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Rumor: Wii U final specs

That's just as much to do with developers getting used to the switch to HD and of the newer tech. People compare the WiiU launch games to 360 launch are way off base. The early WiiU games are greatly benefiting from developers working at this level for the past 7+ years. They have proven, advanced engines in place that are far better than they had at the launch of the 360. It's really not that difficult to show hardware superiority if it's there. The Xbox started outdoing the PS2 day 1 and never let up. I'm not saying the WiiU isn't more powerful, but I'm highly sceptical that it's to the level some are trying to make it out to be.

Publishers have given developers specific requirements and a big enough budget to meet those requirements, get the WiiU ports running as good as the current version and have them ready for launch.

Developers are just porting over games and aren't allowed to commit any more resources to make them look better.

Just look at the Sonic Racing developer as an example. They are only allowed to port the game. They can't make the game look better even if they wanted to due to requirments and limited budget. They need to use Xbox360 and PS3 assets and code.

However, they are discovering the capabilities of the WiiU with performance tests and prototypes, things they can't add to a port due to time and requirement constraints. They have said the WiiU is exceeding what they expected.
 

AlStrong

Member
I think he asked about the NL screens. LBP2 does have some kind of GI for color lighting too, you can see it on the golf ball, and sackboy at least. It's imprecise, but that green would not be on the golf ball if not for some kind of bounce calculation from the green wall, I think.

Yeah, it's a bit odd because the article also shows the LBP1 equivalent (http://images.eurogamer.net/articles//a/1/2/7/3/8/3/7/Cornell_Box_LBP1.jpg.jpg), which also shows the green tint (LBP1 only used a light pre-pass renderer though) - they probably just switched the renderer to make the screenshot, but even so, you can see the greenish tint on the left half of the underside of the ball too, which shouldn't be happening with the dynamic irradiance anyway (they explicitly mentioned @ Siggraph that 1st order SH was monochromatic). :p

Seems possible that the greenish tint is from the level's baked GI bleeding through the dynamic object/floor (background has the green grass). *shrug*
 

djyella

Member
Publishers have given developers specific requirements and a big enough budget to meet those requirements, get the WiiU ports running as good as the current version and have them ready for launch.

Developers are just porting over games and aren't allowed to commit any more resources to make them look better.

Just look at the Sonic Racing developer as an example. They are only allowed to port the game. They can't make the game look better even if they wanted to due to requirments and limited budget. They need to use Xbox360 and PS3 assets and code.

However, they are discovering the capabilities of the WiiU with performance tests and prototypes, things they can't add to a port due to time and requirement constraints. They have said the WiiU is exceeding what they expected.

This makes sense to me. Get the games up and running in time for the launch/window. If you have the budget/time to improve some things then do it but if not just get it up and running equal to that of the PS360. I look forward to the latter half of 2013 and beyond to really start to see what the WiiU is capable of. Also, once the WiiU launches I'm sure the 3rd parties will be more vocal about what they have and will hopefully show more as they will be able to promote for the WiiU. As it stands right now, I agree with the idea that publishers might be a little quiet because the WiiU isn't out yet and they want to push the games for the PS360 base.
 

djyella

Member
For a example this?

nintendo+land+mario+chase+screen+3.jpg


I haven't seen one PS3/360 game that looks just as good lighting wise, and I think the textures and detail are great.

That gradual depth of field is great. The details in the textures are nice too. The little things :) There are other shots, like some of the chase me shots that show a nice draw distance and the zelda shots. Really clean looking.
 
For those of you calling bullshits please see this link:

Official screenshots from darksiders 2 WII-U version not pc version scaled down the Wii-U version. This week as well

This is from The Verge a trustworthy site as well.

Please stop the Wii-U is going to be a player next gen.

I'm on iPad so if someone wants to post the images feel free.

http://www.theverge.com/gaming/2012/9/14/3330908/darksiders-2-wii-u-screenshots#3786553

They're press-shots.

I'm not sure why you think press-shots can't be bullshots.

If there are some direct feed shots, that's a different story.

Unless you think Uncharted 2 actually looks like this.
uncharted-2-among-thieves1.jpg
 
They're press-shots.

I'm not sure why you think press-shots can't be bullshots.

If there are some direct feed shots, that's a different story.

Unless you think Uncharted 2 actually looks like this.
uncharted-2-among-thieves1.jpg

Add some jaggies to that pic and yeah it looks that good.


So have we finally confirmed that Wii U's CPU is based on the Power7 or was someone able to refute IBM's twitter page?

My question is why do we hear "concerns" about the Wii U CPU if it is based on the Power7? Is it really clocked that low?
 

JordanN

Banned
Add some jaggies to that pic and yeah it looks that good.


So have we finally confirmed that Wii U's CPU is based on the Power7 or was someone able to refute IBM's twitter page?

My question is why do we hear "concerns" about the Wii U CPU if it is based on the Power7? Is it really clocked that low?
A better question is where are these concerns coming from and why should they be taken seriously? Every time it's been said the Wii U struggles at something, it's been shot down.

So the Wii U CPU is based on Power 7?, since IBM keeps saying it and all that stuff.
It should be. Nintendo lists IBM as their official CPU provider. :)
 

Meelow

Banned
That "comment" never had any mustard behind it in the first place.

That's what I thought at the start when this rumor was shown, the Wii U has Assassin's Creed 3 which uses the CPU a lot and I don't think an overclocked Broadway could do it, and beside Nintendo using the same CPU for 3 generations in a row would be the stupidest thing a gaming company could do.
 

JordanN

Banned
The idea Nintendo would be so insane as to pair 3 outdated CPU's with a modern GPU always appeared rubbish if you remember this comment from last year.

"There has been some fantastic content that has not come to our platform," said Fils-Aime. "Third party publishers have told us that the reason they couldn’t bring it to our platform was based on the horsepower of the machine. That excuse is gone. So now all of the best content can come to the machine."

We also had this.

"Wii U seems to be a lot more powerful than the previous generation," he said, adding, "It sort of fits better into the scalability in terms of graphics performance and CPU performance, so I think it'll be a lot easier for us to fit it into our scalability model."

How many Valve games are there for Wii again? I think it was 10?
 

Van Owen

Banned
The idea Nintendo would be so insane as to pair 3 outdated CPU's with a modern GPU always appeared rubbish if you remember this comment from last year.

"There has been some fantastic content that has not come to our platform," said Fils-Aime. "Third party publishers have told us that the reason they couldn’t bring it to our platform was based on the horsepower of the machine. That excuse is gone. So now all of the best content can come to the machine."

We also had this.

"Wii U seems to be a lot more powerful than the previous generation," he said, adding, "It sort of fits better into the scalability in terms of graphics performance and CPU performance, so I think it'll be a lot easier for us to fit it into our scalability model."

How many Valve games are there for Wii again? I think it was 10?

Gabe was speculating, and Reggie is PR.
 
Gabe was speculating, and Reggie is PR.

Why would he need to speculate when he most likely has a dev kit? And what makes you think it's so easy for gabe newell to just go out and assume that the wii u is much more powerful than the current generation without having any knowledge on what the system is capable of when people on this forum/Everywhere else on the internet think the opposite?
 

Van Owen

Banned
Why would he need to speculate when he most likely has a dev kit? And what makes you think it's so easy for gabe newell to just go out and assume that the wii u is much more powerful than the current generation without having any knowledge on what the system is capable of when people on this forum/Everywhere else on the internet think the opposite?

He made the comment around E3 2011 and said it "seems" to be powerful. I doubt he had a kit at that time when they've had zero announcements regarding Wii U.
 

Lord Error

Insane For Sony
The rumor that WiiU CPU is weak comes from some pretty reliable sources. By 'weak', it doesn't mean Pentium of course, but about the same or slightly worse than a 7 year old console that launched at the same price as WiiU will be. There's no reason not to believe this either, it's not like WiiU from what's shown so far has been destroying the games we've already seen on other consoles. They all run, and look about the same on it.


Yeah, it's a bit odd because the article also shows the LBP1 equivalent (http://images.eurogamer.net/articles//a/1/2/7/3/8/3/7/Cornell_Box_LBP1.jpg.jpg), which also shows the green tint (LBP1 only used a light pre-pass renderer though) - they probably just switched the renderer to make the screenshot, but even so, you can see the greenish tint on the left half of the underside of the ball too, which shouldn't be happening with the dynamic irradiance anyway (they explicitly mentioned @ Siggraph that 1st order SH was monochromatic). :p

Seems possible that the greenish tint is from the level's baked GI bleeding through the dynamic object/floor (background has the green grass). *shrug*
When playing the game the effect appears somehow more obvious. However, from the screens shown there, it could be that both games use the 'color shader from the underside of the object' and the color used is determined by the closeness to a largest object around or something simple like that. The last Sonic game is using something like this, but only on Sonic IIRC. So when he's running on grass, he's got green color shader applied from below, when running on bricks, the shader switches color to red etc.
 
So we are back to "who knows what the Wii U CPU really does" ? Well it looks like a break down of the system is what has to happen come November 18th. It won't be my system I'll tell you that much :p


Since the CPU is most definitely OoOE, it again lays credence that we won't really see what the Wii U can do with ports from games designed for the Xbox 360's IOE CPU...........good times.........this won't end anytime soon.
 

Shaheed79

dabbled in the jelly
The info about who they worked for. You'll have to ask the mods they talked to on that. Arkam, who it sounds like VGLeaks got this from, was the first person to give us info that pointed to the CPU issues devs were running into. Obviously I can't 100% vouch for them, but at the same time I think it's unfair to 100% write them off as well. Especially when you're asking for stuff you may never get.

Your last sentence is kind of like saying "barely accurate, uncorroborated information is better than no information at all". Imo, not really. But there is a very strong chance that we will receive the information in approximately 2 months time, whether Nintendo likes it or not.

So it's a secret who Arkam works for. That's fine if he doesn't wish to divulge his place of employ, but the consequences of that are less reasons to take his leaks at face value and needs to be independently confirmed. No offense to Arkam but that's just the nature of discerning information.

I take it that some of the gafers who commented saying "These are the same specs I heard also." that they more than likely heard those specs, either directly or indirectly, from the exact same source, instead of an independent corroboration, from a different Wii U developer working for a different company. So we may have a situation where different "insiders" are saying that they heard the same specs, maybe not even knowing that the source is the same. To me that is more believable than each one of them having a different buddy working in the industry, on the final Wii U dev kits, describing the specs the exact same way.

I just find it a little unlikely that Wii U developers, with final specification dev kits, are independently describing Wii U specs as "enhanced Broadway", and only acknowledging half of the available ram which should be in the newest dev kits.

I believe there is a reason why only certain developers are allowed to talk publicly about the Wii U hardware. The ones who are allowed to publicly comment are the developers whom Nintendo has entrusted with the latest and most up to date dk specs. Developers who are not privy to that information, nor privy to the best and newest dev kits, are asked to keep quiet because the information and dev kits that they have aren't representative of the final hardware. Then the developers, who are not so happy about having the older and weaker units, decide to leak how disappointing the hardware is.

Do you really think people are going to risk their jobs just to satisfy your need to know who they work for?
I believe I answered that question just a few sentences down from where you quoted me.

me said:
I don't expect actual Wii U developers to break NDA, but when your rumors are this vague, nondescript and even inaccurate through omission. then you don't have a lot of credibility for people to take you seriously.
I honestly didn't know what kind of situation this person was in because the rumor was so vague. People were telling me that the information in the op was already independently corroborated by other developers. I asked who those people were and who they worked for. Seemed like a sensible question to ask at the time.

You can believe what they say or not. They have been verified by the MODS. Nuff said.

With all due respect to the mods and the wonderful gaf administration, I personally don't think that they are a definitive source of insider industry info, especially when it comes to a company as secretive as Nintendo, who go through great lengths to keep their hand close to their chest. I'm not saying that I don't appreciate when they do drop stuff, because I do. But when it comes to the topic of Nintendo hardware, I always remain skeptical. That goes for anyone who isn't Nintendo or a confirmed Nintendo partner.

The impression that I am getting, from bgassassin and others, is that the mods are simply willing to vouch for the fact that the source is "within the industry", which is fine. That may be enough for certain people, but not myself. Unless they can confirm that the source of this rumor is not just "in the industry", but an actual Wii U developer who has access to the final spec Wii U dev kits, then to me it is far from being something that I am willing to give credence.

Usually when rumors like this happen, right before a reveal, gaf will use any new information, officially confirmed by the company, in order to compare to the rumor and then gauge how accurate the information most likely is. Nothing new in this leak was corroborated by Nintendo, but rather several glaring omissions draw the leak into question, since this rumor was suppose to be "final Wii U specs".

How could someone with a final spec Wii U dev kit not know about the 2gig total system ram? If they did know, then why did they only mention half of the ram? Since over time more memory can be reallocated from the OS into the games, I see no logical reason to omit this information, even if the answer was that currently developers can only use 1gig for games. In other words, the Wii U information, that was officially confirmed after the posting of this rumor, does not lend itself to the credibility of the rumor. I just can't pretend that it did.
 

majik13

Member
That's just as much to do with developers getting used to the switch to HD and of the newer tech. People compare the WiiU launch games to 360 launch are way off base. The early WiiU games are greatly benefiting from developers working at this level for the past 7+ years. They have proven, advanced engines in place that are far better than they had at the launch of the 360. It's really not that difficult to show hardware superiority if it's there. The Xbox started outdoing the PS2 day 1 and never let up. I'm not saying the WiiU isn't more powerful, but I'm highly sceptical that it's to the level some are trying to make it out to be.

Do you think all engine development, optimization, and graphical advancments is suddely just going to stop?
 

mrklaw

MrArseFace
The idea Nintendo would be so insane as to pair 3 outdated CPU's with a modern GPU always appeared rubbish if you remember this comment from last year.

"There has been some fantastic content that has not come to our platform," said Fils-Aime. "Third party publishers have told us that the reason they couldn’t bring it to our platform was based on the horsepower of the machine. That excuse is gone. So now all of the best content can come to the machine."

We also had this.

"Wii U seems to be a lot more powerful than the previous generation," he said, adding, "It sort of fits better into the scalability in terms of graphics performance and CPU performance, so I think it'll be a lot easier for us to fit it into our scalability model."

How many Valve games are there for Wii again? I think it was 10?

That's ok because they haven't paired it with a modern GPU :p


It's a shame though if WiiU doesn't stretch it's legs until later in 2013, because by then you'll have shots and clips of PS4/720 stuff coming through. Perhaps understandable from 3rd par devs with a limited budget/time, but perhaps Nintendo should have pushed to get something more graphically advanced out for launch - pikmin 3 is the best coming up and even that isn't exactly pushing anything
 

Matt

Member
So we are back to "who knows what the Wii U CPU really does" ? Well it looks like a break down of the system is what has to happen come November 18th. It won't be my system I'll tell you that much :p


Since the CPU is most definitely OoOE, it again lays credence that we won't really see what the Wii U can do with ports from games designed for the Xbox 360's IOE CPU...........good times.........this won't end anytime soon.

3 cores.
 

pottuvoi

Banned
5 processes per core, where did that come from? So each core is more like a separate CPU with multiple cores? Surely you can't get 5 threads using hyper threading, or can you?
You can, although 5 is pretty silly number.

Power7 has 4 threads per core.
Niagara 3 has 16 cores with 8 threads each, 128 threads at the same time.
 

The_Lump

Banned

Nibel

Member
Probably a mistake, why should they keep this a secret while talking openly about features such as NFC or the TV switch button?
 
Long overanalyzing post.
You have lherre, Arkam, EatChildren, someone who decided to call themselves Espresso on B3D, IdeaMan but in a more optimistic fashion, and whoever Eurogamer's sources are corroborating spec/SDK copy/pasta leaks.

That's the best anyone's going to get. And really more than most expected to get until someone tears it apart and puts it under a microscope or something.

There's been very little public comment on specifics regarding the hardware - until Iwata confirmed a few things in Nintendo direct. You have people saying things like "Oh it's great, blah blah." which is essentially meaningless - as they've got PR hats on.

It could be some huge Nintendo conspiracy wherein they've given different devkits and there are better devkits and no one knows who got what - what an awesome way to cultivate developer relations - or it could just be Occam's Razor.
 

The_Lump

Banned
You have lherre, Arkam, EatChildren, someone who decided to call themselves Espresso on B3D, IdeaMan but in a more optimistic fashion, and whoever Eurogamer's sources are corroborating spec/SDK copy/pasta leaks.

That's the best anyone's going to get. And really more than most expected to get until someone tears it apart and puts it under a microscope or something.

There's been very little public comment on specifics regarding the hardware - until Iwata confirmed a few things in Nintendo direct. You have people saying things like "Oh it's great, blah blah." which is essentially meaningless - as they've got PR hats on.

It could be some huge Nintendo conspiracy wherein they've given different devkits and there are better devkits and no one knows who got what - what an awesome way to cultivate developer relations - or it could just be Occam's Razor.

Would have been an excellent WUST thread title :(
 

Stewox

Banned
I'd believe IGN over vague forum posters, but that's just me.


Hah that made my morning, I laughed so hard it was probably heard half down the street.


IGN made up that WiiU uses bluetooth and then Wikipedia-stupidos quoted IGN as a source for connectivity method, first of all, bluetooth is internally used and it's not available for any user connectivity methods, shouldn't be listed along with USB2.0 and wireless internet, if they want to list bluetooth they also need to list terminal wireless for the GamePad and that would get it's own section then, will get this sorted out, i rarely edit wikipedia because I only do it when I KNOW FOR 100% i will do it right on the topics I have fully research. This is basic behavior that's a no brainer.

I have nothing against em, but it just weird, most of those guys don't want to research on their own, they just keep policing the page and they are so airheaded to keep using IGN as a credible source, so they definitely aren't any gaming community core members, historians and those that follow stuff deeply, I had many arguments which got me almost a punishment but I had a point, the biggest argument was about Duke Nukem Forever, we knew it was going to happen, the wikipedia idiots wanted to belive some "neutral 3r party source", they keept promoting their wiki-rules.
I was on the side of community core which are a bunch of people who follow stuff deeply, and I can say 100% bgassassin is one of them when it comes to WiiU, so these guys were so defensive, then I tried to use 9/11 wiki page, which is basically a page based on lies, as an argument to see what would they say or if they want to apply the same rules, how the heck can you know of a "neutral 3rd party soruce" is really more credible than a "researcher" that's been familiar with the topic for years, and ofcourse I knew that was dead end and just broke it up. Since then I never argued with anyone it's a waste of time.
 

AzaK

Member
That's ok because they haven't paired it with a modern GPU :p


It's a shame though if WiiU doesn't stretch it's legs until later in 2013, because by then you'll have shots and clips of PS4/720 stuff coming through. Perhaps understandable from 3rd par devs with a limited budget/time, but perhaps Nintendo should have pushed to get something more graphically advanced out for launch - pikmin 3 is the best coming up and even that isn't exactly pushing anything

I was thinking similar this morning. If Nintendo save their graphical showcase for too close to the 720/PS4 reveal, they run the risk of looking rather foolish. If they'd had something to show earlier it could have helped them in the lead up to launch.
 

Goodlife

Member
Since we're back on this topic...

I don't see why people are so dead-set on there being some immutable definition, and that there can't be multiple subjective delimiters.

I'm not sure why people are ignoring that generations have been defined by "power" or perception thereof. 8 bit. 16 bit. 32/64 bit, 3D era. Not just a space of time.

There are consoles across generations that have released within a similar/shorter space of time than consoles considered within a generation.

There we go, you just fcuked up your argument with that little bit.
 

magash

Member
I was thinking similar this morning. If Nintendo save their graphical showcase for too close to the 720/PS4 reveal, they run the risk of looking rather foolish. If they'd had something to show earlier it could have helped them in the lead up to launch.

You are making the quick assumption of thinking that there wouldn't be a learning curve involved in developing games for the PS4/720.
 

AzaK

Member
You are making the quick assumption of thinking that there wouldn't be a learning curve involved in developing games for the PS4/720.

The learning curve is nowhere near as much as this gen. I'm also assuming that MS and SONY would get one of their experienced studios or third parties to make something "wow worthy", whereas Nintendo can't or just won't bother as that's not their MO.
 

magash

Member
The learning curve is nowhere near as much as this gen. I'm also assuming that MS and SONY would get one of their experienced studios or third parties to make something "wow worthy", whereas Nintendo can't or just won't bother as that's not their MO.

So in short Nintendo should have lied and created CG demos (Killzone 2) in order to be considered 'wow worthy'. Nintendo's problem (at least when unveiling the Wii U) was that it just didn't lie through its teeth. They should have just 'Killzone-ify' their Zelda tech demo.
 

SmokyDave

Member
Yes, bits stopped being used, because they became less largely irrelevant as a measure. That didn't change the overarching metric being essentially hardware power.

People need to stop saying 'next-gen' and start saying 'demonstrating the sort of leap in power we have come to associate with a generational transition over the last twenty years'.

It's snappier.
 

Goodlife

Member
Yes, bits stopped being used, because they became less largely irrelevant as a measure. That didn't change the overarching metric being essentially hardware power.

Not what I was saying.

You were trying to use examples of how power defined a generation. Great.

But then, for some reason, you decide it's ok to lump 32/64bit in together, even though there is a 100% difference between the two.
 

Thrakier

Member
So in short Nintendo should have lied and created CG demos (Killzone 2) in order to be considered 'wow worthy'. Nintendo's problem (at least when unveiling the Wii U) was that it just didn't lie through its teeth. They should have just 'Killzone-ify' their Zelda tech demo.

Killzone 2 graphics quality was achieved though.
 
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