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Frostbite Technical Director on why Frostbite never came to Wii U

F

frankie_baby

Member
lwilliams3 said:
http://www.ign.com/videos/2013/05/06/9-minutes-of-shadow-of-the-eternals

Even before this, it was stated that Cry Engine 3 was running on the Wii U, and that Crysis 3 was near completion before EA decided not to release it.

The biggest issue that Wii U has right now is its sales, and we will see if Nintendo can turn that around within the few months.
Click to expand...

its a shame crysis 3 never got released on wii u as it would have silenced the small but vocal community that still believe the wii u might not be able to run the engine and it almost certainly would have sold better than mass effect 3 would have done so even if the EA fall out hasnt happened would have made more business sense


edit - i do remember reading somewhere (possibly off someone on here) that EA had a contract with nintendo (possibly in exchange for marketing support) to release 2 core games in the lauch window so thats what we got
 
L

LCGeek

formerly sane
SirIgbyCeaser said:
This has not been proven yet. Its just been announced. The call of duty devs and activision are pissed about their wii-u build and its corresponding sales. No cryengine game has been announced for the wii-u, cryengine also claims to support the vita.
Click to expand...

Have you been under a rock and ignoring certain WiiU topics?

frankie_baby said:
its a shame crysis 3 never got released on wii u as it would have silenced the small but vocal community that still believe the wii u might not be able to run the engine and it almost certainly would have sold better than mass effect 3 would have done so even if the EA fall out hasnt happened would have made more business sense
Click to expand...

Unlikely most of these companies don't want to take the risk of a port and it not selling enough. If they aren't silenced by this point they won't be and are doing it primarily for one reason. Just remember the some of same people crying about nintendo hate PS4 topics when the pc types flood in to shut them up.
 
S

shinra-bansho

Member
It's not the hardware.

Except it is.

Even setting aside the difficulty in porting an engine to significantly weaker hardware than the ideal, when it comes into installed base, audience and potential ROI considerations; the hardware plays a role front and center in business considerations and expectations.

If you release hardware with comparable performance to much older hardware that people already own or can purchase much more easily - then that colours expectations in terms of prospective userbase and potential software sales performance.
 
J

JordanLMiller

Member
When will we ever hear if the origin on wii u stuff was actually true? That story still sounds weird to me, but ea has been pretty unsupportive since launch...
 
W

wsippel

Banned
LCGeek said:
Unlikely most of these companies don't want to take the risk of a port and it not selling enough. If they aren't silenced by this point they won't be and are doing it primarily for one reason. Just remember the some of same people crying about nintendo hate PS4 topics when the pc types flood in to shut them up.
Click to expand...
Crytek wanted to release Crysis 3 on Wii U, probably as advertisement for CryEngine 3, but EA didn't want to publish it. And that's not a rumor:

We did have Crysis 3 running on the Wii U. We were very close to launching it. But there was a lack of business support between Nintendo and EA on that. Since we as a company couldn’t launch on the Wii U ourselves — we don’t have a publishing license — Crysis 3 on Wii U had to die.
Click to expand...
http://venturebeat.com/2013/03/01/crytek-chief-puts-on-his-warface-interview/#M77lFFjqdL5fw2rX.99
 
F

frankie_baby

Member
JordanLMiller said:
When will we ever hear if the origin on wii u stuff was actually true? That story still sounds weird to me, but ea has been pretty unsupportive since launch...
Click to expand...

i guess it depend mainly on what kind of nda/gagging order is on john whathisname (ea ex ceo) guess he at some point could spill the beans
 
P

Phoenician_Viking

Banned
Projectjustice said:
Lol you are still at it.
Click to expand...
Still at what? Telling it how it is?
Mihael Mello Keehl said:
Higher, higher, higher, higher,higher, higher higher, higher praise the ps4 higher!

Lower, lower, lower, lower, lower, lower, lower, lower. stomp the Wii U lower!

I know yall know that church song, replace ps4 with jesus and Wii U with devil.
Click to expand...

Salt (tm). It´s a fact that the PS4 is much more powerful than the WiiU and most likely the Durango as well will be much more powerful than the 2006 tech that is the WiiU.

Lol @ the church thing, especially when it´s you who are in a cult and try to deny the WiiU is extremely under powered for 2012 released hardware.

I guess it´s fun living in your own fantasy bubble.
 
W

wsippel

Banned
SapientWolf said:
Which is after they said that there wasn't a fat chance of Crysis 3 being on Wii U. Yerli says a lot of things.
Click to expand...
The "fat chance" thing was from early 2012, this statement was from an interview two months ago. Also, the Wii U port was done by Crytek UK.


NBtoaster said:
Technical reasons were probably a factor. No reason for the technical director to lie.
Click to expand...
There certainly is a reason: It's more convenient.


Phoenician_Viking said:
Salt (tm). It´s a fact that the PS4 is much more powerful than the WiiU and most likely the Durango as well will be much more powerful than the 2006 tech that is the WiiU.
Click to expand...
That "2006 tech" bullshit is factually wrong and really needs to die.
 
Nealand Liquor

Nealand Liquor

Member
The support comment seems like a rude and immature retort imo. Funny how people all over complain about devs not communicating with fan, yet when they do they put up with childish antics.
 
M

Mihael Mello Keehl

Banned
Phoenician_Viking said:
Still at what? Telling it how it is?


Salt (tm). It´s a fact that the PS4 is much more powerful than the WiiU and most likely the Durango as well will be much more powerful than the 2006 tech that is the WiiU.

Lol @ the church thing, especially when it´s you who are in a cult and try to deny the WiiU is extremely under powered for 2012 released hardware.

I guess it´s fun living in your own fantasy bubble.
Click to expand...
1. Can you quote me on that Phoenician_Viking (I type your full name so when you search your name you see this.)

2. Its an actual church song, I grew up singing that in sunday school.

SALT, Im 100% sure you cant find a post where I deny Wii U is extremely underpowered so it look like you salty now.

EDIT: I guess it´s fun living in your own fantasy bubble.
 
S

StevieP

Banned
Phoenician_Viking said:
Most people knew that the WiiU is weak old hardware that can´t run modern tech.

The WiiU is a piece of old tech that Nintendo was too make a modern times console. But keep the blindfolds on.
Click to expand...

Actually, The Wii U CPU is a new CPU engineered upon/based upon older tech. Similar to the x86 CPUs that will be in the PS4 and Xbox 3.

But then I'm not sure why I'm responding to you.

Phoenician_Viking said:
2006 tech that is the WiiU
Click to expand...

Even better. Now it's 2006 tech? That's wildly inaccurate on multiple levels, both on the CPU and GPU fronts. There is a difference between something being lower powered as a design/engineering goal (which started in late 2009, btw), and "2006 tech". Because if you're going to get technical on a "year" level, we can get into semantics arguments that will make every system based on "old tech".

wsippel said:
Anybody who really believes FB3 on Wii U isn't happening due to technical reasons is kidding himself.
Click to expand...

Correct. It's a business decision, not a technical one.
 
F

frankie_baby

Member
Nealand Liquor said:
The support comment seems like a rude and immature retort imo. Funny how people all over complain about devs not communicating with fan, yet when they do they put up with childish antics.
Click to expand...

the twitter response was a fair comment

this response has been copy/pasted numerous times this thread
 
E

EDarkness

Member
NBtoaster said:
Technical reasons were probably a factor. No reason for the technical director to lie.
Click to expand...

Because it's easier to pass the blame to someone else than to just be straight up about what's going on between EA and Nintendo. There's obviously something going on, but explaining it may be more problematic than simply blaming the hardware.

There is no good reason why the Wii U can't run their engine.
 
U

Unknown Soldier

Member
StevieP said:
Actually, The Wii U CPU is a new CPU engineered upon/based upon older tech. Similar to the x86 CPUs that will be in the PS4 and Xbox 3.
Click to expand...

x86 has evolved dramatically since the days of the Gamecube's CPU. To claim otherwise is either willfully ignorant or genuinely ignorant.
 
Schnozberry

Schnozberry

Member
I think if the money was there Frostbite would probably find a home on Wii U. Technical issues are always difficult to surmount when the profit motive isn't there.
 
S

shinra-bansho

Member
EDarkness said:
There is no good reason why the Wii U can't run their engine.
Click to expand...
People keep saying this. But the tweet doesn't say it couldn't run the engine. The tweet says that when they tested FB2 they didn't really like what they saw.

Again, the hardware is, or should be, a factor in all of the business-side considerations too.
 
J

JAYSIMPLE

Banned
ill take his word for it. it might have needed more work etc. its interesting. frostbite 2? that must have been really old dev kits tho right?
 
Z

Zarx

Member
Tron#1 said:
Um so ok another thought...


LOL He will never respond to that. EA & D.I.C.E. are flip-flopping. First is to keep from "stretching too thin." Now it's because they say Frostbite 2 wasn't promising on Wii U.

They couldn't make it any more obvious.
Click to expand...

Those things aren't mutually exclusive tho, in fact they are complementary problems. If the results of running FB2 were poor off the bat that would mean optimising the engine and game content to get good results would naturally take up more resources and hence stretch them to thin when they are already dealing with tight schedules.
 
G

Gori

Member
I seriously don't understand why Nintendo fucked it up so bad with the Wii-U by releasing a next generation machine with a slower CPU and lower memory speed than the last generation.

It's like they intentionally wanted to make it as hard for third party developers as possible.

Sure, they went with an upgraded CPU because of BC, but finding a modern one that could emulate their old CPU wouldn't have been impossible or even very hard. Instead they chose one that is directly hardware compatible because they were lazy. And cheap.

How could anyone justify this? It's just really really bad business decisions.
 
S

StevieP

Banned
Unknown Soldier said:
x86 has evolved dramatically since the days of the Gamecube's CPU. To claim otherwise is either willfully ignorant or genuinely ignorant.
Click to expand...

And what is Bobcat (and by extension, Jaguar) based on, exactly? Oh yeah, that's right. K8. 2003. The K8 was the successor to the K7 (1999).

And that's not an uncommon thing in the processor world, either. (The Pentium 3's spirit lives on to this day in many of our computers).

My point was that just because a design is based on an older design, that doesn't mean it's entirely based on what was released in 1997.
The power envelope/amount of cores/GPU strength/etc that Nintendo chose makes it a very weak console in comparison to the PS4, not its CPU design base.

It's floating point performance is pathetic in the face of the Cell, as an example, but that's not what that CPU was designed for. That's what its GPU is there for.
Simply put, it would require work to port content. And that work to port content is something that takes time and money. That money isn't there at the moment, and it was obviously decided before launch (in the case of EA, at least) that the money wouldn't be put into it.
 
U

Unknown Soldier

Member
frankie_baby said:
the gamecube cpu was shockingly ultra efficient, To claim otherwise is either willfully ignorant or genuinely ignorant.
Click to expand...

I see. So being "shockingly ultra efficient" for it's era magically changes the fact that it's an in-order, limited pipeline, limited floating-point performance, lacking in most modern architecture additions 2006-generation PowerPC CPU? I can tell you who isn't being ignorant here, and that person is me.

The modern game engine does so much on the CPU that a powerful gaming PC running overclocked Sandy Bridge or Ivy Bridge will still become the bottleneck when paired with a suitably powerful Nvidia or ATI GPU. This is factual and demonstrated by benchmarks of people who own GeForce GTX Titan, where a single Titan can easily bottleneck BF3 at the CPU no matter how powerful it is. What chance does the Wii U's CPU have, especially compared to an x86 CPU based on a much more recent design?
 
T

Thunder Monkey

Banned
It couldn't just be that the CPU has limited capability that's stopping this engine from running on it right?

Of course not. It has to be lazy devs, or hardware weaker than the PS3/360.

There is no middle ground. Even if we've seen titles designed under GPU centric constraints that look better on the console, hell even games that put CPU's through the ringer have launched and looked better on the console.

But it can't be because the system has an esoteric design in comparison to the PS3/360. It has to be because devs lazy or too weak.

Guys... you really need to start talking to one another like adults instead of petulant manchildren.
 
N

NBtoaster

Member
EDarkness said:
Because it's easier to pass the blame to someone else than to just be straight up about what's going on between EA and Nintendo. There's obviously something going on, but explaining it may be more problematic than simply blaming the hardware.

There is no good reason why the Wii U can't run their engine.
Click to expand...

He didn't pass blame to anyone. He responded to refute the comment that FB3 was running on the Wii U.

And a reason has already been presented; that the engine is extremely CPU intensive.

wsippel said:
There certainly is a reason: It's more convenient.
Click to expand...

He could have not responded at all. He didn't do it just to bash the Wii U.

wsippel said:
Certainly, but why would you assume PPC750 hasn't evolved?
Click to expand...

Isn't it an ancient, dead line outside of Nintendo consoles?
 
F

frankie_baby

Member
Gori said:
I seriously don't understand why Nintendo fucked it up so bad with the Wii-U by releasing a next generation machine with a slower CPU and lower memory speed than the last generation.

It's like they intentionally wanted to make it as hard for third party developers as possible.

Sure, they went with an upgraded CPU because of BC, but finding a modern one that could emulate their old CPU wouldn't have been impossible or even very hard. Instead they chose one that is directly hardware compatible because they were lazy. And cheap.

How could anyone justify this? It's just really really bad business decisions.
Click to expand...

slower cpu in terms of clockspeed but then so have the orbango twins, as for the memory bandwidth its a lot more complicated than it looks on paper and no devs have said there was a problem in fact several have praised the memory
 
E

EDarkness

Member
shinra-bansho said:
People keep saying this. But the tweet doesn't say it couldn't run the engine. The tweet says that when they tested FB2 they didn't really like what they saw.

Again, the hardware is, or should be, a factor in all of the business-side considerations too.
Click to expand...

If other engines couldn't run on it, then I'd say they have a leg to stand on, but this is just not the case. Especially when it comes to the hardware which is at least marginally better than the 360/PS3. I'm not going to believe that they couldn't get it running well enough to at least have games running at the same framerates as games they already have running on other systems. It doesn't make a bit of sense.


NBtoaster said:
He didn't pass blame to anyone. He responded to refute the comment that FB3 was running on the Wii U.
And a reason has already been presented; that the engine is extremely CPU intensive.
Click to expand...

He did pass the blame. To the hardware itself. The hardware couldn't do it so they didn't do a Wii U version of the engine.

CPU intensive CryEngine 3 is running on the Wii U. So maybe Crytek knows something DICE doesn't.
 
F

frankie_baby

Member
Unknown Soldier said:
I see. So being "shockingly ultra efficient" for it's era magically changes the fact that it's an in-order, limited pipeline, limited floating-point performance, lacking in most modern architecture additions 2006-generation PowerPC CPU? I can tell you who isn't being ignorant here, and that person is me.

The modern game engine does so much on the CPU that a powerful gaming PC running overclocked Sandy Bridge or Ivy Bridge will still become the bottleneck when paired with a suitably powerful Nvidia or ATI GPU. This is factual and demonstrated by benchmarks of people who own GeForce GTX Titan, where a single Titan can easily bottleneck BF3 at the CPU no matter how powerful it is. What chance does the Wii U's CPU have, especially compared to an x86 CPU based on a much more recent design?
Click to expand...

its out of order, limited pipeline is a good thing, though i'll give you that its floating point aint great
 
U

Unknown Soldier

Member
wsippel said:
Certainly, but why would you assume PPC750 hasn't evolved?
Click to expand...

PPC750 hasn't evolved. PPC750 is PPC750. If you think IBM and Nintendo spent money to improve such an old architecture, I don't know what to tell you. IBM has since launched POWER4 through POWER7 since the days of PPC750, so it's not as if Nintendo couldn't have chosen a more recent POWER architecture CPU if they wanted to. They had 4 newer generations of POWER they could used for the Wii U. They wanted to be cheap and also maintain 100% binary compatibility with Wii and GC, so here we are.
 
S

squidyj

Member
EDarkness said:
If other engines couldn't run on it, then I'd say they have a leg to stand on, but this is just not the case. Especially when it comes to the hardware which is at least marginally better than the 360/PS3. I'm not going to believe that they couldn't get it running well enough to at least have games running at the same framerates as games they already have running on other systems. It doesn't make a bit of sense.




He did pass the blame. To the hardware itself. The hardware couldn't do it so they didn't do a Wii U version of the engine.

CPU intensive CryEngine 3 is running on the Wii U. So maybe Crytek knows something DICE doesn't.
Click to expand...

If you knew the requirements of the engine then I would say your opinions have a leg to stand on but seeing as you're not someone involved in developing it, that is just not the case.
 
M

Maximilian E.

AKA MS-Evangelist
Sorry for my ignorance..
But is CryEngine3 running on Wii U? I saw some comment some posts above that it was..

Any vids about it or is it only comments from Crytek?

Im just saying, it could be running, but to what extent? It can run like Usain Bolt, or like a crippled man.. (or somewhere in between).
And if this is the case, then perhaps DICE did not want to sacrifice performance/visual fidelity just to make the engine run on Wii U and perhaps Crytek are willing to make those sacrifices?

or?
 
F

frankie_baby

Member
Maximilian E. said:
Sorry for my ignorance..
But is CryEngine3 running on Wii U? I saw some comment some posts above that it was..

Any vids about it or is it only comments from Crytek?

Im just saying, it could be running, but to what extent? It can run like Usain Bolt, or like a crippled man.. (or somewhere in between).
And if this is the case, then perhaps DICE did not want to sacrifice performance/visual fidelity just to make the engine run on Wii U and perhaps Crytek are willing to make those sacrifices?

or?
Click to expand...

only (very positive) comments from crytek so far, there is the footage of the eternal darkness sortofsequel but thats not been confirmed as wii u footage though the button prompts suggest it is
 
S

shinra-bansho

Member
EDarkness said:
If other engines couldn't run on it, then I'd say they have a leg to stand on, but this is just not the case. Especially when it comes to the hardware which is at least marginally better than the 360/PS3. I'm not going to believe that they couldn't get it running well enough to at least have games running at the same framerates as games they already have running on other systems. It doesn't make a bit of sense.
Click to expand...
It's not like engines could have different requirements or anything...

Perhaps they could get it working; with time and effort and money maybe they could get it in a workable state. If they wanted to they could probably get some form of the engine working on all manner of hardware.

Epic could probably do that with Unreal Engine 4 as well. But they're not going to either.
 
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