Wii U Speculation Thread The Third: Casting Dreams in The Castle of Miyamoto

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Dem peniswatts...
 
The Wii brand name is associated with casual gamers and will not be taken serious by many hardcore gamers.

Hardcore gamers will just think "Oh god, not another Wii".

I think Nintendo needs to rebrand themselves and their image if they want to get the hardcore gamer market. A new name for their console would be the right direction.

You're right. I know Nintendo says otherwise, but I'm quite confident in saying that I really don't think they care about attracting the 360/PS3 market.

The truth is, though, that they don't need to.
 
I don't know if this has been posted already but still... anyways, Darksiders seems to be a day 1 game for the wii U and they are actually trying to improve the core game using the tablet features

That's been very interesting to see what those guys are doing, and they're making efforts to make sure we do use it in more than a slapdash way. It's basically the core game, but then with added abilities to do certain things that you can't do on the other consoles.
One of the things that we did, when we were originally going to show it off, was that you could equip stuff directly. So, for instance, I could be running along and I could click on another piece and I could put it on as I'm running through the game. That's huge, it's not breaking up the game in a way, I'm not going into a menu and assigning it, I'm literally just tapping as I'm playing.
We're not basically heavily changing the core game to support the control system, but the control system will be an enhancement of the core game.

Source: nintendo life

Ignore if old, etc
 
About the name of the console, do you guys really think the audience the other consoles get much more of would be attracted to ANY console with the Nintendo name in it or attached to it???

After the perception of the company fopr some time???

Yeah, Wii carries that stigma with its concept and lack of power, etc... but I personally don't think any name that is attached to Nintendo would sway people much more.

Maybe the Nintendo BeerSlutBanger.
 
The Wii brand name is associated with casual gamers and will not be taken serious by many hardcore gamers.

Hardcore gamers will just think "Oh god, not another Wii".

I think Nintendo needs to rebrand themselves and their image if they want to get the hardcore gamer market. A new name for their console would be the right direction.


define "hardcore gamers"
 
Yeah, gaming journalism is dead. Barely any of the major gaming sites and blogs could be described as actually participating in journalism. What they write has less to do with informing us about our hobby and more to do with trying to impress the reader with how jaded and dismissive they can act. This blasé, self-entitled attitude has bred a generation of "hardcore" gamers who have little appreciation for what constitutes good game design or graphics, let alone the incredible amount of work that goes into making games. They think that just as long as a console has the "power to handle them", tons of incredibly life-like games will just magically appear, and studios won't go bankrupt in the process. Thanks, gaming media - way to keep people's expectations in check.

Well honestly i think it's the other way around.
The jaded fanboys have always been around. Even back in the print magazine days they -the magazines- figured out it's way easier to get the money out of insecure teenage pockets by spewing hate and acting cool and aloof than by actual journalism (let's be honest, does that make the big bucks anywhere compared to sensationalist press?).
Obviously we gaffers stand above this, cheers, a fellow GAF fellow


You're right. I know Nintendo says otherwise, but I'm quite confident in saying that I really don't think they care about attracting the 360/PS3 market.

The truth is, though, that they don't need to.

Depends on what you define as the PS360 crowd. Nintendo used to have a large percentage of them in the past and for sure there is still a sizeable overlap. What Nintendo may indeed not be after are the people that PS360 brought in by wooing PC gamers and franchises over, that i'd readily agree with.
Nintendo always seemed to keep their very 'japanesey' outlook on gaming and that's what i love about 'em.
 
One of my sincerest wishes for gaming as a whole going forward is a re-evaluation as well as a step away from marketing terms like casual, core and hardcore gamers. That shit is poison for discussions.


You know the ninjas are coming for you now that you've leaked pics of the dev kit right? :P
 
Depends on what you define as the PS360 crowd. Nintendo used to have a large percentage of them in the past and for sure there is still a sizeable overlap. What Nintendo may indeed not be after are the people that PS360 brought in by wooing PC gamers and franchises over, that i'd readily agree with.

In real life, the PS360 crowd that I know simply consists of people who want to play games but have found that the games that get heavily advertised only appear on the PS3 or 360. That's it. They don't care about the screen resolution, they don't care about the graphical fidelity (excepting when a game is exceptionally "kiddified" when ported between systems), and they don't even care about online communities (except that apparently having Netflix can be a plus).

Simply having the games without them being dramatically gimped would help dramatically with this particular crowd.
 
Well honestly i think it's the other way around.
The jaded fanboys have always been around. Even back in the print magazine days they -the magazines- figured out it's way easier to get the money out of insecure teenage pockets by spewing hate and acting cool and aloof than by actual journalism (let's be honest, does that make the big bucks anywhere compared to sensationalist press?).
Obviously we gaffers stand above this, cheers, a fellow GAF fellow

Good point. There is a cyclical thing going on, too - a vicious circle of fanboyism between the gaming media and its audience, feeding off of itself and informing no one in the process. I'm just saying things have gotten especially bad in the past decade. It's like everybody in the media's got a chip on their shoulder about the Wii, as if it did something to offend them. Of course, had Nintendo gone the expensive HD route last time around, the gaming industry would be in piss-poor shape right now. That little white rectangle kept gaming afloat more than they'd like to admit.
 
Best you can come up with? and seeing as you have noway of knowing

No we do have ways of knowing. It's all well explained in the link I posted a few pages back.

Nintendo will be using 45nm fab, at least for the CPU, if MS launch next year they wouldn't be using a 45nm process, they would be using 28nm since this would be mature by the end of next year. You can look this up if you want, I'm not making this up. So even if the chips were the same size, MS and Sony would be able to pack more transistors into the same amount of silicon.

Learn about yields, fabrication processes, and the other things I mentioned before questioning someone's post.
 
In real life, the PS360 crowd that I know simply consists of people who want to play games but have found that the games that get heavily advertised only appear on the PS3 or 360. That's it. They don't care about the screen resolution, they don't care about the graphical fidelity (excepting when a game is exceptionally "kiddified" when ported between systems), and they don't even care about online communities (except that apparently having Netflix can be a plus).

Simply having the games without them being dramatically gimped would help dramatically with this particular crowd.

Oh i agree, i just think there is never a "PS360" crowd or even the "Wii Casual Gamer" to start with. Somebody on another forum once made a point about how the forum basically consisted of a lot of micro-communities that for the most part even never really interacted that much among themselves.
I feel gaming audiences are similar to these forum participants. The companies themselves are really more concerned to bring over specific audiences out of the huge amalgamation of gamers with completely different interests, and to do that you need the games in question.
Do you need a capable hardware to pull that off? Sure, you need at least a level high enough to run the software in a satisfying manner. But i think we don't have to look much farther than Vita and 3DS to see that gamers are willing to follow their franchises moreso than any perceived hardware capabilities (keeping in mind that 3DS can hold it's own atm against Vita, which we will see about the consoles).

Good point. There is a cyclical thing going on, too - a vicious circle of fanboyism between the gaming media and its audience, feeding off of itself and informing no one in the process. I'm just saying things have gotten especially bad in the past decade. It's like everybody in the media's got a chip on their shoulder about the Wii, as if it did something to offend them. Of course, had Nintendo gone the expensive HD route last time around, the gaming industry would be in piss-poor shape right now. That little white rectangle kept gaming afloat more than they'd like to admit.

Definitely so. Maybe things are escalating now that the prices went insanely high and people have to justify their purchase, maybe we just like to see things black/white more than ever, or maybe Nintendo made it just too easy to be attacked. It has been boggling my mind for years now. There has been some nice discussion on journalists' and devs' preconceptions (or rather, if they exist and if everyone is out to harp on Nintendo), think i remember charlequin being a spearhead of GAF discussion there.
 
the stigma is within the name Nintendo, it will not make too much difference change the name.

geez, I don't think that Nintendo has a chance with the core market, heck not even Kojima-Crystal Dynamics think it will.
 
No we do have ways of knowing. It's all well explained in the link I posted a few pages back.

Nintendo will be using 45nm fab, at least for the CPU, if MS launch next year they wouldn't be using a 45nm process, they would be using 28nm since this would be mature by the end of next year. You can look this up if you want, I'm not making this up. It easily boils down to one simple question: Do you see the PS4 or 720 being as small as the Wii-U? If the answer is no, then there's no way the Wii-U can equal the other 2 in power.

Learn about yields, fabrication processes, and the other things I mentioned before questioning someone's post.

lol you think the size of a console will tell witch one of them better? yeah clear you dont know what you talking about, And yeah they will come out a year later I'am not saying the Wii U will out power them I'am saying they will be close and alike with only a year apart they not going to be a big jump like we had with Wii and 360

Any console game that come out later will always be a little better but that nothing to do with size lol its what you do with it all and how well it all go together, with the type of games next gen will be seeing what what they need

ps they dont really use duck tape you know?
 
lol you think the size of a console will tell witch one of them better? yeah clear you dont know what you talking about, And yeah they will come out a year later I'am not saying the Wii U will out power them I'am saying they will be close and alike with only a year apart they not going to be a big jump like we had with Wii and 360

Any console game that come out later will always be a little better but that nothing to do with size lol its what you do with it all and how well it all go together, with the type of games next gen will be seeing what what they need

I edited my previous post because honestly it didn't make sense in a way (sorry at work so my thoughts aren't always clear).

Also, yes it does make a difference. Did you even read the link I posted?

Crucially, we also know how big the Wii U is, and it's a hell of a lot smaller than either Slim rendition of the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Why is this important? It's simple: typically, the more power you're packing, the bigger the case of the machine and the meatier its cooling assembly.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/digitalfoundry-in-theory-can-wii-u-offer-next-gen-power

Read the whole thing, it does a good job describing how fabrication process and console size can effect how powerful the chips can be.

All things being equal, as in the same fab process, the bigger the chip, the more transistors you can pack, thus the more performance you will get.
 
At this point, I'm only concerned about Wii U's CPU/GPU capabilities to the extent that they might impact third-party support. As long as it runs UE4, albeit with a few less graphical bells and whistles than PS4/Xbox 3, I don't really care how big the performance delta is.
 
Crucially, we also know how big the Wii U is, and it's a hell of a lot smaller than either Slim rendition of the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Why is this important? It's simple: typically, the more power you're packing, the bigger the case of the machine and the meatier its cooling assembly.

Are people paid for this?
 
We already went through the whole console size debate last year. The reasons you can't directly compare the size of the Wii with the Wii U include the larger rear fan, the additional side fan, the lack of Gamecube hardware (controller plugs and memory slots), and the efficiency of modern CPU/GPUs compared to Wii's late 90's tech. It's apples to oranges. Also directly comparing the size of a console with Nintendo's notoriously streamlined and practical design philosophy with one using Sony and MS's throw-everything-we-can-into-a-box philosophy is a lost cause.
 
At this point, I'm only concerned about Wii U's CPU/GPU capabilities to the extent that they might impact third-party support. As long as it runs UE4, albeit with a few less graphical bells and whistles than PS4/Xbox 3, I don't really care how big the performance delta is.

It's stupid really. I don't really care about how powerful it is, as in my wanting to purchase it is pretty much unaffected by it. It's so important though because what Nintendo can't have is another scenario like with the Wii where they have to develop for 3.5 systems at the end of the generation, obviously one is going to fall off the truck there. That's why i just can't fathom the gap to be so significant in the end. That can't possibly in the plans of anyone at the big N.
 
I only posted it again to show jump_button that he doesn't have a clue to what he's talking about.

Size got nothing to do with anything more so now days everything getting smaller, they come along way from PS360 days PS4 could be tiny you don't know

saying something has to be bigger stupid
 
Apparently, people have no concept of heat dissipation or process technology.

Well I could have told you that man.

You're AlStrong! I'm disappointed.

edit: Ummm... jump unless you're being facetious I'd give up this point.

You're wrong. Personally I'm hoping for a slightly larger WiiU case. Closer to 360s size. Since I don't expect Durango/Fusion/Loop to be much larger than the 360s it's the only way I can explain this 20% gap that was being talked about last month.
 
I'm hoping the GPU will be on 28nm, I know that's not realistic but, it's a pipe-dream.
Nintendo could've upped the specs to be more competitive with XB3/PS4.
 
Thanks. In the Samaritan thread I mentioned that even with only a 25% reduction that would bring down the 1080p TFLOP requirement to ~1.9 TFLOPs. For 720p that would be ~830 GFLOPs. If 25% were true, then for Wii U a 720p Samaritan seems outside of my guessed range as I really don't see Nintendo going for the max of my range in both clock and ALUs, and that includes my take on AMD FLOPs. Now if you're saying the change to FXAA possibly has a greater than 25% reduction, then I'd be more willing to say a 720p/30 Samaritan is much more possible.

Only if Wii U had a Nvidia GPU right though BG? :D


He said the hardware was roughly on par from what he was told, but he also made it clear that he doesn't really understand that stuff and isn't involved in the actual technical, let alone platform specific development. It's all second hand and he's not a tech guy.

True, he's not in a position to mince whether the Wii U is 0% more powerful than PS360, 20% more, or 50% more. It seems clear it's not a generation leap though. I imagine MS and Sony breathe a sigh of relief (but no doubt they knew what Wii U was months or years ago), and Pachter was right.


I don't mind the Wii U not matching PS4/720.

But expect the console to receive a massive negative media backlash against them when developers complain about the console not being able to handle certain games.

That's what I'm afraid of.

I know the Wii U will have the games I want. I will buy the Wii U at launch regardless of the power and specs.

But does Nintendo really want a reputation that they always put out underwhelming hardware compared to their competitors? Do they really want a reputation like that to stick to them? It's fine to put out one underpowered console (Wii), but if you keep doing it, people will always expect you to put out weak consoles, and Nintendo will gain a reputation of being cheap.

Again, if the Wii U was literally a 360 with no extra ram (which we know isn't the case), I would still buy the Wii U.

But Nintendo needs to start worrying about its image.

At this point we'd probably be happy if Wii U was a stock 360 with 1GB of RAM instead of 512 LOL. That would be pretty nice.

I think the other thing this whole new hullballo indicates, is one of the difficulties I knew Wii U would face right along, even if it is lets say, 30% more powerful than current gen, all it's going to get are straight PS360 ports. Nobody is going to bother taking advantage of that 30% except Nintendo themselves (and they arent exactly know for cutting edge mature games anyway). For the same reason PC's, which are already 10X more powerful than current gen, usually just get quick minor upgrades at best from the console version. Wii U likely wont even get that, because 1.3X is a lot different than 10X. Another example here is the Xbox-PS2 era, where Xbox despite being maybe 2X PS2 imo, mostly just got a lot of PS2 ports with little difference.
 
define "hardcore gamers"

Today's definition seems to be "anyone who will play a casual game for many hours, but only if it's mature-themed (which makes it hardcore)". It also seems to me that those "hardcore games" are mostly first person shooters, like Call of Duty. So basically any 13-16 year old who can persuade his parents to buy him a 300$ toy (800$ if the toy is a PC and said hardcore gamer can pretend that he will learn programming on it).

Personally, I can't imagine a hardcore gamer judging a console by the fact that it has a certain name. That's just stupid. Only people with no knowledge whatsoever do that, how can you call them hardcore (to me, the term means people who follow gaming news, play any game they can for at least a while, etc.). However, it's probably also a fact that these people (teenagers with too much pocket money) are the majority of gamers nowadays. They don't have to go to work or care for children, so they have more time to play.
 
Only if Wii U had a Nvidia GPU right though BG? :D




True, he's not in a position to mince whether the Wii U is 0% more powerful than PS360, 20% more, or 50% more. It seems clear it's not a generation leap though. I imagine MS and Sony breathe a sigh of relief (but no doubt they knew what Wii U was months or years ago), and Pachter was right.




At this point we'd probably be happy if Wii U was a stock 360 with 1GB of RAM instead of 512 LOL. That would be pretty nice.

I think the other thing this whole new hullballo indicates, is one of the difficulties I knew Wii U would face right along, even if it is lets say, 30% more powerful than current gen, all it's going to get are straight PS360 ports. Nobody is going to bother taking advantage of that 30% except Nintendo themselves (and they arent exactly know for cutting edge mature games anyway). For the same reason PC's, which are already 10X more powerful than current gen, usually just get quick minor upgrades at best from the console version.
That ending is more than a little suspect man. Those PC games tend to run at much higher resolution with higher precision everything from shadows to lighting. They are crunching pixels neither the PS3 or 360 could attempt.
 
Well I could have told you that man.

You're AlStrong! I'm disappointed.

edit: Ummm... jump unless you're being facetious I'd give up this point.

You're wrong. Personally I'm hoping for a slightly larger WiiU case. Closer to 360s size. Since I don't expect Durango/Fusion/Loop to be much larger than the 360s it's the only way I can explain this 20% gap that was being talked about last month.

Well if the E3 cases really didn't have anything in them i don't think they should be too much of a discussion point right now.
 
Well if the E3 cases really didn't have anything in them i don't think they should be too much of a discussion point right now.

It does give us a barometer for what case size they are shooting for.

Last E3's case? It would gives a nice little powerhouse, but overall it would be much closer to the PS3 or 360 than away from them.

Unless Fusion is a relatively minor upgrade (of which almost all rumors point), in which case it might literally be smack dab in the middle.
 
Oh, and for the teasing part, i've already talked about that, it's just a way to spice up the thread while waiting for E3. And when i announce in advance that i'll say something, it's simply to avoid writing a 1 line message drowned in the middle of the 50th discussion about Retro (not criticizing this, as i love to participate, it's just that when people have some news that can nurture the speculation, it's better to emphasize them).

This is the kind of thing that bothers people.
- This thread needs no spicing. It's pretty crazy as it is.
- NO ONE is going to [purposely] ignore your [hypothetical] 1 liners if they contain any kind of useful/good/actual info (except the usual suspects, I guess).
- If you want to emphasize your news so it can get speculation going (something you love, apparently), just do it. No need to do useless and stupid teasing like this:

Expect a tiny bit of info (not a wall of text this time, maybe 2 or 3 sentences) regarding the dev kits, soon :p
Announcement of an announcement... nice :|

Other people who have shared info in this thread, even if it's only a tiny bit of vague info, don't to this.
And when you add all that with statements like this:


Because i like to monitor hypothetical discussion that can occur after my post, and right now, i don't have the time to do it. It's time-consuming to just catch-up (since thread 3) and read all the pages to be sure that eventual new infos haven't already been given :)

And it would be a waste to say it now, in the middle of a heated discussion regarding the Wii U power because of the Vigil statement. So i just warn in advance. And it's fun to tease as i explained, during this long wait until E3. It could be irritating if i made these announcements then disappear for days, but no, i'm here and i post the message in the end, so it's in a controlled fashion. If it build some anticipation amongst some, then i'm satisfied :)

Well, it just reeks of attention seeking.

And about: "It could be irritating if i made these announcements then disappear for days, but no, i'm here and i post the message in the end."
First you tease and days or weeks later you post the info... even if you don't disappear, the result is the same.

I just want to clarify this post of mine isn't about doubting your data or your credentials or your contacts, but about your posting style.
 
Happy to see that some gafers were defending the legitimacy of my information in my absence in answer to a doubtful post, i'm tired of doing it :p

Oh, and for the teasing part, i've already talked about that, it's just a way to spice up the thread while waiting for E3. And when i announce in advance that i'll say something, it's simply to avoid writing a 1 line message drowned in the middle of the 50th discussion about Retro (not criticizing this, as i love to participate, it's just that when people have some news that can nurture the speculation, it's better to emphasize them).

Expect a tiny bit of info (not a wall of text this time, maybe 2 or 3 sentences) regarding the dev kits, soon :p

By the way, these last pages are frightening, just calm down please. For the Vigil comment, a lot of gafers explained how someone from their studio can do such a statement. Read again my post concerning the resolution of third-parties "ports" in a specific situation, it will give also more hindsight about that.

how soon Ideaman...how soon?
 
...
It seems clear it's not a generation leap though.
...

That's not actually a thing.

Also, who's going to be funding these games that are leaps and bounds more complex and expensive than AAA PS360 titles already are? Will we see a lot of them? Do you think publishers are going to be taking a lot of risks with these games, going the unique yet unproven route? Or are they basically going to make prettier versions of the same stuff we've been playing for over a decade now? When is that ever going to get old?
 
Considering the small booth (412), I wonder what they will show. Could it be 3DS galore only or perhaps they are having a very limited amount of Wii U demo kiosks for people to bull rush their booth (like attendees did at E3 last year).

PAX East is a public event, the first one this year Nintendo is exhibiting at if I'm not mistaken. Regardless of Wii U's presence there, people will ask them (Kit Ellis perhaps?) questions and most likely are they gonna reply with "we can't answer that right now" if the system is not present... and most likely even if it is. Do we have any PAX goers in this thread?

Anyway, now we know at least they are exhibiting. PAX East takes place in Boston between April 6-8.

pax_east_2012_expo_mau3uho.png


Source: http://hw1.pa-cdn.com/pax/resources/PAX_East_2012_Expo_Map.pdf
 
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