That thread is hilarious
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Wii U Community Thread
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gamergirly
Member
Okay guys, I've just arrived home after a Wii U demonstration in Germany.
Some initial impressions:
Hardware:
- the Wii U Gamepad is extremely light and feels great. Analog sticks are instantly comfortable if you are used to play with Nintendo controllers. The buttons feel clicky and responsive and are easy and comfortable to reach even without looking at the controller. L+R and LZ+LR are also perfect to reach and feel good but there are definitely no analog triggers on the back. All in all the Gamepad is a joy to play with.
More importantly, the screen is vivid and responsive and both 3D and 2D games looked great on it. The colors are really bright, feels very HD, even if it isn't. I own both a Vita and an iPad 3 and the screen still looked modern and great.
- the Pro Controller feels great, too. For me it was easy to play with the left sticks and the right buttons regardless of the uncommon placement.
- the console itself looks good, to me all materials look like it's a bit higher in quality than Wii. But maybe because all was brand new
Software:
- Pikmin 3. The moment you watch it on a big HD TV, you're sold. While you can see it's origin, it definitely does not look like an upscaled Wii game. There are a lot of cool small visual touches I haven't noticed in the videos, like reflections on the enviroment and on the characters and enemies. I played it with Wii Remote + Nunchuck and I really like the controls that way.
- New SMB U. It's what you expect. You can play single player on the Gamepad and use a button to do the spin attack, which I really like. Multiplayer was fun but placing blocks with the Gamepad was dull compared to actually playing the game. It's more a father-son-thing. Apart from that, it looks perfectly anti-aliased, very nice parallax scrolling and background details and just plays as you would expect from a Mario game.
- Batman. The visuals do look worse than PS3. Horrible texture pop in and framerate issues. When using the boomerang thing, somehow the graphics looked more detailed on the gamepad than on the TV. The gamepad ideas looked a bit tacked-on. Batman's new suit is very shiny.
- ZombiU. It's very slow and scary and feels great. It does use the gamepad in very clever ways and you're really losing control of what's going on around you as soon as you have to look in your backpack, and you're nervous and scared. Even within a crowd. Controls felt really good to me. Visuals are on par with better-than-average PS3/360 games with some nice lighting effects but nothing extraordinary. The game looked pretty polished to me. Multiplayer was fun, too, but I didn't spend too much time on it.
- Nintendoland. I didn't care about it after E3. I played the Ninja minigame and thought "nice. but boring.". I played the Animal Crossing game and it was fun, so I played it again three times, then I wanted to play something else. That was the Luigi's Mansion minigame.
Honestly, this is my new system seller. I played the minigame for one hour continuously with the same four people. The person who finally "killed" the ghost got rewarded in getting the gamepad. It is perfectly balanced, you have to communicate all them time and there was not a single match that was boring. It's that good. Best multiplayer session I've had in a very, very long time. We only stopped playing, because Nintendo forced us to.
Bonus impressions:
- New Super Mario Bros 2 for 3DS: It's fun, and I found it relatively demanding compared to it's predecessors because you're constantly trying to get more coins and you're doing more risky stuff. The 3D effect was strange (and different to the 3DS eshop trailer). In 2D mode, the background was sharp and clear. In 3D mode, the background was blurry and much further away.
- Castlevania: I only played it for 5 minutes, visuals look great for 3DS but the framerate was horrible. I can't comment on gameplay as I haven't played the old games.
- Luigi's Mansion: Very polished and full of charm. The map I played, a clock tower, had something like 6 levels and looked very big. The controls are better now than E3 build 2011 as slight movement of the gyros already helps to change the angle of the cleaner and the 3D is a bit more subtle and doesn't get distorted that fast. I still hope for support of the second circle pad.
All in all I came away much more impressed than after E3. Personally, the Wii U is a must buy as long as it is around 299$. I'm looking forward to play Nintendoland now, and I would buy Mario, Pikmin 3 and ZombiU, as long as there is enough content. I didn't play Project P-100 because I got stuck with Luigi's Ghost House, but it looked fun and was graphically maybe the most impressive game (great shading).
If you have any questions, I'm happy to answer.
We were looking at the videos. The zombies actually sped up as you looked in your backpack or had to do something with the Gamepad. Then they would slow down when you went out of that mode back to real time. Was really funny hehe
I didn't notice it before, but the bird demo displayed in the floor units had more effects added, more shadows applied, and better texture than the one showed by Reggie.
http://www.nintengen.com/2011/06/wii-u-garden-demo-had-better-graphics.html
http://www.nintengen.com/2011/06/wii-u-garden-demo-had-better-graphics.html
StreetsAhead
Member
Welcome to June 10, 2011?
I only mentioned the 5570 as an examples of a 40nm GPU with a performance near to the number being referred to. Don't get to hung up on the WiiU GPU actually being any specific retail GPU because it won't be. It started out based on R700 because that was the newest GPU available when development began. But around 3 years later it could be very different (HD5000 and HD6000 are arguably just based on R700 afterall), and from what we're hearing lately (GPGPU ect) it is.
We also have no confirmation that WiiU is only DX10.1 level. In fact again latest rumors suggest otherwise.
I'd say something around 40 watts for the GPU is reasonable. But not of your comparing it to a entire graphics card with RAM ect. In that case 50+ watts is reasonable IMO.
lol, I never saw this commented anyway =P
What you think the the power will be with this case?
4830[110tdp at 55nm] card even underclocked and moved to 40nm would still be at 65-80w. 32nm would be even better but that hard to believe since most rumors point to 55-40nm.
Even if you remove the ram from the gpu tdp you still have edram and ram in the console. So it really a wash. I dont see why they wouldnt move to a new design sooner but maybe they did. The r700 has been around for over 4 years. It not like they havent had time to upgrade.
Well the gpgpu started with r700. Not sure that really tells us anything. Going by the released dev specs. They match perfectly with r700 feature set not evergreen.
I've just listened to the latest GiantBomb podcast and two things they said about Wii U concerned me. Can anyone who's used it talk about them?
1) That the screen definitely feels like a big DS screen and not at all as responsive as an iPhone for instance.
2) That you can notice the video compression on the gamepad. Especially in the blacks.
1) That the screen definitely feels like a big DS screen and not at all as responsive as an iPhone for instance.
2) That you can notice the video compression on the gamepad. Especially in the blacks.
Jaded Alyx
Member
Well...of course it's not as responsive as an iPhone screen. It's resistive, what did they expect? Did they use the stylus?
No and although they mentioned that obviously with the stylus it'd be better they also rightfully mentioned that we won't be playing games like Zombi U with a stylus in our hands. I also got the impression that was was quite bad and in fact I think Patrick Klepek called it "rubbish". I felt like it was a pretty damning evaluation.
I should also add that they experienced a LOT of calibration issues with the gyro's in the controller to the point of calling it "Broken".
I'm just interested to hear other experiences with the thing, although the compression/streaming artifacts do concern me.
Is this the one of the ones from e3? I been trying to catch up but they are like 3 hours long and all over the place.
Thanks
If the next Xbox is pushing Windows 8 integration as hard as we expect then they'll do everything they can to make sure it's the dominate system. It's not just about gaming anymore for Microsoft. I expect Microsoft to come out swinging and more next year.
Yeah it is, the last one from a couple of days ago I think.
bgassassin
Member
First I would say I think that case can handle ~100W. I don't remember what I thought way back when, but as of now I think 80W will be the highest TDP Nintendo will target with the GPU taking up a big majority of that. Also any rumors talking about 55-40nm were probably just guessing what was in the early dev kit and not the final GPU.
Is it okay to port-beg in here?Because I really wish Okami HD were to show up on WiiUshop...
I'm going to go out on a very short and small limb to say no.
I haven't seen any, but Van Owen posted a picture showing how big the power brick is (so far).
So what node size are we looking at, 32? I hope so because Pikmin would suck on a 45nm node.
bgassassin
Member
LOL. Well 32nm seems the most likely when looking at how Nintendo thinks. Also when looking at those Oban "coincidences", another is that Oban is a 32nm chip and is using a modified Southern Island GPU. We now have the rumor of Wii U having a GPGPU and Iwata talking about "slightly different architecture" compared to the other consoles.
Wow that is high. the xbox 360 slim is 85 watts and that console is like twice to three times as big.
v= 325.81 inches xbox 360 slim
v= 128.52 inches wiiu
Compare to something like a laptop or tiny desktop, although they run the fans loud at full tilt. I think the 360 still uses a desktop optical drive, which would account for a huge chunk of space (like almost the size of the Wii itself).
Yeah and you also have a hdd. Wish some one would get a good picture of the writing on the power brick. That would tell us a lot.
bgassassin
Member
Xbox360 (and PS3) aren't efficient with their cooling either.
Gahiggidy
My aunt & uncle run a Mom & Pop store, "The Gamecube Hut", and sold 80k WiiU within minutes of opening.
bgassassin,
In the rush of E3 news there is this overlooked spec Nintendo released about the console:
Weight
Approximately 3.41 pounds (1.5 kg).
Is there anything we can learn from that? For reference, the original Wii is 2.65 pounds.
In the rush of E3 news there is this overlooked spec Nintendo released about the console:
Weight
Approximately 3.41 pounds (1.5 kg).
Is there anything we can learn from that? For reference, the original Wii is 2.65 pounds.
Christberg
Member
Not only that but they weren't designed with any sort of size, power or heat envelope in mind when they were originally built. The Wii U was clearly designed with having a small size in mind from the word go.
bgassassin
Member
^ True. Even ignoring their current TDP they could make them smaller than what they are.
I'd probably attribute that to the casing being bigger. Although there was that article from CES talking about being surprised at the weight which we attributed to the cooling. So it could be a little of both. Probably will need to see what the final will be as that's not much of an increase over Wii.
I'd probably attribute that to the casing being bigger. Although there was that article from CES talking about being surprised at the weight which we attributed to the cooling. So it could be a little of both. Probably will need to see what the final will be as that's not much of an increase over Wii.
Gahiggidy
My aunt & uncle run a Mom & Pop store, "The Gamecube Hut", and sold 80k WiiU within minutes of opening.
Also, I'd like to point out that the drive in Wii U probably weighs less without the mechanism for GCN disc compatibility. In addition, they dropped the controller and MC ports. I'll bet the lion's share of that 3.41 pounds goes to the mo/bo and cooling system.
I seriously can't wait until someone opens up one of these suckers.
axisofweevils
Holy crap! Today's real megaton is that more than two people can have the same first name.
New Japan Nintendo Direct tomorrow.
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=479362
Hopefully, we'll see some Wii U games from Japanese third parties?
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=479362
Hopefully, we'll see some Wii U games from Japanese third parties?
bgassassin
Member
When I looked at Wii teardowns in the past, the drive didn't seem to have a drastic impact (minute IMO) on Wii's weight. But I do agree about the ports being dropped. Do you know the weight of the modified Wii? I'll start looking to see if I can find it.
Slightly hyped. Have to go to my cousin's birthday party tomorrow though, so I'll miss it. The official ND threads usually do a good job of updating, though.
I hope they talk about Culdcept some.
ThoseDeafMutes
Member
It just occurred to me how ironic having the symmetrical sticks is when asymmetrical gameplay is such a big focus.
Seems like it is just 3ds and Wii right?
Don't have anything to add about the weight, but in terms of space looking at a Wii teardown (original model) the optical drive seems really chunky (compared to most 12.7mm drives, which itself is the larger of the laptop sized drives), while the GC controller ports intrude a bit with the GC memory card ports taking a huge chunk of space.
I'm guessing the U has some fat heat sink(s) and perhaps a bunch of shielding/wacky arrangement for the various antennas/wireless protocols (Bluetooth, WiFi, magic controller wireless).
StreetsAhead
Member
Implied, yes. However they use 'ya' between them, which could mean there's more info, but I believe they've always written it that way.
nordique
Member
This is a console unit from E3 2012
http://www.gamesradar.com/new-wii-u-console-overview-hardware-specs-and-controller-demoed/
Lies, a guy on B3D said 55nm!
Gahiggidy
My aunt & uncle run a Mom & Pop store, "The Gamecube Hut", and sold 80k WiiU within minutes of opening.
Thanks for that. Weird back plate there. Is that some kind of security alarm attachment? Also, one of those looks like it could be a power switch for the unit. Perhaps Nintendo did not want people to be able to hit the power button from the front and shut down the units?
I'm surprised you didn't mention the coaxial ports and your dream of an integrated DVR or something (unless I'm thinking of someone else).
Gahiggidy
My aunt & uncle run a Mom & Pop store, "The Gamecube Hut", and sold 80k WiiU within minutes of opening.
But I don't think those are coaxial ports, they seem much too shallow from the close up:
But I don't think those are coaxial ports, they seem much too shallow from the close up:
Looks like a SMA connector to me.
bgassassin
Member
Yeah I saw that, but I assumed that wasn't what he was looking for.
I'm surprised someone hasn't tried to argue the GPU uses a larger node.
thegodsend
Member
zombiu: there was only the assymetric multiplayer available, no more information.
luigis ghost house: it only worked with 5 people. same with the AC minigame.
by the way, the black gamepad looks so much better...
How so?
GameplayWhore
Member
I'd imagine they're connectors for the wired GamePads. The video said they weren't the retail units.
StreetsAhead
Member
This caught my eye. Is there anything technically interesting or new that's going on in this scene?
Bananas!
It's Iwata in a dress!
TheCongressman1
Member
This caught my eye. Is there anything technically interesting or new that's going on in this scene?
It's got nice lighting and shadows, but as for new? I don't think so.
The million dollar question: Are the shadows realtime or not?
This caught my eye. Is there anything technically interesting or new that's going on in this scene?
Would need a direct-feed/image of the game to really tell. From what I can see, aside from great shadows, not much.
bgassassin
Member
I should have added IMO to that.
360 is better than PS3 IMO, but both consoles are having to accommodate "standard size" optical drives though it seems to be a worse offender in the 360. 360 Slim moved the HDD to being internal. With PS3 the PSU is internal, the CPU/GPU are still discrete, they are more toward the center of the MB, it also has an internal HDD.
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