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[BY2K]

Is Iwata doing any keynote at this year's GDC? It would be the perfect opportunity to show more of the console without revealing as much as E3 obviously.

Nintendo doesn't have a keynote this year. Only a Super Mario 3D Land Keynote about the difference between 2D and 3D gameplay and one Nintendo employee is participating in a AI-related keynote.

We won't have anything at GDC this year from Nintendo.

 

[-Pyromaniac-]

Nintendo doesn't have a keynote this year. Only a Super Mario 3D Land Keynote about the difference between 2D and 3D gameplay and one Nintendo employee is participating in a AI-related keynote.

We won't have anything at GDC this year from Nintendo.

that's not true. You don't need a conference to dripfeed more information. I still think we're gonna get more news on the online, maybe something hardware related (pics of the final hardware?), but obviously nothing game related.

 

[blu]

I wonder if they could find a justifiable name worse than Wii U?

I find you lack of faith disturbing.

*pinching motion*

 

[MDX]

Honestly, the Nintendo U would fit well - drops the confusing Wii name, keeps the suffix of the aforementioned title and still portrays the concept of a system that gives the player what he/she wants - a system tailored to 'U'.

This way, they could differentiate the system from it's predecessor successfully, but maintain the hype they have gathered without compromising the public's knowledge of the console.

AND, titles such as Smash Bros. Universe would still work.

Then we can just call it the uPad.


The Nintendo U, the Universal console for U

 

[Fourth Storm]

Honestly, the Nintendo U would fit well - drops the confusing Wii name, keeps the suffix of the aforementioned title and still portrays the concept of a system that gives the player what he/she wants - a system tailored to 'U'.

This way, they could differentiate the system from it's predecessor successfully, but maintain the hype they have gathered without compromising the public's knowledge of the console.

AND, titles such as Smash Bros. Universe would still work.

It sounds fine, but wouldn't it be kind of hard to keep counterfeits at bay? You can't trademark a letter, can you?

 

[Übermatik]

^ Hm, interesting... 'Nintendo U' is trademark-able...

I don't see the Wii name sticking - it has a massive stigma attached to it for the 'hardcore', that portrays a casual, kiddy friendly, low powered console. Yes, stereotyping bullshit, but it's true.

If Nintendo wants to win back the big kids, the Wii name has to go.

 

[Rösti]

It sounds fine, but wouldn't it be kind of hard to keep counterfeits at bay? You can't trademark a letter, can you?

As a single word mark that would be very difficult. If you however have a design attached to the application, it is much easier. In USA, there are over 300 designs of "U" registered, with the logo for the Unreal Engine (at least one version of it) and other Unreal related properties being a prime example (serial number 78977141):

Mark Drawing Code: (3) DESIGN PLUS WORDS, LETTERS, AND/OR NUMBERS
Design Search Code:
15.07.03 - Wheels with spokes
26.01.17 - Circles, two concentric; Concentric circles, two; Two concentric circles
26.01.21 - Circles that are totally or partially shaded.
26.17.25 - Other lines, bands or bars

"Nintendo U", as that is connected to Nintendo, shouldn't have any hard lawsuits connected to it if Nintendo decides to go with that name. And in that case it would be registered to several instances, with the most important ones being first a word mark and then a design (logo).

 

[darthdago]

Sense. You don't make any.

do you have a prob with speculation?
this all is about it isn't it?

 

[snowdog1971]

Seeing how horrible the console sales are right now, makes me wonder when Nintendo is going to release the Wii U. I really hope it's at the end of August.

Me too because I'm going to have the money for it in August and I have trouble not spending it when I have it lol

 

[Bisnic]

Disappointing to hear Iwata wont be there next month...Guess we'll have to wait until june before we get anything meaningless. Bleh.

do you have a prob with speculation?
this all is about it isn't it?

Its not speculation when you ignore the fact that he did mention Wii U before that quote and "other platforms i cant name" probably meant Sony and Microsoft consoles.

 

[Fourth Storm]

As a single word mark that would be very difficult. If you however have a design attached to the application, it is much easier. In USA, there are over 300 designs of "U" registered, with the logo for the Unreal Engine (at least one version of it) and other Unreal related properties being a prime example (serial number 78977141):

"Nintendo U", as that is connected to Nintendo, shouldn't have any hard lawsuits connected to it if Nintendo decides to go with that name. And in that case it would be registered to several instances, with the most important ones being first a word mark and then a design (logo).

Ah, I see. Thanks for the clarification.

 

[Rösti]

Disappointing to hear Iwata wont be there next month...Guess we'll have to wait until june before we get anything meaningless. Bleh.



Its not speculation when you ignore the fact that he did mention Wii U before that quote and "other platforms i cant name" probably meant Sony and Microsoft consoles.

Nintendo of America's Reggie Fils-Aime has said both in interviews with GameTrailers and CNN that:

We'll share more information between now and E3, and then after.

The segment (I chose CNN's video here as it is clearer than GameTrailers') starts at 02:05: http://money.cnn.com/video/technology/2012/01/10/ts_ces_wii_u.cnnmoney/

It essentially means that we will see new information at Game Developers Conference or at least after Nintendo's briefing regarding Record Date for Year-End Dividends for the 72nd Fiscal Year on March 31st.

 

[Übermatik]

Yep, news from now till E3 will come from Nintendo - question is, what will it be? I'm betting all game announcements and hardware changes will be saved for E3, so maybe a name change announcement will be made before, to save the confusion this year in LA? Plus some more details on the online service and 'pad support...

 

[Sadist]

Yep, news from now till E3 will come from Nintendo - question is, what will it be? I'm betting all game announcements and hardware changes will be saved for E3, so maybe a name change announcement will be made before, to save the confusion this year in LA? Plus some more details on the online service and 'pad support...

Seeing they announced "Wii" a week before E3 '06, I'm expecting the same to happen for a Wii U namechange.

 

[Lord Ghirahim]

Then we can just call it the uPad.


The Nintendo U, the Universal console for U

Uii.

 

[brochiller]

Seeing they announced "Wii" a week before E3 '06, I'm expecting the same to happen for a Wii U namechange.

Yeah I was thinking about this too. That worked out pretty well for them too. I think they should just get that out of the way before E3. They don't want people focusing on something as trivial as a name after their E3 press conference. The attention should be on the games/features of the new system.

 

[woo and indeed hoo]

I wonder if they could find a justifiable name worse than Wii U?

Wii Poo®

Why not? They've done the other form of bodily secretion so they might as well keep the theme going. Besides, it rhymes with Wii U so works on all levels .

 

[ratcliffja]

I still think the Cafe is a great name. It won't happen, though, because nobody ever stays with the development name.

 

[Log4Girlz]

TechPowerUp has seemingly found the specs for the HD7700 series of GPUs. Do the 640 SPUs on the HD7770 sound familiar?

Spoiler

Wii U will use a custom part and all, but still some interesting figures of what's possible with current tech

Cape Verde Physical
Built on TSMC 28 nm process, ~1.5 billion transistors
10 Graphics CoreNext Compute Units (CUs)
640 stream processors
40 TMUs, 16 ROPs
128-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface

Radeon HD 7770
All CUs enabled, 640 stream processors
1 GB GDDR5 memory
40 TMUs, 16 ROPs
1000 MHz core clock-speed
1125 MHz (actual), 4500 MHz (effective) memory clock-speed
72 GB/s memory bandwidth
1280 GFLOP/s single-precision floating-point performance
Typical board power: 80W


Radeon HD 7750

8 CUs enabled, 512 stream processors
1 GB GDDR5 memory
32 TMUs, 16 ROPs
800 MHz core clock-speed
1125 MHz (actual), 4500 MHz (effective) memory clock-speed
72 GB/s memory bandwidth
819 GFLOP/s single-precision floating-point performance
Typical board power: 55W

Sounds like the 7750 is more likely.

 

[Rösti]

I still think the Cafe is a great name. It won't happen, though, because nobody ever stays with the development name.

Also, some people might associate it with that coffee bunny. And what role that would play I don't know.

 

[Azure J]

Just wondering, why was the agreed upon wattage range for the Wii U 60W total? Like, I understand because of its shape people shot it low, but I'm interested in hearing the full logic train that led to that agreed upon assumption.

 

[stupidvillager]

The only thing I would take from that would be the Stream Proc., TMUs and ROPs. Forget the core clock, memory clock, wattage.

 

[LeleSocho]

Cape Verde Physical
Built on TSMC 28 nm process, ~1.5 billion transistors
10 Graphics CoreNext Compute Units (CUs)
640 stream processors
40 TMUs, 16 ROPs
128-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface

Radeon HD 7770
All CUs enabled, 640 stream processors
1 GB GDDR5 memory
40 TMUs, 16 ROPs
1000 MHz core clock-speed
1125 MHz (actual), 4500 MHz (effective) memory clock-speed
72 GB/s memory bandwidth
1280 GFLOP/s single-precision floating-point performance
Typical board power: 80W


Radeon HD 7750

8 CUs enabled, 512 stream processors
1 GB GDDR5 memory
32 TMUs, 16 ROPs
800 MHz core clock-speed
1125 MHz (actual), 4500 MHz (effective) memory clock-speed
72 GB/s memory bandwidth
819 GFLOP/s single-precision floating-point performance
Typical board power: 55W

Sounds like the 7750 is more likely.

something between these two maybe since the AMD guy said 1TFLOP...

 

[GameplayWhore]

I find you lack of faith disturbing.

*pinching motion*

No, you can't do that on the Wii U.

Spoiler

 

[Zoramon089]

I still think the Cafe is a great name. It won't happen, though, because nobody ever stays with the development name.

Wasn't the 3DS the development name? I know the DS was Nitro, Wii was Revolution, GC was Dolphin, and the N64 Ultra64

 

[brochiller]

Also, some people might associate it with that coffee bunny. And what role that would play I don't know.

Nintendo has been in need of some new IP's lately...

 

[Übermatik]

Cape Verde Physical
Built on TSMC 28 nm process, ~1.5 billion transistors
10 Graphics CoreNext Compute Units (CUs)
640 stream processors
40 TMUs, 16 ROPs
128-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface

Radeon HD 7770
All CUs enabled, 640 stream processors
1 GB GDDR5 memory
40 TMUs, 16 ROPs
1000 MHz core clock-speed
1125 MHz (actual), 4500 MHz (effective) memory clock-speed
72 GB/s memory bandwidth
1280 GFLOP/s single-precision floating-point performance
Typical board power: 80W


Radeon HD 7750

8 CUs enabled, 512 stream processors
1 GB GDDR5 memory
32 TMUs, 16 ROPs
800 MHz core clock-speed
1125 MHz (actual), 4500 MHz (effective) memory clock-speed
72 GB/s memory bandwidth
819 GFLOP/s single-precision floating-point performance
Typical board power: 55W

Sounds like the 7750 is more likely.

So what you're saying here is the early dev kits had a 4850 or similar, and the last minute change could have been some sort of 7000 series hybrid, seeing as Nintendo would have to waited for such production?

 

[Azure J]

So what you're saying here is the early dev kits had a 4850 or similar, and the last minute change could have been some sort of 7000 series hybrid, seeing as Nintendo would have to waited for such production?

This is honestly what I expected from the jump, although you mentioned a 4850 which was my "high end" guesstimate. 4830 is what's mentioned as having any connection to Wii U devkits so I choose to start from there and hope that Nintendo built upward.

 

[tkscz]

Cape Verde Physical
Built on TSMC 28 nm process, ~1.5 billion transistors
10 Graphics CoreNext Compute Units (CUs)
640 stream processors
40 TMUs, 16 ROPs
128-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface

Radeon HD 7770
All CUs enabled, 640 stream processors
1 GB GDDR5 memory
40 TMUs, 16 ROPs
1000 MHz core clock-speed
1125 MHz (actual), 4500 MHz (effective) memory clock-speed
72 GB/s memory bandwidth
1280 GFLOP/s single-precision floating-point performance
Typical board power: 80W


Radeon HD 7750

8 CUs enabled, 512 stream processors
1 GB GDDR5 memory
32 TMUs, 16 ROPs
800 MHz core clock-speed
1125 MHz (actual), 4500 MHz (effective) memory clock-speed
72 GB/s memory bandwidth
819 GFLOP/s single-precision floating-point performance
Typical board power: 55W

Sounds like the 7750 is more likely.

According to rumor it has more than 1 TFLOP/s (I'd say about 1.2), so maybe a mix of the two. After all, it is custom.

 

[Übermatik]

This is honestly what I expected from the jump, although you mentioned a 4850 which was my "high end" guesstimate. 4830 is what's mentioned as having any connection to Wii U devkits so I choose to start from there and hope that Nintendo built upward.

Ah yeah, 4830 is what I meant to be honest... still, this is good news.

 

[DCKing]

Sounds like the 7750 is more likely.

The power usage of a desktop card as mentioned here is not necessarily comparable to that of the chip itself. The power usage of the actual chips on the cards, which is the interesting part for a console, is somewhat lower. These chips are clocked very high: if true the 7770 will be the first card released with a stock speed of 1 GHz. A comparable chip in the Wii U could also run at 700 MHz or less, and use correspondingly less power. I'm still thinking Nintendo is going for a 40-45W chip, likely even less.

Besides, Nintendo isn't going to use a chip with disabled/faulty compute units. If Nintendo is going for a 512 SPU part it will be a 512 SPU part and not a 640 SPU part with some parts of it disabled.

 

[pestul]

Yeah, I think Nintendo's next is going to be under 100W for all components. That's still quite powerful given the advancements in the past 7-8yrs.

 

[DXB-KNIGHT]

I don't know if this will effect the Wii U final naming but this was posted recently in the Japanese Trademark thread.

任天堂
商願2011-088682 ＢＥＡＴ　ＴＨＥ　ＢＥＡＴ　ＲＨＹＴＨＭ　ＰＡＲＡＤＩＳＥ
商願2011-090605 ＳＰＩＲＩＴ　ＣＡＭＥＲＡ
商願2011-092510 Ｗｉｉ　Ｕ
商願2011-092511 §Ｗｉｉ　Ｕ
商願2012-002228 Ｗｉｉ　Ｕ
商願2012-002229 §Ｗｉｉ　Ｕ
商願2012-002230 §Ｗｉｉ　Ｕ

 

[DamSea]

For me it will be the Zelda/Metroid box...
and the occasional JRPG if they get with the program.

 

[Watch Da Birdie]

So, I was watching videos of Goku, Naruto, and other anime characters hacked into Brawl and I realized...

With the Wii-U controller handling the koma system, a HD cel-shaded Jump Super Stars for the Wii-U would be awesome.

 

[shnord]

Besides, Nintendo isn't going to use a chip with disabled/faulty compute units. If Nintendo is going for a 512 SPU part it will be a 512 SPU part and not a 640 SPU part with some parts of it disabled.

What if they can get the partially disabled 640 SPU part for cheaper and don't have any problem fitting it into the design?

They do like to pinch them pennies.

 

[blu]

No, you can't do that on the Wii U.

Spoiler

*tosses ipad aside, unsheaths stylus.

 

[AceBandage]

What if they can get the partially disabled 640 SPU part for cheaper and don't have any problem fitting it into the design?

They do like to pinch them pennies.

On some things, and even then, they'll go for power per watt over power per dollar.

 

[Sadist]

Kinda makes me wonder what Japanese devs are doing. And when we'll see the titles.

About Tekken Wii U: “We’re still in the research phase of the capabilities of the hardware so we’re not sure about which aspect is really going to stand out. We probably won’t understand that fully until some time next year.”

“Right now, we want to develop for Wii U, but we need to take some time to figure out how to make Ninja Gaiden 3 innovative and fit the hardware. We’ll think about Wii U and see how we can implement new features instead of rushing it.”

 

[DamSea]

Kinda makes me wonder what Japanese devs are doing. And when we'll see the titles.

The excuses begin...

 

[AceBandage]

We already knew that Tekken was a "prototype" much like they did on the 3DS, so that won't be a launch game.
We also know exactly what they're planning for Razor's Edge.
So I'm not sure what these interviews exactly say about anything.

 

[antonz]

Worth noting it does say the interview was done in 2011.

 

[ShockingAlberto]

I still think the Cafe is a great name. It won't happen, though, because nobody ever stays with the development name.

Microsoft did

They dropped the "Direct" part but it's still basically the development name

 

[DCKing]

On some things, and even then, they'll go for power per watt over power per dollar.

If you're talking millions of GPUs, it's more expensive to make faulty 640 SPU chips rather than proper 512 SPU chips. There's no way Nintendo will have faulty hardware in there.

 

[jump_button]

I cant help but to feel like Big N still hiding something, We keep getting devs talking about something they cant say yet

 

[snowdog1971]

I cant help but to feel like Big N still hiding something, We keep getting devs talking about something they cant say yet

Yup, I think it's pretty obvious that they've got something up their sleeves that we don't know about. I'm hoping for a haptic touchscreen myself. That Ono fellah said there was something about the controller he couldn't talk about and I don't think it's the NFC functionality...can't wait to find out tbh. I'm like a kid at Christmas lololol

 

[The_Endgamer]

Source: http://www.gamespot.com/shows/gamespot-live/?event=interactive_achievement_awards20120209

That is the best video intro i've ever seen...
Cannot help but see, this is what Lego City Stories will be like... *drool*

 

[Super Smash Bro]

Yup, I think it's pretty obvious that they've got something up their sleeves that we don't know about. I'm hoping for a haptic touchscreen myself. That Ono fellah said there was something about the controller he couldn't talk about and I don't think it's the NFC functionality...can't wait to find out tbh. I'm like a kid at Christmas lololol

I can't think of any widespread gaming applications of a haptic touchscreen. Not saying Nintendo can't, but I don't think we'd see anything other than mini-game collections so I doubt Nintendo would pursue that.

 

[bgassassin]

The power usage of a desktop card as mentioned here is not necessarily comparable to that of the chip itself. The power usage of the actual chips on the cards, which is the interesting part for a console, is somewhat lower. These chips are clocked very high: if true the 7770 will be the first card released with a stock speed of 1 GHz. A comparable chip in the Wii U could also run at 700 MHz or less, and use correspondingly less power. I'm still thinking Nintendo is going for a 40-45W chip, likely even less.

Besides, Nintendo isn't going to use a chip with disabled/faulty compute units. If Nintendo is going for a 512 SPU part it will be a 512 SPU part and not a 640 SPU part with some parts of it disabled.

I agree. Doing something like that is not what I can envision Nintendo doing. Which is why I wonder about the dev kit GPU. Did they go with what's essentially a 4830 because they intend to go with a 640 ALU GPU, or was using a 55nm GPU in that case such a concern heat-wise that they went with two disabled SIMDs with the intent of a 32nm 800 ALU GPU as the final? The two disabled SIMDs have been a sticking point with me for awhile.

 

[snowdog1971]

I can't think of any widespread gaming applications of a haptic touchscreen. Not saying Nintendo can't, but I don't think we'd see anything other than mini-game collections so I doubt Nintendo would pursue that.

Plenty of gaming applications mate. Buttons being pressed on the touchscreen will feel like real buttons made from a variety of materials, drawing on the touchscreen can be made to feel like pencil on paper
/water paint on paper/oil on canvas, fur will feel like real fur. All sounds pretty good to me! ;o)