Wii U Speculation Thread of Brains Beware: Wii U Re-Unveiling At E3 2012
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No it wouldn't. The "digital snap" is nothing more then a physical confirmation that the analogue button has been depressed 100%. Functionally, it's completely superfluous and any game that actually used them would work just as well with normal analogue triggers.
That being said, I'm pretty sure that if the rumour is true they will keep the snap (because, why not?), but it's hardly a necessity.
Anybody working in retail know how this works?
The came out on the 19th of November.
Are there any other times in the year that retailers prefer to receive new products?
Im still thinking Nintendo will repeat what they did with the Wii and release in November. maybe capitalizing on Black Friday to create scarcity hype.
The came out on the 19th of November.
Are there any other times in the year that retailers prefer to receive new products?
Im still thinking Nintendo will repeat what they did with the Wii and release in November. maybe capitalizing on Black Friday to create scarcity hype.
I dont find it unusual insofar as we have no idea when Power7 came into play into the specs of the WiiU. Could have been proposed after the devkits and targets boxes were already sent out. Could be that they weren't finished with designing the chip prior to sending out the devkits.
All I know is that we have hearsay and rumor vs press releases:
They link to this image (test chip)
http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/attachment/34681.wss?fileId=ATTACH_FILE2&fileName=diamonddie1.jpg
We all know what they are talking about here, the on chip L3 Cache.
Not external. Here is a paper on the subject
POWER7TM L3 CACHE and Beyond
http://www.cmoset.com/uploads/Toshiaki_Kirihata_2010.pdf
Fourth Storm
Member
You're definitely smart for taking a skeptical approach to all this. I just choose to entertain some of the specs that are being thrown around by the 2 or 3 trustworthy posters in here, because they seem to make a certain sense.
That being said, it doesn't make sense for Nintendo to have made a last-minute decision on the inclusion of Power7. Lherre has also said on here that while some things could still change (system RAM, clocks), most things are now set (such as eDRAM and cache).
And we don't really all know what they are talking about. Their press release is vague. They say merely that the CPU is "Power-based" and they never explicitly mention L3 cache. Now, even if you choose to ignore the rumors, common sense dictates that the chip IBM make for Wii U is going to be a "bastardization" of Power7. But compared to a bastardization of a Power6, that ain't bad. Some of Power7's features apparently have little benefit for gaming anyway.
Anyway, I did a little searching and came up with this:
http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2007/02/8842.ars
This describes eDRAM being used as L2 cache rather than L3 (it also seems to align with a quote from wsippel's source concerning a "metric ton" of L2 cache. The rumored 3 MB is quite a bit compared to the 360's 1 MB.)
This link also provides an interesting tidbit in that IBM claims its eDRAM is almost as fast as SRAM. The latency is also super-low at 1.5ns (the 1t-SRAM on flipper, for a comparison, has a latency of 6.2ns). So perhaps the 1t-SRAM has been surpassed on some fronts.
Thanks for your input. I don't think it's unnecessary, however, if it's being used as an I/O processor. The Playstation 2 did this with the PS1's cpu in order to achieve perfect BC while also performing a necessary function for the current system. The Wii U will need something like Starlet but probably much stronger. So they could choose a shrunken Broadway, which for this purpose is pretty powerful and also familiar, or they licence something from ARM, which will also come with a cost. Having Broadway on the GPU die also might line up with the rumors about a SoC from wsippel's source and would eliminate the need for some kind of bus which connects the Wii U cpu to the theoretical pool of eDRAM/1t-SRAM on the GPU for BC. When the system goes into Wii mode, it could pretty much shutdown the Wii U tri-core CPU completely and run everything off the GPU SoC. That's sheer speculation right there, but it seems to be a logical possibility.
There are some large potential benefits with the Wii hardware embedded. They could make an XCGPU like design and fit Hollywood, Broadway and 24+3MB 1T-SRAM on a single SoC. I'd imagine it would only consume ~5W tops on 45nm.
With it they can have:
- Broadway running OS functions, network functions, processing input data, all the light stuff you don't want the CPU context switching over
- Use the Hollywood framebuffer and optionally its processing power to render the tablet graphics, saving precious main GPU time
- Full non-emulated backwards compatibility with every Wii and GC game.
Having a Wii SoC in there could actually be really efficient if they use it well.
EatChildren
Currently polling second in Australia's federal election (first in the Gold Coast), this feral may one day be your Bogan King.
The only hardware I want in my Wii U is hardware built specifically for the system, optimised to run the OS and games only. The only way I'd want Broadway in is if it had a very real, logical and beneficial function to aid in running Wii U specific games.
Though I figure such benefits could come from different hardware at probably better clocks and with minimal, if any, price increase.
Simply put the only reason I could see Nintendo sticking Broadway in the Wii U is for Wii backwards compatibility, and I will happily have that removed in favour of a cheaper system that doesn't have junk crammed into it to appeal to people who want to buy new systems to play old games.
Though I figure such benefits could come from different hardware at probably better clocks and with minimal, if any, price increase.
Simply put the only reason I could see Nintendo sticking Broadway in the Wii U is for Wii backwards compatibility, and I will happily have that removed in favour of a cheaper system that doesn't have junk crammed into it to appeal to people who want to buy new systems to play old games.
Fourth Storm
Member
^ I don't think Hollywood is even necessary. The WiiU GPU should have no problem emulating it as long as that eDRAM is present. I also don't think there's going to be much going on as far as tablet graphics for most games, at least not when the tv is being used as themain display. And AMD has confirmed that the GPU is optimized for multiple displays. Everything else you said I agree with.
Regarding backward compatibility, how did the PS2 utilize upscaling in older games with its chip? I assume the other functions were present while in BC mode. Seeing how Wii did it's BC (relying completely on-chip and no high-level emulation and the fact you cannot even access the Wii's home menu), it seems at first WiiU won't probably upscale Wii games when in BC mode. Then again, the 3DS did have it's home menu available while playing DS games, so I'd reasonably assume they'd want some high-level emulation in there for sake of console accessibility considering one of the big draws for WiiU is being able to keep playing on the U Controller when the TV gets occupied.
I think blu mentioned somewhere that Hollywood's TEV units might not be completely emulatable (is that a word?) by shaders, because the TEV units do particular stuff more quickly than conventional shaders do. There's also some other hardwired effects in the Hollywood unit that might be hard to pull of in the exact same way using just shaders. Maybe the Wii U GPU has some modifications to its shader architecture that could make this work though. The original TEV designers work for AMD and Nintendo's R&D department.
Nintendo's approach to backwards compatibility has always been to just include the old hardware (GBC -> GBA, GBA->DS, GC->Wii) and I think it's because software emulation is never 100% perfect and a pain in the ass to maintain. Look at how MS did it with the 360 or the Sony mess with the PS3. Considering there's 80 million people that have bought all sorts of Wii games, much of it probably obscure crapware, that's consumer dissatisfaction they'll most likely want to avoid. I mean, even with the Game Boy Player they went the complex route and included the GBA chipset, even though the GBA is easy to emulate and the GameCube had plenty power to do it.
specialguy
Banned
The main thing it does is require the GPU it's connecting to, to be a certain size or larger, below which it cannot shrink. I want to say it's around 200 mm^2.
This may or may not be an issue initially, but it becomes one as you do process node shrinks to get smaller/cheaper chips later in the systems life.
It's basically why so many consoles feature EDRAM and no desktop graphics cards do.
It's pretty clearly one of, if not the, biggest console design issues imo. How you deal with it is one of the most fascinating questions to be answered about the next gen systems.
This past gen Xbox 360 dealt with it via EDRAM, and PS3 dealt with it by having two memory pools and two 128 bit busses to rsx. PS3 is still often bandwidth constrained though (it's the main reason you see low res effects particularly on PS3, though you commonly see them on both consoles. Take a close look at a grenade explosion in an Uncharted or killzone game and you will see it is blurry and low res http://www.tsurugi.co.uk/misc/ps3/uncharted/drakesfortune/screens/explosion1.jpg. Now play Crysis on a high end PC and see how glorious and full res the explosions and fire are http://www.4gamer.net/games/049/G004979/SS/021.jpg)
I dont think much of it applies to Wii U as I expect that to be pretty low powered.
That covered, as far as I know I've never heard 256 bit related to DDR3 at all. It's a GDDR thing. DDR3 uses 64 bit bus and that's it as far as I know, nothing else is mass produced. Their may be some exotic higher bandwidth DDR3 solutions, but again key is mass produced.
WrathOfOtaibah
Banned
Hey kids! Its WrathOfOtaibah up in this bitch 'bout to aks y'all some Q's, ya dig?
Well really just a Q or 2 but who's counting:
Seeing as this is a Re-Unveiling, what is suppose to be different this time around? Any chance that tabled gets its tea table upended? Will it be more powerful graphically?
Please and thank you!
Well really just a Q or 2 but who's counting:
Seeing as this is a Re-Unveiling, what is suppose to be different this time around? Any chance that tabled gets its tea table upended? Will it be more powerful graphically?
Please and thank you!
outunderthestars
Banned
I really don't want to wait until E3 to get a look at some actual first party Wii U games. 
Good point:
I got a sneaky suspicion that Nintendo will keep their TEV. Maybe update it for their own uses. I mean they have patents http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/6980218/claims.html
that are valid till 2020 that make use of the TEV. They probably have a library of effects they dont want to throw away.
no one knows, but why would you want the tablet cut other than i guess cost?
I don't think so, it can't be beneficial. Usage of TEVs and the fact that many developers simply could not use them already hurt them in the GameCube era. The TEV used in Flipper and Hollywood is also badly outdated and very limited in functionality if you compare it to what a modern shader unit can do. Therefore I don't think we'll see anything you can call a TEV unit in the new GPU, but maybe there are specific customizations that make shaders capable of mimicing some TEV properties. It's hard to imagine how it would help Nintendo to do something unusual again though.
Nintendo's library of effects should be binned anyway. Modern shaders are capable of much more, and even the 3DS shaders are more sophisticated than the Wii's shaders are.
"What is supposed to be different?"
It's not a "We screwed up, here's a new system" thing, it's a "Hey, now that it'll be out in a few months, here's more info on it and why you should buy it"
-Pyromaniac-
Member
So Nintendo said they are doing an achievement/trophy system for Wii-U right? Just curious.
As for what's different about this re-unveiling. I bet you they'll go out of their way to be 100% clear on things, they'll even show the "box" and explain stuff.
As for what's different about this re-unveiling. I bet you they'll go out of their way to be 100% clear on things, they'll even show the "box" and explain stuff.
According to wsippel, the dev kits are using an RV770LE and GDDR3 memory. That chip has a 256-bit bus. If both of you are correct, then it's safe to assume that the final unit will have a GPU with a 128-bit bus and GDDR5, wouldn't you agree?
Also, it should be noted that Nintendo rarely, if ever, takes advantage of die shrinks with consoles.
They haven't said anything about that.
I think Nintendo is mostly going to change the looks of the system. It didn't look very 'next-gen' or 'new' at E3 and adapted the Wii-style. Launching it in black instead of white would actually make it stand out a bit already. Other than that E3 is going to be all about the games. That for me is the most important part about this new Nintendo machine are they able to join the ranks of the other 'HD' game developers or are we looking at a rough start. Iwata said that the Zelda demo was proof that Nintendo could cope with the increased costs, richer assets and graphical effects but I feel like Nintendo underestimates what Sony and MS have done in the HD-space just like they underestimated what Nintendo had achieved with motion controls.
-Pyromaniac-
Member
ohh yeahh it was ubisoft who mentioned their game would have it so I guess I assumed they would use Nintendo's and not some kind of pointless separate system just for that game.
Yes. GDDR3 on a 256-bit bus makes no sense at all.
I really wonder if that RV770LE is still present in the current devkits. If final hardware isn't there yet, it means the Wii U announcement could've been a greater rush than expected...
lherre pretty much confirmed that the dev kits that got recently sent out had nothing new about them, so I'm guessing the RV770LE is still in place.
Also BP's last post brought up something pretty interesting with the 128 bit GDDR5 that makes me lean more to GDDR5 being in the system all thanks to the bus width talk from before. (128 bit GDDR5 = 256 bit GDDR3 at same clocks -> 256 bit complexity is pretty foreign for console board design -> potential for GDDR5 in final design moderately raised)
WrathOfOtaibah
Banned
I think it looks awful and uncomfortable, the screen is just too big and the "you can play anywhere else at home using the controller" gimmick doesn't appeal to me at all.
Oh so I guess its still a pass for me then.
Thanks for the help guys!
Every single person who used it at E3 said that it's comfortable. And they might change the look slightly anyway.
They're loads of Gamecube effects which we don't see in modern DX games. Especially the indirect texturing stuff that was rampant in Metroid Prime 2. Or the warping effects in Twilight Princess when you go to the other realm.
I'll just keep quoting myself until someone answers
Or you could go to youtube.com and type in Wii U games and see for yourself. Like Ghost Recon Online, Killer Freaks From Outer Space and all that Nintendo has tried to hide.
BlackNMild2k1
Member
Not exactly sure what you were trying to say there, but what are you expecting from a console controller? for it to suddenly be a portable game system too? That's a new standard that hasn't been required of all previous console controllers, so I'm not sure why it would start here.
I think he just means that he wants Nintendo to make a 100% traditional console (nothing more, nothing less) with a full gen graphical leap, and he's not interested if that's not exactly what Nintendo makes.
WrathOfOtaibah
Banned
Ummm no? You totally misread my comments dude. I'm not the biggest fan of portable gaming(I do like it though) and I want to keep it separate from console gaming.
Way to put words in my mouth there bub, while also trying to make it seem like I want something samey.
Look I'd be down for a controller with a multitouch screen that isn't too big on a traditional controller that has motion controls for and gameplay ideas(like in no more heroes where holding the controller up or down changes where the sword hits your enemies, but this time with added combos and such) and IR Pointer for aiming like in Twilight Princess.
And yes I want a graphical leap, I don't see why that's a bad thing at all. I understand why Nintendo had to skip the graphical leap with the Wii and at all, but now it really makes no sense not to, especially if they want to go for the "core gamers" this time around.
Hey duders, it ain't a problem if I don't like the direction for the Wii U. I find it funny that you can't understand why I wouldn't want it, I like Nintendo but this console doesn't really pull me in at all. Its cool if you guys want it though.
It makes no sense that they don't want to bleed money for 2-3 years? Also, isn't multitouch a "gimmick" too?
WrathOfOtaibah
Banned
It makes no sense for them to play catch up and claim to want to compete for the "core gamer" seriously. Man Nintendo doesn't feed your family or anything, and it doesn't feed mine, I just want this new upcoming console to be something I want, and you seem to have a problem with that.
Not having held the controller, I've mocked up 6.2" and to be honest I think that's kinda small. I wouldn't mind something a bit larger to reduce any potential detail loss.
I understand that, but I also understand that expectations have to be realistic. No, I'm in favor of simply playing catch-up. What I want is for Nintendo to aim for something like a half-gen leap (which should be enough for most ports), and have a lower price tag than the competition in return. Just being on-par is not acceptable, but a full leap isn't possible. i know that I have to either deal with that fact or ignore the console. I'm not a graphics whore, so it being noticeably better than the current-gen by any stretch is enough to make me happy as long as it's not overpriced. I'm just saying that you shouldn't be angry with Nintendo for not doing something completely unfeasible.
The low resolution should counteract that, though.
It's cool you know the direction they're taking this in, because we sure don't...
aesthetically sure, whatever floats your boat, but hands on impression say it's really comfortable.
and although i don't blame you cause the reveal was pretty bad, there's a lot more than just streaming away from the tv to it.
oh and no one has been pulled in by it because we know nothing about it, just potential.
-Pyromaniac-
Member
I personally don't give a flying fuck about ever streaming my game onto my goddamn controller but the other applications are pretty interesting. Would love if Resident Evil 6 which will inevitably come out for PS3/360/Wii-U(I hope) would let you manage your inventory on the screen and whatnot.
Capcom would have to be totally insane not to...........................
Okay, jury's still out.
It's because it's not the right thread for it. There is a reason this is a speculation thread, and it isn't to through our dreams in the wall and say "Yup, this is what Nintendo's next console will be. Because this is what I think it should be." That will only leave you in disappointment and will end up making your comments sound trollish.
This is about piecing together what little credible info we have to paint a picture on what WiiU can do. People here are ready to temper their expectations considering what happed to Wii after its unveiling.
WrathOfOtaibah
Banned
I would love a "dreamcast" myself, but the initial reveal made it look like a new 360
BlackNMild2k1
Member
re-reading your comment again, I think I know what you were saying now. You don't like the idea of playing the game off of the TV and being able to do it in the kitchen or bathroom.
But that is just one of the many uses as I'm sure you know. Personally I would love to be using my Wii U to watch Netflix and then decide that I can continue my movie/show uninterrupted in the bathroom by just moving the content to the controller.
Or if I was in the middle of Metroid U and someone wanted to watch the MTV movie awards... I could just move my game in progress to the controller and go about my business almost uninterrupted. Then when they are done, I can switch back to the big screen.
I see lots of potential in the idea, but I don't think the in home portable-ness will detract from the games themselves, so I don't see why there would be a real issue with it.
You mean the one where they showed pretty much nothing representative of its power?
Also, look at the Ghost Recon vid and see if you're still against the screen.
That's the thing. As some people have pointed out for some genres the tablet probably won't be a game changer (fighting games for example) but in those cases I don't see the rest of the controller's design DETRACTING from those games. It just looks like gamers will have more options than ever and for many genres the controller is HUGELY superior. I think that was the one fatal flaw with "core" gamers with the Wiimote. Yes it's great for many genres of games, but it never really felt like a satisfying answer to use a classic controller for games the Wiimote was not suitable for. I don't see the same issues with the UPad.
WrathOfOtaibah
Banned
But what about if the screen was important for the game, and now you take out what could potentially be a big feature so that you can play it somewhere else or watch tv at the same time. Just sounds clumsy to me.
And I saw the Ghost Recon thing. The screen has potential but I still think multitouch + making it smaller and more comfortable is a priority.
There has been absolutely NO indication from ANYONE who has held it that it is uncomfortable. In light of that I don't see a reason to make it smaller either. Size is an advantage as long as it is ergonomic.
BlackNMild2k1
Member
If you take the game to the controller then it would just play like the PS360 version where you need to pause or use an in-game menu to get to the other options. If you are gonna decide "well, whats the point of that", then just play it on the big screen like it was intended.
and the screen on the controller isn't as big as you seem to be making it out to be and the controller, from all hands-on reports, is really comfortable already.
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