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Wii U Community Thread
- Thread starter Metroid Hunter
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Conference just felt like a big year-long bait and switch; hope that isn't the case with launch and the WiiU's life in general.
I can't justify this week with that, lightheartedly or no. This week was sheer Nintendo Stupidity™.
Just a heads, up, might be seeing a more crabby Cabbie for the next week. I'm really stung.
I can't justify this week with that, lightheartedly or no. This week was sheer Nintendo Stupidity™.
Just a heads, up, might be seeing a more crabby Cabbie for the next week. I'm really stung.
Er, ok. I'm insane for using a slang term for graphic snobs and have no understanding of technical "stuff".
But I've been right all along anyway.
Did Nintendo do anything to cause that though or was it all our hype? I called the fact that they would stick to their conservative reveal model, and I'm not sure we received any information that suggested that they wouldn't.
So...?
The context of a console launch for this conference was all that was needed as a scale.
As far as E3 pressers go - and barring later megatons at the fall meeting - they could have done much much more to inspire the early-adopters: us.
I agree that it was a mistake if they were going for a normal launch where they have to sell the core on the future of the console, but I think they're banking on it being successful off the bat on the back of the mainstream, like the Wii. To that consumer I don't think the future of the console matters so much, it's more about a here and now thing. I'm not sure that it'll be successful but I can see the logic.
DXB-KNIGHT
Member
I also felt a bit disappointed after the conference since I expected a huge lineup other than the launch titles, but I think thats the new Nintendo direction of delivering announcements throughout the year via Nintendo Direct which if you think about it will help them keep some cards hidden instead of revealing their 12 month lineup. I'm not holding my breath for next E3, my expectations will be as the ones from a Nintendo Direct.
The Japanese event is on Tuesday? Sooner than expected. Anyway, considering the Japanese press most likely won't care about a lot of the stuff shown at E3, it's certainly possible that Iwata will announce a few Japanese games instead.
Oh, geez, I'm sorry.
I meant in the UK! I don't know about Japan yet, but I can't imagine it being too far away with the UK one so close. I thought that it would be a little longer getting to the UK one than basically a week after E3 started.
I'm editing my post now! Sorry about that!
JoshuaJSlone
Member
To go back to the "all games are 720p AA" thing; the games don't all look the same. Put characters from LEGO City and NSMBU side by side and it's clear that what's the case for one isn't the case for the other.
Shin Johnpv
Member
I still will be.
Shin Johnpv
Member
If all this is available at launch
Black Wii U system
Pikmin 3
NSMBU
Darksiders 2
Rayman Legends
Trine 2
Aliens: Colonial Marines
Batman: Arkham City
Maybes would be Assassin's Creed III, Ubisoft fooled me twice with AC I and II. I really need to try out ACIII before I take the plunge. Zombie U is a big maybe as well, need to see more of that game first.
Was just never that interested really. When the game started coming I didn't have a PS3 or 360 at the time. When I got them the length of the games concerned me. Especially for $60 and I was really into playing the Wii at that time. Also how people raved about them combined with the insults many (who were raving about the games) were directing at Wii games (and those that choose to play them. For a while things were pretty bad on this front.) I was enjoying just helped turn me off to the series. The same with many other games out there to be honest. It's strange how that works.
I'm really glad to have a unified WiiU thread again and thankful that it's back in the Community section where's it somewhat protected from the drive-by's.
I was really disappointed with the conference and I think that has to do with me getting my hopes up in the last weekend before. I kept a reasonable expectation of what the games would look like and what system power would be, but some of the hyperbole and vitriol really got to me for a bit.
Then I did two things. One is showed my girlfriend a video NSMB2 and she kept saying how much fun it looked. Then I myself looked at a bunch of gameplay videos for both 3DS and WiiU and realized how much fun most of this set of launch games looks. I may be jaded as hell about the art style of the NSMB series but I'm now totally down with some platforming action with HD backgrounds.
I'm thinking $299 November launch with Nintendoland installed on the flash memory. They need to do something to fluff up the enthusiast gamer and now that e3 is gone price and a pack-in are the best ways for them to do that.
As it stands now I'll likely pick up ZombiU and Mario at launch and then pickup Pikmin and P-100 (this looks so freaking good) later. I'll likely gamefly most of the 3rd party efforts.
I was really disappointed with the conference and I think that has to do with me getting my hopes up in the last weekend before. I kept a reasonable expectation of what the games would look like and what system power would be, but some of the hyperbole and vitriol really got to me for a bit.
Then I did two things. One is showed my girlfriend a video NSMB2 and she kept saying how much fun it looked. Then I myself looked at a bunch of gameplay videos for both 3DS and WiiU and realized how much fun most of this set of launch games looks. I may be jaded as hell about the art style of the NSMB series but I'm now totally down with some platforming action with HD backgrounds.
I'm thinking $299 November launch with Nintendoland installed on the flash memory. They need to do something to fluff up the enthusiast gamer and now that e3 is gone price and a pack-in are the best ways for them to do that.
As it stands now I'll likely pick up ZombiU and Mario at launch and then pickup Pikmin and P-100 (this looks so freaking good) later. I'll likely gamefly most of the 3rd party efforts.
Smashkirby
Member
Why is Mario's hand so huge? I guess he punches blocks?
The Undercover playthroughs and graphics look out of place compared to most of the other games. It could be something that's said in that spec info eariler in the thread that they worked on a earlier devkit.
The Undercover playthroughs and graphics look out of place compared to most of the other games. It could be something that's said in that spec info eariler in the thread that they worked on a earlier devkit.
Far from being a poor launch, I actually think the Wii U launch is the most well rounded it could probably be, maybe save for one, really major core franchise with a step up in visuals. The next Just Dance and Wii Fit U are going to be as crucial to the Wii U launch as NSMBU (easily the most successful brand of Mario) and Pikmin 3 will be.
Infact, contrary to this weeks lack of hype (and I was affected BADLY by it too), I think Nintendo are going to do well between now and launch in terms of wooing the mainstream media and keeping up a nice flow of announcements. I don't expect them to suddenly drop a "Oh and yeah, Metroid Prime 4" announcement or anything but I think they'll probably do several Nintendo Direct or media presentations to flesh out the system, Nintendo Network and maybe the third party lineup.
I think we'll be all be talking a little differently in two or three months time than we are now. I genuinely believe that.
My shopping list from what we've seen so far is:
- NSMBU (Day One)
- Pikmin 3 (Day One)
- ZombiU (Day One)
- Project P-100 (Day One)
- Assassins Creed 3
- Rayman Legends
Probably pick up AC3 and Rayman Legends a little later on, maybe after Christmas. The others are Day One be that launch day or day one whenever they release. I also have Super Mario Galaxy 1 & 2, Donkey Kong Country Returns and a number of other Wii games I want to play having never owned a Wii before.
Infact, contrary to this weeks lack of hype (and I was affected BADLY by it too), I think Nintendo are going to do well between now and launch in terms of wooing the mainstream media and keeping up a nice flow of announcements. I don't expect them to suddenly drop a "Oh and yeah, Metroid Prime 4" announcement or anything but I think they'll probably do several Nintendo Direct or media presentations to flesh out the system, Nintendo Network and maybe the third party lineup.
I think we'll be all be talking a little differently in two or three months time than we are now. I genuinely believe that.
My shopping list from what we've seen so far is:
- NSMBU (Day One)
- Pikmin 3 (Day One)
- ZombiU (Day One)
- Project P-100 (Day One)
- Assassins Creed 3
- Rayman Legends
Probably pick up AC3 and Rayman Legends a little later on, maybe after Christmas. The others are Day One be that launch day or day one whenever they release. I also have Super Mario Galaxy 1 & 2, Donkey Kong Country Returns and a number of other Wii games I want to play having never owned a Wii before.
bgassassin
Member
Wsippel and I have had some talks about the CPU. He came up with a pretty interesting hypothesis. I bounced some questions off of it and it seems to be pretty sound so far. If he wants, maybe he'll share it. I'm sure Grampa Simpson might like it in part. 
Games I just received real vague hints about. I guess they are outside the launch window.
They're legit. This was the little Pre-E3 surprise I was planning. I figured someone would reveal them eventually.
Games I just received real vague hints about. I guess they are outside the launch window.
They're legit. This was the little Pre-E3 surprise I was planning. I figured someone would reveal them eventually.
So, why have they closed this thread?:
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=458438
Retro hired another ex-Vigil employee (Contract Character Artist):
http://www.linkedin.com/in/routinechaos
http://www.vertexsnapper.com/index.html
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=458438
Retro hired another ex-Vigil employee (Contract Character Artist):
http://www.linkedin.com/in/routinechaos
http://www.vertexsnapper.com/index.html
So those are the dev kits that were locking up because of heat from the 4830 GPU as per wsippel's ancient analysis? Very interesting.
Glorified G
Member
Of course Wii U is capable of 1080p. Rayman Origins runs 1080p 60fps on 360/ps3. It's not that Nintendo is lazy, they just don't give a fuck. They probably think it's not worth the resources & time. Maybe they think 720p is sufficient enough.
Shin Johnpv
Member
I really wish we had gotten some kind of hint as to what Retro is working on, even just a title screen SOMETHING!
Nintendo = Peter Gibbons confirmed.
Considering I already posted the theory on B3D, I might as well post it here, too:Wsippel and I have had some talks about the CPU. He came up with a pretty interesting hypothesis. I bounced some questions off of it and it seems to be pretty sound so far. If he wants, maybe he'll share it. I'm sure Grampa Simpson might like it in part.
From the leaked specs, it becomes apparent that the Wii U won't have a Broadway CPU for BC. Instead, the Wii U CPU will be fully binary compatible, including all the custom features like L1 cache locking, write gather pipe and proprietary SIMD instructions. Moving all those custom features to a completely different PPC64 chip, a modified Power7 for example, is probably not exactly trivial - using something closer to the 750 line should be a more straight forward approach.
Another interesting detail is that the toolchain Nintendo uses doesn't support Power7 or Cell or any other big IBM design. It's heavily optimized for embedded 32bit PowerPCs like the IBM 4xx or Freescale e500 lines of cores. And the 4xx, more specifically the 470S, seems to be IBMs go-to design for custom processors these days. The design is out-of-order with a very short pipeline, supports SMP and tons of L2 cache, is highly modular, small, cheap and efficient. It's also 45nm SoI, so there's that as well. But it doesn't support SMT (not that it would really benefit from SMT in the first place), which is something the Wii U CPU reportedly does.
But what if the chip isn't really multi-threaded in a traditional sense? In 1996, a company called Digital Equipment introduced a processor that did SMT in a pretty unique way: Each "core" was actually two cores that only shared cache and early pipeline stages (fetch and decode). Cheaper and more energy efficient than using two full blown cores, and the performance is much more predictable as the threads don't have to compete for resources. That's how modern AMD Bulldozer cores work as well, by the way.
My theory at this point is that the Wii U uses a "three core", dual threaded 32bit PowerPC that's actually made of six modified 470S cores with Gekko features and FPUs (and whatever new shit the engineers came up with). Using eDRAM as L2 cache should further reduce space and power consumption. Such a design should offer a pretty damn good performance/ Watt and performance/ Dollar ratio and mesh very well with the few known facts.
Spieler Eins
Member
Yeah. Nintendo not even managing to make a proper warioware game kinda worries me. Shit looks worse than WiiPlay. Just wtf are they doing?
The incompetence of SK is a true shame. :[
I'm going to be completely honest.
Title screens of games years off could've saved both the Wii U conference and the 3DS one, no joke. Title Screens.
Man, you all impress me so much here. I'm quoting this, but quite a few of you are really good with figuring out technology and explaining it. It's one of the reasons I like reading threads about new console specs and things just to see everyone figure it out.
You mention that the CPU will be fully binary compatible. I don't know if it can be said as such, but does this mean that a developer could more fully utilize the CPU compared with something like Broadway? From what you describe, this sort of set-up seems very efficient based on the wattage and performance, and I was wondering if having binary capability like this would aid that a lot as well. I would just imagine having this here would help utilize more of the chip than not.
The tears good lord, lol
Maybe PS4/720 will not be the insane beasts that people think, and Epic is covering all their bases.
About Japanese 3rd party, the only thing we know is that it'll be revelaed later, like price and release date. I wouldn't count a reveal for next week Japanese event. Maybe, on the next Nintendo Direct we'll see something of Japanese support, as well as FIFA / Madden / COD (?).
Glorified G
Member
This doesn't say anything about the power of 720/ps4. It's just epic wants to put ue4 on as many platforms as possible.
yeah a little video reel of "things to come"(even if they don't) at ultra speed at the end would have been better than the Nintendoland fireworks.
But what brought down the conference was the WB /Arkham City part; remove it and the conference reach average status.
Instead, if they wanted to convince us of 3rd party support(beside Ubisoft) it should have been EA sports and its 2013 games with fun and unique uses of the gamepad, followed by Aliens : colonial marines taking the spotlight. Then the conference would have been good.
Finally getting rid of Reggie and have someone likeable who seems genuinely excited about his products host the show and it would have been excellent.
First of all, I'm just speculating based on the few tidbits and leaks we have. But yes, having a chip that's extremely similar to Nintendo's previous CPUs would certainly help developers familiar with Gekko and Broadway. Thing is: It would make things simpler for Nintendo and the few developers who really pushed the Gamecube and Wii, not for anybody else. In fact, quite a few programmers would probably want to strangle Nintendo's hardware guys.
I personally loathe long teases, its really hard to keep momentum going.. Look at Bioshock Infinite... we're entering 2 years since its announcement and have another half a year until its release.
And we get sporadic updates, I think like 2 or so...
That said, I do think Nintendo needed to showcase the larger picture with the Wii U
Just kind of to show people what's in the future.
Especially since Nintendo's year 2 or.. year 1.. tends to be awesome
Metroid Prime/3, Galaxy, Sunshine
This going to be the first Nintendo launch where I don't buy a Nintendo developed title (P100 doesn't count, its just being published by them). After the disappointment of how the conference went down, I'm actually quite hyped for the line up. It's definitely a solid line up.
At launch
Wii U Black
Additional Black Pro Controller
ZombiU
Project P-100
Assassin's Creed 3
After launch
Trine 2 (at some point)
Rayman Legends (at some point)
Darksiders 2 (at some point)
Pikmin 3 (at some point)
Count me in on a NintenGaf friendlist!
I sure hope so. I need to justify my Wii U purchase with more than just platformers!
Thanks. I hope by partial they don't mean it's just missing 1 or 2 games, which will obviously become an EA Sports title and CoD BLOps 2
Epic said that UE4 would be only for high end (UE3 for mid range), my guess is PS4/720 are not up to the high end level expected by Epic, considering that a big bulk of development occurs there maybe Epic was forced to lower their specs and broad UE4. All this is just speculation on my part of course.
Thank you for the response! Makes sense to me! I guess with them dropping Broadway then for the Wii U, that that will help everyone else out significantly. (I hope!) Assuming that this is the CPU being used (hypothetically), does that change anything in regards to possible GPUs that may be used?
Also, for those interested in the whole "pixel counting" thing:
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-vs-wiiu-e3-2012
Here is a Moffitt interview where he explicitly states more titles are coming:
Q: You have some new games for hard-core gamers but I didn't see "Call of Duty" or "Battlefield" for the Wii U. Can you get the core gamer if you don't have those titles on there?
A: E3 for us is all about games. We're focusing on that first pillar of the three pillars of what E3 can offer. Over 20 games were unveiled. That's a pretty broad lineup. But I can assure you even more games will be coming during the launch period so if there's a favorite game that gamers like, I think there's a good chance it will be coming to the platform. .... I would expect that gamers will see an immense array of first- and third-party content at launch.
Link
Pretty clearly hinting at CoD IMO.
Q: You have some new games for hard-core gamers but I didn't see "Call of Duty" or "Battlefield" for the Wii U. Can you get the core gamer if you don't have those titles on there?
A: E3 for us is all about games. We're focusing on that first pillar of the three pillars of what E3 can offer. Over 20 games were unveiled. That's a pretty broad lineup. But I can assure you even more games will be coming during the launch period so if there's a favorite game that gamers like, I think there's a good chance it will be coming to the platform. .... I would expect that gamers will see an immense array of first- and third-party content at launch.
Link
Pretty clearly hinting at CoD IMO.
tkscz
Member
I hope so, this would mean that MS and Sony didn't pussy out to Epic and Epic won't bully the companies anymore. They let their egos get WAY out of hand.
bgassassin
Member
Yeah. I'm sure it puts some of the past discussions in better perspective. Like my focus on the GPU being on a smaller process.
So like most of us expected, as long as the GPU has the feature set (DX11-equivalent GPU), it can handle UE4 in some fashion. Considering when the GPU was finished, I would be more shocked that the GPU isn't capable than is.
Definitely seems like CoD and EA Sports are on their way. I'm thinking the recent bump in devkits held EA and Activision back from showing their Wii U titles.
Man - what an interesting week.
The conference started pitch perfect with Pikmin 3 then...
The overall announcements are great for launch - I just wished the would have showed some fall 2013 stuff (Mario 3D, Retro, etc.).
I see everyone saying 'if NintedoLand is packed in', which it may well be, but that game looks freakin' awesome to me, and the most unique software available.
It will be interesting what comes out of the Japanese show this week.
I don't think anything has been announced from Capcom, Konami, or Square Enix (beyond Dragon Quest X). Surely we will be receiving some report from all.
Lastly, what the hell with EA and Activision? I expect BLOPS2 and 007 Legends from Activision (beyond Skylanders) and more formalized announcements about EA Sports games...
The conference started pitch perfect with Pikmin 3 then...
The overall announcements are great for launch - I just wished the would have showed some fall 2013 stuff (Mario 3D, Retro, etc.).
I see everyone saying 'if NintedoLand is packed in', which it may well be, but that game looks freakin' awesome to me, and the most unique software available.
It will be interesting what comes out of the Japanese show this week.
I don't think anything has been announced from Capcom, Konami, or Square Enix (beyond Dragon Quest X). Surely we will be receiving some report from all.
Lastly, what the hell with EA and Activision? I expect BLOPS2 and 007 Legends from Activision (beyond Skylanders) and more formalized announcements about EA Sports games...
Glorified G
Member
Well, now it's not only for the high end anymore. Doesn't say anything about 720/ps4. Even if their consoles came out with crazy specs, Epic making 2 versions just shows they want as much money as possible. It was always going be scalable to platforms like ios/android regardless what 720/ps4 specs were going to be.
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