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Schnozberry · Jan 18, 2013

frankie_baby said:
I'd wager good money the Wii u could too, if any time, money and effort was put into the port

From what I understand from a Treyarch Q&A from IGN on YouTube, the team to port to the Wii U was very small and short on time. The multiplayer is great, so the frame dips in the single player campaign don't bother me that much. I'm sure with more optimization it could have been better. I'll try to find the video when I get to a computer.

The Wii U GPU is several generations newer than Xenos, and has access to a lot of EDRAM. I'm not sure how to directly compare the CPU's with the 360, since we don't know exactly how the CPU in the Wii U is customized. We've never seen a tri-core PPC750 clocked at 1.25ghz with EDRAM on die, and I don't know what else may have been changed.

Gahiggidy · Jan 18, 2013

Well, there seems to be a lot of geometry happening at the Nintendoland plaza... and with everything covered in shiny and crisp textures. Outside of the Zelda and Bird demos, its the most impressive example I've seen of what Wii U can do.

Ryoku · Jan 18, 2013

phosphor112 said:
I don't see that happening. The ram differences alone are staggering.

I want to see the RAM configuration for the next Xbox. Is it similar to Wii U? Reason I'm wondering about this is because in the Eurogamer article, it mentions that Microsoft had put in place the EDRAM (ESRAM?) in order to counter the slower bandwidth of the large pool of DDR3, which is what the Wii U essentially has (the EDRAM is MEM1, if I remember correctly).

tipoo · Jan 18, 2013

Ryoku said:
I want to see the RAM configuration for the next Xbox. Is it similar to Wii U? Reason I'm wondering about this is because in the Eurogamer article, it mentions that Microsoft had put in place the EDRAM (ESRAM?) in order to counter the slower bandwidth of the large pool of DDR3, which is what the Wii U essentially has (the EDRAM is MEM1, if I remember correctly).

Similar in philosophy but with much bigger numbers all around if the rumors are right. I think the rumor was 192GB/s for the PS4 and I forget what for the Nextbox, something over 60 I think though. But even if the bandwidth wasn't much higher than the Wii U, the rumor was also 8GB RAM with 1 gone to the OS, 7x more what Wii U games can get at.

Gahiggidy said:
Well, there seems to be a lot of geometry happening at the Nintendoland plaza... and with everything covered in shiny and crisp textures. Outside of the Zelda and Bird demos, its the most impressive example I've seen of what Wii U can do.

Shiny != intensive. The geometry seems pretty basic to me, I'm not sure what you mean, lots of flat surfaces or round heads etc. Besides, my point was that mid range cards of 2010 can pull off some impressive things still.

BruiserBear · Jan 18, 2013

Gahiggidy said:
Well, there seems to be a lot of geometry happening at the Nintendoland plaza... and with everything covered in shiny and crisp textures. Outside of the Zelda and Bird demos, its the most impressive example I've seen of what Wii U can do.

I've noticed that as well. That plaza looks excellent. It has me very excited to see the next big games from Nintendo's internal studios.

tipoo said:
Shiny != intensive. The geometry seems pretty basic to me, I'm not sure what you mean, lots of flat surfaces or round heads etc. Besides, my point was that mid range cards of 2010 can pull off some impressive things still.

It's more than just the geometry. It's the lighting, which is very nice, and the overall image quality.

tipoo · Jan 18, 2013

BruiserBear said:
It's more than just the geometry. It's the lighting, which is very nice, and the overall image quality.

I agree, but again, good looking doesn't necessitate computationally intensive. The aesthetic is nice, but does the light use computationally intensive filters and reflections etc. Aesthetics vs graphics.

Ryoku · Jan 18, 2013

tipoo said:
Similar in philosophy but with much bigger numbers all around if the rumors are right. I think the rumor was 192GB/s for the PS4 and I forget what for the Nextbox, something over 60 I think though. But even if the bandwidth wasn't much higher than the Wii U, the rumor was also 8GB RAM with 1 gone to the OS, 7x more what Wii U games can get at.

I believe the rumor is now 3GB reserved for OS and other things. Of course, that still leaves a substantial amount more than the Wii U.

Spongebob · Jan 18, 2013

Ryoku said:
I believe the rumor is now 3GB reserved for OS and other things. Of course, that still leaves a substantial amount more than the Wii U.

According to Karak(and ageis as will I think) that figure is old. Apparently the OS footprint has been reduced to 1.5GB with MS targeting a reduction to 1GB.

Ryoku · Jan 18, 2013

Spongebob said:
According to Karak(and ageis as will I think) that figure is old. Apparently the OS footprint has been reduced to 1.5GB with MS targeting a reduction to 1GB.

Oh. I have no idea about that; I'm just going off what that new Eurogamer article has stated. Not that I'm discounting what Karak or Aegeis are suggesting.

EDIT: I've read over the other thred. Many people saying the 3GB is incorrect.

Chronos24 · Jan 18, 2013

This could honestly be a dumb question granted my limited technical knowledge and I apologize if it is, but is it plausible that through a firmware update that the U's CPU speed be increased? From what I've read before it seems so but I thought I would ask outright.

lightchris · Jan 18, 2013

Chronos24 said:
This could honestly be a dumb question granted my limited technical knowledge and I apologize if it is, but is it plausible that through a firmware update that the U's CPU speed be increased? From what I've read before it seems so but I thought I would ask outright.

Possible, yes, but very unlikely. I don't see a reason why they should've held it back at launch.

Gahiggidy · Jan 18, 2013

tipoo said:
I agree, but again, good looking doesn't necessitate computationally intensive. The aesthetic is nice, but does the light use computationally intensive filters and reflections etc. Aesthetics vs graphics.

I don't know, but there is one interesting detail I noticed. When your Mii is over the glass floor covering the speakers there are two shadows cast. One on the glass surface and another in the area under the glass.

Ryoku · Jan 18, 2013

Chronos24 said:
This could honestly be a dumb question granted my limited technical knowledge and I apologize if it is, but is it plausible that through a firmware update that the U's CPU speed be increased? From what I've read before it seems so but I thought I would ask outright.

Yes, it's possible, but not likely. Reason being that the system was designed around the current clockspeeds, and if you increase the clockspeed, you increase the temperature, which the console may not be designed for. And there were rumors before the console launched about Nintendo having overheating issues with the console.

majik13 · Jan 18, 2013

phosphor112 said:
No, a midrange PC from 2010 can run COD at 1080p with 60fps.

But you're right it is closer to 4.

well the wiiu does run it at 60fps to 2 seperate screens, but however still in sub HD. And seems like it was a kinda late in development port, on new architecture.

frankie_baby · Jan 18, 2013

Chronos24 said:
This could honestly be a dumb question granted my limited technical knowledge and I apologize if it is, but is it plausible that through a firmware update that the U's CPU speed be increased? From what I've read before it seems so but I thought I would ask outright.

Certainly technically possible but not likely, it was technically possible with the wii but dont think it was ever done

Father_Brain · Jan 18, 2013

John Harker said:
I don't think you have to be that concerned. Not all games will likely be ported depending on feature sets, but I imagine that for the first two years at least, games are going to be coming out on X720, PS4, X360, PS3, and PC. Those games will also have a Wii U version, in all likelihood. So what do you consider that? A down port? An up port? Parity?

Who cares, choice is always good.

Source?

Looking at the current-gen 2013 multiplatform lineup, I find it hard to believe that Wii U is even being seriously considered as a platform for most next-gen multiplats, cross-generational or otherwise.

Schnozberry · Jan 18, 2013

Chronos24 said:
This could honestly be a dumb question granted my limited technical knowledge and I apologize if it is, but is it plausible that through a firmware update that the U's CPU speed be increased? From what I've read before it seems so but I thought I would ask outright.

Not impossible, but unlikely due to it already being clocked very high for it's architecture. It has a very short instruction pipeline, and it limits the clock speed the micro architecture can reach. One of the benefits of the short pipeline is that it likely does more instructions per clock cycle than what Xenon and the Cell were capable of.

It's far from a the fastest CPU, but it seems to punch above it's weight, considering it's likely only consuming 5-10w of power.

ohlawd · Jan 18, 2013

Father_Brain said:
Source?

Looking at the current-gen 2013 multiplatform lineup, I find it hard to believe that Wii U is even being seriously considered as a platform for most next-gen multiplats, cross-generational or otherwise.

the multiplatform chart really speaks volumes of the Wii U's future for 2013.
Am I foolish in thinking 2014 will be any better? :/

Donnie · Jan 19, 2013

tipoo said:
Similar in philosophy but with much bigger numbers all around if the rumors are right. I think the rumor was 192GB/s for the PS4 and I forget what for the Nextbox, something over 60 I think though. But even if the bandwidth wasn't much higher than the Wii U, the rumor was also 8GB RAM with 1 gone to the OS, 7x more what Wii U games can get at.

Shiny != intensive. The geometry seems pretty basic to me, I'm not sure what you mean, lots of flat surfaces or round heads etc. Besides, my point was that mid range cards of 2010 can pull off some impressive things still.

The rumour posted in this thread is 8GB with 3GB for the OS, which is actually similar to what we've heard from other places (can't remember hearing a 1GB rumour..). Also 60GB/s DDR3?, I suppose they could use 8x 8192Mbit 2000Mhz chips each on a 32bit bus, but that seems quite extreme.

I'd definitely be surprised if WiiU doesn't end up with more than 1GB for games as well, especially if the 512MB for the PS4 OS ends up being true.

Out of Working Order · Jan 19, 2013

I just hope Nintendo can drum up some quality support for their console. In light of the recent leaks on the performance of Or/Du, I do worry that developers will ignore the Wii U to lower development costs in crossplatform development.

I don't want another Wii scenario, where all the cool third party stuff is on other systems.

tipoo · Jan 19, 2013

Donnie said:
The rumour posted in this thread is 8GB with 3GB for the OS, which is actually similar to what we've heard from other places (can't remember hearing a 1GB rumour..). Also 60GB/s DDR3?, I suppose they could use 8x 8192Mbit 2000Mhz chips each on a 32bit bus, but that seems quite extreme.

I'd definitely be surprised if WiiU doesn't end up with more than 1GB for games as well, especially if the 512MB for the PS4 OS ends up being true.

As mentioned above the latest rumors were that they whittled the 3GB OS down.

I would love to see Nintendo reduce the Wii U OS footprint and allow games to get at most of that 2GB RAM. But to do that and fix their already extremely slow menu switching times...They have their work cut out for sure. They aren't really OS people to begin with, I think we can all agree with that.

I hate it when this happens, but I can't find the number on the Durango memory bandwidth anymore, I swear I saw it somewhere...

The PS4 is being guessed at pretty close to 200GB/s like I said though, if it uses GDDR5 and a modern controller, but without the eDRAM/eSRAM cache of the Nextbox and Wii U.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=507910

shinra-bansho · Jan 19, 2013

tipoo said:
I hate it when this happens, but I can't find the number on the Durango memory bandwidth anymore, I swear I saw it somewhere...

Regarding Durango RAM via Proelite.

Proelite said:
2133 mhz with 256 bit bus is 68 GB/s.

BruiserBear · Jan 19, 2013

Empowe said:
I just hope Nintendo can drum up some quality support for their console. In light of the recent leaks on the performance of Or/Du, I do worry that developers will ignore the Wii U to lower development costs in crossplatform development.

I don't want another Wii scenario, where all the cool third party stuff is on other systems.

It's probably going to be a similar situation to the Wii. At least for now there can be a few ports from the PS3/360, and some great exclusives like Rayman Legends.

Roo · Jan 19, 2013

Empowe said:
I just hope Nintendo can drum up some quality support for their console. In light of the recent leaks on the performance of Or/Du, I do worry that developers will ignore the Wii U to lower development costs in crossplatform development.

I don't want another Wii scenario, where all the cool third party stuff is on other systems.

You better be prepared

and get a PS4 or the next Xbox

ohlawd · Jan 19, 2013

Alistair Roo said:
You better be prepared

and get a PS4 or the next Xbox

Scratch that. Just get a good PC.

DjRoomba · Jan 19, 2013

BruiserBear said:
It's probably going to be a similar situation to the Wii. At least for now there can be a few ports from the PS3/360, and some great exclusives like Rayman Legends.

Or a similar situation to the PS3/360..Wasnt the ps3 sposed to be like "8x" more powerful, yet Uncharted 3 looks like GOW3. Its extremely presumptuous to think the unannounced du/or are gonna be the dominant, awesome systems.

Schnozberry · Jan 19, 2013

ohlawd said:
Scratch that. Just get a good PC.

I second that one. I honestly wish I had a Wii U gamepad type device for my PC. Off TV play has really spoiled me. With a wife and a kid it really expands the time I can play.

Elfforkusu · Jan 19, 2013

Empowe said:
I just hope Nintendo can drum up some quality support for their console. In light of the recent leaks on the performance of Or/Du, I do worry that developers will ignore the Wii U to lower development costs in crossplatform development.

I don't want another Wii scenario, where all the cool third party stuff is on other systems.

I think it's very unlikely that the Wii U will see much AAA third party support. So if that's what you have in mind when you say "cool third party stuff", well...

I think there's a chance it'll get some decent lower budget third party games, but we'll have to wait and see.

OTOH, I'm not optimistic about the future of AAA titles in general.

OryoN · Jan 19, 2013

BruiserBear said:
It's probably going to be a similar situation to the Wii. At least for now there can be a few ports from the PS3/360, and some great exclusives like Rayman Legends.

With modern engines being so highly scalable - and expected to be even more so in the future to accommodate everything from hi-end PCs to mobile phones - I just don't see it being the same issue. I'm sure Wii U falls somewhere in between that grand scale. Well, for major middleware engines, at least. Wii's problem was more feature/pipeline related than anything else, but that's not the case with Wii U. Unless a particular game's engine isn't very scalable(in which case it'd be too much to Wii U to handle as is, or not worth "watering down"), expect ~~excuses~~ reasons for the lack of a Wii U version to come down to time, money, resources, and/or target audience.

Roo · Jan 19, 2013

OryoN said:
With modern engines being so highly scalable - and expected to be even more so in the future to accommodate everything from hi-end PCs to mobile phones - I just don't see it being the same issue. I'm sure Wii U falls somewhere in between that grand scale. Well, for major middleware engines, at least. Wii's problem was more feature/pipeline related than anything else, but that's not the case with Wii U. Unless a particular game's engine isn't very scalable(in which case it'd be too much to Wii U to handle as is, or not worth "watering down"), expect ~~excuses~~ reasons for the lack of a Wii U version to come down to time, money, resources, and/or target audience.

I don't think this is really about power or about what the console can archieve.
Right now, a lot third party studios have tight budgets and they're used to spend them only
in two platforms, three if we include PC and I'm sure they will keep doing so next gen, so including Wii U to the list might be a little too much.

Why dump the Wii U instead of let's say.. PS4? Well, I think the answer is pretty obvious and you already said it (money, resources)

Bigger developers like Activision and Ubisoft won't have this issue where even MAC and PS360 will get their own ports (7 platforms in total) but I just don't see it happening for the rest of the studios.

We'll see but sadly, I'm not holding my breath

deviljho · Jan 19, 2013

can we please not turn this thread into a discussion about games, sales and porting? i know people are excited, but pls

wsippel · Jan 19, 2013

For future reference:

Die sizes

Flipper: 120mm²
Hollywood: 72mm²
Latte: 156mm²

Gekko: 43mm²
Broadway: 19mm²
Espresso: 33mm²

TDP

Gamecube: 23W
Wii: 17W
Wii U: 32W

RAM

Gamecube: 40MB
Wii: 88MB
Wii U: 2080MB

It's quite obvious that the Wii truly was an odd one out. Wii U is very much a "2012 Gamecube", not a "2012 Wii".

freezamite · Jan 19, 2013

Well, GC was modest on it's chips, but had a great design overall.
WiiU on the other hands has really modest chips (CPU smaller than the one on the GC tells us everything about it) and an awful bottlenecked design. With only 12.8GB/s of total RAM bandwidth it's performance will be between the first Xbox and the Xbox360, and that's all there is on it.

The difference between WiiU and Durango/Orbis will be bigger and more exaggerated than the one existing between the Wii and Xbox360/PS3.

Regards!

TheDrowningMan · Jan 19, 2013

freezamite said:
The difference between WiiU and Durango/Orbis will be bigger and more exaggerated than the one existing between the Wii and Xbox360/PS3.

Regards!

Troll Hard With A Vengence

On the other hand, it is nowhere near GC's place in the pecking order. That was Nintendo's greatest technological success, and a solid match-up for the most powerful machine of its generation, Xbox.

OG_Original Gamer · Jan 19, 2013

freezamite said:
Well, GC was modest on it's chips, but had a great design overall.
WiiU on the other hands has really modest chips (CPU smaller than the one on the GC tells us everything about it) and an awful bottlenecked design. With only 12.8GB/s of total RAM bandwidth it's performance will be between the first Xbox and the Xbox360, and that's all there is on it.

The difference between WiiU and Durango/Orbis will be bigger and more exaggerated than the one existing between the Wii and Xbox360/PS3.

Regards!

You forgot the edram and its bandwidth that could be 550GB/s(WiiU)

blu · Jan 19, 2013

freezamite said:
Well, GC was modest on it's chips, but had a great design overall.
WiiU on the other hands has really modest chips (CPU smaller than the one on the GC tells us everything about it) and an awful bottlenecked design. With only 12.8GB/s of total RAM bandwidth it's performance will be between the first Xbox and the Xbox360, and that's all there is on it.

The difference between WiiU and Durango/Orbis will be bigger and more exaggerated than the one existing between the Wii and Xbox360/PS3.

Regards!

An interesting post.

May I ask people who intend to post such, erm, extreme opinions in this otherwise technical thread, to also care to back them up with minimal reasoning?

Thank you.

darkistheway · Jan 19, 2013

freezamite said:
performance will be between the first Xbox and the Xbox360, and that's all there is on it.
Regards!

No one is this stupid.

lightchris · Jan 19, 2013

wsippel said:
It's quite obvious that the Wii truly was an odd one out. Wii U is very much a "2012 Gamecube", not a "2012 Wii".

I guess that depends on your point of view. If you look at the Nintendo consoles in an isolated way, maybe. The Gamecube was a huge improvement on the N64 without adding much more power consumption or case size. The same can be said about Wii U in comparison to Wii.
But: The Gamecube was also a huge improvement on the previous generation consoles of Nintendo's competitors (and roughly on the same level as Dreamcast, PS2 and Xbox). This most definitely can't be said about Wii U.

TheDrowningMan · Jan 19, 2013

thelongdarkriversofhell said:
No one is this stupid.

Holy fuck, I missed that bit.

freezamite · Jan 19, 2013

Well, I'm very happy with my WiiU but I don't believe in those "magic solutions" until I see them. I mean, eDram hasn't been confirmed at all, we don't even know if it really exists, and even if it did, Xbox 360 also had it.

Now if in the future I see some games that demonstrate me that the WiiU is as capable as the Xbox 360 or the PS3 or even better, then great for me, but at this moment, what we have is:

A CPU that basically is 3 Broadways at 70% higher clocks and instead of sram cachés, eDram ones that will of course be less effective latency wise. In comparison, it has a little more cache memory than the Broadway (same L1 (which probably is still sram memory) and double L2 on two cores, and the remaining one with 8 times L2 cache size) but even assuming this improves overall performance in a clock per clock comparison, it's nowhere close to the Xbox 360 CPU in terms of GFLOPs.

14 maximum peack GFlops for WiiU CPU against more than 100 GFlops for Xbox 360's Xenon (it's CPU).

About the GPU, we don't know anything. It will probably be more modern than the one found on Xbox 360, but we don't have this confirmed by Nintendo or any official document.

ZombiU and NintendoLand showed me a GREAT lighting system, radiosity lighting on the first one (only seen at Battlefield 3 on Xbox 360 and PS3, and from launch on the WiiU) and a great shadowing effect on the second one (I don't know which name it has, but its really noticeable and improves image a lot), and games like Batman AC had great AA on them despite a bit lower framerate.

But I still haven't seen a game that makes me think "wow, this is better or at the same level overall than Uncharted 3, The Last of Us or Halo4".
When I see them, I will agree in that the WiiU is at least as powerful as the Xbox360 and PS3.

wsippel · Jan 19, 2013

freezamite said:
Well, GC was modest on it's chips, but had a great design overall.
WiiU on the other hands has really modest chips (CPU smaller than the one on the GC tells us everything about it) and an awful bottlenecked design. With only 12.8GB/s of total RAM bandwidth it's performance will be between the first Xbox and the Xbox360, and that's all there is on it.

The Cube even had the exact same "bottleneck":

Gamecube MEM1: 2.6GB/s
Wii U MEM1: unknown; Renesas' 32MB UX8GD prototype achieves 262GB/s at 550MHz

Gamecube MEM2: 81MB/s (no, this is not a typo)
Wii U MEM2: 12.8GB/s

Terra · Jan 19, 2013

Look at Xenoblade for a good example what the Wii could muster up. The Wii U will do just fine in terms lf technology.

Rolf NB · Jan 19, 2013

wsippel said:
The Cube even had the exact same "bottleneck":

Gamecube MEM1: 2.6GB/s
Wii U MEM1: unknown; Renesas' 32MB UX8GD prototype achieves 262GB/s at 550MHz

Gamecube MEM2: 81MB/s (no, this is not a typo)
Wii U MEM2: 12.8GB/s

Are you seriosly comparing Gamecube's main memory bank (60% of total RAM, 57% if you include the Flipper's eDRAM completely) to Wii U's framebuffer (1.5% of total memory)?

Gamecube's memory architecture was aggressive and fast. 1T-SRAM was an expensive, high-performance abberation from the then common memory types. And it had eDRAM for framebuffer and texture caching all the same.

Wii U's memory architecture OTOH is cheap, cheap, cheap.

lightchris · Jan 19, 2013

wsippel said:
The Cube even had the exact same "bottleneck":

Gamecube MEM1: 2.6GB/s
Wii U MEM1: unknown; Renesas' UX8GD prototype achieves 262GB/s at 550MHz

Gamecube MEM2: 81MB/s (no, this is not a typo)
Wii U MEM2: 12.8GB/s

I don't think this is a valid comparison. Gamecube's "MEM2" was only a small auxiliary pool (16 MB, smaller than it's "MEM1") mainly used for audio. Most data was stored in "MEM1". On Wii U, most data needs to be stored in it's "MEM2" (which is 32x larger as opposed to being smaller).

I'm not saying that Wii U's memory hierarchy is a bottlneck, but it certainly is a different approach than the one we saw in Gamecube.

wsippel · Jan 19, 2013

Rolf NB said:
Are you seriosly comparing Gamecube's main memory bank (60% of total RAM, 57% if you include the Flipper's eDRAM completely) to Wii U's framebuffer (1.5% of total memory)?

Sure, because MEM1 is no framebuffer.

lightchris said:
I don't think this is a valid comparison. Gamecube's "MEM2" was only a small auxiliary pool (16 MB, smaller than it's "MEM1") mainly used for audio. Most data was stored in "MEM1". On Wii U, most data needs to be stored in it's "MEM2".

I'm not saying that Wii U's memory hierarchy is a bottlneck, but it certainly is a different approach than the one we saw in Gamecube.

The MEM1/ MEM2 hierarchy is an obvious evolution of the main RAM/ aux RAM concept. ARAM/ MEM2 became much bigger, but also much faster over the years compared to MEM1, but the idea still is to have very fast memory for highly performance critical stuff and "mass storage" for everything else. Is 32MB enough? No idea, but MEM2 certainly doesn't need to be bigger than MEM1 with current workloads.

freezamite · Jan 19, 2013

Sure, because MEM1 is no framebuffer.

It's not the first time I'm reading this and I want to know what are you referring to. I mean, besides the larger quantity, what is the difference between WiiU eDram and/or Xbox360/Wii's eDram that makes the first be better than the other ones.

I mean, what operations are allowed on that speculated (but not confirmed, it may not even exist!) eDram memory that aren't possible on Wii's or Xbox360 eDram?

Regards!

Drek · Jan 19, 2013

DjRoomba said:
Or a similar situation to the PS3/360..Wasnt the ps3 sposed to be like "8x" more powerful, yet Uncharted 3 looks like GOW3. Its extremely presumptuous to think the unannounced du/or are gonna be the dominant, awesome systems.

Not even remotely true, outside of very selective Sony PR.

Sony had more power on the CPU side locked up in an obtuse design structure, but the actual production that could be achieved was rather similar. Meanwhile on the GPU side they were equal or with a slight lean to the 360. Their quantity of ram and type of ram was effectively identical, to the point where Sony's slightly larger OS allocation actually posed something of a problem. Add in the clear advantage of Microsoft's DirectX API and the widespread familiarity developers all have with it and you see why the two systems were a very level playing field with most multi-plats running best on the 360 (easiest starting point).

Also, I'm assuming by "GOW3" you mean Gears of War 3. Most abbreviate that series to "Gears" so as to avoid confusion with Sony's incredibly popular and longer running God of War series, which as been referred to by the acronym "GoW" for quite some time.

As for the Wii U relative to the PS4/Xbox720 - it simply isn't in the same ball park. Both of those systems are looking at significantly larger amounts of memory, and in Sony's case a significantly superior technology. They're massively ahead of the PS3 and 360 on the CPU side as well, while the Wii U's CPU is more or less a peer of them. So even if the Wii U GPU was the exact same silicon as the PS4/Xbox 720 (which it clearly is not) it would still be bottlenecked in many other ways.

The Wii U is what the Wii would have been if it released in 2004. Then it would have been more or less equal or better across the board over it's best peer at the time, the original Xbox, but it's reign as the most powerful platform would have been very brief with the 360 coming out in 2005. The same is happening now, with both new systems likely coming out in late 2013.

The real problem with the Wii U will ultimately be Nintendo's failure to this point of making hay while the sun shines - i.e. building enough of an install base and getting enough 3rd party support on the console before the next systems hit to give it strong appeal to publishers. Instead it's lukewarm on both fronts with daylight fading fast. E3 is closing quickly and consumers likely will soon know what to expect in the very near future.

Thunder Monkey · Jan 19, 2013

Honestly freezey... if it really was between an Xbox and 360 none of those launch titles would have turned out as well as they did.

It's at parity with the PS3/360, with a slightly different focus than either. Much heavier on the GPU side. Less focus on CPU. But parity nonetheless.

wsippel · Jan 19, 2013

freezamite said:
It's not the first time I'm reading this and I want to know what are you referring to. I mean, besides the larger quantity, what is the difference between WiiU eDram and/or Xbox360/Wii's eDram that makes the first be better than the other ones.

I mean, what operations are allowed on that speculated (but not confirmed, it may not even exist!) eDram memory that aren't possible on Wii's or Xbox360 eDram?

Regards!

MEM1 is just RAM. You can access it directly from the CPU, you can execute code from MEM1, you can do anything you want. It's the actual main work RAM of the system, comparable to the 1T-SRAM in Gamecube and Wii. MEM2 is for textures, audio and other assets.

That's assuming the leaks were correct and the hierarchy still works as it used to, which is most likely the case if only for Wii compatibility reasons.

Drek · Jan 19, 2013

Terra said:
Look at Xenoblade for a good example what the Wii could muster up. The Wii U will do just fine in terms lf technology.

Xenoblade is an exceptional title but its far from a graphical showpiece. The gap between it and Monolith's last PS2 game Xenosaga 3 is not particularly massive, despite the PS2 being hands down the weakest of the "big three" consoles from it's era.

Or compare it to another similarly open world "real battlefield combat" RPG in Final Fantasy XII, also on the far inferior PS2 hardware compared to the Wii. Scope, draw distance, poly count, texture detail, IQ, etc. are generally quite comparable.

One of the best games in recent history, but as a technical achievement it isn't a great argument for Monolith tapping into some great reserve of hidden power within the Wii.

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WiiU technical discussion (serious discussions welcome)

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My aunt & uncle run a Mom & Pop store, "The Gamecube Hut", and sold 80k WiiU within minutes of opening.

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My aunt & uncle run a Mom & Pop store, "The Gamecube Hut", and sold 80k WiiU within minutes of opening.

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Member

Member

Banned

Member

Member

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Member

Banned

Member

Banned

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Banned

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Banned

Banned

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Wants the largest console games publisher to avoid Nintendo's platforms.

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