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[Meelow]

I'm guessing nobody saw my previous post?.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=39730241&postcount=7416

 

[Apophis2036]

Some games need more power. For those experiences there's hardware out for that. And I'll buy them.

But hardware cannot make a game great. It can make a great game better, but the core game has to be sound. Otherwise polishing a turd.

This is a very important point imo, it was either Iwata or Miyamoto that said when the IP requires it we will not hesitate to spend big on the product and really push the system.

I think we have to hold back our expectation tho, maybe most of the exclusives will be far closer to Pikmin 3 in looks (which is fine by me, esp after watching more Wii U experience videos of it in motion in HD).

I could easily see games like Starfox, F Zero, Waverace, Pilot Wings, Smash Bros, Mario Kart and Donkey Kong look a lot like 'Wii HD' games with of course a lot of effects added, the reason i use the term 'Wii HD' is not out of disrespect but rather not a game you see and instantly think 'Wow that is a massive leap over PS360'.

I think the massive development budgets will be saved for EAD Mario, Zelda, Metroid and whatever Retro are working on.

There is also the point of even if Wii U was as powerful as PS4 / 720 are rumoured to be, where would it actually help Nintendo apart from getting more ports from third party developers ?.

Their graphical style can only go so far before you start to get into Pixar level quality which is when you start spending outrageous amounts of money on developing software that can take as long as 3 years per instalment.

As i said earlier today i think a technological half step (On par CPU, 1.5GB of usable Ram, 500 FLOP GPU, 32MB's of eDRAM) is perfect for Nintendo.

They can sell the console for $250 and make a small profit on it and continue to churn out the smaller IP's on a steady stream while they take their time and spend their big budgets on three or four of their massive IP's.

They also need to stop shying away from more than one instalment of a game per gen aswel, the reason the Wii stopped selling was because we never got sequels to Mario Kart, Metroid Prime 3, Smash Bros or Donkey Kong Country Returns, we also never even got a Wii version of Pikmin, Starfox, Waverace, F Zero or Pilot Wings.

To make maximum profits and keep making them aswell as keeping the system alive software wise they need to make at least one of every major IP and for the massive selling games like Mario Kart and Wii Sports make a sequel maybe three years into it's cycle.

 

[MadeInBeats]

I'm guessing nobody saw my previous post?.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=39730241&postcount=7416

Aye, I've suggested miss-translation/out of context a few times. Let's hope someone can tweet him for a comment on CPU remarks.

 

[Fourth Storm]

Looking back Nintendo launched GC in Sept. and announced they changed the clocks in May. So if we're looking at a Nov. or so release, now is the time they would likely do it.

I wonder if it's possible to "unlock" more speed as the PSP did well into its life. Perhaps Nintendo kept the CPU clocks low as they attempted to "balance" the sysem, as they did with Wii and GCN, where the CPU clock = 3x GPU clock. But if the CPU is holding devs back, it may not be as balanced in practice as it perhaps is theoretically. Still, how high could they really clock it? A modified 400 series core is currently the best running theory and those top out at 2 Ghz.

 

[bgassassin]

So all this OoOE, efficiency, modern talk makes no difference? Jesus, how low have they clocked it exactly if a PS360 fighting game is struggling? There's no way it's going to make it through a generation if that's the case.

But then again, my thought is how can that be the case when games like ME3, Arkam City, ACIII etc, must all need much more processing power than Tekken? Those devs must be having some real headaches if that is the case.

There's just so much that doesn't add up... so much doesn't add up... ummm, shit, I jst realised this is Nintendo we're talking about !

It makes a difference. But "personal" decisions can affect that difference. Knowing that the CPU was going to be modern it didn't make much sense that it was being such a big issue these past few months. The most logical was not utilizing VMX units like in Xenon. But now having two on record saying the CPU has a low clock and is apparently an intentional decision on Nintendo's part defeats the purpose of what they are supposed to be doing with Wii U in the first place. Most people really couldn't care less if they can't hear Wii U running while playing a game. It's not like they were going to push it where the fans sounds like a small vacuum anyway.

Nintendo probably intended on heavier reliance on the other components. But it wouldn't hurt to give those that aren't working exclusively on the console "a little more help".

 

[lostinblue]

So all this OoOE, efficiency, modern talk makes no difference? Jesus, how low have they clocked it exactly if a PS360 fighting game is struggling? There's no way it's going to make it through a generation if that's the case.

It makes difference, of course, the code could be unoptimized to take advantage of this CPU and that hurting it's efficiency. But it certainly seems that it's clocked under 3.2 GHz and/or engineers are saying that if it was clocked a tad higher it could match X360 performance whilst running that code (we don't know exactly under which conditions though).

No matter how you put it doesn't seem to be far off, though.

But then again, my thought is how can that be the case when games like ME3, Arkam City, ACIII etc, must all need much more processing power than Tekken? Those devs must be having some real headaches if so.

Might depend on how engine's are written/optimized.

Notice all of those have PC versions, Arkham City actually seems more based on the PC version than on the console versions going by the console-FMV-now-is-ingame talk, ME3 also runs on UE3 (which is optimized first and foremost for PC) and ACIII is also multiplatform as well. These are engines, tech and software more used to dealing with regular cpu architecture (or rather, not PS3/X360) than Tekken who is only being developed for PS3/X360 and an arcade cabinet (and Tekken 6 ran on a PS3 based System 357 cabinet at that), that might be a factor.

If that's the reason it might mean Japanese developers are the one's that'll struggle more, since they're the one's with less PC-development experience; the strongest CPU's they're used to are probably PS3/X360.

 

[Redford]

Gotta start reading the news you all are talking about before entering this thread. Because the Tekken thing sounds neither as roundly positive nor negative as it's being interpretted.

(personally, I once again take comfort in the fact that at least we're jumping to HD with a good DD and online solution)

 

[MadeInBeats]

No matter how you put it doesn't seem to be far off, though.Might depend on how engine's are written/optimized.

Yeah, but again, if it was that close surely they could easily find that little bit extra they need from looking into offloading to DSP, I/O GPU etc, unless they have already done that and there's still problems (surely not.) OR, is there any circumstance where CPU clock speed will only do and no amount of DSP/IO etc make no difference. What's with all the creative solutions?

I think it's a bad translation.

 

[Meelow]

Aye, I've suggested miss-translation/out of context a few times. Let's hope someone can tweet him for a comment on CPU remarks.

Hopefully.

 

[Apophis2036]

Nintendo being Nintendo. It's always for better or worse and in this case it's pointing to the latter.

It's not surprising since we've had indications the CPU was the problem since Arkam's posts back in Jan. or Feb. pointed in that direction. But doing it for no other (possible) reasons than keeping power consumption as low as possible and to have the console quiet as possible is asinine. I'm not saying they should push it to the point where it can cause a high failure rate, but Nintendo has a bad habit of overdoing it with stuff like this and it's ugly head is rearing again. Hopefully they will back off of that some before launch since clocks can still be changed at this point at least.

If it makes Nintendo blink and up the clock I support it. The CPU as a problem has been pointed to for too long and like I mentioned this is likely Nintendo unnecessarily doing it for some perceived need.

Is it just a matter of cost, not wanting to charge over $300 and still making a profit that is the CPU issue or is it more to do with the fact they love tiny consoles which is obviously a massive problem regarding heat from both the CPU and GPU ?.

 

[lostinblue]

Yeah, but again, if it was that close surely they could easily find that little bit extra they need from looking into offloading to DSP, I/O GPU etc, unless they have already done that and there's still problems (surely not.) OR, is there any circumstance where CPU clock speed will only do and no amount of DSP/IO etc make no difference. What's with all the creative solutions? I think it's a bad translation.

I dunno.

I don't even think they're trying to be negative (or positive), they were trying to be insightful on how it's going for them; their experience doesn't need to be reflected everywhere but it's still their experience, and a little higher clocked solution seems to have been the sweet spot for them.

Now, of course that has to be taken as a grain of salt, their tech seems very PS3/X360 centered (and it's good tech at that, meaning they took years to get it that efficient), they can't change that by clicking fingers. Wii U is clearly a different beast.

 

[bgassassin]

I wouldn't necessarily say its "Nintendo being Nintendo" (stingy with clocks) if they've decided to go with an architecture like the 47x series. I don't think there are any historical examples of those bad boys going higher than 2ghz (or even 1.6 really) and running straight code from Xenon isn't going to produce any ground-breaking results. Of note: in the 60 or so watts the box is going to be pushing, most of it is going to be the gpu. Most of ibm's embedded solutions like the aforementioned 47x's eat up <2w per core.

We also have a possible indication the CPU can be clocked up to 4Ghz.

I wonder if it's possible to "unlock" more speed as the PSP did well into its life. Perhaps Nintendo kept the CPU clocks low as they attempted to "balance" the sysem, as they did with Wii and GCN, where the CPU clock = 3x GPU clock. But if the CPU is holding devs back, it may not be as balanced in practice as it perhaps is theoretically. Still, how high could they really clock it? A modified 400 series core is currently the best running theory and those top out at 2 Ghz.

Well it's definitely not certain the exact reason why the clock is said to be low since they're assuming it's to keep the heat down and the console quiet. But at the same time, what other reason would they have to do it? I think the most logical thought again was relying on the other components to do their part. And that was even before the possibility of depending on GPU compute tasks.

 

[Donnie]

There's no way to spin this, it's terrible. There's also no more "why are we trusting anonymous devs?!?" excuse, the Tekken guy just outright publicly said it. Lower clocked than 2005 hardware (not "5-6" years old, but 7). Saying it might be more efficient doesn't make sense based on what he said, that they have to use creative solutions just to get it up to par. If it was more efficient and had some custom magic in it he wouldn't have said that. This is the Wii all over again.

You need to calm down here, CPU's aren't defined by their clock speeds. If they were Pentium 4 would have destroyed Athlon. As another example in 2004 Intel had Pentium 4 3.33Ghz, in 2011 they released Intel I7 3.2Ghz, would you then say "There's no way to spin this Intel, its terrible, lower clocked than 2004 hardware!!". Definitely not because even at a lower clock speed the I7 is leagues ahead of the Pentium 4.

Of course in this instance we're not talking about two CPU's leagues apart in performance. Where code highly optimised for one CPU (and so very unoptimised for the other) can still run as well or better through the sheer performance advantage. We're talking about two very different CPU's that are probably in a similar ball park performance-wise. In that situation you can easily come across problems where optimisations to the code for the older CPU are actually hindering performance on the newer CPU. If you don't have a significant performance advantage to negate that then you need to put in some work to change the code to get that same code working well (the creative solutions being referred to). Of course this isn't an issue if you can write the code to work well with the new CPU from the beginning.

 

[Pineconn]

Is it just a matter of cost, not wanting to charge over $300 and still making a profit that is the CPU issue or is it more to do with the fact they love tiny consoles which is obviously a massive problem regarding heat from both the CPU and GPU ?.

Probably slightly more the latter than the former, but both are factors. Nintendo would simply rather produce a smaller, quieter, more reliable console than a behemoth beast that red rings every two years.

In pictorial terms, Nintendo prefers a functioning gaming platform over this option:

 

[AzaK]

Looking back Nintendo launched GC in Sept. and announced they changed the clocks in May. So if we're looking at a Nov. or so release, now is the time they would likely do it.

OK. For some reason I was under the impression that there was normally a 6 month lead time on manufacturing.

 

[Van Owen]

Gimped CPU comes as no surprise. Falls in line with what I've been saying about he systems overall capabilities. Slightly more powerful than current gen.

 

[Apophis2036]

Been meaning to ask for a while now but was there a 'Wii Speculation Thread', or even a 'Gamecube Speculation Thread' ? .

 

[Apophis2036]

Probably slightly more the latter than the former, but both are factors. Nintendo would simply rather produce a smaller, quieter, more reliable console than a behemoth beast that red rings every two years.

What was the cause of the RROD, the CPU or GPU overheating ?.

 

[lostinblue]

I wonder if it's possible to "unlock" more speed as the PSP did well into its life. Perhaps Nintendo kept the CPU clocks low as they attempted to "balance" the sysem, as they did with Wii and GCN, where the CPU clock = 3x GPU clock. But if the CPU is holding devs back, it may not be as balanced in practice as it perhaps is theoretically. Still, how high could they really clock it? A modified 400 series core is currently the best running theory and those top out at 2 Ghz.

I disagree.

PowerPC e5500 is out of order and 64 bits, has the same Power ISA revision as Power7 going for it. Tops out at 2.5 GHz. L2 cache actually match what supposedly leaked specs suggest for Core 0 and Core 2; unlike Power7 (512 KB versus 256 KB per core).

Exists in SoC configurations too.

If I had to bet on one existing CPU to be likely to be picked of the shelf it would be that one; if it's clocked at 2.5 GHz or lower, that is. But if it is (clocked higher) or can be clocked higher then this one is off the map.

What was the cause of the RROD, the CPU or GPU overheating ?.

Mostly GPU.

But everything in there was a factor, the thermal design for it was inefficient.

One has to wonder if they did intense thermal testing as they should or they simply ran out of time. I could see Nintendo going the other way around by being careful now with what they promise developers (and thus being overly conservative with CPU clocks) and actually releasing higher clocks closer to launch. But I don't have a dev kit or an showfloor unit, don't know know how much they're heating.

Of course, that kind of tweaking might have happened already too, seeing the GPU seems a no-problem part when compared to the CPU, they might have decided to spice the GPU in spite of CPU performance)

OK. For some reason I was under the impression that there was normally a 6 month lead time on manufacturing.

Less than 6 months is very tight for components like CPU and GPU. But this isn't manufacturing; I bet they could change clocks on a console with a firmware/software upgrade providing they decide on stone for something else before launch.

It's probably all up to thermal efficiency and balancing now, if it's not totally ready makes sense to be conservative rather than promising developers a lot more than they'll get (or give it to them and embrace RRoD festival), then again I won't say to count on it (Nintendo changing clocks at this time).

 

[snowdog1971]

It's not out there. He got the percentage wrong.
There are some games on the 360 where audio processing does take up an entire core.

Yup, it's compulsory for developers to have at least one thread out of six to be entirely dedicated to audio, but given the importance that getting audio right carries most developers dedicate more than that. You can get away with wobbly textures here and there but a sound effect or music stuttering is VERY noticeable. I think the PS3 has developers having 1 SPE dedicated to audio, but I will stand to be corrected on that.

 

[MadeInBeats]

I dunno.

I don't even think they're trying to be negative (or positive), they were trying to be insightful on how it's going for them; their experience doesn't need to be reflected everywhere but it's still their experience, and a little higher clocked solution seems to have been the sweet spot for them.

Now, of course that has to be taken as a grain of salt, their tech seems very PS3/X360 centered (and it's good tech at that, meaning they took years to get it that efficient), they can't change that by clicking fingers. Wii U is clearly a different beast.

That makes me a little frustrated as well; what might be the reason they can't wield the SDK to easily off-load their CPU tasks. Unabashed nativity talking here, but I would have thought Nintendo make it easy for devs to understand what needs to be done and how to do it, more so for them if they'll be working on a major Nintendo IP soon.

I suppose if what you're saying is they would just like a little more clock speed so they can piss out a minimum effort port because optimising with DSP etc in mind is too much messing, then that's that.

Does anyone know or can theorise on that? Tekken engine: PS360 centric; how much work might be involved basic optimising for WiiU architecture in say, man hours or what-have-you?

 

[Pineconn]

What was the cause of the RROD, the CPU or GPU overheating ?.

I'm not sure if it was relegated to one specific area, but a buildup of heat can weaken solder joints just about anywhere. If one of those babies pop, it's game over.

I guess I'm glad to see those little white nubs on the vent side of the Wii U. They should prevent overheating due to vent blockage, even if they're a bit of an eyesore.

EDIT: Stealth edit by lostinblue. :|

 

[bgassassin]

Gotta start reading the news you all are talking about before entering this thread. Because the Tekken thing sounds neither as roundly positive nor negative as it's being interpretted.

(personally, I once again take comfort in the fact that at least we're jumping to HD with a good DD and online solution)

I'd personally drop "neither" and say it's both. Positive in that Wii U can be even more capable than it currently is and negative because at least so far Nintendo is choosing not to allow it to be more capable.

Is it just a matter of cost, not wanting to charge over $300 and still making a profit that is the CPU issue or is it more to do with the fact they love tiny consoles which is obviously a massive problem regarding heat from both the CPU and GPU ?.

Latter. Knowing Nintendo and their overcompensating, their cooling could handle more heat than Nintendo plans so it wouldn't/shouldn't cause them to need to spend extra on cooling.

Gimped CPU comes as no surprise. Falls in line with what I've been saying about he systems overall capabilities. Slightly more powerful than current gen.

That doesn't prove the latter at all.

 

[vctor182]

I'd personally drop "neither" and say it's both. Positive in that Wii U can be even more capable than it currently is and negative because at least so far Nintendo is choosing not to allow it to be more capable.

But they can unlock it via firmware update like it happened with the 3DS right?

 

[MadeInBeats]

But they can unlock it via firmware update like it happened with the 3DS right?

People are starting to use this like the 'wait for the inevitable redesign' comment lol. The 3DS is the only time they've ever done anything like that so I wouldn't hold your breath thinking it will happen again. Might have been a pure one-off.

 

[Van Owen]

But they can unlock it via firmware update like it happened with the 3DS right?

Did 3DS games suddenly become more amazing looking?

 

[lostinblue]

Does anyone know or can theorise on that? Tekken engine: PS360 centric; how much work might be involved basic optimising for WiiU architecture in say, man hours or what-have-you?

Impossible to theorize I'm afraid. Not enough data on their tech innards or Wii U CPU.

If their tech is so PS3/X360 centered as it seems, and if Wii U is a out-of-order+no smt solution then I'd say a lot; the more optimized it is for in-order+2-way smt the more whole cpu portion of the code will suddenly turn inneficient.

EDIT: Stealth edit by lostinblue. :|

I forget Neogaf replies come really quick so I tend to edit everything if I want to add something.

 

[axisofweevils]

Capcom talks about the lack of Marvel Fighters on Nintendo.

http://www.cubed3.com/news/16976?

It's not some sort of spite thing. It's just that on current generation consoles, the most sizable base of active digital consumers has been on the X360 and PS3. Bear in mind, this game was green lit more than a year ago when I did the deal with Marvel.

Don't worry though, on some future unannounced Capcom projects, Nintendo platforms will get digital love from us.

Mock if old.

 

[MadeInBeats]

Got to say though, I greatly respect Nintendo for their build quality, I'd hate it if they dropped down to Sony, or God forbid MS standards. The only N console failed on me was a DS Lite after 4 years of use, and they repaired that for free for me because it was a known manufacturing fault - micro cracks on the mainboard. Love to see Sony or MS help me out with a 4 year old failed console.

 

[lostinblue]

We're talking about two very different CPU's that are probably in a similar ball park performance-wise. In that situation you can easily come across problems where optimisations to the code for the older CPU are actually hindering performance on the newer CPU. If you don't have a significant performance advantage to negate that then you need to put in some work to change the code to get that same code working well (the creative solutions being referred to). Of course this isn't an issue if you can write the code to work well with the new CPU from the beginning.

I was having problems in conveying this.

Don't worry though, on some future unannounced Capcom projects, Nintendo platforms will get digital love from us.

Mock if old.

By digital love he means virtual-service releases?

I want Okami HD! Not port begging or anything, but this thing has a screen on the controller... and a pen; and the wii port sold better than it's PS2 counterpart (while not being a really good port) and can be marketed to the Zelda userbase again, I guess.

Speaking of which, and offtopic; with PS Vita living through it's software drought with PSP-classics discounted I wonder why Nintendo hasn't gone ahead and pulled in DS games on their 3DS virtual service.

Got to say though, I greatly respect Nintendo for their build quality, I'd hate it if they dropped down to Sony, or God forbid MS standards. The only N console failed on me was a DS Lite after 4 years of use, and they repaired that for free for me because it was a known manufacturing fault - micro cracks on the mainboard. Love to see Sony or MS help me out with a 4 year old failed console.

I hear you.

Microsoft build quality can't even get trims right. I traded in my X360 4 times before I got a satisfying build quality one.

The O's on the Xbox side lettering were always defective, in some the height of it's depression varied greatly from the other embossed letters, in others it was as if the O had been turned, in one the O actually altered the form of the whole case (seemed to converge up to the place it was.

Not to mention other minor details, felt like a tupperware and the plastic didn't really meet in the back vent area because there was nothing keeping it together in the middle, instead it arched. One of them (old X360's before slims) seemed scratched, this isn't a glossy console but it had an area in it that was matte; matte unlike the rest of the console finish. (and I unboxed it, had never been open).


And don't get me started on the X360 Slim design; the back ports are so OEM PC, seems like they went for production with the first design tape-out they did, argh. I mean the very square S/PDIF audio out is rounded when everything else is square? I can actually imagine the conversation going like this "add an extra port at this place with this width for adding something new" to whoom the designer, not knowing what it was... did, only for that to be the final production design.

 

[MadeInBeats]

That's enough speculation for one night; I actually had a major dejar vu trip out when readin Azak's post... I seen a future where the WiiU was released, it felt scary. Too much speculation is bad for your health... Good night.

 

[Agent Unknown]

Remember that comment yesterday from Katsuhiro Harada stating "it would be distracting that the Gamepad plays a big role with fighting games" well apparently he never said that, he said "difficult for fighting games" he's mad at Gamespot for changing his words, makes you wonder if the CPU comment is wrong too.

“Looking at the small screen [Wii U GamePad] and the big [TV] screen at the same time is pretty difficult for a fighting game. So we’re thinking of making it useful as a way of having shortcuts.”

“Or, by making progressing through the game more convenient. Or by playing alone on the GamePad screen.”

https://twitter.com/Harada_TEKKEN/status/222703388025032704

Also he said

https://twitter.com/Harada_TEKKEN/status/222711445886996480

"WiiU gets 'trolled' too much as it is. I like Namco on Nintendo platforms"

Gamespot and the media. SMH.

 

[Silas Lang]

Got to say though, I greatly respect Nintendo for their build quality, I'd hate it if they dropped down to Sony, or God forbid MS standards. The only N console failed on me was a DS Lite after 4 years of use, and they repaired that for free for me because it was a known manufacturing fault - micro cracks on the mainboard. Love to see Sony or MS help me out with a 4 year old failed console.

I agree. I have every Nintendo home console from Nes to wii and they are all still kicking. Much respect to them for that.

Still, from the sounds of it they could up the clock speed a bit on the wii u CPU to at least ease the development of current gen ports.

 

[StevieP]

We also have a possible indication the CPU can be clocked up to 4Ghz.

I'm not sure wsippel ever followed up to that (if he would pop in and correct me I'd be happy) but there exists no Broadway-based (which this CPU isn't) or 47x based design that goes past 1ghz or 2ghz respectively. I don't think Waternoose ever got that high either - anyone ever tried overclocking their 360 or PS3? lol

Gimped CPU comes as no surprise. Falls in line with what I've been saying about he systems overall capabilities. Slightly more powerful than current gen.

Where have you been? The party started hours ago. Specialguy still hasn't arrived yet, though. I even invited him earlier.

That makes me a little frustrated as well; what might be the reason they can't wield the SDK to easily off-load their CPU tasks. Unabashed nativity talking here, but I would have thought Nintendo make it easy for devs to understand what needs to be done and how to do it, more so for them if they'll be working on a major Nintendo IP soon.

I suppose if what you're saying is they would just like a little more clock speed so they can piss out a minimum effort port because optimising with DSP etc in mind is too much messing, then that's that.

Does anyone know or can theorise on that? Tekken engine: PS360 centric; how much work might be involved basic optimising for WiiU architecture in say, man hours or what-have-you?

There are known to be middlewares that don't take advantage of the extra processors/DSP/etc, according to wsippel, in their current states. It's pretty standard par-for-the-course that middleware and documentation on a new console platform is incomplete/hard to optimize for/etc etc at the beginning of a generation.

The next MS console is probably going to be the exception to that rule (with the PS4 probably being there as well) as a more standard x86 platform that's almost like today's PCs would be welcomed by most of the industry.

 

[Apophis2036]

How on Earth can they keep even an on par Xenon type CPU, 2GB of Ram and a 500 FLOP GPU cool in that thin case ? !!! .

My Gaming PC's case is the size of 6 or 7 Wii U's pilled ontop of one another and the CPU and GPU fans still go like crazy !.

 

[Stewox]

Games that cost US$100 million to make on the PlayStation 4 and Xbox 720 will also cost US$100 million to make on the Wii U. The industry problem of over expensive game budgets and a shitty market will be problematic for everyone and the Wii U will solve nothing in this field. As I said earlier, this is a 'now' problem on 'current' hardware, and it will be a similar problem for similar games on the Wii U.

Where publishers and developers will find success with smaller budget titles will depend on hardware market penetration, sustainable software sales, and distribution models that benefit developers/publishers working on a small budget. If Nintendo is unable to provide these they won't be helping anybody.

Games cost that much because most big publisher just throw money at it, the industry today is riddled with these interactive movies, the focus on content, it's the content that costs the much just because there's much more percentage of it, content creation is always by workforce, a programmer team is about 10-15 people, ID has more than 20 possibly more, they have about 50 all time employees, those 150 were for Doom4 and Rage asset production, some of the Rage team went to join Doom4 team, probably in early stages, the Doom4 engine has not yet been finished by what Carmacks plans for it (updated IDTech5, actually the tech never stopped evolving, changes every month) or guys like Crytek ... you can't throw a 300 programmers, because the way development works is that they actually need to be communicating and managing in a way, there just won't be enough plan-ahead to know what the heck to assign those 250 guys to work on, but on content you can, not only the content is more in volume, they have to pay on top of all those extra people and effort in order to make it faster, can't you see, the industry is spitting games out like off conveyor belt, feeding the obese audience.

Tekken Producer said the Wii U CPU is slightly slower than the PS3/360 CPU and a lot of people are taking it that the Wii U CPU sucks even though that's not what it means.

Whooh; I am not even going to start on that.

And he's a producer, but it may be official planned response as a company, a fairly stupid one in that case.

From what I remember POWER7 is only made with eight
cores. The 4 and 6-core versions are just the 8-core with disabled cores.

A2 is in-order.


So now we have an anonymous dev and a public dev both talking about the CPU having a "low" clock.

Let's hope the early revisions released may forgot to be physically locked the number of CPU cores enabled, Rosti must get the device as early as possible, that means he has to get on the midnight release asap, but i doubt it, nintendo isn't known for large mistakes like this (however it may be IBMs fault/cause beyond nintendo's control)
I'm sure others of same goal will also do this, but not sure.

As previously suspected, a low clock may not mean anything drastic, however, I don't see the point of that, power consumption is a non-issue, I never cared about electrical consumption in my house or anywhere, and they have the power adapter outside the console, splendid, the cooling thing can be enhanced why not, that's small price to pay,

I am not sure why are they trying to achieve quiet operation, it's pointless, that damn Wii disc drive was heard through half of my house, freaking earthquake (I have high senses for hearing silent sounds and vibration, must be a side effect of my long-distance seeing clear ability), it wasn't the cooling at all when I finally checked it out, I thought it was, what will make the WiiU disc drive less noisy, intertial dampners for crying out loud ?

They clearly miss the point of they try to design around silence, it must be prevented to vibrate the sorrounding material, that's the key, the ventilating air will not produce that distinct shaking sound.

There's no way to spin this, it's terrible. There's also no more "why are we trusting anonymous devs?!?" excuse, the Tekken guy just outright publicly said it. Lower clocked than 2005 hardware (not "5-6" years old, but 7). Saying it might be more efficient doesn't make sense based on what he said, that they have to use creative solutions just to get it up to par. If it was more efficient and had some custom magic in it he wouldn't have said that. This is the Wii all over again.

Are you out of your mind. Just keep reading what we're saying, the tekken guy is a jerk, he's not an engineer, he probably speaks of silly things like clock speed. Developers talk shit they want, they need to fill in their communciation for the marketing, they just tell you the gut feeling when they have no idea, his team has, but he's just playing with customers.

Most of the negative rumors were anonymous.

 

[snowdog1971]

Does Kojima and Crystal Dynamics speak for Nintendo?
I dont see the connection you are trying to make here.

Just because some developers do no want to bring their games to the console, doesn't mean Nintendo is not aggressively pursuing 3rd parties.

And they have already shown through their hardware design that they are interested in third parties, by announcing their pro controller, for those third parties not interested in working out the gamepad or wiimote.

Nintendo has worked on their online structure, allowing developers to basically self publish their own titles.

They are most likely offering a console with modern feature sets, yet priced, as close as possible, to mainstream budgets.

Nintendo is also publishing several games for third parties. Project P 100, NinjaGaiden3

Going after third parties is not just about money-hatting, it can also be about offering an ecosystem that they can thrive in.

What Nintendo's mission is is to put as many consoles into the hands of users using their key franchises. That means Mario, which is a title bought by both core and casual players. Its up to third parties to take advantage of it. Those that dont, will most likely become dinosaurs.

Yup, totally agree. You've also got to take into account Nintendo's unprecedented deal in giving tens of thousands of pounds worth of middleware free with each dev kit. Absolutely outstanding if you're an indie developer and even for the more flush big name developers it's going to bring the costs of development down which should keep them happy.

I'm not worried at all about the third party support tbh, Nintendo have removed the obstacles that hindered porting games to the Wii this gen and have been forward thinking enough to give the U a similar architecture to the next gen efforts from Sony and Microsoft.

I've said it before but by the time the PS4 and 720 are released the U will more than likely have a user installed base of around 10-15m imo and publishers won't want to leave money on the table, particularly when you take the inevitable rise in development costs next gen. With the likes of NSMB U, Lego City Undercover, ZombiU and Assassins Creed 3 at launch and Aliens Colonial Marines soon after you're going to have a similar amount of hardcore gamers buying the console that bought the Wii when it first launched, and Nintendo aren't going to ignore them they way they did a couple of years after launch imo. Most of the first and third party launch and launch window titles aren't casual/shovelware titles and I can't see that changing.

And even the launches of the PS4 and 720 aren't going to affect the sales next year that much either because you can bet your bottom dollar that Nintendo have some big hitters to be released around the same time...and if the console keeps selling then third parties will continue to support it. No doubt in my mind at all.

 

[JordanN]

I am not sure why are they trying to achieve quiet operation, it's pointless, that damn Wii disc drive was heard through half of my house, freaking earthquake (I have high senses for hearing silent sounds and vibration, must be a side effect of my long-distance seeing clear ability), it wasn't the cooling at all when I finally checked it out, I thought it was, what will make the WiiU disc drive less noisy, intertial dampners for crying out loud ?

Blame Miyamoto's fear of moms.

 

[lostinblue]

Are you out of your mind. Just keep reading what we're saying, the tekken guy is a jerk, he's not an engineer, he probably speaks of silly things like clock speed. Developers talk shit they want, they need to fill in their communciation for the marketing, they just tell you the gut feeling when they have no idea, his team has, but he's just playing with customers.

I know I said he is not a technical head so he's not being overly technical in his explanation/perhaps he couldn't elaborate on it so it should be taken as a grain of salt.

But I don't think he's as clueless as claiming the clocks are low and not be. It's probably under 3.2 GHz or some engineer explained to him that if it had, say 200 MHz extra running whatever they're struggling with right now would be easier.

I also don't think he comes off as a jerk; he seems to mean well and be talkative to his userbase, which is very good (and friendly); we're fishing for details after all. And his team sure put forth a lot of effort on Tekken 3DS technical aspects and Tekken 6 on X360 sure had some impressive inovations considering the game started off as a PS3 exclusive; I expect them not to be lazy with Wii U as well. (Note: I actually hate the way tekken plays)

If there's something the Tekken team is good at, is being good at finding their "creative solutions".

 

[Federico_612]

But, is the WiiU's cpu weaker than PS360's real or theorical performance?

 

[Trevelyan9999]

How on Earth can they keep even an on par Xenon type CPU, 2GB of Ram and a 500 FLOP GPU cool in that thin case ? !!! .

My Gaming PC's case is the size of 6 or 7 Wii U's pilled ontop of one another and the CPU and GPU fans still go like crazy !.

The GPU will most likely be closer to 600 GFLOPS (not that it means much).

The CPU thing goes back to the way the Wii U handles graphics.....it seems to be all about the GPU.

The CPU doesn't have to worry about the sound department since the system has a dedicated DSP.

Games being ported to the Wii U from Xbox 360/PS3 will use code made from the ground up for those older systems with older technology. The Wii U will be able to handle those ports just fine with some tweaking to how the CPU/GPU work together, but developers are not going to completely re-write code for the Wii U from scratch, otherwise it would be similar to trying to port to the og Wii (ok maybe not that hard) and developers would steer clear of that noise. All Third Parties have/want to do is make the game run on Wii U just good enough to make the game look the same/maybe a tad better than the HD twins, other than that, I don't think they are going to care to put more work into "figuring out" how to get better use of the CPU.

Right now developers aren't doing that for the most part and are still in Xbox 360 mode.....which is totally understandable

Games built for next-gen (PS4/Xbox 3) will be able to port to the Wii U due yet again to the GPU being modern with compute shaders and all the DirectX 11 jazz.

Games built from the ground up and made for Wii U specifically will probably be able to match closely the games on PS4/Xbox 3 in terms of graphics if development uses some of the unique "Custom Nintendo Features" that are unknown at this time i.e. just like the Gamecube did with Resident Evil 4, Star Fox Adventures & Rogue Squadron II/III despite the Xbox 1 being about twice as powerful in technical terms.

 

[Apophis2036]

The GPU will most likely be closer to 600 GFLOPS (not that it means much).

The CPU thing goes back to the way the Wii U handles graphics.....it seems to be all about the GPU.

The CPU doesn't have to worry about the sound department since the system has a dedicated DSP.

Games being ported to the Wii U from Xbox 360/PS3 will use code made from the ground up for those older systems with older technology. The Wii U will be able to handle those ports just fine with some tweaking to how the CPU/GPU work together, but developers are not going to completely re-write code for the Wii U from scratch, otherwise it would be similar to trying to port to the og Wii (ok maybe not that hard) and developers would steer clear of that noise. All Third Parties have/want to do is make the game run on Wii U just good enough to make the game look the same/maybe a tad better than the HD twins, other than that, I don't think they are going to care to put more work into "figuring out" how to get better use of the CPU.

Right now developers aren't doing that for the most part and are still in Xbox 360 mode.....which is totally understandable

Games built for next-gen (PS4/Xbox 3) will be able to port to the Wii U due yet again to the GPU being modern with compute shaders and all the DirectX 11 jazz.

Games built from the ground up and made for Wii U specifically will probably be able to match closely the games on PS4/Xbox 3 in terms of graphics if development uses some of the unique "Custom Nintendo Features" that are unknown at this time i.e. just like the Gamecube did with Resident Evil 4, Star Fox Adventures & Rogue Squadron II/III despite the Xbox 1 being about twice as powerful in technical terms.

Huh ?...

I was asking someone in the know how such a thin case would be able to keep the Wii U from over heating.

Maybe you quoted the wrong person .

 

[Trevelyan9999]

Huh ?...

I was asking someone in the know how such a thin case would be able to keep the Wii U from over heating.

Maybe you quoted the wrong person .

Well I did talk about the GFLOPS....I guess I went on my own rant after that

 

[lostinblue]

i.e. just like the Gamecube did with Resident Evil 4, Star Fox Adventures & Rogue Squadron II/III despite the Xbox 1 being about twice as powerful in technical terms.

Mostly on paper only, as PS2 and Xbox inflated and gave theorectical performance as a measure while Nintendo went with realworld scenarios (that could be surpassed). It still was supposed to be a little more powerful going by specs alone though, seeing the more expensive (and familiar) parts, compliant feature set, nvidia feature set, hard drive and the effort to trump any feature the other platforms had by the widest possible margin, but it's not as linear as everyone makes it out to be (not twice by the longest shot); specially if xbox bottlenecks play a part.

Of course when it's all said and done both platforms could only be exploited with code written specifically for them. All in all they were pretty balanced, but with strengths and weaknesses often lying on exact oposites or simply very specific quirks; if I recall correctly even stuff like bump maps; Xbox had less hit doing regular ones (not DOT3 ones), whilst gamecube had less hit doing them via the Environment-Mapped Bump Mapping (EMBM) way; which were used intensively on the water effects that characterized the platform. Something like that anyway. Tweaks on how things were made had to be made for both platforms to do the same with comparable performance.

And of course, western developers were more familiar with a celeron with a geforce 3 than they were with some custom gpu; more documentation and a more complete existing shader library going for it too.

 

[Barack Lesnar]

Are you out of your mind. Just keep reading what we're saying, the tekken guy is a jerk, he's not an engineer, he probably speaks of silly things like clock speed. Developers talk shit they want, they need to fill in their communciation for the marketing, they just tell you the gut feeling when they have no idea, his team has, but he's just playing with customers.

Most of the negative rumors were anonymous.

I read this paragraph a few times and am still confused.

 

[bgassassin]

I'm not sure wsippel ever followed up to that (if he would pop in and correct me I'd be happy) but there exists no Broadway-based (which this CPU isn't) or 47x based design that goes past 1ghz or 2ghz respectively. I don't think Waternoose ever got that high either - anyone ever tried overclocking their 360 or PS3? lol

It came from a linkedin profile. I found it and posted a picture in one of the other WUSTs.

Someone posted the profile link in a later WUST and wsippel responded here.

 

[nordique]

Wii U offers the same large level 3 cache found in the POWER7 line and processing technology as Watson (another POWER7).

Anyways, this is getting wack. IBM called it. You can disagree on its definition (i.e opinion) but facts are fact.

It doesn't work like that exactly (Watson isn't simply "another POWER7", it was some crazy number of POWER7's put together. It was a supercomputer on a whole other level)

Also, you have to be careful about how much you read into IBMs statements. Fourth Storm is right in that regard; from what we do know (I don't know how far back you've been following) but the Wii U CPU is not a POWER7 and there are no facts (as you are claiming) that support that. There will be similarities to an extent, but we don't know how much it actually has in common. For one thing, there is no (as far as we know and have heard) L3 cache at all in the Wii U CPU and it certainly isn't anywhere near 32MB. It apparently has 32MB of eDRAM so you might be getting that mixed up.

As far as we do know, the Wii U has 3MB of L2 cache.

Just to point out, the POWER7 uses L3, not L2.

Again, everything is still more on the speculative side of things until we get a Wii U and rip it open and see whats inside but people who have seen spec sheets have confirmed that.

Even in IBM's release they did not outright say the Wii U CPU is POWER7 (which we did think it was for a while)

As far as specs go Gamecube CPU speed was 486 Mhz vs 733 Mhz of the original Xbox and 299 Mhz of the PS2 latest models. That is roughly 60% faster in clock speed for Xbox against GC and something along 140% for PS2.
This clock difference while substantial didn't make for a general situation where ports where impossible or games in general lagging one generation behind for the slower consoles. What we are talking now is about a difference of a "little bit" so it obviously couldn't make much difference.
Now for the argument of "in the past generation what made the difference was not Mhz, but architecture". That is my point. Wii U while a "little" bit slower than 360 is likely going to be better on CPU general terms and comparable on functions with their counterparts. The difference on Mhz against current and next gen, could be pretty much neglible

For the record, they all used different CPU architecture. Someone else who knows specific details better would be able to explain it, but this analogy doesn't work at all since you cannot compare clock speeds like that

though your point is still probable and likely under certain circumstances

 

[bgassassin]

As far as we do know, the Wii U has 3MB of L2 cache.

Just to point out, the POWER7 uses up to 32MB of L3 and 2MB of L2.

fixed

 

[nordique]

fixed

Ah, merci beaucoup mon ami

 

[JordanN]

It doesn't work like that exactly (Watson isn't simply "another POWER7", it was some crazy number of POWER7's put together. It was a supercomputer on a whole other level)

Also, you have to be careful about how much you read into IBMs statements. Fourth Storm is right in that regard; from what we do know (I don't know how far back you've been following) but the Wii U CPU is not a POWER7 and there are no facts (as you are claiming) that support that. There will be similarities to an extent, but we don't know how much it actually has in common. For one thing, there is no (as far as we know and have heard) L3 cache at all in the Wii U CPU and it certainly isn't anywhere near 32MB. It apparently has 32MB of eDRAM so you might be getting that mixed up.

As far as we do know, the Wii U has 3MB of L2 cache.

Just to point out, the POWER7 uses L3, not L2.

Again, everything is still more on the speculative side of things until we get a Wii U and rip it open and see whats inside but people who have seen spec sheets have confirmed that.

Even in IBM's release they did not outright say the Wii U CPU is POWER7 (which we did think it was for a while)

The level 3 is implemented in edram, which is what the Wii U has.

I carefuly constructed my words to say the Wii U isn't power7. What I said is Wii U uses the same technology found in power7's.