Wii U Speculation Thread 2: Can't take anymore of this!!!
- Thread starter ClovingWestbrook
- Start date
- Status
Bombillazo
Member
Your faith give me hope lol.
Hoping GDC gives info on the new online Network at the very least...
I am so happy with 2 x 360 as raw power. Nintendo's games are going to look spectacular!
I get the feeling that when ideaman/llhere are talking 2 x 360, they are talking in terms of raw power (throughput).
However, I would imagine many optimisations to the SDK are taking place as we speak.
There could well be signification performance gains there, once the SDK is optimised/finished.
This may be the reason that 2-5 number keeps getting thrown around. A well optimised SDK can make a world of difference, otherwise dev's spend half their time just getting the engine/SDK up and running; with less time left over for spit and polish.
I'd rather see a weaker hardware configuration with a great SDK that helps you get close to 90% of the power out of the box very quickly rather than an [UNNAMED CORPORATION] approach to SDK's (we'll worry about that later OR that's the dev's job, let them worry about it) which just hinders the development process at every step of the way.
It is WAY too late for hardware revisions now, the ship has left the harbour!
2 x 360 with better shaders/effects running the next Zela/Mario?!
Fucking sold to me guys! I was concerned with the equal footing to the 360 rumors. No concern whatsoever now, going to be a great launch, especially if they manage to get a Zelda/Mario out within the launch window.
I think a lot of people are still thinking about the numbers and not thinking about what is the next zelda going to look/play like on a machine with at least 2 x the power of the 360!
Contemplate that, and tell me you ain't happy, it just don't fathom to me! Cannot wait!
CubeHands.
I get the feeling that when ideaman/llhere are talking 2 x 360, they are talking in terms of raw power (throughput).
However, I would imagine many optimisations to the SDK are taking place as we speak.
There could well be signification performance gains there, once the SDK is optimised/finished.
This may be the reason that 2-5 number keeps getting thrown around. A well optimised SDK can make a world of difference, otherwise dev's spend half their time just getting the engine/SDK up and running; with less time left over for spit and polish.
I'd rather see a weaker hardware configuration with a great SDK that helps you get close to 90% of the power out of the box very quickly rather than an [UNNAMED CORPORATION] approach to SDK's (we'll worry about that later OR that's the dev's job, let them worry about it) which just hinders the development process at every step of the way.
It is WAY too late for hardware revisions now, the ship has left the harbour!
2 x 360 with better shaders/effects running the next Zela/Mario?!
Fucking sold to me guys! I was concerned with the equal footing to the 360 rumors. No concern whatsoever now, going to be a great launch, especially if they manage to get a Zelda/Mario out within the launch window.
I think a lot of people are still thinking about the numbers and not thinking about what is the next zelda going to look/play like on a machine with at least 2 x the power of the 360!
Contemplate that, and tell me you ain't happy, it just don't fathom to me! Cannot wait!
CubeHands.
Bombillazo
Member
Wiz
Member
At the end of the day, that's what we all want.
Beautiful! The Wii U Zelda will probably push the console to it's limits.
I really don't think lherre's comments should be too worrisome unless you were expecting a radically more powerful console. Current gen consoles struggle to run current gen engines anywhere near as well as PCs. It's not too surprising, to be honest, but it does kind of depend on what engine it is too. If Wii U is currently having trouble running frostbite 2.0 with all the bells and whistles enabled at 1080p, I wouldn't be worried whatsoever, especially if performance can be improved via optimization.
lherre did bring up some really interesting points though.
What this tells me is that they're not only continuing to have an open dialogue about dev kit performance but they're actively working to get the system capable of running the engines that 3rd parties specifically want to use on future games. Nintendo having such open dialogue with developers outside of their 1st and 2nd parties teams is a very good sign.
lherre did bring up some really interesting points though.
- Nintendo is testing out the performance of 3rd party engines. This means performance of those engines is important to them. This is a very good sign.
- Nintendo is openly talking with 3rd parties about the performance of 3rd party engines.
- Nintendo is also updating 3rd party devs on increases in performance (apparently in this case in dev kit v4.0 vs. v5.0).
What this tells me is that they're not only continuing to have an open dialogue about dev kit performance but they're actively working to get the system capable of running the engines that 3rd parties specifically want to use on future games. Nintendo having such open dialogue with developers outside of their 1st and 2nd parties teams is a very good sign.
AceBandage
Banned
yeah this is a very important point. 2x actual performance requires greater than 2x specs *points to the OG Wii*
bgassassin
Member
Cubehands. IdeaMan wasn't saying 2x the raw power. You don't realize it, but you're underselling what was said. 
His other post.
He said it other times as well. And my response after that post.
Here's a recent post I made talking about it more in depth.
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=35338159&postcount=9583
His specs sound exactly like the Cafe leaked specs. His opinion is what didn't line up. As I said before the opinion doesn't discredit the info.
I don't mean to keep driving home this point, but you are justifying what he says, when it doesn't line up. People inferred from what he was saying that it was older, but he definitely first claimed it was recent. Maybe later on he said it was older, but if so, his story has holes. if not, then what he's saying about recent kits is different than what other people are saying about recent kits.
So SOMEONE is probably not being truthful. Who that is, who knows. Personally, I'm a fanboy, so I believe in the optimistic leaks. Are they true? Probably not, but it makes the hype more fun.
His other post.
He said it other times as well. And my response after that post.
Once you get used to GAF you won't bite on that.
That said I believe you and your description sounds a lot like the earlier kit which from there lherre was saying wasn't seeing any hardware changes, just what sounded like firmware tweaks. Considering normal hardware development I would say it sounds like you are unfairly writing it off too soon. So I would say wait till you know how the final looks like before being disappointed.
Here's a recent post I made talking about it more in depth.
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=35338159&postcount=9583
His specs sound exactly like the Cafe leaked specs. His opinion is what didn't line up. As I said before the opinion doesn't discredit the info.
You just made my night.
You're welcome. Something had to be done after your post. I think we'll find it quite apt once we finally see the full machine in action.
ClovingWestbrook
Banned
Wait, what? Isnt that standard? I have a difficult time believing the same wasnt true for the Wii. If it didnt happen for the Wii then Nintendo was even more incompetent in this area than I thought.
Why would it be standard? You think they were testing UE3 on Wii and then talking to people about the performance?
AceBandage
Banned
Actually, Nintendo has a history of keeping things from developers.
Particularly on the GC and N64.
The fact that this has obviously changed on the 3DS and Wii U is a very positive sign for how seriously Nintendo is taking third party support now.
ClovingWestbrook
Banned
Wow. That is pathetic. Micro was obviously talking with Epic and it paid off for us with 512 mb of ram.
AceBandage
Banned
Right.
We all know that.
And now Nintendo is taking that same approach, but even more aggressive.
The Nintendo of then is not the same Nintendo of now. They evolve far more than people give them credit.
What does "2x visually" even mean?
I understand these kind of numbers when we’re talking about pure horse power, but when we're talking about visuals...it makes no sense to me. I mean, how many times better is Uncharted 3 than Enslaved, or Gears of War 3 than God of War 2?
I understand these kind of numbers when we’re talking about pure horse power, but when we're talking about visuals...it makes no sense to me. I mean, how many times better is Uncharted 3 than Enslaved, or Gears of War 3 than God of War 2?
It should be painfully clear that 3rd party happiness wasn't even among their slightest concerns back when wii came out.
And could you really blame them? 3rd parties ended up abandoning the GC, and it must have been apparent from day 1 that the Wii wouldn't cater to 3rd party desires. The Wii was a pretty crazy anomaly from a design perspective. It was nintendo's attempt to remake themselves entirely.
AceBandage
Banned
Twice the effects, resolution, FPS, ect.
Also, here's a neat little tidbit.
Nintendo can now claim an Oscar!
Retro Employee Dominic Pallotta worked on the Oscar winning best Animated Short.
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm4202494/
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/dominic-pallotta/11/356/817
Link to said video (it's pretty fucking awesome):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Adzywe9xeIU
Yeah Nintendo in the past has had a bad habit of developing systems around their goals and ignoring 3rd parties.
The 3DS was where they did actually begin changing that policy and developers have said Nintendo has been very receptive with the Wii U. Now Nintendo is still setting a we wont go there policy for insane specs but they are at least being flexible with 3rd parties addressing issues.
Bombillazo
Member
To their defense, N64 was a beast of a machine, they just wanted to shine above all and intentionally made it hard to program for as a filter for bad games, but it bit them when PS started releasing many new games in a cheaper medium.
I think the shift when Iwata became president and GCN launched that Nintendo still had that "We can carry this on our own" mentality left by Yamauchi. With the Wii they took a huge risk and started to heal those bonds with 3rd parties, but Wii was not the ideal console when you had 2 behemoths that could display far superior graphics with a traditional game pad and competitive online connectivity.
Wii U is the perfect opportunity for completely involving 3rd parties in the development of a new console, they know 3rd party is indispensable now more than ever before.
pieatorium
Member
Yeah but having twice the effects, resolution and FPS would require alot more than 5x the power of the hardware specs of a 360.
Hero of Legend
Member
I won't deny that the Wii was underpowered compared to the others, but when I look at The Last Story:
I said wow.
I said wow.
Cubehands. IdeaMan wasn't saying 2x the raw power. You don't realize it, but you're underselling what was said.
His other post.
He said it other times as well. And my response after that post.
Here's a recent post I made talking about it more in depth.
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=35338159&postcount=9583
His specs sound exactly like the Cafe leaked specs. His opinion is what didn't line up. As I said before the opinion doesn't discredit the info.
Look, you're one of the people I trust most on here (maybe just because you're so present) but you REALLY think that when he said "recent devkit" (from my quote) and "current devkit" (from your quote) he was talking about a devkit that dated clear back to the Cafe rumors before E3? All he said was that it wasn't the very most cutting-edge devkit (which he didn't believe existed.) But he definitely called it both "recent" and "current."
And like I said, if later on he DID go back and say it was really old, then he has holes in his story. I've been following this thread for a while, and I read all your other posts. But you're trying to reconcile info that just doesn't fit. He said "recent" and "current," even if it wasn't the newly released one at the turn of the year. He would not call a devkit from early last year "recent" or "current." He just wouldn't.
If you want to believe him, that's fine. But what he says (as fact, not opinion) doesn't fit with other stuff that's also come from "confirmed" devs, so someone's not being fully truthful, whether him or the others. Either that, or they've got totally different devkits. I suppose it's possible that Arkam's company got "recent" and "current" devkits that are actually hand-me-downs, without them knowing. Although, since EatMyChildren seemed to know definitively that his company had devkits, I'm guessing it's a bigger company that wouldn't likely get hand-me-downs.
I won't deny that the Wii was underpowered compared to the others, but when I look at The Last Story:
I said wow.
You know that's not in-game, right?
So visually it will look mostly the same but it has other power under there. Will that mean we will have people looking at gameplay vids and being all "bleh"?
AceBandage
Banned
No, a 2X visual increase is actually fairly noticeable and significant.
That seems extremely subjective. What exactly would a 2X visual increase of this look like?
Seems unquantifiable.
AceBandage
Banned
Hero of Legend
Member
Cutscene, yes.
But still, it's in-game assets that's cleaner with depth of field. So it KINDA counts.
In-game officially, is still no sloutch:
Well, seeing as that's pre-rendered...
Pfff... that's it? WII U IS DOOMED.
Honestly, though, as long as it can pull off something like this real-time with gameplay, I'm satisfied: http://youtu.be/2fpu6qMwMlM?hd=1
Wait. That first question is a good question. Or rather, how late is it before no more dev kit revisions.
For instance, assume a mid-August launch, when is the cutoff for the latest dev kit to reach developers?
Honest question.
AceBandage
Banned
lostinblue
Banned
Henry Ford once said:
Nintendo can ask, but they never ever can listen to them too closely for they'll always ask for more until the console isn't viable. PS Vita in that sense is an example of "feature pimping" taken too far, probably because they listened too much. Also called feature creepping; if Nintendo included a classic controller with the wii then motion controls wouldn't have taken off as they did; if the original mac had directional key's then most developers would have just ported their DOS stuff and not care about adding a graphics user interface... (they re-added them later on) Sometimes (more often than not) you have to limit in order to favor certain features or philosophy.
I've heard Crytek crying out for 8 gigs of RAM for christs sake.
But it's alway's a balancing effort; one can say Nintendo didn't think wrong when crippling the wii hardware in 2006 because of the risks they were taking (they needed to be able to fall back) and because they saw opportunity in not raising development prices to secure interest (low costs ensue more variety/more freedom to developers and less risk for publishers) and it's also true most people didn't own a HDTV back then for a SD console to be viable (and it was); but they should have gone for a balance, the gpu was something they knew well but virtually no one else knew. Thus they should have gone with a x1600 or something.
If they're youtube vids, perhaps. You can't possibly hope to recreate the difference from 32-bit to 128 bit consoles; this gen didn't do it, and the next won't either. It will look good, but thing is you can make a pretty game on any console these days providing you invest enough time, talent and money.
Even if this console was only as powerful as an X360 though, think of the actual handycaps X360 has that are keeping games from looking better other than the GPU itself and you'll conclude framebuffer and RAM could be improved.
If you did that, textures would look way better (and this gen is all about textures/normal and displace maps), and most people have no idea that the RAM of the system more often than not get's used for framebuffer.
Also 60 frames, AA and even vsync don't happen a lot also because RAM is lacking. 8 GB is too much for next gen (they ought to invest in better RAM rather than quantity), but if someone this gen had 1 GB of RAM you would have seen a pretty big difference; bigger than having double the graphical power on paper.
Also remember that Ideaman said the 2X increase in perceived visuals was before a lot of graphical effects, which are added later in development, were added. So it could look even better than the perceived 2X:
I'm assuming a mid-November launch. But I'm a licensed, board-certified pessimist.
Well if AC3 is releasing October 30, I think we can assume that the WiiU will be releasing in close proximity to that date.
Thunder Monkey
Banned
I'd have to disagree about your Vita stance. It is by far the most conservative approach to console design I've seen Sony make since the original PS1.
Now if you're talking just "it does too much" I'd still have to disagree, but I could see where you're coming from.
Totally unrelated to this thread but that short was good. :')
bgassassin
Member
Without knowing "x" it doesn't mean much on it's own, especially when "x" will be up to developers. But compared to 2x the performance there is definitely a difference and that's really the main thing to take from it.
?
I don't think you read the post I linked to based your response. And he said it was second hand info so I doubt he would know exactly what kit the info was coming from anyway. Also I think we are taking "current" in different context.
lostinblue
Banned
I humbly disagree.
Theoretically it has the cpu and gpu parts for 2 ipad 2 in there (I know, I know; they're quad core variants, whereas ipad has the same parts in dual core variants but you get my point), for half the price and in a smaller form factor.
It's like if you were building a PC and already had the most powerful parts you could have so you started adding them up, 4 of each.
If they went for half that, developers would have been impressed nonetheless and it would be powerful enough. They could also go with a screen with less resolution seeing lots of games are already suffering from upscaling (being rendered at less resolution).
I also don't think getting that close to the other current gen home console's (albeit less powerful) brings many advantages other than (often lousy) ports; I mean we saw what happened with PSP and the identity crisis it went through due to that. Ports don't sell systems, their exclusives do; and Sony also did a horrible job with that; continuing to port their PSP games to PS2 for most of the console's lifespan and now more recently porting their stuff over to the PS3 (The God of war's for PSP, and a few others).
I don't think they were conservative at all; in fact we've seen some speculation saying they actually wanted to go with a PSP Go form factor but couldn't because of the size of everything they wanted to fit in there and heat it would generate; and I think they spent the PSP years looking for something, PSP wasn't an ugly console but it used the GBA form factor, with exposed screen and well, it wasn't really striking as something all that different; but with the Go (although I was initially doubtful regarding the ergonomy of the thing) I really thought they found the form factor they should go for.
If they went with that form factor (and less power) I'm of the opinion they'd have more possibilities and strenghts at hand than they have now; for one it would be cheaper to produce, when closed it would ressemble an ipod touch so a 3G version of something with that form factor would immediately be more apelative than the current product; and they could sell it as a multimedia device eating into the sales of the ipod, not to mention eventually do a mobile phone version if there was demand.
Also: it could have touch games without key's being around (PSP Go was just begging for that). Sure you can do them anyway, but it's part of the whole "compromise a product to make it more focused" I was saying, I think it would lend itself for more variety/the best of both world's; games like plant's vs zombies, angry birds, fruit ninja or cut the rope really don't need key's around. And we obviously prefer them for the platform's the developers seemed to have in mind when been designed the games.
I don't think it was necessarily an error to ditch the second joystick on the 3DS in order to encourage the developers to use the gyroscope; if they didn't do that the gyroscope would probably be forgotten by most games. And yes I realize they had to back down on their intention regarding that, but I think the risk of betting on something rather than something else is better than making no effort to select technology you want to get used in detriment of other stuff; and Vita for me is that console, unable to predict the next big thing (be it right or wrong) they opted to just drop it all in (minus the stereoscopic 3D thing).
Regarding Vita I don't think it does too much, but I do think it's a little aimless; I hope it finds it's way through.
Have to check around, but I saw a few videos of people zooming and turning around the camera in a similar cutscenes. The game has CG movies, but it also has a ton of real-time cutscenes on which you can move the camera...a little.AceBandage said:Well, seeing as that's pre-rendered...
*Avatar picture*
Even the lo-res textures in the clothes show that is not pre-rendered.
EDIT:
The only difference with the models you control in the game is that the ones in custcenes have better animated faces. But the rest is the same, which is disappointing in those cutscenes seeing the basic animation and blocky arms and low-res textures in the armor.
So, is not like those models are really taxing or incredible.
boiled goose
good with gravy
no second analogue on 3ds was a mistake. There is not a doubt about this.
look at the Circle pad pro.
the gyroscopes are incompatible with 3D!!!!!!
lostinblue
Banned
That's always subjective.
Regarding the fact that moving it around destroy's the ilusion, that's dependent of 3D tech, right now DS only has 2 paralax barriers, but there's already screen's with more and if that tech was to grace a living room you could have as much as 32 paralax barriers or more at place so moving around wouldn't destroy the illusion. Time will tell if that's solved in subsequent revisions.
And I'm not a huge fan of aiming with gyroscopes, mind you. But I do think they were right in trying to select the things that make it to the final product somewhat and I understand why they did it; I also think platforms are different because of the things they allow you to do (or the thing's they don't allow you to do); I never felt DS was lacking for having no joysticks for instance, for that took full 3D games from it but brought along lots of 2D ones; and I felt it was just how it was; a normal thing rather than a misstep (that I don't think it was).
Risking is alway's hit or miss, but the thing is, in this scenario Nintendo can actually add things (and they did); but Sony can't possibly take them away because they made them standard forms of input. Vita has way too many features that didn't go through process of thought, "this is essential" and "this isn't really needed". That makes them arbitrary.
That difference can be crucial if either of them runs into trouble, for I doubt Vita can fallback like the 3DS did without costing Sony a lot more money; and I'm convinced they'll have to because portable's have failed in the past to have a perceived worth of 250$/€.
Another example: Sony added rumble and joysticks to their PSone controller; but Sega had huge problems with Sega Saturn because they couldn't lower production prices more because of how complex their console was (lots of parts they couldn't cut out); it's better to be lacking than aiming for the sky "just because". It's not really a "selecting features" example but I think it fits somehow.
I did read your post (both originally and again) and while it's a well-written post, I don't think it changes the fact that he said it was a recent and current devkit, not the Cafe devkit. And that would take some serious context to change the meaning of those two words. But anyway, you're right, he could have been mistaken about how recent the devkits were. I guess I should just let sleeping dogs lie; it's ultimately irrelevant whether what he or anyone posts is accurate or inaccurate.
I agree that it was a mistake. The inclusion of certain functions doesn't automatically take away from other functions. N64 had both the traditional d-pad and the analog stick. Although the d-pad would have been traditional to use, most everyone used the new analog stick. The Wii had a pointer function and motion controls. Some games used the pointer only, some used motion only, some used buttons only, etc. More options allowed for more variety.
EDIT:
This is a good point. Just because you bet a friend $10 that a die would roll 1 through 5 and it happened to roll 6 doesn't mean it was a bad gamble. It was the smart choice, it just didn't work out for you. However, I think they should have seen the need for the second slider. I think that was a miss-gamble.
bgassassin
Member
That's fine. I do still believe him and that what he may have called "recent" may not necessarily have meant updated.
But that's probably just me still being the optimist.
- Status