).
Yeah, although they said they had been asked(by EA, I think) for multi-tablet support & they were looking into it.
Anasui Kishibe
Banned
AceBandage
Banned
If it only supports one tablet, the party game Nintendo as we know would be dead
Did you miss all the 5 player games they showed off at E3?
fluffydelusions
Member
Lol, only if it were true. Seriously...would be awesome. I miss the Nintendo of the 80's and 90's
BlazingDarkness
Member
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
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
I'm aware it's not a hard concept. What is a hard concept is a company assuming that it can consistently develop such innovations time after time without fail. The 3DS proves that they cannot; that they can occasionally mistake what consumers value and how much they value it at. And Gaborn, you know me by now - I am hardly an apologist for Sony or MS. I've been critical of the two firms for years. I've seen the graph, I know the score.
Absolutely that was the case with the Wii. I don't doubt that for a minute. Hell, in the end, they undervalued the Wii's price; they could have sold it for more. But that was due to how innovative and differentiated it was. They made decisions relative to the risk being undertaken - that makes sense.
What doesn't make sense, given our situation now, is for Nintendo to once again do little to appease 3rd parties. This, and online, is the company's achilles heel. It's the one area in which their competitors have a competitive advantage over them; in essence, they are providing their competitors a means of differentiation from them.
The truth is simple: If Nintendo is ever able to garner full 3rd party support, MS and Sony will be in deep shit. At that point it becomes about exclusives and no one is beating Nintendo in that area. I thought the Wii U would be Nintendo's move towards that potential, but we'll see... If not, perhaps next-next gen, perhaps never.
And that's a problem for them. Not just for 3rd parties. It is in Nintendo's best long-term interests to secure ongoing relationships with 3rd party companies; they have already admitted that they cannot do everything on their own.
Perhaps, but the system better sell like a bat out of hell upfront to create some sort of foundation for 3rd party efforts. Otherwise, I would not be at all shocked to see this play out similarly to the Wii. I'm not saying that Nintendo has to be equal to PS4/720, but I believe it's a foolish strategy to be too far behind them - especially when the company is in a good position to grab share from them.
cyberheater
PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 Xbone PS4 PS4
I think that WiiU will be able to support multiple tablets and a screen but the games would have to be pretty simple. I don't think the WiiU is up to have rich content on multiple padlets and the screen.
Leatherface
Member
Yeah, I'm okay with the power of the Wii U, the only thing that worries me are the ports. The other consoles are coming out far later and will obviously be much more powerful. Does this mean a bunch of shitty "hand me down" ports again? If so, that's kind of a bummer. Would be nice to have Nintendo be the king of the block again and not get the shit end of the stick on multi-platform games like it has for many generations now. I guess I just want this console to be like the glory days of Nintendo again. It's the 14 year old kid in me feelin' nostalgic.
Yes? I've only read some Nintendos own reports and recall them talking about only one tablet per device.
Barack Lesnar
Banned
There was no reference to evil in that post, nor any sort derision to the Nintendo crowd/fans.
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.
gaming_noob
Member
^ Victim complex
AceBandage
Banned
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?
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.