[blu]

It's funny, really, when you think about it. lherre: "The system isn't all that powerful and some people are getting their hopes up too high." Chopper: "My source is disappointed with the Wii U's specs." Arkam: "The system isn't all that powerful and some people are getting their hopes up too high." I've verified all three. Take that as you will.

While I entirely understand and share your stance in this (I'd do the same in your place), Arkam did say a few things more than what you're saying here. It's those extra things (and not the 'The system isn't all that powerful') that stirred the flurry over the past few pages. Just saying.

[Maxrunner]

Better than 360 is a dream now?? really???cmon...dont be ridiculous...

[DragonKnight]

Every time I think nintendo is getting it right they always leave out one detail. Can't be the PS2 of the generation if devs can't port to your system.

[EatChildren]

You're really generalising there though. The actual details have varied quite a lot and I don't see why that should be smoothed over with "Well he probably meant this or that". At no point did Lherre ever claim the kits were weaker than current gen. His comments on people getting their hopes up were in reference to many posts about WiiU being in the same kind of power range as 720/PS4.

The whole point is that it is a generalisation (and I never, not once, claimed lherre said the kits were weaker than current generation systems). People are quite happy to lap up generalisations, but as soon as someone says something 'concrete' that conflicts with their hopes and wishes and dreams it's time for torches and pitchforks. Worse still people trying to dismiss Arkam's claims with the same damn generalisations from other sources. Nobody is willing to humour the possibility of any of Arkam's claims being slightly correct because, fact of the matter is, you don't want to believe it.

And despite all this I too still don't believe Arkam's information is 100% accurate, simply because numerous other sources have stated or implied that you can, in total, squeeze more grunt out of the Wii U than the 360 and PS3. But that is about where this speculation begins and ends. I've heard no concrete specifications that necessarily conflict with what Arkam has said. I don't have any notable reason to believe the system isn't a tri core out of order CPU, or that it doesn't have 1GB of RAM.

[Door2Dawn]

wrong thread

[Gravijah]

i just want to know something concrete. i don't even care if it's weaker than the sega saturn, i just want to knooooooow~

[Donnie]

No, not kidding. It does not surprise that Ninty would do the absolute bare minimum required to elevate Wii into HD territory. We've got three verified guys who have said as such and a load of crying fanboys who are jerking over some fantasy hardware dream that simply won't happen. Give it up.

You've been convinced by three comments that aren't even direct quotes and have been taken completely out of context in order to look like they mean the same thing? Really?? I think you're in no position to refer to anyone as a fanboy if that's the case.

[Goodlife]

2. He's working with an older dev kit (which Arkam has stated himself)

Do you believe that even the older dev kits were "less powerful than the 360"?

[Mr Swine]

Do you believe that even the older dev kits were "less powerful than the 360"?

How can the older dev kits be weaker than the xbox360 if Nintendo has said that the Wii U is more powerful and that devs can easily port over late gen 360 games?

[Mithos]

lherre: "The system isn't all that powerful and some people are getting their hopes up too high." Chopper: "My source is disappointed with the Wii U's specs." Arkam: "The system isn't all that powerful and some people are getting their hopes up too high."

What does this say? Not much because we don't know what THESE developers was expecting/hoping for in terms of "next-gen" hardware.

[cyberheater]

How can the older dev kits be weaker than the xbox360 if Nintendo has said that the Wii U is more powerful and that devs can easily port over late gen 360 games?

Where did Nintendo say that WiiU is more powerful then Xbox360?

[Goodlife]

The whole point is that it is a generalisation (and I never, not once, claimed lherre said the kits were weaker than current generation systems). People are quite happy to lap up generalisations, but as soon as someone says something 'concrete' that conflicts with their hopes and wishes and dreams it's time for torches and pitchforks. Worse still people trying to dismiss Arkam's claims with the same damn generalisations from other sources. Nobody is willing to humour the possibility of any of Arkam's claims being slightly correct because, fact of the matter is, you don't want to believe it. And despite all this I too still don't believe Arkam's information is 100% accurate, simply because numerous other sources have stated or implied that you can, in total, squeeze more grunt out of the Wii U than the 360 and PS3. But that is about where this speculation begins and ends. I've heard no concrete specifications that necessarily conflict with what Arkam has said. I don't have any notable reason to believe the system isn't a tri core out of order CPU, or that it doesn't have 1GB of RAM.

We'll him stating "it's weaker than the 360" has made him into a bit of a joke poster, it must be said and has made it fairly easy to dismiss the rest of his claims.

[DragonKnight]

Where did Nintendo say that WiiU is more powerful then Xbox360?

I'm with you, dude. I'm still waiting for E3 but i'm not holding my breath for a more powerful system.

[cyberheater]

We'll him stating "it's weaker than the 360" has made him into a bit of a joke poster, it must be said and has made it fairly easy to dismiss the rest of his claims.

He only said the GPU was weaker and the memory was a bit slow. How does that make him a joke poster?

[Rösti]

How can the older dev kits be weaker than the xbox360 if Nintendo has said that the Wii U is more powerful and that devs can easily port over late gen 360 games?

I don't remember Nintendo saying something like that. Though several developers and analysts said last year only good things about the Wii U's power in relation to PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

John Carmack of ID Software said in an interview with GameSpot on the 9th of June 2011 the following:

But you know the technology level on there brings it up to parity with the other consoles, which is nice for us.

Source: http://e3.gamespot.com/story/6318725...-next-gen-rage

And Sterne Agee analyst Arvind Bhatia said to Industry Gamers on the 13th of June 2011 the following:

Some of the developers we spoke to indicated to us that the console will have 50% more processing power compared to the PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360. This is yet to be confirmed by Nintendo.

Source: http://www.industrygamers.com/news/w...-ps3---report/

Now, John's comment is a bit similar to what Arkam has written. If Wii U is only slightly less powerful than Xbox 360, it certainly would bring it to parity with both Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. At least regarding portability.

[z0m3le]

The whole point is that it is a generalisation (and I never, not once, claimed lherre said the kits were weaker than current generation systems). People are quite happy to lap up generalisations, but as soon as someone says something 'concrete' that conflicts with their hopes and wishes and dreams it's time for torches and pitchforks. Worse still people trying to dismiss Arkam's claims with the same damn generalisations from other sources. Nobody is willing to humour the possibility of any of Arkam's claims being slightly correct because, fact of the matter is, you don't want to believe it. And despite all this I too still don't believe Arkam's information is 100% accurate, simply because numerous other sources have stated or implied that you can, in total, squeeze more grunt out of the Wii U than the 360 and PS3. But that is about where this speculation begins and ends. I've heard no concrete specifications that necessarily conflict with what Arkam has said. I don't have any notable reason to believe the system isn't a tri core out of order CPU, or that it doesn't have 1GB of RAM.

I think Arkam really helped any speculation we could of had, it means 1TFlops is off the table, especially if people think an HD6670 is the base for x720, I will stop speculating with hard numbers, but something based on one of these types of GPUs would have half the memory bus (128bit) in Wii U it would be a low clocked part with maybe twice the Gflops in early dev units, but it would have modern shaders (with "plenty of features" that arkam is talking about and yet have "no teeth")

That is exactly what trinity is, Nintendo did happen to patent Triforce again, maybe they will use it for the code name of their GPU, to be honest this would put the hard numbers around 2x the 360 and I'm ok with that.

[LegendofJoe]

If the WiiU doesn't have at least 2008 or so graphic processing tech I'm not buying it until it reaches a mass market price ($99-$150). I borrowed a Wii from friends until recently because I believed it to be overpriced for much of its life, and if the same is true of the WiiU I will likely do that again.

[Rhod]

Some pertinent quotes from authoritative figures?

Talking about the Wii U, it is going to be compatible with high-definition TV sets, which are now widespread and, with the graphics capabilities catching up to the general trend, some people consider it to be the "next-generation Wii." On the other hand, as far as graphics capabilities are concerned, there are already other hardware systems with similar functions.

So, how to differentiate the Wii U in terms of brand-new uniqueness with other video game systems is important, and regarding this point, all I can say today is, we now have the new controller which revolves around the original concept of the Wii Remote, and the developers can take advantage of multiple screens, which enable them to leverage upon the unique combination of a big TV screen and a smaller screen in player’s hands.

[Goodlife]

He only said the GPU was weaker and the memory was a bit slow. How does that make him a joke poster?

Because the 360's memory is slow enough anyway and it's like 5-6 years later.

If Nintendo were going to go really cheap ass on the Wii U why stick 1GB of RAM in?
If they want a box that is weaker than the 360 there is no need for that.

[Grampa Simpson]

Damn the last couple of days have been hairy.

Maybe we can reboot the thread for GDC whether or not we hit 20k.

Wii U speculation 3: We're tumescent for GDC.

[Donnie]

The whole point is that it is a generalisation (and I never, not once, claimed lherre said the kits were weaker than current generation systems). People are quite happy to lap up generalisations, but as soon as someone says something 'concrete' that conflicts with their hopes and wishes and dreams it's time for torches and pitchforks. Worse still people trying to dismiss Arkam's claims with the same damn generalisations from other sources. Nobody is willing to humour the possibility of any of Arkam's claims being slightly correct because, fact of the matter is, you don't want to believe it. And despite all this I too still don't believe Arkam's information is 100% accurate, simply because numerous other sources have stated or implied that you can, in total, squeeze more grunt out of the Wii U than the 360 and PS3. But that is about where this speculation begins and ends. I've heard no concrete specifications that necessarily conflict with what Arkam has said. I don't have any notable reason to believe the system isn't a tri core out of order CPU, or that it doesn't have 1GB of RAM.

No I don't believe him because his info doesn't match up with most other sources and I'm not going to make excuses like "he might have been confused" in order to believe him. I don't see why anyone should be accused of only believing what they want to believe just because they won't do that. Someone needs to be convincing for me to believe them. If they say something that I believe is wrong (because it goes against someone I do believe), then everything else they say comes into question, that's only logical when talking about someone I know nothing about.

I'm not sure what concrete info he's come out with either. Everything he's said is in the public domain. We all knew the CPU was triple core and in order for instance, that's been said before by Lherre. A poster, by the way, who was never over the top or full of praise for WiiU. People didn't believe him because they wanted to believe him, they did so because he was believable.

[Door2Dawn]

I refuse to believe that Nintendo would make the same mistake again with Wii U. I mean that would surpass sony levels of stupidity,and those guys have made some pretty fucking stupid decisions.

[Goodlife]

I refuse to believe that Nintendo would make the same mistake again with Wii U. I mean that would surpass sony levels of stupidity,and those guys have made some pretty fucking stupid decisions.

What mistake? Being the generation leader and making a bucket load of cash?????

[EDarkness]

My only problem with Arkam is that he stated it was weaker than the 360 which I don't think has been said anywhere when developers discuss the Wii U, so for me that just sends red flags up. I don't think he should be lynched or anything, I just simply think there's something off about the comment. Maybe he's right, but it just doesn't jive with what we've been hearing so far. Is it going to blow everyone's socks off? I don't think so, either.

Maybe Nintendo will find that happy middle ground where most people are happy with the design. But until we know more, there just isn't any way to tell, however if the tech demos are anything to go by, then I'm fine with what they have so far.

[DragonKnight]

What mistake? Being the generation leader and making a bucket load of cash?????

And completely failing to cater to the likes of the people who went solely ps3 and 360 only? I'm sure nintendo would have enjoyed the dollar of 50 millions consumers.

Edit: And even if the damn thing is on par with the 360 it will still effectively be and Wii. Just what is Tecmo, EA, and Crytek telling nintendo that they want in the machine...

[Door2Dawn]

What mistake? Being the generation leader and making a bucket load of cash?????

Making a console that was so weak compared to the other consoles that it would be a hassle to port games to it.

[cyberheater]

Because the 360's memory is slow enough anyway and it's like 5-6 years later. If Nintendo were going to go really cheap ass on the Wii U why stick 1GB of RAM in? If they want a box that is weaker than the 360 there is no need for that.

Remember that he's talking about a older dev kit and that they were expecting another revision.
I think the main thrust of what he was trying to say is obvious. I think they were expecting at least 2x current gen and realised that was never going to happen.
Giving what we know now. I expect the final hardware to have a similar performance or maybe just a tad more of current gen with hopefully more memory. If they did ship with 1gig then that would be a huge help for devs and make porting a lot easier.

[LegendofJoe]

I refuse to believe that Nintendo would make the same mistake again with Wii U. I mean that would surpass sony levels of stupidity,and those guys have made some pretty fucking stupid decisions.

Nintendo took a monumental risk with its control interface for the Wii, so going low cost on the tech inside the console was a smart way to mitigate that risk. I don't think the tablet controller is anywhere near the risk that the Wii-mote was, so going low cost on the hardware makes a lot less sense to me.

[ozfunghi]

The whole point is that it is a generalisation (and I never, not once, claimed lherre said the kits were weaker than current generation systems). People are quite happy to lap up generalisations, but as soon as someone says something 'concrete' that conflicts with their hopes and wishes and dreams it's time for torches and pitchforks. Worse still people trying to dismiss Arkam's claims with the same damn generalisations from other sources. Nobody is willing to humour the possibility of any of Arkam's claims being slightly correct because, fact of the matter is, you don't want to believe it.

He did what now? He said something concrete? I must have missed it.

Bottomline, he says PS360 games need to be downscaled to run on WiiU. None of the "concrete info" he gave, explains that. Lherre said it is obviously more powerful, but not as much as people might hope. These are two opposite statements.

How you can pretend they both said the same thing is beyond me. Generalisation or not, because if you are going to generalize like that, your entire argument is without merrit.

Your statement that nobody is willing to believe ANY of his statements is also plain false. I'm willing to believe the amount of RAM, the fact that it's not that fast, the type of CPU, the decently specced GPU lacking pure muscle... but how ANY of that amounts to having to downscale 360 games in order for them to be able to run, i do not see. And when asked about that, he runs while crying "don't shoot the messenger"? It reeks of trolling any way you slice it. Capcom said they had RE5 running on 3DS without too many difficulties iirc, but the WiiU needs downscaled versions of 360 games?

[Goodlife]

And completely failing to cater to the likes of the people who went solely ps3 and 360 only? I'm sure nintendo would have enjoyed the dollar of 50 millions consumers.

What would it have cost them to cater to those 50 million consumers?

[DragonKnight]

Remember that he's talking about a older dev kit and that they were expecting another revision. I think the main thrust of what he was trying to say is obvious. I think they were expecting at least 2x current gen and realised that was never going to happen. Giving what we know now. I expect the final hardware to have a similar performance or maybe just a tad more of current gen with hopefully more memory. If they did ship with 1gig then that would be a huge help for devs and make porting a lot easier.

Yes but not for 720/ps4 games and certainly not powerful enough for next generation engines.

[DragonKnight]

What would it have cost them to cater to those 50 million consumers?

Good luck trying to win those same consumers back with underpowered hardware.

[cyberheater]

What mistake? Being the generation leader and making a bucket load of cash?????

Oh come on. I really like my Wii but if Ninty had shipped with the performance and graphics on par with PS360 then they would still be selling shed loads, they would have had much more 3rd party support and I probably would have stuck to the one system.

My fear is that Ninty are going to do the same with the WiiU. If the power isn't there then it's not going to be a 10 year system. If Xbox 720 and PS4 is clearly much more powerful then WiiU will die a death like the Wii is doing now.

[Goodlife]

Oh come on. I really like my Wii but if Ninty had shipped with the performance and graphics on par with PS360 then they would still be selling shed loads, they would have had much more 3rd party support and I probably would have stuck to the one system. My fear is that Ninty are going to do the same with the WiiU. If the power isn't there then it's not going to be a 10 year system. If Xbox 720 and PS4 is clearly much more powerful then WiiU will die a death like the Wii is doing now.

Uh, that makes no sense. The 360 and PS3 are still a fair way behind and is highly unlikely that they will ever catch up to the Wii's sales.
If the Wii was on par, it would have been more expensive for consumers and / or lost a lot of money for Nintendo, like the PS3 and 360 has done for Sony and MS.

[radioheadrule83]

Speculation about the power of the dev kits, even the last few pages of Arkam saga - hasn't informed me one jot. I am less sure about what other people know, and I personally know about as much as I did last week... which isn't a lot.

I do hope Nintendo start getting some news out soon... tomorrow would be a good start. E3 can be the blow-out, but a few teases and incidental announcements to whip up hype towards the expo might be nice.

[mclem]

And despite all this I too still don't believe Arkam's information is 100% accurate, simply because numerous other sources have stated or implied that you can, in total, squeeze more grunt out of the Wii U than the 360 and PS3. But that is about where this speculation begins and ends. I've heard no concrete specifications that necessarily conflict with what Arkam has said. I don't have any notable reason to believe the system isn't a tri core out of order CPU, or that it doesn't have 1GB of RAM.

Arkam has said he's not a software engineer. I would rather like to know what the nature of his interactions with the system *are*, if they're not in the realms of software development.

I'm reminded of the fact that it was an unwritten rule when I was in the games industry for the coding side of things to hold their cards very close to their chest, because if you give artists and designers an inch, they'll gladly take a mile.

[DragonKnight]

Uh, that makes no sense. The 360 and PS3 are still a fair way behind and is highly unlikely that they will ever catch up to the Wii's sales. If the Wii was on par, it would have been more expensive for consumers and / or lost a lot of money for Nintendo, like the PS3 and 360 has done for Sony and MS.

I believe it was the waggle that sold the system. It was new and fresh. People support apple products for a reason. Casuals will flock to new experiences regardless of the price.

[cyberheater]

Uh, that makes no sense. The 360 and PS3 are still a fair way behind and is highly unlikely that they will ever catch up to the Wii's sales. If the Wii was on par, it would have been more expensive for consumers and / or lost a lot of money for Nintendo, like the PS3 and 360 has done for Sony and MS.

There is no doubt that Wii has been a very successful system for Nintendo but sales have dropped of the planet. I believe (my opinion) that the system would have had longer legs if the hardware was HD with reasonable performance from the get go.

[Albino_Samurai]

I guess an underpowered Developer Kit would make sense in the case where Nintendo would limit the developers to a certain amount of use of the CPU, so that the processor still has enough juice left to run other aplications or future (hardware) extensions/upgrades beside the game itself.

Right?

Im no tech wizard, but i know the architecture of the hardware in a console is way different than that of a PC.
Bottlenecks mostly don't exist and there's isn't a Operating System that requires a big of the amount of RAM, like Vista for instance....

Realy curious what the crop of the cream can pull from this new Nintendo machine.

What i would like to see is a new Endless Ocean in full HD. The team who made the Japanese garden demo could handle it as it seems.
I would even settle for remakes of the first two games!
And a new SimCity would be rather nice.
The tablet controller would be excellent for these kinda games. All in my humblest opinion ofcourse.

One other thing, i realy hope it supports 3d party hardware extensions, like my G25, or mouse and keyboard.

[teeny]

Here is a thought.

What if the Wii U is only ever intended as a stop gap system? I mean, how far away are the next Xbox and Playstation machines in comparison to when the Wii U launches? Is it possible that Nintendo felt the need to release a machine comparable to the current generation because they knew it was too soon to really compete with Microsoft and Sony, but they had to do something because of the current situation with the Wii?

If Sony really do extend the PS3s lifespan for a considerable length of time, and the next Xbox releases say at the end of 2013, then releasing in autumn of 2012 with a 3 year lifespan and again in 2014/15 may not be a bad idea, I guess.

The whole notion of a 'generation' has been contorted now anyway.

[stilgar]

I believe it was the waggle that sold the system. It was new and fresh. People support apple products for a reason. Casuals will flock to new experiences regardless of the price.

That, Sir, is a nonsense.

[tkscz]

I'm just going to go ahead and agree with EatChildren (never thought I'd say something like that) here and say that Arkham simply got his info wrong. For one, the original dev kits (of which he were talking about) were underclocked and underpowered. Hell, other devs claimed the original dev kits were about 50% stronger than the 360. I'm going to stick with what I've always thought (3 - 5 times the 360) and leave it at that. No more about this Arkham guy sense he never posted again and probably won't.

[LegendofJoe]

My fear is that Ninty are going to do the same with the WiiU. If the power isn't there then it's not going to be a 10 year system. If Xbox 720 and PS4 is clearly much more powerful then WiiU will die a death like the Wii is doing now.

This is an argument about value, and I totally agree. What I care about most is functionality and value (present and future). If the WiiU is substantially underpowered compared to the competition again and doesn't release at a cheap price (cheaper than $250) it will be a low value offering. I love Nintendo's games and the promise of the tablet controller, but I refuse to buy overpriced old tech out of principle. It's akin to me going out and buying a 2002 Camaro for slightly less than for what I would spend buying a 2010 Camaro, to me that is not a good decision.

[Gahiggidy]

The Xbox 720 will be closer to the Wii U in performance than it will be to the PS4.

[stilgar]

The Xbox 720 will be closer to the Wii U in performance than it will be to the PS4.

Sure thing is that the gap won't be so huge between WiiU and PS4/720 that it was in this gen.

[Goodlife]

There is no doubt that Wii has been a very successful system for Nintendo but sales have dropped of the planet. I believe (my opinion) that the system would have had longer legs if the hardware was HD with reasonable performance from the get go.

It may not have the legs of the other two, but is still going to outsell them.

[DragonKnight]

That, Sir, is a nonsense.

I don't think it is.

[Shin Johnpv]

Now, John's comment is a bit similar to what Arkam has written.

I think you're miss interpreting Carmack's comment. The big problem with the Wii was it lacked the shader technology that has become the standard in the industry. I think what Carmack is commenting on is that the Wii-U is now using the same shader technology, and not a comment on the "power" of the console.

[stilgar]

I don't think it is.

There is a reason for the wii to be underpowered.

[cyberheater]

It may not have the legs of the other two, but is still going to outsell them.

You're missing the point. This is about our hopes and aspirations for WiiU and how powerful we want it to be. Selling another underpowered system might be a good financial move for Nintendo but I'm simply not interested this time around.