Wii U Speculation Thread 2: Can't take anymore of this!!!

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Prediction time:

3 core oooe PowerPC with 2 way SMT and 3MB L2 cache. (~3ghz).
1.5GB of GDDR5 on a 96 bit bus (128MB-256MB dedicated to OS and background tasks).
Custom VLIW5 based AMD GPU with 32MB eDRAM (~400-640 SPs).
 
Prediction time:

3 core oooe PowerPC with 2 way SMT and 3MB L2 cache. (~3ghz).
1.5GB of GDDR5 on a 96 bit bus (128MB-256MB dedicated to OS and background tasks).
Custom VLIW5 based AMD GPU with 32MB eDRAM (~400-640 SPs).

Does this mean that both the GPU and the CPU will have eDRAM?

Either way, it sounds more than powerful enough for me.
 
Ok, I know that thread is normally about my Wii U-baby.
But several times now I've found that news here on different sites...
dont remember if it was posted here before...

http://www.tomsguide.com/us/Gaikai-Sony-PlayStation-Microsoft-Nintendo,news-13858.html

So what would that mean??
Sony really out of the race?
Nintendo+Sony together for the next PSWii/WiiPS in 5 to 10 years?
So a relationship that ended in SNES era and resulted in Playstation, can now restart....
What do you all think about that??
 
I am expecting for Nintendo to not charge for online play, but instead to, like others have said, charge for an adapter (such as the 360 wifi adapter) or something else..

I really hope they implement Internet browsing with the UPad. Seriously it has all the power to become ficking awesome (the pad as a keyboard or as a download status while you browse the market..)

Really the line up is great, Nintendo only has to get right with the hardware/price and good release timing..
 
Ok, I know that thread is normally about my Wii U-baby.
But several times now I've found that news here on different sites...
dont remember if it was posted here before...

http://www.tomsguide.com/us/Gaikai-Sony-PlayStation-Microsoft-Nintendo,news-13858.html

So what would that mean??
Sony really out of the race?
Nintendo+Sony together for the next PSWii/WiiPS in 5 to 10 years?
So a relationship that ended in SNES era and resulted in Playstation, can now restart....
What do you all think about that??

If anyone would drop out of the straight console race, it's MS.
They have the least studios and would much rather try to compete with Apples new stuff.
 
Has this been posted yet?

We have received word from a tipster, who wishes to remain anonymous, that a new Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing game could be on the way. Our tipster recently spoke to a high ranking staff member at development studio Sumo Digital, and when queried about new projects, the developer gave the below reply.

“Now working on another title for Sega on 3DS, VITA and WiiU. [The] title we are working on is top secret but the last game we did for them was Sonic And Sega All-Star Racing, so the logical conclusion would be… :) ”

While the game could be a sequel to 2010′s Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing, there is also a possibility, given the platforms, that it could be a remixed version of the first game with new characters & courses specifically tailored to Wii U, 3DS & Vita. But having said that, the tipster informs us that the developer told them months ago that they will be doing no more additional work on the first game.

The Sonic Stadium has received proof of the discussion and the Sumo Digital source in question and have confirmed the authenticity of both. But, as the game has not been officially announced by SEGA and things can often change dramatically behind the scenes, we’re posting this up as rumour for now.


Link
 
I really think that Retro needs to work on an inspired sci-fi FPS to compete with Halo. I went there *exposes chest* My body is ready for your daggers.
 
So you're thinking they'll buy the Wii U, ditch the console, and try to use the controller on the original Wii?

I should have clarified that if the controller *is* sold separately, yes, there will be confusion for Wii owners who think it will work with their system.

The problem(s) with Nintendo naming the system Wii U are two-fold.

That "name recognition" of Wii that was so popular with the "casual" crowd will now come back to haunt Nintendo with those folks thinking this is simply a revision/Wii with a new touch controller. Why buy it? Why is this Wii with the tablet controller $350 when a Wii costs $99?

This is a true generation leap for Nintendo with Wii------->Wii U. There's pretty much nothing in common between the two besides the Wii U being backwards compatible with Wii games and being able to use original Wii controllers with it. Otherwise the system is drastically different performance wise/tech wise.

Nintendo will have to work harder to make people realize that the Wii U is simply not a Wii revision/touch screen controller "upgrade" compared to a full blown HD generational leap for the hardware.

I understand it's easy to armchair quarterback Nintendo's decision on naming the system Wii-U but I still think it would be easier for them to name it something entirely different and market it to the public as a HD Nintendo system with the latest graphics/performance tech.
 
I really think that Retro needs to work on an inspired sci-fi FPS to compete with Halo. I went there *exposes chest* My body is ready for your daggers.

As long as they stay true to their design principles and level of quality, I don't care what genre their next game is going to be. But I gotta say, a competitive FPS with Retros amazing Art Team and their level of perfection when it comes to gameplay and leveldesign...

Would preorder the day it's announced.
 
I really think that Retro needs to work on an inspired sci-fi FPS to compete with Halo. I went there *exposes chest* My body is ready for your daggers.

We dont need any Sci-Fi FPS

Any way the best game genres for Wii U will be

RPG
MMO
Strategy
Simulation all types
Music

they be the one devs can get the most out of Wii U pad
 
I really think that Retro needs to work on an inspired sci-fi FPS to compete with Halo. I went there *exposes chest* My body is ready for your daggers.
Well, if we look at the past, Metroid Prime was a game that competed against Halo 1 in it's time, it was a "Halo Killer". A major first party game, marketed as a AAA game, FPS ("FPA"), sci-fi, etc. Around the time that Halo was becoming a huge success. It didn't work, even though Metroid Prime is one of the best games ever made.

Now, Sci-fi FPSs aren't popular, they are like platformers, if you are not Mario, you don't sell; if you are not Halo, you don't sell. Halo is king of that particular subgenre, and it's pointless to try to compete with it.
 
Well, if we look at the past, Metroid Prime was a game that competed against Halo 1 in it's time, it was a "Halo Killer". A major first party game, marketed as a AAA game, FPS ("FPA"), sci-fi, etc. Around the time that Halo was becoming a huge success. It didn't work, even though Metroid Prime is one of the best games ever made.

Now, Sci-fi FPSs aren't popular, they are like platformers, if you are not Mario, you don't sell; if you are not Halo, you don't sell. Halo is king of that particular subgenre, and it's pointless to try to compete with it.

Halo is a more traditional, arcadey FPS with great multi-player. I think they can do it *believe.gif*
 
You have to admit though that things should be different with Wii U, unless their marketing gets even worse than with the 3DS. I admit though that changing the name probably wouldn't be such a bad idea - Wii 2 is something consumers would probably understand, it doesn't sound...as stupid as Wii U and it keeps the recognizable Wii brand.

Yeah. It was a whole mess of issues. Confusing name, confusing marketing, and retail shelf space being close to the DS.

Nintendo has mentioned still pushing the Wii hardware even with the Wii U out, which is what they wanted to do with the 3DS too. Its risky, as marketing two consoles that sound and appear so similar can easily blur together in the minds of consumers.

People need to remember that consumers are not so much 'stupid' as often uninformed. They don't read GAF, gaming websites, or magazines. Oftentimes when they go into retailers it is there that they intend to learn about the differences between consoles, when new consoles are coming out, and what they can do. I still get people asking me the main differences between the 360 and PS3, which is BluRay, the online features, etc. It sound stupid to us and its easily researched, but going into stores and asking is research to these people. More often than not they do want to buy something, they just don't which is best for them.

In marketing and retail, the Wii U needs to have a presence that clearly distinguishes itself from every other platform around, with defined features that jump out to people when they're asking what the differences between the platforms are. Given it will no doubt be more expensive than the current asking price of the 360/PS3, it needs to do something to warrant the extra investment.

It doesn't play BluRays. Its more expensive. It doesn't have as many games. Online is questionable. These are the answers I could be giving consumers when they inevitably ask. "You can stream games to the controller's touch screen". I don't think that is going to be enough to sell it.

I hope Nintendo has some big things at E3. Big things that don't involve a handful of ports and "but it has a touch screen". Nintendo better realise that the 360 and PS3 are their competitors for the time being, and launching at higher price? Didn't work for Sony, wont work for them.
 
The games that I would like to see besides the known lineup are:

Mother (RPG)
Nintendo/Advance Wars (Strategie)
Game&Watch classics (as download to play on controller - perfect fit)
Golden Sun (RPG)
Fire Emblem (RPG/Strategie)
Disaster Day of Crisis (Action) - a new one would be great the first was great
Xenoblade (RPG)
Baten Kaitos (RPG)

They would all be day one purchase!!!
 
Halo is a more traditional, arcadey FPS with great multi-player. I think they can do it *believe.gif*
I think it's a mistake. Just look how Blinx "competed" against Mario.

We have to face it, the sci-fi FPS genre is dead, and the only survivors are the "kings of the genre". The same way the 3D platformer genre is dead, except for Mario, or 2D platformer (except Mario, look at Rayman's sales, and the game is excellent), or the fighting genre.

If Nintendo has a great idea for the genre, that will revolutionize it and change it fundamentally, then sure, do it. Speaking of the fighting genre, you saw Nintendo releasing Smash Bros when the genre was dead; but Smash was so fundamentally different, that it created a genre of it's own, and no other Smash-like fighting game that's not smash has been able to compete with it (again, remember Kung Fu Chaos, and I think something like that will happen with the PS fighting game, unless Sony does something new).

My point in the end is, it's a bad idea to do "game-killers"; just like MOH killing COD was a bad idea, or all of the kart clones killing MK where bad ideas (some sold OK, when the genre was new, but now...), doing a game just because someone else did it and it's popular, is a really bad idea.

IMO, ideas should be born from studios and not from sales data; because if the studio believes in what they are doing, if they love the product, then, the chances to succeed are much higher.
 
Regarding all of the Nintendo Direct and the upcoming investor's meeting, I don't think Nintendo has mentioned the Wii U. They pretty much have only showed it to the NA audience, and they focused on 3DS in Japan. I think that definitely the next Nintendo Direct will show off Wii U stuff now (at least some of the N-Network details).
 
Prediction time:

3 core oooe PowerPC with 2 way SMT and 3MB L2 cache. (~3ghz).
1.5GB of GDDR5 on a 96 bit bus (128MB-256MB dedicated to OS and background tasks).
Custom VLIW5 based AMD GPU with 32MB eDRAM (~400-640 SPs).

I'd agree in the most part, but I don't expect that the eDRAM in the CPU will be used as an L2 cache, the latency is too high compared to SRAM. I'd expect small SRAM L2 caches of about 128kB-256kB per core, and then a shared eDRAM L3 cache of about 6-10MB.

I'd also tend a bit higher on the SPUs (although that depends on the GPU clock rate) and would still go for a 192bit bus (again depending on memory clock).
 
It's pretty much a given we're going to see Wii U games from Retro, Monolith, Nintendo EAD Tokyo very soon. Which are Nintendo's best studios. Also Monster Games and HAL Labs have got to have something cooking.

As for spec prediction update:
- 3x ~3 GHz PowerPC, OOE somewhat like POWER7, 2 MB L2 cache
- GPU at 600+ MHz, 512 GCN SPUs/32 TMUs/16 ROPs/Gen 9 tesselator, 32MB EDRAM
- 1 GB of DDR3 at 1/3 CPU clock, 128-bit bus
- 256MB of LPDDR2 (or whatever), 64-bit bus, memory for OS and gaming apps from the Nintendo App Store
- BD-drive with 2+ times the throughput of the PS3 one
- 16GB of flash memory on cheapest model
 
I really think that Retro needs to work on an inspired sci-fi FPS to compete with Halo. I went there *exposes chest* My body is ready for your daggers.

I feel like Nintendo wouldn't be willing to invest in the production values necessary to really compete on that level.

Like, going and getting an actual sci-fi writer to do the universe building and write the story.

The voice acting, etc.
 
Are you doubting Ubisoft's ability to put together quality launch games for Nintendo systems? Crazy talk!

I had to laugh.. this reminds me of that time back in 2007 when Ubisoft apologized to Wii owners for putting-out crappy games onto the system, followed by them promising that better games were on the way.

Ha. ha. ha.
 
Well, if we look at the past, Metroid Prime was a game that competed against Halo 1 in it's time, it was a "Halo Killer". A major first party game, marketed as a AAA game, FPS ("FPA"), sci-fi, etc. Around the time that Halo was becoming a huge success. It didn't work, even though Metroid Prime is one of the best games ever made.

Now, Sci-fi FPSs aren't popular, they are like platformers, if you are not Mario, you don't sell; if you are not Halo, you don't sell. Halo is king of that particular subgenre, and it's pointless to try to compete with it.

Not sure where you got this idea that sci fi fps is dead, Bioshock is coming up on its third instalment, Crysis has 3 games in it series now, Metro series has a sequel coming, Borderlands did well and has a sequel inc, STALKER etc etc.

The military FPS has been the top seller for quite a while (Pertty sure BF2 was bigger than any of the Halo's) but that doesn't mean that sci fi fps isn't doing well.
 
Regarding all of the Nintendo Direct and the upcoming investor's meeting, I don't think Nintendo has mentioned the Wii U. They pretty much have only showed it to the NA audience, and they focused on 3DS in Japan. I think that definitely the next Nintendo Direct will show off Wii U stuff now (at least some of the N-Network details).

I agree, this one will probably focus on Nintendo Network details.
 
The very idea of including 2 totally different kinds of controllers with a system is ridiculous lol. I can't even begin to entertain the idea.
Things like these have been pretty-well liked:
atari%2Bvcs%2Bheavy%2Bsixer.png
5308.jpg
NESActionSet.jpg

I know some people enjoyed their Wiimote, you were free to. But Nintendo is pushing the UPad next generation. I seriously can't see a reason why the remote would be anything other than an optional accessory.

WiiU
UPad
some pack in
cables

the end.
For an optional accessory, they've sure made a big deal of showing it off in their Wii U demos. They've made it seem about as optional as nunchuk was for Wii. Still, considering how widespread it is I could see leaving it out if it would cost more than a pittance to include.
 
With the recent passing of Nobuo Nagai (rest his soul), I'm sure we'll get something in the OS or within the manuals that basically says "In memory of Nobuo Nagai"
 
It's pretty much a given we're going to see Wii U games from Retro, Monolith, Nintendo EAD Tokyo very soon. Which are Nintendo's best studios. Also Monster Games and HAL Labs have got to have something cooking.

As for spec prediction update:
- 3x ~3 GHz PowerPC, OOE somewhat like POWER7, 2 MB L2 cache
- GPU at 600+ MHz, 512 GCN SPUs/32 TMUs/16 ROPs/Gen 9 tesselator, 32MB EDRAM
- 1 GB of DDR3 at 1/3 CPU clock, 128-bit bus
- 256MB of LPDDR2 (or whatever), 64-bit bus, memory for OS and gaming apps from the Nintendo App Store
- BD-drive with 2+ times the throughput of the PS3 one
- 16GB of flash memory on cheapest model


I somewhat agree but I think they'll use the faster GDDR5.
 
I'd agree in the most part, but I don't expect that the eDRAM in the CPU will be used as an L2 cache, the latency is too high compared to SRAM. I'd expect small SRAM L2 caches of about 128kB-256kB per core, and then a shared eDRAM L3 cache of about 6-10MB.

I'd also tend a bit higher on the SPUs (although that depends on the GPU clock rate) and would still go for a 192bit bus (again depending on memory clock).

Lherre told us the cache is split asymmetrically among the cores. I've also seen multiple mentions that the amount is 3MB of L2 cache, unless that was one of the areas that passed it's original target. My guess was that it was split 1.5MB/768KB/768KB. But that could also be 2MB/512KB/512KB, or 2.5MB/256KB/256KB. And considering that they would want to keep the die size down it would most likely be the same eDRAM used in POWER7 and the PowerPC A2. And the other eDRAM amount has been said to be 32MB by a few people (probably shared, but not L3), unless that too went up from the original target.

I agree that I think the SPU range is higher than that though. And I see the eDRAM being used because that would indicate the BW for the main memory isn't big enough on its own to achieve the resolutions Nintendo claims which most likely points to a 96-bit bus to reduce the design complexity.

It's pretty much a given we're going to see Wii U games from Retro, Monolith, Nintendo EAD Tokyo very soon. Which are Nintendo's best studios. Also Monster Games and HAL Labs have got to have something cooking.

As for spec prediction update:
- 3x ~3 GHz PowerPC, OOE somewhat like POWER7, 2 MB L2 cache
- GPU at 600+ MHz, 512 GCN SPUs/32 TMUs/16 ROPs/Gen 9 tesselator, 32MB EDRAM
- 1 GB of DDR3 at 1/3 CPU clock, 128-bit bus
- 256MB of LPDDR2 (or whatever), 64-bit bus, memory for OS and gaming apps from the Nintendo App Store
- BD-drive with 2+ times the throughput of the PS3 one
- 16GB of flash memory on cheapest model

I think you should have stuck with your previous one(s). :P
 
Final guesstimates from me:

- 3x ~3 GHz PowerPC, OoOE somewhat like POWER7, 2 MB L2 cache
- GPU at 600+ MHz, 512~768 GCN SPUs or 640~720 VLIW4 SPUs/32 TMUs/16 ROPs/Gen 9 tesselator, 32MB EDRAM
- 1.5 ~ 2GB of GDDR3/5 at 1/3 CPU clock, 128-bit bus
- Very fast BD-drive
- 16GB of flash memory on cheapest model

With that all said, here's hoping for something breaking soon.
 
Just was thinking about this....


What about WiiWare/Virtual Console stuff?

Should we just assume that is gone, as far as the stuff we've already purchased on Wii transferring to WiiU?
 
Just was thinking about this....


What about WiiWare/Virtual Console stuff?

Should we just assume that is gone, as far as the stuff we've already purchased on Wii transferring to WiiU?

No you should not just assume its gone. Nintendo has done transferring for the DSi and 3DS, I don't see why they wouldn't add it for the Wii U.
 
we mentioned earlier that the WiiU will use all Wii's previous peripherals etc.
How much a longshot is that Nintendo will make 2 SKUs for the WiiU?
  • Upgrade pack/core pack
  • Standard Pack/premium pack

uprade pack is for wii owners. in the box there is only the upgraded parts. meaning, wiiu console itself, probably the new psu for the machine and the tablet (and the minigames we saw on E3/CES). everything else you already got it. No cables, no sensorbar, no wiimotes etc.
that way we may ugrade with 50-80$ less. I know Nintendo must "train" the retailersbut I think is worth it if they can advertise a 249-299 Next Gen upgrade

oh and standard pack is the sku we know it as today.

No way. Someone would buy that at retail, get home and realize they don't have cables. Not going to happen.

Overall, the cables, Remote, Nunchuck, and Sensor bar probably run Nintendo around $20. Not worth it.
 
I see the eDRAM being used because that would indicate the BW for the main memory isn't big enough on its own to achieve the resolutions Nintendo claims which most likely points to a 96-bit bus to reduce the design complexity.

Or more simply, the eDRAM is used to provide higher bandwidth for local operations without needing to saturate the main memory. Can still be a 128bit architecture.
 
Prediction time:

3 core oooe PowerPC with 2 way SMT and 3MB L2 cache. (~3ghz).
1.5GB of GDDR5 on a 96 bit bus (128MB-256MB dedicated to OS and background tasks).
Custom VLIW5 based AMD GPU with 32MB eDRAM (~400-640 SPs).
This sounds really horrible. Why keeping the bus width so low ?
 
If there are good launch games + a promising launch window, I would. If not, hellz naw. Not gonna get the system for 1 game and then not play it for a while.
 
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