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[BurntPork]

I still believe that while beautiful, the Zelda demo was limited due to being created from an engine designed originally for the Gamecube since it's Twilight Princess-based. They were able to make it prettier due to the better hardware, but the engine wasn't designed to take proper advantage of this level of hardware.

Possibly, but that still doesn't explain the more distant parts of the bird demo being mediocre. I guess we'll see in due time. I hope there are more leaks soon about the new dev kit.

 

[beje]

what else would it sound like if the system hasn't been finalized yet?

The main problem is about if the current dev kits are overpowered or underpowered regarding to the final specs. All time, dev kits have been packing extra power to deal with beta testing and such (and also due to initial mindless over-engineering), but taking into account what some devs have said about new more powerful kits and the 3DS, we just can't be sure.

 

[Lonely1]

Not sure if trolling... Though all of that makes sense. Sadly, that would put it merely at twice as powerful as the current gen, especially with that huge memory bottleneck. I hope you're not right...

That GPU is about 3 times as strong as the 360's.

 

[Mr_Brit]

I still believe that while beautiful, the Zelda demo was limited due to being created from an engine designed originally for the Gamecube since it's Twilight Princess-based. They were able to make it prettier due to the better hardware, but the engine wasn't designed to take proper advantage of this level of hardware.



I agree with everything except for consoles and PC going their own separate ways if I understand you correctly. I think they've become symbiotic now to the point where the potential positive(s) (at least to devs) outweigh the potential negatives you mention. Consoles use the PC to push their usage of hardware, while PC is reliant on the extra sales that come from console versions of the games. Devs can put more money into making the games prettier for PC, but with the current power of consoles devs can scale the game down to maximize their profits. Which is needed since despite that we still saw company's close their doors due to not earning enough.

Source? There's no way that was the Twilight Princess engine. It's most likely an all new Nintendo engine that they'll use on most of their games similar to the Source or Frostbite engine.

 

[guek]

It was almost assuredly a modified TP engine using TP assets. That's how nintendo works with game engines - they just about always use previous game engines as frameworks.

You could say that Zelda HD was running off a heavily modified Mario 64 engine Unrecognizable, yes, but it probably wasn't a "new" engine.

 

[Gozan]

Well, if wsippel's source is at all credible, the GPU could be either a 4730, 4770, 4830, or a 4860. The 4830 has a core clock of 575 MHz...

Kinda of sounds like it's just the dev kit.

And of course, AMD has already a 40 nm 4830 (Mobility), which uses about 40 W and has a pixel fillrate around 50% above Xenos...

 

[Lonely1]

Source? There's no way that was the Twilight Princess engine. It's most likely an all new Nintendo engine that they'll use on most of their games similar to the Source or Frostbite engine.

But it was using TP assets. Also Nintendo likes to recycle their engines. SMG is still based in the SM64 engine, I believe.

 

[Mr_Brit]

It was almost assuredly a modified TP engine using TP assets. That's how nintendo works with game engines - they just about always use previous game engines as frameworks.

You could say that Zelda HD was running off a heavily modified Mario 64 engine Unrecognizable, yes, but it probably wasn't a "new" engine.

No way. The chances of that being the TP engine are so small as to be negligible. From what I could tell, the demo didn't seem to share anything in common with TP.
TP is a Gamecube engine, this demo was made for hardware dozens of times more powerful.

 

[Azure J]

From what I've heard, it is GDDR3. Not GDDR5, not XDR2. Maybe my source is wrong, I don't know. That's not necessarily a problem of course, depending on how wide the bus is, and there might even be benefits (lower latency). No idea. The GPU is supposedly has 640 SPs and is running at 500MHz, and the CPU is a triple core PPC running at 3.5GHz with a metric ton of l2 cache. Again, no idea if it's actually true - just something I was told in private. It's all second hand information, and the devkits are not even close to final, anyway.

Taking all of this at face value, where would this all put the current revision of the Wii U dev kit in terms of overall ability? I keep on hoping that Nintendo has a good pool of RAM in the system (1 - 1.5GB, 2 if it's Christmas & everyone's birthday at the same time) and said RAM is GDDR5 but I'd really like to know how this would stack up against the current gen.

 

[BurntPork]

That GPU is about 3 times as strong as the 360's.

Not when underclocked 33% and using GDDR3.

 

[guek]

No way. The chances of that being the TP engine are so small as to be negligible.

TP is a Gamecube engine, this demo was made for hardware dozens of times more powerful.

that's why I said it was a modified TP engine -_-;

nintendo likes to recycle engines up the wazoo

 

[Lonely1]

Not when underclocked 33% and using GDDR3.

No, the specs he said makes it so. (Xenos is still using GDDR3 and with similar clock, but 40 Sp that eq about 240 of r700s ones.)

 

[antonz]

A Stock 4830 is going to be basically 3x current gen machines. The 4830 itself is nothing more than a shader locked 4850 thats been downclocked.

I would be surprised if Nintendo did stick with DDR3 considering Ram is one area they usually like to not cut corners but who knows maybe they will for total system cost reasons

 

[BurntPork]

And of course, AMD has already a 40 nm 4830 (Mobility), which uses about 40 W and has a pixel fillrate around 50% above Xenos...

Laptop parts are usually super high-binned and low-yield. That's irrelevant.

No, the specs he said makes it so. (Xenos is still using GDDR3 and with similar clock, but 40 Sp that eq about 240 of r700s ones.)

That got me thinking... Do you know what the bus width of Xenos is? 128-bit?

 

[antonz]

Laptop parts are usually super high-binned and low-yield. That's irrelevant.


That got me thinking... Do you know what the bus width of Xenos is? 128-bit?

128 bit as far as I know

 

[bgassassin]

Yeah, the system seems to be designed for efficiency, not raw performance. On paper, it's probably no more than two to three times as powerful as current generation systems.

Not un-common for a Nintendo system. On Paper its probably going to look less powerful than it actual is. Like the GC.

That could be where some of the "50% more powerful" comments come from.

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

Source? There's no way that was the Twilight Princess engine. It's most likely an all new Nintendo engine that they'll use on most of their games similar to the Source or Frostbite engine.

No way. The chances of that being the TP engine are so small as to be negligible. From what I could tell, the demo didn't seem to share anything in common with TP.
TP is a Gamecube engine, this demo was made for hardware dozens of times more powerful.

I think "I still believe" should tell you the source. Guek and Lonely1 already said it, but it's most likely a modified TP engine. Nintendo doesn't seem to be the type to create a new engine for a tech de... excuse me, experience that's not playable. Companies do that all the time with engines. The most recent I can think of is the Samaritan demo still being UE3 based, but taking advantage of more powerful hardware.

Then while looking for the date UE3 was released, I found this (nice read by the way).

http://ps3.ign.com/articles/107/1071533p1.html

The idea of using borrowed technology was not new in 1998. Capcom and Konami had both been recycling internal technology with their various platformer and brawler variations (e.g. DuckTales, Rescue Rangers, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The Simpsons Arcade Game). Likewise, id had made its tools available to a carefully selected number of partners (including Valve).

In spite of the tumultuous start to the generation, the turbulent reports of struggle have abated. While the early years of this generation might have pointed to a near ubiquitous adoption of UE3, a healthy variety of different technologies have emerged. Meanwhile, Epic's technology has quietly continued in big performers like Army of Two: The Fortieth Day, Mass Effect 2, BioShock 2, and Splinter Cell Conviction. Some of those games are built on heavily modified versions of UE 2.5, but the core suite of tools that Epic built remains consistent.

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

If the console is actually using a Blue-laser drive at a decent and up-to-date speed (this means, something around 8x to 12x), you won't need installs (and therefor, neither a huge-ass hard drive as the rumored 8GB in-board SSD + 8GB SD card would be enough) because access time would be much better than the current PS3 drive that works at 2x.

Well, I think this generation the negatives are outweighting the positives for "classic" PC developers. Why? Beacuse before this gen happened, they had all their audience in just one platform. One SKU with all that implied (support, beta testing, licensing...) and during this gen, a big part of their audience migrated to the new oh so powerful consoles, leaving them in a delicate position where they had suddenly to spread their work across two or three platforms with the budget rise it means and the problems they cause, in this case (and IMHO) hindering PC development and dumbing down pretty much everything to a controller. With a next-gen scenario similar to what we had before 2005, things should go back to normal, or at least to something more sane.

I quoted that first one because it's a point that was mentioned before awhile back, but still doesn't get enough mentioning.

And I got you now. I'm expecting a more "reasonable" upgrade from at least MS and possibly Sony as well that could drive away some gamers and making them PC only again. That would be a benefit to some of those devs allowing the to re-consolidate their financial priorities to a better focused direction as you mention.

 

[Coolwhip]

I think this too. There was a huge player shift from PC to consoles this generation, and it's very likely that all those people wil go back to PC gaming if all next gen consoles don't hold up to the PC at their launch, which has a 95% probability of happening unless Sony and MS go the crazy route again with huge, loud, extremely power hungry and highly prone to failure money-sinking machines.

This generation has been a complete anomaly in console cycles with Sony and MS wanting to minimize the effect of diminishing returns to be able to play once again the OMG GRAPHICS card, and it's to be expected that next generation each console + PC will go their own different way again without interferences (like hindering PC development with bad limitations and the need to do triple SKU) as before save it from the occasional multiplat title and yearly sports games.

I don't really agree with that. You're assuming people switch back and forth between consoles and PC solely because of graphical power? I find that very very unlikely. And I don't see why it would make business sense to cater to the smaller PC crowd once again after this gen.

 

[BurntPork]

128 bit as far as I know

Uh-huh. Okay, I get it now. Assuming the wsippel's sources are accurate, Nintendo is most likely using an RV770. However, they're using one similar to the 4830 (640SPs), except that they'll be at 40nm or maybe 32nm in the final version. The reason for using that over the RV740 would be the 256-bit bus. That's why they're using GDDR3; they'll still get a lot more bandwidth than the 360.

As for the 50%, either that's a totally arbitrary figure, or it's talking only about the CPU compared to the 360.

The CPU is what bugs me about wsippel's specs, though. How could it be clocked so high? There's just no way it could be a Power7 relative with such a high clock and fit into a dev kit the size of a 360. Perhaps the dev kit CPUs are more related to Xenon to make porting easier?

 

[antonz]

Uh-huh. Okay, I get it now. Assuming the wsippel's sources are accurate, Nintendo is most likely using an RV770. However, they're using one similar to the 4830 (640SPs), except that they'll be at 40nm or maybe 32nm in the final version. The reason for using that over the RV740 would be the 256-bit bus. That's why they're using GDDR3; they'll still get a lot more bandwidth than the 360.

As for the 50%, either that's a totally arbitrary figure, or it's talking only about the CPU compared to the 360.

The CPU is what bugs me about wsippel's specs, though. How could it be clocked so high? There's just no way it could be a Power7 relative with such a high clock and fit into a dev kit the size of a 360. Perhaps the dev kit CPUs are more related to Xenon to make porting easier?

It is possible the cpus they are using right now are being pushed higher to try and keep up with a theoretical performance of the final model chips. Its really hard to say what they are doing with the final CPU. We know aspects of Power7 are there but to what degree is the real question.

 

[hellclerk]

No way. The chances of that being the TP engine are so small as to be negligible. From what I could tell, the demo didn't seem to share anything in common with TP.
TP is a Gamecube engine, this demo was made for hardware dozens of times more powerful.

You mean ASIDE from the models, assets, and animations? Seriously, it looks exactly like the TP engine. It looks like the only thing added was support for higher resolutions, HDR, and dynamic lighting. You can see it in Link's animation. Note how the maile on the sleeves don't move like maile, it moves exactly like it did in TP. Everything else about that demo looked exactly like it did in the temple of time, reflecting floors and all. Hell, it's even the same boss as from the temple of time. That was the TP engine given some updates for making it prettier.

 

[antonz]

You can see the Zelda demo is very much based on TP assets that have been tweaked just by looking at TP in Dolphin

 

[sarusama]

I wish some people would moderate their statements. In particular with respect to the "TP engine" talk going on, it's clear the people posting have no idea what an "engine" is, how it's built and most importantly how development of games/engines happen. Please don't post stuff you are pulling out of someplace the sun doesn't shine as strong factual statements.

What we've seen is a video showing some scenery that bears close resemblance to something that could fit into a TP style. There is no reason to believe there even is an "engine" powering any of this. For all we know it could simply be playing back an animation with some camera and rendering parametrization control. You don't need an "engine" for that.

Stuff like this:

No way. The chances of that being the TP engine are so small as to be negligible. From what I could tell, ... TP is a Gamecube engine, this demo was made for hardware dozens of times more powerful.

your reasoning for "small/negligible" are based on things you could tell from looking at images. That doesn't let you infer anything conclusively about what produced them. The "engine" that was used for TP could be based on something that existed for SNES and has been modified along the way. That the demo runs on hardware a dozen times more powerful than a Gamecube does not logically preclude the "engine" from being exactly the one used on the Gamecube.

You mean ASIDE from the models, assets, and animations? Seriously, it looks exactly like the TP engine. It looks like the only thing added was support for higher resolutions, HDR, and dynamic lighting. You can see it in Link's animation. Note how the maile on the sleeves don't move like maile, it moves exactly like it did in TP. Everything else about that demo looked exactly like it did in the temple of time, reflecting floors and all. Hell, it's even the same boss as from the temple of time. That was the TP engine given some updates for making it prettier.

This started out reasonably, but there is again no support for the bolded statement. You clearly believe the game assets (models, animations, etc.) were reused from TP. That still doesn't mean the underlying "engine" has anything to do with TP. It could be something completely unrelated made to process TP assets.

If I may attempt to clarify, and please feel welcome to correct me, an engine is really only a software framework that bundles and integrates various software components. Usually the purpose of these is to abstract lower-level functionality to facilitate specification of game simulation and display. For example, one module could be used to organize various animations for a character such that designers/programmers can easily select, transition and play them back. Such components can be completely independent of a specific game, and studios might want to reuse them for multiple games. For example an engine that "powered" Metroid Prime can "power" Donkey Kong Country Returns.

Sorry for the rant, but when I read these posts, I can't help but imagine how other people may read all of these statements as facts and sadly not even realize logical fallacies. The same comments could have been made much more sensibly by adding terms like "I believe", "may", "seem to me". Some people posting here actually do know what they are talking about and it would make it easier to parse what is information and what is pure, not even logically sound speculation.

 

[bgassassin]

I don't know what to say about the Wii U and the current state of Nintendo. I grew up with them and bought more games from them than anyone else, even though I haven't owned a Wii or anything this generation. I like to see what they do from a business aspect, they seem really discombobulated though.

First off, I don't know whats going on with their philosophy anymore, but watching a little of the 2001 E3 before this one, its funny how much what they say they stand for has changed. In 2001 they were talking about how price is the most important thing and value, now its like "well here's a new system, and a huge chunk of the cost goes to this controller you may or may not use." Its nice to see them continue to try new things in an era when nothing seems new, but in the end whether its a camera, wand, remote, or touchscreen - they're all just alternative ways to control a game. They may be better for some games, they may be worse, so why force EVERYONE to use it?

It seems really un-Nintendo like this past generation to force people to use motion controls in a lot of cases, when it's just as easy to add an additional standard control scheme. What gets me is how different things are from back when they came out with the N64 analog stick for Mario 64. Miyamoto always said that he thought of the concept of Mario 64 and then the controller to fit that and it was a natural fit. Now its like, there's no clear concept of what games can actually use this controller in a revolutionary way, they're just like "ok we made this now think of something to do with it." Really didn't work well with the Wii. I think Nintendo needs to get back to thinking about everyone and not force people to use a high priced controller, and offer a "standard" controller SKU at a lower price.

Also its odd to me just how unprepared Nintendo was with the Wii U unveiling, games, and apparently their final hardware specs and development kits are still ongoing. I wonder sometimes, what the fuck is going on at Nintendo? It's not like they've been pouring out release after release lately - I know they have some 3DS games they've been working on, but comeon. Since Mario Galaxy 2 was released last year (which Miyamoto himself even said at E3 2009 was basically done even then), they've released practically nothing. Other M and DKC weren't made by them, Kirby was literally the only major game release directly from Nintendo I can think of since then and there's only one major Wii game they've worked on upcoming. Really, what the hell? What are they wasting their time on? They look like a student who's had 4 months to get a major project done and start it two nights before. Hopefully they get it together and learn a lesson from the way 3DS is going that price is a major factor and offering players choices and there's no one right way to play a game.

I wanted to respond sooner, but I was doing work and stuck to the shorter responses.

First dealing with what Nintendo wants to do, they obviously know what they want to do. They just did a very poor job with giving a discrete message about it at E3. You go back to the Revolution reveal back at E3 2005 and you will see that they were even more vague about Wii, but they did a much, much better job with the lack of information. This time around, all they did was create a whole bunch of questions. Hindsight is 20/20 in terms of what they could have done to fix it, but I wouldn't judge their direction going forward based on their bad delivery.

Their philosophy hasn't changed. They are still about the price and affordability. Miyamoto made a statement recently keeping in line with that. If they weren't about that, then we'd probably be seeing something with a much more current GPU on top of the controller changes. And speaking of the controller, we've been using the current dual-analog standard for over a decade now which was about the length of the d-pad being the main standard. If this market wants to truly survive then it has to make changes, because to me dual-analog by itself has reached its limit. I feel that motion/pointer controls would have taken off more if Nintendo had just made the power of the Wii as an "Xbox 360-lite". Then you would have had the devs who avoided the Wii due to hardware adapting their games for to it with the controls. I think the split controller is more immersive with gaming, but has not become associated with casuals which subsequently means bad to the "hardcore" gamer. But Nintendo failed in doing that thanks to their extreme view of not competing with Sony and MS.

I think it's unfair to say "force" because new control methods always do that. And while some of us can see the many things it can be used for, I understand that there are those that don't since there were way too many that don't. To them (and you) I would just say be patient. You'll get the full reveal next E3 and that should give you everything you want to know. And maybe before that we'll get more information to clear things up more for you.

As for the 50%, either that's a totally arbitrary figure, or it's talking only about the CPU compared to the 360.

Some of us have always known it was arbitrary. I was just trying to find someway to give that statement the benefit of the doubt.

The CPU is what bugs me about wsippel's specs, though. How could it be clocked so high? There's just no way it could be a Power7 relative with such a high clock and fit into a dev kit the size of a 360. Perhaps the dev kit CPUs are more related to Xenon to make porting easier?

It's Nintendo so it's most likely magic and Nintendium related.

 

[BurntPork]

It is possible the cpus they are using right now are being pushed higher to try and keep up with a theoretical performance of the final model chips. Its really hard to say what they are doing with the final CPU. We know aspects of Power7 are there but to what degree is the real question.

Yeah, that's definitely possible. It's probably the most likely scenario, actually.

 

[brain_stew]

Not when underclocked 33% and using GDDR3.

The use of GDDR3 isn't going to be a deal breaker if the GPU has enough dedicated eDRAM to store a full 1080p/2xmsaa framebuffer.

 

[BurntPork]

The use of GDDR3 isn't going to be a deal breaker if the GPU has enough dedicated eDRAM to store a full 1080p/2xmsaa framebuffer.

That would need a hell of a lot of eDRAM. I don't even know how how much that could possibly be. 32MB?

 

[bgassassin]

That would need a hell of a lot of eDRAM. I don't even know how how much that could possibly be. 32MB?

Someone calculated before that it would need about 50MB to achieve their "supposedly stated" goal

 

[brain_stew]

Someone calculated before that it would need about 50MB to achieve their "supposedly stated" goal

Assuming you're not using multiple render targets, its around ~30MB.

 

[bgassassin]

Assuming you're not using multiple render targets, its around ~30MB.

Glad to see you here to give exact info stew. Is it possible to achieve a consistent 1080p/60FPS based on what we know about possible large amounts of eDRAM, or is that still out of this console's range?

Obviously it would be up to the devs to pursue it, but would that be theoretically possible?

 

[BurntPork]

That 256-bit bus should be a huge help. I think it means at least double the 360's bandwidth.

 

[AceBandage]

It's Nintendo so it's most likely magic and Nintendium related.

People always forget this fact.
Nintendium is some powerful shit.

 

[bgassassin]

And it looks like they are going back full resolve with it as opposed to what they did with the Wii. Never skimp on Nintendium Nintendo... never.

I wish some people would moderate their statements. In particular with respect to the "TP engine" talk going on, it's clear the people posting have no idea what an "engine" is, how it's built and most importantly how development of games/engines happen. Please don't post stuff you are pulling out of someplace the sun doesn't shine as strong factual statements.

What we've seen is a video showing some scenery that bears close resemblance to something that could fit into a TP style. There is no reason to believe there even is an "engine" powering any of this. For all we know it could simply be playing back an animation with some camera and rendering parametrization control. You don't need an "engine" for that.

Stuff like this:



your reasoning for "small/negligible" are based on things you could tell from looking at images. That doesn't let you infer anything conclusively about what produced them. The "engine" that was used for TP could be based on something that existed for SNES and has been modified along the way. That the demo runs on hardware a dozen times more powerful than a Gamecube does not logically preclude the "engine" from being exactly the one used on the Gamecube.



This started out reasonably, but there is again no support for the bolded statement. You clearly believe the game assets (models, animations, etc.) were reused from TP. That still doesn't mean the underlying "engine" has anything to do with TP. It could be something completely unrelated made to process TP assets.

If I may attempt to clarify, and please feel welcome to correct me, an engine is really only a software framework that bundles and integrates various software components. Usually the purpose of these is to abstract lower-level functionality to facilitate specification of game simulation and display. For example, one module could be used to organize various animations for a character such that designers/programmers can easily select, transition and play them back. Such components can be completely independent of a specific game, and studios might want to reuse them for multiple games. For example an engine that "powered" Metroid Prime can "power" Donkey Kong Country Returns.

Sorry for the rant, but when I read these posts, I can't help but imagine how other people may read all of these statements as facts and sadly not even realize logical fallacies. The same comments could have been made much more sensibly by adding terms like "I believe", "may", "seem to me". Some people posting here actually do know what they are talking about and it would make it easier to parse what is information and what is pure, not even logically sound speculation.

I definitely understand not wanting someone to state things as "matter of factly" in certain situations. I don't believe you were talking about me since I tried to avoid doing that and you were fair by addressing both ends of the debate, but wouldn't that be more work to do what sounds like an animation build from the ground up as opposed to just utilizing what you already have and tweaking it so to speak? My programming knowledge is extremely limited so I wouldn't know first hand, but that seems kind of unnecessary. Plus it was confirmed to be a tech demo so I'm not sure how being a non-engine based animation shows the power of the console. And I say that not to prove you wrong, but because I really don't understand why that would be a logical route to take. Looking at the original versus what we saw at E3 makes it seem more plausible they used the engine as the foundation. Especially since Link is still right handed in the demo.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QiVy2EARZOk (Original on Dolphin emulator)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4jKxqRbklA (Wii U Demo)

 

[TheNatural]

I wanted to respond sooner, but I was doing work and stuck to the shorter responses.

First dealing with what Nintendo wants to do, they obviously know what they want to do. They just did a very poor job with giving a discrete message about it at E3. You go back to the Revolution reveal back at E3 2005 and you will see that they were even more vague about Wii, but they did a much, much better job with the lack of information. This time around, all they did was create a whole bunch of questions. Hindsight is 20/20 in terms of what they could have done to fix it, but I wouldn't judge their direction going forward based on their bad delivery.

Their philosophy hasn't changed. They are still about the price and affordability. Miyamoto made a statement recently keeping in line with that. If they weren't about that, then we'd probably be seeing something with a much more current GPU on top of the controller changes. And speaking of the controller, we've been using the current dual-analog standard for over a decade now which was about the length of the d-pad being the main standard. If this market wants to truly survive then it has to make changes, because to me dual-analog by itself has reached its limit. I feel that motion/pointer controls would have taken off more if Nintendo had just made the power of the Wii as an "Xbox 360-lite". Then you would have had the devs who avoided the Wii due to hardware adapting their games for to it with the controls. I think the split controller is more immersive with gaming, but has not become associated with casuals which subsequently means bad to the "hardcore" gamer. But Nintendo failed in doing that thanks to their extreme view of not competing with Sony and MS.

I think it's unfair to say "force" because new control methods always do that. And while some of us can see the many things it can be used for, I understand that there are those that don't since there were way too many that don't. To them (and you) I would just say be patient. You'll get the full reveal next E3 and that should give you everything you want to know. And maybe before that we'll get more information to clear things up more for you.

Appreciate the response. In your first part, I'm not really talking about how they handled it, I'm asking WHAT the heck have they been working on for this to be so far off and only have this little to show? As I've said, there's been basically no major releases internally for the DS and Wii the past year. Retro made DKC, Team Ninja made Other M, and outside of that there's been what - Kirby Epic Yarn since Super Mario Galaxy 2? And we know from what Myamoto said at E3 2009 that SMG 2 was basically done THEN and being held off to space releases.

What the heck has happened to Nintendo's output is what I'm wondering? I know they have a few 3DS games they're working on, and there's Zelda, but that's still not much at all. Also Zelda development is horribly timed, this is the second console Zelda in EIGHT years and both of the two games have been timed at the end/start of a new console lifecycle? It's just odd that they haven't really been putting out any console games for the past year and then for the forseeable future the next year or so outside of Zelda there's nothing either.

And I'll disagree about your comments about analog. I mean its been 25 years or so since the NES D pad and it's alive and well, analog hasn't replaced it totally, and motion or touch won't replace analog. It's just a different way to play. And by forcing you to play it, I mean making it the only way to play a game (with motion in the past) and also forcing you to buy it too with the system and when it's probably a very sizable chunk of the total cost of this. They should have two SKU's, just like the 360 with Kinect. If you don't want a Kinect, you don't have to buy one to get a 360, and you don't have to use it in games, and you don't have to play the Kinect only games. I'm sure a lot of games will need it because of the way the game is, but if it's just used as a map/item selection replacement - which a LOT of games will likely be with multiplatform versions of games, why not just have a normal control option out there as well so it will cheaper and more people will buy it?

 

[BurntPork]

Retro made DKC

You do realize the Retro is 100% owned by Nintendo, right? They're not a third-party or even second-party. They're just as much first-party as EAD is. What, do they need to add Nintendo to their name for people to understand this? :/ It annoys me to no end!

Also, the Wii's motion sensing tech is extremely basic. It only adds a few dollars to the price. The Wii Remote Plus costs about $6 to make. If you don't include the controller, devs won't use it much and no games will require it, which just holds it back from ever being used in a game-changing way. Imagine if you had to buy an analog stick separately.

 

[TheNatural]

You do realize the Retro is 100% owned by Nintendo, right? They're not a third-party or even second-party. They're just as much first-party as EAD is. What, do they need to add Nintendo to their name for people to understand this? :/ It annoys me to no end!

Also, the Wii's motion sensing tech is extremely basic. It only adds a few dollars to the price. The Wii Remote Plus costs about $6 to make. If you don't include the controller, devs won't use it much and no games will require it, which just holds it back from ever being used in a game-changing way. Imagine if you had to buy an analog stick separately.

I know this, the point is what exactly is Nintendo doing internally to not be making anything. And I was referring to the cost of this controller, not the Wii's.

 

[AceBandage]

I know this, the point is what exactly is Nintendo doing internally to not be making anything. And I was referring to the cost of this controller, not the Wii's.

Nintendo is likely highly focused on Wii U development, since HD games can have longer development times.

 

[TheNatural]

Nintendo is likely highly focused on Wii U development, since HD games can have longer development times.

Well I know they're working on Pikmin, Mario probably, but the obvious question is, why don't they have anything to show? Why would they show an HD Zelda render, some weird nature render, and some small demos if they actually had something to show? And announce Smash Bros when it hasn't even started development? It just doesn't add up - they've barely worked on anything for the last year plus, and they don't have anything console wise outside of Zelda and Lazarus Gamecube Kirby to come out the next year or so.

I know they're working on 3DS games but it doesn't add up that that's all of it. It's really weird that come this time next year you really could be saying that Nintendo has only released two ground up console games in the past two years with Kirby's Epic Yard and Skyward Sword.

I mean compare this to the transition from say, the N64 to the Gamecube and it's amazing how different it is. In late 2000 Nintendo got out Majora's Mask, and a couple of big second part games really late in N64's life in 2001 with Paper Mario and Conker's Bad Fur Day. Then unleashed a 4 game launch later in the year with Gamecube with Waverace, Smash Bros, Luigi's Mansion, and Pikmin and had Mario ready for summer 2002. And this all with the GBA's huge launch and having its own games like Mario Kart to go with that.

It just doesn't add up to me. I don't understand why they're so much slower releasing games anymore than they have ever before, and looked so completely unprepared at E3 to show anything of substance.

 

[AceBandage]

They probably could have shown working games at E3.
Here's the thing though... That wasn't their goal.
Their E3 goal was two fold.

1. Show off the new controller through videos and little quick play demos.
2. Show off the ease of development by listing a bunch of big name third party games that will be on the system almost day and date of launch.

Showing off a new Mario or Zelda or something would have overshadowed both, and Nintendo likes to get out their message slowly.

 

[TheNatural]

They probably could have shown working games at E3.
Here's the thing though... That wasn't their goal.
Their E3 goal was two fold.

1. Show off the new controller through videos and little quick play demos.
2. Show off the ease of development by listing a bunch of big name third party games that will be on the system almost day and date of launch.

Showing off a new Mario or Zelda or something would have overshadowed both, and Nintendo likes to get out their message slowly.

So they show off a Zelda render instead .... of showing the actual Zelda they are really working on they *could* have shown? This after still haven't released the 2nd Zelda in 8 years? And instead meanwhile overshadowing what they showed by announcing a game that hasn't even begun development and who's would be creator doesn't even know why they announced the game? That doesn't make any sense.

It doesn't add up with what they've done in the past. I don't know why, whether its because they're overwhelmed by having to deal with managing more accurate motion controls with the motion plus thing, and with 3D, and with working on Wii U's hardware or what, but there is a big dent lately in their output and it doesn't seem to be ending anytime soon console wise.

 

[z0m3le]

Does anyone think that the HD4000 variant rumor might of been just for the Dev kits? The R700 series uses 5 vliw's, while the HD6000 uses 4, what this basically means, is that you get more efficient shaders, hd4000 800SP's is about equal to 640SP's from HD6000...

The more I hear about this GPU, the more I think it's a highly modified fusion part which would be based on HD6000, not HD4000, 640SP R700 series, would be about the same as Trinity's 480SP, which makes a whole lot of sense with the wattage and size of the console.
Quick reference to compare SP's, you take the numbers of SP's, and divide by the number of Vliw's, 640/5 and 480/4 which is 128 and 120 respectfully.

The HD6000 series would have been known about at AMD 3 years ago, so they would be customized parts and Nintendo's team will have modified it as well.

This solves the Wattage / Size of console, Fusion with an IBM CPU could easily fit into an 80Watt system.

 

[sarusama]

... but wouldn't that be more work to do what sounds like an animation build from the ground up as opposed to just utilizing what you already have and tweaking it so to speak?

My ranting was particularly about how comments were made as opposed to arguing for one or the other speculation. For what it's worth I agree that it seems unlikely they built an animation playback component from scratch just for this demo. As I was mentioning earlier it seems quite possible they reused some of their existing animation and/or cut-scene scripting components from before. Depending on how the game engine was built, specifically if it is design with appropriate layers of hardware abstraction (e.g., OpenGL is such an abstraction layer), it is quite possible it could be quickly ported to the new hardware, especially if the same or similar abstractions are directly supported. This would make sense from the point of view of producing something quickly, that might not take advantage of new hardware features or be properly optimized for the new hardware architecture.

So I agree that they probably used their existing engine to produce this. But just because the demo used assets that are from (or maybe even only inspired by) TP doesn't mean anything about what engine it is running on. It certainly doesn't mean it's "_the_ TP engine" and such a thing might not even exist (as opposed to the EAD Group1 engine or the EAD engine).

Plus it was confirmed to be a tech demo so I'm not sure how being a non-engine based animation shows the power of the console.

It really depends on what you want to show. The Samaritan people refer to all the time most probably is just a canned animation running in real-time with kick-ass surface shaders, lots of geometry and what not. It's a graphical show case, highlighting what the GPU could possibly do. I doubt it is doing any game simulation (AI, input device processing... I would be surprised if it even did any data loading from storage as opposed to pre-loading everything onto the Video RAM). So is that demo representative of what real games will be able to do?

It would actually be difficult to fully characterize the "power" of the WiiU. Specs can tell you so much, but performance is dependent on many, many factors. E.g., if you access data in a nice pattern where you use neighboring data next, caches are going to do wonders for you. But if your data is spread all over the place, their usefulness could be limited.

Looking at the original versus what we saw at E3 makes it seem more plausible they used the engine as the foundation. Especially since Link is still right handed in the demo.

It's plausible that they used the same assets as the foundation. Those are independent of the engine. For example you could use Unreal Engine and script the same animation using the actual TP assets and you'd conceivably get the same animation shown at E3. That doesn't make UE the TP engine.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QiVy2EARZOk (Original on Dolphin emulator)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4jKxqRbklA (Wii U Demo)

Wow, I beat TP, but I totally forgot about this boss fight. I didn't remember it at all. It's as if I saw this for the first time. Too bad Skyward Sword is coming out soon or I'd go and replay TP right now. I wonder what else I don't remember about it. And before anyone says there's plenty of time before the release... I'd never make it in time or if I did I'd probably be a little burnt out from Zelda and it would diminish my enjoyment of SS (which imho is looking stellar!!)


Oh, right about the embedded DRAM question for HD rendering:

1080p = 1920x1080 = 2,073,600 pixels
2x1080p = 4,147,200 pixels

As far as I understood from the couple of MSAA articles that were first results on searches the color buffer is not multisampled, but the depth and stencil are. So for a minimum of just a plain color buffer (RGBA = 4B/pixel) with a depth buffer (4B/pixel):

1080p x 4B = 8,294,400B
2x1080p x 4B = 16,588,800B

thus a total of 24,883,200B so ~24MB. This would be a very "bare minimum" framebuffer.

I'd really like someone with a good idea of eDRAM to chime in with his take on how much eDRAM on something like an embedded system (WiiU) would be reasonable. Unless they resort to tiled-rendering (where chunks of the framebuffer are processed in sequence) and considering the amounts of memory being embedded in other chips, it seems folks should not get their hopes up for 1080p 2xMSAA.

 

[Truth101]

Oh, right about the embedded DRAM question for HD rendering:

1080p = 1920x1080 = 2,073,600 pixels
2x1080p = 4,147,200 pixels

As far as I understood from the couple of MSAA articles that were first results on searches the color buffer is not multisampled, but the depth and stencil are. So for a minimum of just a plain color buffer (RGBA = 4B/pixel) with a depth buffer (4B/pixel):

1080p x 4B = 8,294,400B
2x1080p x 4B = 16,588,800B

thus a total of 24,883,200B so ~24MB. This would be a very "bare minimum" framebuffer.

I'd really like someone with a good idea of eDRAM to chime in with his take on how much eDRAM on something like an embedded system (WiiU) would be reasonable. Unless they resort to tiled-rendering (where chunks of the framebuffer are processed in sequence) and considering the amounts of memory being embedded in other chips, it seems folks should not get their hopes up for 1080p 2xMSAA.

brain_stew posted this already.

Assuming you're not using multiple render targets, its around ~30MB.

 

[Anasui Kishibe]

So they show off a Zelda render instead .... of showing the actual Zelda they are really working on they *could* have shown? This after still haven't released the 2nd Zelda in 8 years? And instead meanwhile overshadowing what they showed by announcing a game that hasn't even begun development and who's would be creator doesn't even know why they announced the game? That doesn't make any sense.

It doesn't add up with what they've done in the past. I don't know why, whether its because they're overwhelmed by having to deal with managing more accurate motion controls with the motion plus thing, and with 3D, and with working on Wii U's hardware or what, but there is a big dent lately in their output and it doesn't seem to be ending anytime soon console wise.

so you think that releasing a Zelda HD trailer while trying to promote Skyward Sword would have been a good thing?

They're focusing on casuals again with the new controller. that's Nintendo's biggest audience nowadays, and they have to sell the wii U to them first

 

[TheNatural]

so you think that releasing a Zelda HD trailer while trying to promote Skyward Sword would have been a good thing?

They're focusing on casuals again with the new controller. that's Nintendo's biggest audience nowadays, and they have to sell the wii U to them first

So ... they show a render instead? They still showed something, what's the difference? Obviously if there was a real HD Zelda decently in development, it would have been shown, and from various comments its not. And I mean at E3 2009 they showed off two Mario's, its not like one overshadowed the other either.

Doesn't add up or make sense. If you had a real Zelda to show, you don't show off a render of what the next one "may" look like. If you had some real games deep in development to show, you don't have incomplete development kits, and don't announce games that even the creator hasn't even started yet. The question is why they don't have this stuff ready, they haven't released anything lately. Where 3rd parties are with knowledge on this and where they are with what they have to show of their titles, this point should have been reached 6, 8 months ago. It's not like they're coming out with all kinds of crap that has occupied their time in a huge way. What the hell have they been doing?

 

[sarusama]

Does anyone think that the HD4000 variant rumor might of been just for the Dev kits? The R700 series uses 5 vliw's, while the HD6000 uses 4, what this basically means, is that you get more efficient shaders, hd4000 800SP's is about equal to 640SP's from HD6000...

The more I hear about this GPU, the more I think it's a highly modified fusion part which would be based on HD6000, not HD4000, 640SP R700 series, would be about the same as Trinity's 480SP, which makes a whole lot of sense with the wattage and size of the console.
Quick reference to compare SP's, you take the numbers of SP's, and divide by the number of Vliw's, 640/5 and 480/4 which is 128 and 120 respectfully.

The HD6000 series would have been known about at AMD 3 years ago, so they would be customized parts and Nintendo's team will have modified it as well.

This solves the Wattage / Size of console, Fusion with an IBM CPU could easily fit into an 80Watt system.

Sorry to put you on the spot there z0m3le, but your post is another example of why parsing these threads for information is difficult. I understand that you might not be a native english speaker and that that could factor into it. However:

VLIW stands for Very Long Instruction Word. It refers to a processor technology aimed at enabling parallel instruction execution using a Multiple Instructions Multiple Data (MIMD) paradigm (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very_long_instruction_word for a start). Saying that a chip is 5 vliws or 4vliws doesn't make much sense. Does 5 and 4 refer to the number of "vliw" units or the width of the long instruction word? If I assume the numbers refer to the width of the word, i.e., 5 or 4 instructions in one cycle, you could be right with your efficiency statement in the case that compilers are not able to utilize the extra instruction in the 5-case (compilers have to generate an instruction flow that can be spread across the n-words of the vliw, which highly depends on the serial dependencies of the computation being done). In that case you'd have wasted/underutilized resources, and yes 4 might be more efficient. But if the number reflects the width of the vliw that also means that in theory:

HD4000 can do 800 x 5 = 4000 instructions per clock
HD6000 can do 640 x 4 = 2560 instructions per clock

I guess I must not be understanding something right. Could you clarify why dividing the number of SPs by the width of the word means anything?

 

[Anasui Kishibe]

So ... they show a render instead? They still showed something, what's the difference? Obviously if there was a real HD Zelda decently in development, it would have been shown, and from various comments its not. And I mean at E3 2009 they showed off two Mario's, its not like one overshadowed the other either.

Doesn't add up or make sense. If you had a real Zelda to show, you don't show off a render of what the next one "may" look like. If you had some real games deep in development to show, you don't have incomplete development kits, and don't announce games that even the creator hasn't even started yet. The question is why they don't have this stuff ready, they haven't released anything lately. Where 3rd parties are with knowledge on this and where they are with what they have to show of their titles, this point should have been reached 6, 8 months ago. It's not like they're coming out with all kinds of crap that has occupied their time in a huge way. What the hell have they been doing?

the something they showed was a tech demo, something to make people go wooh at U's graphical capabilities. We will almost certainly never see that game, the next Zelda will have a different style (but if we did, I'd be the happiest man in town)...and how do you think some people would react at the announcement of Zelda HD with such graphics? They'd immediately call SS graphics a piece of shite and avoid the game


Nintendo wanted the conference primarly focused on the new controller, because moms and uncles don't give a shit about Darksiders 2 looking coo,, they want to see that wacky thing and think "ooooo"
I'll give you this: they should have never announced the U at this E3, because between SS and the 3DS they had to promote a lot of things. Announce it in October with a proper game footage, proper demo stations and you'd have saved all the crap we're still talking about today

 

[z0m3le]

I guess I must not be understanding something right. Could you clarify why dividing the number of SPs by the width of the word means anything?

You probably know more about it then I do, when coding at a low level, you might be able to use all 5 units, but on PC's, VLIW4's seem to be more efficient.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4455/amds-graphics-core-next-preview-amd-architects-for-compute/2

If I'm wrong, I wouldn't be too surprised but if the HD6970 is simply faster than the HD5870 with 64less SP's; then a dev kit with an R700 640SP would translate well into a final unit being HD6000 trinity based with 480SP. Though I get most of my information on GPUs from Anandtech, and not from personal knowledge, which is of course why I asked what others thought.

Edit: http://www.anandtech.com/show/4061/amds-radeon-hd-6970-radeon-hd-6950/4
the review of the HD6900 series goes over the history of VLIW5 and why they changed to VLIW4, it could only be that it helps with Direct X API, which might not matter, but then again, if ports for devs are any concern, VLIW4 would most likely be what xbox next uses as well.

 

[TheNatural]

the something they showed was a tech demo, something to make people go wooh at U's graphical capabilities. We will almost certainly never see that game, the next Zelda will have a different style (but if we did, I'd be the happiest man in town)...and how do you think some people would react at the announcement of Zelda HD with such graphics? They'd immediately call SS graphics a piece of shite and avoid the game


Nintendo wanted the conference primarly focused on the new controller, because moms and uncles don't give a shit about Darksiders 2 looking coo,, they want to see that wacky thing and think "ooooo"
I'll give you this: they should have never announced the U at this E3, because between SS and the 3DS they had to promote a lot of things. Announce it in October with a proper game footage, proper demo stations and you'd have saved all the crap we're still talking about today

That's ridiculous. Your explanation makes no sense that if they hypothetically had something in development for Wii U with Zelda (which they obviously don't right now in any heavy form), that they would avoid a game coming out in 3 months for a game that would be 2 years away or so.

And Zelda isn't even the point, forget Zelda - its showing anything PERIOD. You're going to tell me something isn't up when there's going to be about two years and Nintendo is only releasing TWO real console games internally? Compare that to the N64 to Gamecube transition I mentioned before. It's ridiculous. What the hell are they doing that they only had Kirby's Epic Yard since SMG2 and in the next year they only have Skyward Sword?

 

[BurntPork]

Does anyone think that the HD4000 variant rumor might of been just for the Dev kits? The R700 series uses 5 vliw's, while the HD6000 uses 4, what this basically means, is that you get more efficient shaders, hd4000 800SP's is about equal to 640SP's from HD6000...

The more I hear about this GPU, the more I think it's a highly modified fusion part which would be based on HD6000, not HD4000, 640SP R700 series, would be about the same as Trinity's 480SP, which makes a whole lot of sense with the wattage and size of the console.
Quick reference to compare SP's, you take the numbers of SP's, and divide by the number of Vliw's, 640/5 and 480/4 which is 128 and 120 respectfully.

The HD6000 series would have been known about at AMD 3 years ago, so they would be customized parts and Nintendo's team will have modified it as well.

This solves the Wattage / Size of console, Fusion with an IBM CPU could easily fit into an 80Watt system.

Only the high-end 6000 cards (6950/70/90) use the VLIW4 arch. the rest all use VLIW5.

Trinity APUs will use VLIW5.

 

[Anasui Kishibe]

That's ridiculous. Your explanation makes no sense that if they hypothetically had something in development for Wii U with Zelda (which they obviously don't right now in any heavy form), that they would avoid a game coming out in 3 months for a game that would be 2 years away or so.

And Zelda isn't even the point, forget Zelda - its showing anything PERIOD. You're going to tell me something isn't up when there's going to be about two years and Nintendo is only releasing TWO real console games internally? Compare that to the N64 to Gamecube transition I mentioned before. It's ridiculous. What the hell are they doing that they only had Kirby's Epic Yard since SMG2 and in the next year they only have Skyward Sword?

what doesn't make sense here is the fact that Nintendo would promote TWO mainline Zelda games..heck, no company would do that

that's why i said they should never have showed the U at this E3. But their goal was to make the casuals drool, because that's who bought the Wii