ProfessorMoran
Member
Cross-gen titles will dry up and it'll leave the wiiU in an even more difficult position to get third party software because it's just not capable compared to the next gen consoles.
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Secret Developers, The Wii U story - Digital Foundry Series
- Thread starter hesido
- Start date
KillerDark
Member
Bad choice by Nintendo to make it that different. Sounds like it takes significant effort to port a game to WiiU and you probably aren't going to see a profit from it...
efyu_lemonardo
May I have a cookie?
This isn't accurate. Nintendo deeply appreciate aesthetics, and not exclusively from a functional point of view.
But they are financially conservative when it comes to hardware and software development.
The interesting thing is most of their own Wii games and even many Gamecube games look pretty great when rendered at higher resolutions and with improved iq, and based on comments in the Dolphin thread those improvements alone would make a lot of gamers very happy.
Omegasquash
Member
That article was a read and a half, and very telling. Nintendo made some bad choices, and it's hurting them in the short term and long run.
The article should have been named differently: Launch game woes, Wii U edition. Or something. It was presented in a fairly inflammatory way and eaten up by people who fail to make the distinction that the situation changed very shortly after launch.
Thank you for pointing this out. I was gonna respond to the same post but I would've started with "horsepoop" and then just closed the window.
prag16
Banned
Yeah, that was the one main "positive" thing that came out of this. Many people had been running with that "bandwidth starved" theory for quite a while.
We had already had other devs contradict that. But this should pretty much put that concern to rest once and for all.
Zombie James
Banned
Shit, is this really how they starting pitching the thing to third parties? Yikes.
Bingo!
OG_Original Gamer
Member
Sorry I'm late, but yeah I saw that later. I read the entire article and don't know how I missed that.
Mental Atrophy
Banned
flatearthpandas
Member
I would guess that the tools and documentation changes often enough it may seem a waste to pay people to continously translate things in real time that may not be useful later. But yes you would think around the time dev kits are going out, you might want to get started on that. But then, they probably do. Translation is a pretty lengthy process that generally goes through several stages. Its possible they wanted to get the dev kits out as soon as the hardware was ready, while documentation was still in translation.
Not saying this is what happened or even that that would be the best plan, but the language thing isn't as unthinkable as people try to make it out. Also, I think many people here would be very surprised at how messy translation can be from even the largest international corporations from all around the globe.
It would not surprise me. We have to understand - Nintendo puts hardware power up there on the level of consideration as the quality of cardboard to use for their packaging boxes. It has a small effect on the overall perception of the purchase but no way is hardware power in the same universe of consideration as the other goals Nintendo have. Namely price (They fucked that up), uniqueness of the controller, running cool and quiet, being small, and overall just "being different".
Top that off with being rather Japan-centric means they seem to completely feel at ease telling everyone this and being confused when developers in the West go "Err, no thanks - you guys are mad"
Apophis2036
Banned
Shit, is this really how they starting pitching the thing to third parties? Yikes.
Haha !, perfect Gif for that bolded statement. It really is incredible if true but it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest because it's Nintendo.
He doesn't go into specifics, but Dodger (former Ratchet and Clank/Skylanders developer) says the report is based on dated information.
Even so... that doesn't paint the system in any better light. In fact it explains some of the system's biggest failings, and the fact that they still had this mentality so late into developing the hardware and OS still makes them look incredibly behind-the-times
Apophis2036
Banned
I found your cardboard comment incredibly funny :-D but is it really fair ?. Iwata said around launch that because they chose to go with a system with a second screen they would have to balance the hardware with the controller or it's cost would have been astronomical.
Out of interest for you personally, If they had made WiiU as powerful as Xbone would you have paid $500 for it, I would have but they were going for the mass market.
HiredN00bs
Member
Saying the information is dated is basically a confirmation (i.e., yes this did happen some time ago). We already knew it was dated because he's talking about a launch Wii U game which necessarily launched more than a year ago.He doesn't go into specifics, but Dodger (former Ratchet and Clank/Skylanders developer) says the report is based on dated information.
If they hadn't spent so much time focusing on a low power-consumption, small-size console with their custom chipset, you don't think they could've alleviated some of the cost?
Apophis2036
Banned
Of course, I just wondered if Azak would have been prepared to spend $500 on a Nintendo system if it had been as powerful as Xbone with the tablet controller.
I think the main reason they used that chipset was to make it as easy as possible for their internal teams to graduate to HD development. Going from SD to HD while learning a whole new architecture would have been incredibly difficult and even more time consuming which would have made the software delays even worse than they are now.
Not if they planned appropriately and didn't rely so heavily on their own games and instead created a platform for third parties. They could create the great looking games. Nintendo should have concentrated on making their current output literally just 1080p, their games have the kind of art design that you don't need incredibly sophisticated HD graphics.
But oh well, that's a hypothetical that we will never experience.
From a developer's perspective, this thing is practically a new architecture. It has a many-core OoO-CPU vs. a single-core In-Order-CPU and a completely new GPU. I'd guess that the main reason for keeping the PowerPC ISA and some parts of the Wii GPU is backwards compatibility and little else.
The low power consumption and need to want it quiet so it can go in the living room is baffling. First of all its not that quiet and secondly the wii u isn't even really positioned to be a device in the living room.
The media capabilities are poor, no dvd / blueray playback, no movie or music rental options yet Nintendo said this must be able to go in the living room?
Start making consoles which teenage boys and young men want to use in there bedroom. Focus on that!!
The media capabilities are poor, no dvd / blueray playback, no movie or music rental options yet Nintendo said this must be able to go in the living room?
Start making consoles which teenage boys and young men want to use in there bedroom. Focus on that!!
And then only teenage boys will buy software for it. Marginalizing your market isn't smart. Not even Sony does that.
Wonderful 101 says hi
Not good enough. When people mention new IP they mean Mario/Zelda/DK caliber.
Wonderful 101 is like Z tier IP. Sorry folks.
PdotMichael
Banned
Z was a pretty funny strategy game. Please, no bashing.
have you seen X? if you dont think its not a good hd game i dont know what is.
That's not a ridiculous standard at all. "Not good enough. It has to be atleast among the most influential and iconic game franchises since the 80's."
Shin Johnpv
Member
Mario, Zelda, and DK didn't emerge as giant OMFG IPs. They became them over time. Every IP has to start some where.
Herb Alpert
Banned
But no, Nintendo must deliver a new IP that is instantly a multi-million seller. Or they are doomed.
Flipper, Broadway and Espresso are all OoO. The only known differences between the three, clocks aside, is that Espresso is multicore, has more L2 cache with a different cache coherency protocol, and a new bus.
If it is not a shooter it is not considered new IP.
Edit: but Nintendo is stupid. There are so many new ideas in Mario 3d World, they should have made a couple of new IPs from them, because anyhow nothing beats Mario nostalgia (known also as why isn't Mario the same it used to be, why change?).
Edit: but Nintendo is stupid. There are so many new ideas in Mario 3d World, they should have made a couple of new IPs from them, because anyhow nothing beats Mario nostalgia (known also as why isn't Mario the same it used to be, why change?).
Their first games were all huge hits and critically acclaimed. W101, nope.
Random Anonymous 3rd Party Developer says Wii U is hard to Develop for, Renegade Kid says no its not
http://playeressence.com/random-ano...-to-develop-for-renegade-kid-says-no-its-not/
Shinen Multimedia Responds to the Wii U Euroclickbait
http://playeressence.com/shinen-multimedia-responds-to-the-wii-u-euroclickbait/
Eurogamers Anonymous Wii U Dev Article Confirmed Clickbait by a REAL Wii U Developer
http://playeressence.com/eurogamers...onfirmed-clickbait-by-a-real-wii-u-developer/
Anonymous Wii U Developer Complaints based on Pre-Retail SDK, no More Difficult than Rivals, devs say
http://playeressence.com/anonymous-...l-sdk-no-more-difficult-than-rivals-devs-say/
Former Resistance & Skylanders Developer says Nintendo made the Wii U easy to Developer for
http://playeressence.com/former-res...intendo-made-the-wii-u-easy-to-developer-for/
Platinum Games Hideki Kamiya says the Wii U is not Harder to Develop for than PS3/Xbox 360
http://playeressence.com/platinum-g...s-not-harder-to-develop-for-than-ps3xbox-360/
http://playeressence.com/random-ano...-to-develop-for-renegade-kid-says-no-its-not/
Shinen Multimedia Responds to the Wii U Euroclickbait
http://playeressence.com/shinen-multimedia-responds-to-the-wii-u-euroclickbait/
Eurogamers Anonymous Wii U Dev Article Confirmed Clickbait by a REAL Wii U Developer
http://playeressence.com/eurogamers...onfirmed-clickbait-by-a-real-wii-u-developer/
Anonymous Wii U Developer Complaints based on Pre-Retail SDK, no More Difficult than Rivals, devs say
http://playeressence.com/anonymous-...l-sdk-no-more-difficult-than-rivals-devs-say/
Former Resistance & Skylanders Developer says Nintendo made the Wii U easy to Developer for
http://playeressence.com/former-res...intendo-made-the-wii-u-easy-to-developer-for/
Platinum Games Hideki Kamiya says the Wii U is not Harder to Develop for than PS3/Xbox 360
http://playeressence.com/platinum-g...s-not-harder-to-develop-for-than-ps3xbox-360/
GFLOPS and DMIPS are theoretical figures, they don't really tell you much about real world performance. They don't take the overall architecture or potential bottlenecks into account. On top of that, the figures don't even tell you which operations a system supports. For example, "5*5" is one operation, and so is "5+5". But if a chip can only add, not multiply, it has to do "5+5+5+5+5" to compute "5*5" and is really several times slower, yet the "ops per second" performance figure is the same on paper.
True, I stand corrected.
I still wonder why they valued backwards compatibility so much that they kept the processor family. Not only do I think that backwards compatibility is generally overrated, especially in the case of the Wii's library with only relatively few memorable games, but Nintendo could have re-released easy ports of the Wii's best titles (SMG1/2, TLoZ:SS, Metroid Prime 3, etc.) on the eShop had they changed the CPU entirely.
I'm taking some issue with a dev whistleblower to be referred to as clickbait, when it's what's sorely missing from games journalism; insiders breaking NDA and PRspeak.
Of course it's kicking a console when it's down and especially by DF, who exist to kick anyone down that makes their job harder of a sell, but still.
Of course it's kicking a console when it's down and especially by DF, who exist to kick anyone down that makes their job harder of a sell, but still.
Maybe it just had more to do with their preexisting deal with IBM and R&D costs.
It's a very simple and efficient architecture. Nintendo probably figured that dedicated vector units (VMX/ SSE) or 64bit support would be a waste of die space, and for everything else, the ppc750 holds up very well to this day. I mean, the system has less than 4GB RAM, so 64bit support would indeed be pretty much pointless (and the ppc750 has a 36bit memory controller anyway, so there is no 4GB limit to begin with), and there's probably a reason they always highlighted GPGPU and hired a lot of GPGPU and heterogenous computing guys over the last two years. If a GPU is better at physics or pathfinding than a CPU anyway, why bother?
So, with two consoles out there basically the same, and one different, your solution is having three consoles basically the same? Aren't two enough?
Smiles and Cries
Member
that website needs another news story or an update to save some credibility here
ab.aeterno
Member
You're right, PlayerEssence does need to get back some credibility. It's not often you see, in the same post, a frothing-at-the-mouth condemnation of an article for being poor journalism and then post like you're a member of GameFAQs:
PlayerEssence said:
That's fucking embarrassing to read.
BlockheadBrown
Member
Eurogamer and DF have become embarrassments. Nice work, guys. Good luck with the mess you've created.