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

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This is what confuses me about EDRAM. If it's primarily a Framebuffer then all the textures still need to come from main ram and hence that's the bottle neck no as the GPU has to read them from there?

They don't need the same level of bandwidth.

So wouldn't that suggest that the 720/PS3, which we all pretty much agree is going to be gruntier than the Wii U, will cost more than $399. OK PS3 maybe not quite as high because it doesn't have a fancy controller but the 360 will likely have Kinect.

Depends on how much they are willing to lose. I mentioned awhile back that I could see a scenario where Wii U is $349 and Xbox3 is $449 (including Kinect 2.0).
 
You haven't bought a system at launch in a while then have you.

Wii was the only one so far. When I was younger, I didn't have the money to buy systems right away. And now, I'm actually kind of angry that systems continued to get more expensive while simultaneously taking out the "free" game. Good times, back when there was literally a game burned into the ROM of the system.



Courtesy of JVM:
LTD Software Tie Ratio: Xbox 360 9.1 || PS3 8.8 || Wii 7.7[ /IMG]

By volume - at least until recently (not sure what the breakdown is now) the Wii sold the most software this gen.[/QUOTE]

Sounds like more or less what I was expecting. So if those held, then if Wii made it up to 100mm, then 360 would have to make it to 85mm. We don't know when its successor is exactly coming, and it's possible that it won't be dropped in the manner than the original Xbox was, but it's still a pretty steep uphill climb.


[quote="StevieP, post: 34508310"]No clicky sticks causing devs to whine? C'mon now.[/QUOTE]

I'm not at all suggesting that this is a [i]reasonable[/i] excuse to whine. I'm just saying that it's something that really stubborn developers can latch onto. For what it's worth, while I recognize that they have a pretty good use in some games, I am not a fan of clicky sticks.
 
The reason why saying "Nintendo" is a problematic response is that in the home console realm it has a general overwhelming history of releasing systems that are competitive from a cpu and graphics standpoint. So your answer stated the opposite of your intent.

So, being behind most of the time is... 'competitive'?
 
The Wii U tablet is, unfortunately, a dual-analog control scheme. The "excuses" you speak of won't be so easy.

Hey, don't shoot the messenger. A couple of devs have already said that there's no point in porting the games over if they won't use the screen in a meaningful way.

Since GAF is better than me at finding WiiU quotes, then I'll leave to others to find that info.
 
No clicky sticks causing devs to whine? C'mon now. They're going to have to do better than that. There are functions that can be mapped to other things (touch screen, waggle, etc) if they REALLY run out. Hell, when I played CoD on Wii, I mapped knifing to nunchuck waggle. SO much more satisfying than a button, and with a slight increase in the motion sensitivity slider over the defaults I got it to work when I wanted 100% of the time.


You're acting as if WE are the one complaining. Chill pill, cabinet, top row.
 
Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter:

People still buy CDs and play them in CD players although there's no reason to, because you can get everything over the Internet. So as long as there's somebody who is going to buy a game console, and buy a game in that format, then consoles will continue. Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo have a vested interest in their core royalty business: getting people to put content on their platforms. Nintendo doesn't even know there's an Internet yet so trust me, they're going to be making consoles until someone explains it to them...

I think Nintendo, if they don't figure out that there really is something called the Internet, is a loser.
http://www.industrygamers.com/news/ces-panel-consoles-continue-but-nintendo-is-a-loser/


I guess we will find out Wednesday if Nintendo knows there is something called the "internet".
 
You're acting as if WE are the one complaining. Chill pill, cabinet, top row.

I couldn't fathom that any developer could use the tablet as an excuse not to port a game, considering it's a dual-analog tablet with sticks and buttons like any other. It blows my mind.

So, being behind most of the time is... 'competitive'?

Welcome back, Luckyman.

Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter: said:

At least now we know Pachter is just out to troll. Either that or he is Luckyman.

I'm not so sure...

Nintex, I highly doubt general technical support is going to give you any kind of realistic answer, one way or the other.
 
I guess we will find out Wednesday if Nintendo knows there is something called the "internet".

I'm not so sure...

Thank you for your email.

Nintendo WFC (Wi-Fi Connection) and Nintendo Network are one and the same. This is not to be confused with any other network or connection as our servers are integrated to one another.

We hope this information helps you out.

Kind regards,

The Nintendo Team
 
lol I love Pachter trolls. He is right though, I could picture Nintendo wikipedia'ing internet and online gaming and infrastructure and whatnot. They have much to catch up on. Though I'm sure they'll end up paying the right people.
 
Obviously, they're not bound by the iron-clad NDA we previously believed existed. So what do you guys think this means for Wii U 3rd party support? Does it mean anything at all?

Are they not? They are not showing anything of the WiiU version, they simply, like some other developers/publishers have already, are announcing WiiU support.
 
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).

L2 cache is SRAM. I never said anything about there being any eDRAM on the CPU.
 
This has been the unfortunate truth since the N64 days. First it was cartridges, then it has minidisks/"kiddy" console, then it was lack of power and now what will it be?
"I can't put my game on the Wii U because I don't know what to put on the controller screen"? Which has already happened mind you. Several devs have said that if they can't figure out how to use the screen in a meaningful way, then they won't port the games because there's no reason to have the same thing on another consoles.

But by being multi-platform developers, they're ALREADY DOING THAT. What's the point of having it on 2 consoles when they offer nothing different? I understand that devs are ripe with hypocrisy when discussing Nintendo, but that would be too far to go.

Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter:


http://www.industrygamers.com/news/ces-panel-consoles-continue-but-nintendo-is-a-loser/


I guess we will find out Wednesday if Nintendo knows there is something called the "internet".

Oh Pachter..... never stop living under that bridge.
 
lol I love Pachter trolls. He is right though, I could picture Nintendo wikipedia'ing internet and online gaming and infrastructure and whatnot. They have much to catch up on. Though I'm sure they'll end up paying the right people.

The beauty of the Pac-trolls is that you can honestly believe that he believes every word he's writing. The trolling currently going on in this thread is less engaging because you know the person behind it is just having fun.
 
Hybrid Memory Cube. Several DRAM dies stacked on top of a controller/ logic die. Extremely fast and consumes very little power, but it's truly bleeding edge stuff. First prototypes surfaced in September 2011, a joint production agreement between Micron and IBM was signed in December, and the chips aren't expected to become widely available until late 2013.

Thanks. So I take it that it's a pretty 'out there' prospect. Let's assume that they have set up a daughter die on the GPU MCM for the eDRAM and the CPU can access it for certain tasks (Wii emulation being a big one). What kind of bus could we expect between the 32 MB and CPU? Seems like if the purpose is primarily for emulation, it wouldn't need to be that wide, but how else might the CPU be able to utilize such memory?
 
I agree on most of your premise honestly.

It was a combined price + software affect I think we can agree on.

I'm not sure of the sales now, but I don't think they're setting the world on fire (although in Japan it's doing better than over here IIRC). I think they're just at reasonably good levels.

IMO if the system was still at $249.99 even with the software now and in the pipeline for 2012, it would be selling poorly.

I agree that the 3DS launch lineup was typically launch-y (weak), but they did have Kid Icarus planned to be the spot light game, it just wasn't ready. Would have been interesting to have originally had:
- launch : KI:Uprising and Nintendogs + Cats
- 3 months : OoT 3D
- 6 months : Star Fox 64 3D
- 9 months: Mario Kart and SM3DL
- 12 months : Lugi's Mansion 2

By the way, picked up Pilotwings Resort and find it a lovely distraction, maybe just a little short for the flagship launch title.

All they can do is have a good plan for WiiU's lauch, but it still may not come together due to nature of development (still their fault, mind you).
 
I meant the odd bus width. This isn't a graphics card with a 12-month shelf life at best. You need to consider a revision roadmap for at least five years. The nice thing about power-of-two bus widths is that, for a revision, you can switch to using half the chips at twice the clocks a few years after launch, simplify the circuit board and bring your costs down. Or you can switch to chips with twice the capacity and twice the bus width once they become available. But what's half of three memory chips?

64 or 128. There's no precedent for non-power of two memory bus widths in a console. I'd be mighty surprised if Nintendo starts doing it.


Using double-clocked memory chips is just as unprecedented, let alone switching memory controllers to support a different memory tech altogether. Heck, double the memory clock on the same memory type would be quite something to see in reality as well unless you're meaning to start at a very slow speed to begin with. It's not as though GDDR5 6 or 7Gb/s is an easy thing to support in the first place due to the considerably higher demands on the signalling.

I don't see what the big deal is. It's not like non-power of two buses haven't existed on PC. They'll design it for what makes sense in bang for buck.

You'd need 6 chips with 2Gbit ram chips anyway. 4Gbit GDDR5 hasn't even seen a place on the roadmap and the 2Gbit only just started appearing recently, so you will actually need 6 chips for 1.5GB. So again, I'm not sure what the issue is. Years later there *might* be a demand for 4Gbit GDDR5 such that the console manufacture would switch and halve the number to 3 chips. That eventually translates to a cost savings (as soon as there is huge supply that is, but I wouldn't expect them to switch as soon as the chips appeared. It took forever for MS to switch to 1Gbit GDDR3 for example...

As for future cost reductions, a smaller bus is just the way to go since that will dictate the minimum perimeter of the chip. I don't see what the point of doubling the bus width is. That goes against the point of die reductions. You'd be doubling the bus width, but then you'd halve the clock rate so that the memory bandwidth spec doesn't change.

It should be obvious that doubling the density of chips doesn't require changing the bus width. We're supposedly starting at a point where they can halve the number of chips from 6 to 3, so it's a moot point. Ultimately, they'll want the minimum number and if 3 is that number, then that's that. There's no real reason to do any further changes. Anything less than 4 should already be considered pretty cheap and cost effective. And it's not like we're going to be seeing 8Gbit GDDR5 anyway.

------------

And even if they end up using DDR3, which does have readily available 4Gbit chips, then it just means they've already cost reduced as much as possible with 3 chips at the start. Why does there need to be any future change with it? The greater concern will ultimately be the processors, and the memory bus width will play a role there. Sure 128-bit might have been ideal for going down to 2 chips, but everyone is talking about a particularly odd memory configuration anyway (1.5GB), which by nature can't be using a power of two memory bus (lest they do some real weird funky business).
 
All 3 consoles are going to be a lot closer in power than people think next generation. It's going to be PS2-GC-Xbox style power level differences all over again.

The Wii U isn't going to be close to the PS4 and Xbox 3, although the latter two will likely be almost interchangeable.
 
96-bit and 192-bit buses are only suggested to fit 1.5 GB of memory into it. That's not supported by rumours at all, and I simply don't see it happening. Unless a small miracle occurred and Nintendo fitted in 2GB of memory, the Wii U is equipped with 1 GB of memory with a nice regular 128-bit bus and a nice regular amount of memory chips. There might be some EDRAM caches, there might be even some fallback RAM that is used for the OS, but it's not likely to have effectively more RAM than 1 GB for games.
The Wii U isn't going to be close to the PS4 and Xbox 3, although the latter two will likely be almost interchangeable.
You're confusing next gen with this gen. There's really no way you could say that with any degree of certainty about next gen. I'll give you the Wii U being weaker, but there's nothing indicating the PS4 and Xbox 3 going to be close. There's nothing even indicating a PS4 at all!
 
I meant the odd bus width. This isn't a graphics card with a 12-month shelf life at best. You need to consider a revision roadmap for at least five years. The nice thing about power-of-two bus widths is that, for a revision, you can switch to using half the chips at twice the clocks a few years after launch, simplify the circuit board and bring your costs down. Or you can switch to chips with twice the capacity and twice the bus width once they become available. But what's half of three memory chips?

64 or 128. There's no precedent for non-power of two memory bus widths in a console. I'd be mighty surprised if Nintendo starts doing it.

Using a 96 bit bus would allow you to switch to 3 RAM chips in a future revision. Using a 128 bit bus would mean that you'll always have to use at least 4 RAM chips. If Nintendo feel that 1GB of RAM isn't enough then a 96 bit bus needs to be considered imo.
 
Do ya think Nintendo will try/be able to push a great frame rate and iq out of the machine all at 1080?
I think Nintendo usually tends to keep it simple and efficient, graphics-wise. With the way they are targeting the core gamers, though, I hope they show off their skills and set the bar high for 3rd parties to follow.
 
I think close is subjective considering the amount of people out there that think next gen will be a repeat of this gen in that regard.
honestly, all I hope is that ALL the engines (cryengine, fox engine, luminous engine, unreal engine 4, etc...) all run WELL on the WiiU. I hope Nintendo consulted with all those big companies.
 
Do ya think Nintendo will try/be able to push a great frame rate and iq out of the machine all at 1080?

Nintendo themselves might sense that's the only console they'll be focused on. 3rd parties that are making multi-plats may sacrifice that to achieve a certain look across the board (compared to Xbox3 and PS4). My opinion of course.
 
All this talk of future revisions got me thinking. I look up the Wii, Gamecube and N64 and none seem to have had a revision. ie: die shrink.

Is this wrong? And is it expected to change with Wii U?

I'm guessing it ain't cheap to do slim editions.
 
Whatever. I still don't understand what the appeal is, of a huge screen on a controller. From my point of view they're heading straight into the abyss. I just don't see how this idea of a console could thrive, unless it has tons of powerful software and a good price.
 
All this talk of future revisions got me thinking. I look up the Wii, Gamecube and N64 and none seem to have had a revision. ie: die shrink.

Is this wrong? And is it expected to change with Wii U?

I'm guessing it ain't cheap to do slim editions.

Yeah, looking at the size of the box and if they are going for the five year plan.
I dont see revisions planned. Though, technically, there is a Wii slim for Europe.
But what they really did was take out the backwards compatibility with GC.
 
Whatever. I still don't understand what the appeal is, of a huge screen on a controller. From my point of view they're heading straight into the abyss. I just don't see how this idea of a console could thrive, unless it has tons of powerful software and a good price.


Wouldnt you say that if they had a traditional controller?
 
Apparently there's a shareholder's meeting Wednesday to the person who asked. I might be mistaken though.

Edit: I didn't see someone already answered this. Why is there no delete post option?!
 
Whatever. I still don't understand what the appeal is, of a huge screen on a controller. From my point of view they're heading straight into the abyss. I just don't see how this idea of a console could thrive, unless it has tons of powerful software and a good price.

Software is always the most important part, but why exactly is the controller the problem?
It has standard buttons and the added benefit of motion controls.
All the screen does is allow for more expansive gameplay options.
 
Whatever. I still don't understand what the appeal is, of a huge screen on a controller. From my point of view they're heading straight into the abyss. I just don't see how this idea of a console could thrive, unless it has tons of powerful software and a good price.

Well for me, there really isn't one, although being able to play full console games on a handheld in bed is cool. More than anything, I just want to be able to play Nintendo games without making my eyes bleed or having to resort to emulation. The Wii is an embarrassing abomination at this point, no active console has ever felt so antiquated.
 
Do ya think Nintendo will try/be able to push a great frame rate and iq out of the machine all at 1080?
The devkit GPU has the raw power to do slightly more work on pixels in 1080p than the 360 can do on 720p. Furthermore it has much more EDRAM to make it very substantially better at doing AA. There's also a much larger shading capacity and likely tesselation and other goodies.

So it will be able to deliver superior IQ to Xbox 360/PS3 games on 1080p. I think it's likely Nintendo will use this resolution for most of their casual aimed games.
 
[Nintex];34509022 said:
I'm not so sure...


Thank you for your email.

Nintendo WFC (Wi-Fi Connection) and Nintendo Network are one and the same. This is not to be confused with any other network or connection as our servers are integrated to one another.

We hope this information helps you out.

Kind regards,

The Nintendo Team

Seriously? You didn't learn from the past 10 years that Nintendo support knows even less about imminent product changes than Apple support?!

Name one solid piece of info we ever got from Nintendo customer support.
 
Well for me, there really isn't one, although being able to play full console games on a handheld in bed is cool. More than anything, I just want to be able to play Nintendo games without making my eyes bleed or having to resort to emulation. The Wii is an embarrassing abomination at this point, no active console has ever felt so antiquated.

Iwata said it best, the PS2 generation was the last one where technical specs made a big difference. It's strange now to see them backtrack on that philosophy. Of course, what really drives the momentum is the software, so it doesn't matter what the box does, as long as the right software is there. But the killer application is no longer graphics, the fact that all they could come up with to follow up on the Wii remote was a big touchscreen makes me cringe.
 
Seriously? You didn't learn from the past 10 years that Nintendo support knows even less about imminent product changes than Apple support?!

Name one solid piece of info we ever got from Nintendo customer support.

They were the ones who confirmed that Xenoblade and Last Story were being translated before amy official announcement was made.
 
Seriously? You didn't learn from the past 10 years that Nintendo support knows even less about imminent product changes than Apple support?!

Name one solid piece of info we ever got from Nintendo customer support.

I'm stepping in for opiate here... these are the two options we have:

1. Nintendo has rebranded Nintendo WiFi Connection for the 3DS and they added paid DLC and perhaps Wii U but that's it for the time being.

2. Nintendo will announce their Xbox Live counterpart this week at an investors conference.

Which one is more likely?
 
Iwata said it best, the PS2 generation was the last one where technical specs made a big difference. It's strange now to see them backtrack on that philosophy. Of course, what really drives the momentum is the software, so it doesn't matter what the box does, as long as the right software is there. But the killer application is no longer graphics, the fact that all they could come up with to follow up on the Wii remote was a big touchscreen makes me cringe.

Wait, what? How have they backtracked on that philosophy?

Suppose they didn't backtrack from your point of view. What would we be seeing right now as an indication of that?

Personally I think releasing a console that's only potentially as good as your competitors (clearly not attempting to blow them out of the water) means that you don't think power is going to win the generation. Additionally, focusing on other features to attract consumers' attention like motion control and tablet screens would seem to back up that idea - you attract people more with interesting features rather than raw power.
 
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