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[Hakai]

Are all of you guys still buying the Wii U at launch?

Definitely! NSMB U, Nintendo Land and Project P-100 just settled it! And I would get it anyways in the future, so I will take it ASAP so I can have fun with a new toy. =D

Though I'm hoping for a Black version, if it is white only I will get it anyways.

 

[IdeaMan]

I was going to say something snarky, but lack of coffee was my undoing. I'm just going to point out again that "The Sunday Before Black Friday" has been a traditional Nintendo Vacation for some time now.

To be fair, i would say that even if the November launch is the most expected date, a lot of people thought (and some may still believe in that scenario) that the Wii U will release at an early date, because of the vague Q3/Q4, other statements about "launch window games in 2012" that pushed some to think the system will hit the shelves at least a few months before those, other declarations from officials, various clues spread on those speculation threads (that yourself listed in your consolidated summaries) about a possible september release, etc. Even insiders heard about that.

But it won't be September.

 

[Instro]

Who am I to stop people deluding themselves into thinking case volume has no relation to airflow and cooling of modern hardware? Hardware runs on magic and fairy dust after all.

Are there ponies inside?

 

[Nibel]

http://www.thealistdaily.com/news/exclusive-gamesbeats-dean-takahashi/

[a]list: With Nintendo, where do you think they came up short in the way they showed the Wii U?

Dean Takahashi: They have a major issue with the capability of the Wii U console where it has a single processor but it has to drive multiple displays. A single graphics chip inside the console has to drive the big screen, the main game screen, but it also has to provide the imagery for the tablet controller, the game pad. And yet the system itself isn’t that powerful. Nintendo only showed games with one game pad controller and the TV. Most games out there, if you’re in a social setting, you want two controllers. Nintendo didn’t show any games that do that. They admitted in a Q&A that the games are going to run slower if you have two game pads and playing on a main display. That’s a fairly big issue for them. They made a good case that you can play with one controller and multiple Wii controllers, what they call asymmetric gaming where one person is looking at the small tablet screen and trying to deploy zombies while the people playing with the controllers were all on the main screen. You come up with very creative, different kinds of games where it’s one against four, or one person going online. They tried to justify and turn into an advantage this major weakness of the Wii U, but I think a lot of people saw this as a weakness. The games themselves were creative. They tried to do something like Wii Sports with NintendoLand, which has mini-games in it that explore the capabilities of the tablet and the touch screen. But there wasn’t an obvious blockbuster within those games. They may have had a good one in ZombieU, but in the demos it didn’t necessarily play that well. Nintendo came up as a pretty big disappointment at E3.

Go ClovingWestbrook, create a thread from hell!

 

[Glorified G]

http://www.thealistdaily.com/news/exclusive-gamesbeats-dean-takahashi/



Go ClovingWestbrook, create a thread from hell!

He's banned. I think you should take the honors.

 

[10k]

Games like assassins creed III are listed for October 30th while launch window games are listed as "Launch". So to me, that sounds like the Wii U will be comin out in October maybe after Canadian thanksgiving. Add that to the Nintendo rep who said that Nintendo considers October a holiday month, I think the wii u will be out the second Sunday of October.

October 14th is my prediction.

 

[GameplayWhore]

http://www.thealistdaily.com/news/exclusive-gamesbeats-dean-takahashi/

it has a single processor but it has to drive multiple displays.

Go ClovingWestbrook, create a thread from hell!

Don't most multi-display computers use a single processor to drive multiple displays? I mean, in the old days, they used multiple processors, but nowadays it's pretty common to just use single, multi-core processors and single, highly parallel graphics processors.

 

[Log4Girlz]

Who am I to stop people deluding themselves into thinking case volume has no relation to airflow and cooling of modern hardware? Hardware runs on magic and fairy dust after all.

I loved how Ace tried to convince us that a smaller case was conducive to greater cooling ability.

 

[schuelma]

Games like assassins creed III are listed for October 30th while launch window games are listed as "Launch". So to me, that sounds like the Wii U will be comin out in October maybe after Canadian thanksgiving. Add that to the Nintendo rep who said that Nintendo considers October a holiday month, I think the wii u will be out the second Sunday of October.

October 14th is my prediction.

Nintendo has repeatedly said the holiday season. I am 90% sure it will be the weekend before Thanksgiving like with the Wii.

 

[Fourth Storm]

I think a console controller in 2012 should at least have analogue triggers.

It's frustrating that we apparently need to fight tooth and nail for every little feature you'd think would be a standard by now.

And let's hope that GPU is a marvel of modern engineering. Using the e6760 as evidence, I still hold that at 32nm, a 640 SPU design (maybe stick to 8 ROPs as I've read they weren't a bottleneck this gen) @ 600 Mhz is is feasible. But that's currently looking like the absolute max.

Also, no replies to my post on CPU threading?

 

[Hoodbury]

I loved how Ace tried to convince us that a smaller case was conducive to greater cooling ability.

It's actually not that illogical of reasoning. Think of it in non tech examples... What do you think is easier to cool off on a hot summer day? A huge mansion, or a tiny house?

I get that it's not the same thing, but for someone who isn't that tech savvy it doesn't really make sense that bigger is easier to cool.

 

[Log4Girlz]

It's actually not that illogical of reasoning. Think of it in non tech examples... What do you think is easier to cool off on a hot summer day? A huge mansion, or a tiny house?

I get that it's not the same thing, but for someone who isn't that tech savvy it doesn't really make sense that bigger is easier to cool.

If you're trying to cool down a burning hot piece of say...coal, do you throw it in a cup of ice water or a bucket of ice?

 

[Thunder Monkey]

Good lawd man

Dude

You are indeed special :lol

Chobot started it!

I wouldn't want to lick a controller you guys touched.

Gross.

 

[10k]

Nintendo has repeatedly said the holiday season. I am 90% sure it will be the weekend before Thanksgiving like with the Wii.

I don't know. Why would Ubisoft list games like Rayman Origins as "Launch" while assassins creed III is listed as October 30th? Does that mean Ubisoft knows the wii u release and knows ACIII won't be ready or does it mean Ubisoft thinks the Wii U will launch before ACIII's launch? Maybe they want to put the Wii U version in the market a few days/weeks ahead of the Wii U launch (unlikely)

I think Ubisoft knows the launch date.

 

[10k]

Chobot started it!

I wouldn't want to lick a controller you guys touched.

Gross.

I now find myself sexually attracted to Jessica Chobot.....now I want her to lick my vita and 3DS and Wii Remote (also my Nintendo wii controller as well )

 

[Fourth Storm]

I don't know. Why would Ubisoft list games like Rayman Origins as "Launch" while assassins creed III is listed as October 30th? Does that mean Ubisoft knows the wii u release and knows ACIII won't be ready or does it mean Ubisoft thinks the Wii U will launch before ACIII's launch? Maybe they want to put the Wii U version in the market a few days/weeks ahead of the Wii U launch (unlikely)

I think Ubisoft knows the launch date.

You've got it backwards. "Launch window" titles will be arriving after "Holiday" titles. You can count on that.

Edit: I see you're referring to the Ubisoft release list, while I was thinking back to the Nintendo one. In that case, I'm banking on the latter being more accurate.

 

[Hakai]

I now find myself sexually attracted to Jessica Chobot.....now I want her to lick my vita and 3DS and Wii Remote (also my Nintendo wii controller as well )

wow,Wow, WOw, WOW...too many details there tiger!!

 

[lwilliams3]

It's frustrating that we apparently need to fight tooth and nail for every little feature you'd think would be a standard by now.

And let's hope that GPU is a marvel of modern engineering. Using the e6760 as evidence, I still hold that at 32nm, a 640 SPU design (maybe stick to 8 ROPs as I've read they weren't a bottleneck this gen) @ 600 Mhz is is feasible. But that's currently looking like the absolute max.

Also, no replies to my post on CPU threading?

Whatever the GPU will end up has probably be trimmed and modified due to Nintendo's requests for video games so that it may not look like any other GPU in the end. I think that an e6760 does give us a good idea on what a chip in GPU7's watt-range can be capable of.

So far, though, the original GPU in Wii U's dev kit was apparently a 4830 possibly underclocked to 450MHz. That would be ~576 TFlops, so the final chip should most likely still be somewhere in that range of performance, if not a bit more.

As for your thoughts on the CPU mult-threading, I'm still researching that myself so it may be a bit before I can try to reply to that

 

[DeviousAngel]

If you've ever wanted to try sweat, jizz, and cheese together just lick a controller at your local gaming convention and taste the flavor of the new millennium!

I love you, you naughty monkey

And another embarassing Wii U thread on the gaming side

Lawd forgive us!

Oh, marc^o^, what have you done...

Wii U is small. Or better yet to make it clearer, its volume is small.

But what about its actual dimensions of the case? It's not much thicker than the Wii, yet much longer and quite a bit wider. I think I understand why Volume is a big deal, but from a scientific point of view, in the hypothetical scenario where you have two consoles with the same volume but different case dimensions, they would dissipate heat differently. I know very little about tech so the same principles may not even apply here.

Are there ponies inside?

No ponies, just Pikmin.

 

[10k]

wow,Wow, WOw, WOW...too many details there tiger!!

Haha. Yeah I have a dirty mind. As I begin posting more and get more comfortable I will give guys like thunder monkey a run for their money on raunchiness.

http://kotaku.com/5922148/i-like-the-wii-u-i-like-it-a-lot

An actual positive Wii U article that I liked. Basically saying that Wii U games are fun and that's what it's all about.

 

[Thunder Monkey]

Haha. Yeah I have a dirty mind. As I begin posting more and get more comfortable I will give guys like thunder monkey a run for their money on raunchiness.

http://kotaku.com/5922148/i-like-the-wii-u-i-like-it-a-lot

An actual positive Wii U article that I liked. Basically saying that Wii U games are fun and that's what it's all about.

You have a dirty mind?

YOU?!

I had to fight myself not to put "cousin minge" between jizz and cheese.

 

[Earendil]

Take this with a grain of salt, but here's a supposed feature set for NiN

Free Online Services
DLC
Online Shop containing Virtual Console, Indy, Freeware and Full Retail Titles
Weekly Discounts
Cross Platform Communication with 3DS, PC, Smartphones and Tablets (at later date)
Video Chat with friends
Account System
Message Boards
Achievements (will be posted on Miiverse, not mandatory)
Multiple Levels of Security*
Web Browser w/flash support, private browsing, on (controller)screen keyboard
Multimedia services including Netflix and Hulu
in-game access to Miiverse and Browser

There's no source listed other than it from the Investor meeting.
http://www.ign.com/boards/threads/t...k-achievements-virtual-console-etc.452555920/

 

[DeviousAngel]

Haha. Yeah I have a dirty mind. As I begin posting more and get more comfortable I will give guys like thunder monkey a run for their money on raunchiness.

I had to fight myself not to put "cousin minge" between jizz and cheese.

I think we're going to get along just fine...

 

[Fourth Storm]

Whatever the GPU will end up has probably be trimmed and modified due to Nintendo's requests for video games so that it may not look like any other GPU in the end. I think that an e6760 does give us a good idea on what a chip in GPU7's watt-range can be capable of.

So far, though, the original GPU in Wii U's dev kit was apparently a 4830 possibly underclocked to 450MHz. That would be ~576 TFlops, so the final chip should most likely still be somewhere in that range of performance, if not a bit more.

As for your thoughts on the CPU mult-threading, I'm still researching that myself so it may be a bit before I can try to reply to that

Oh yes, I definitely agree on the trimming/mods and I'm excited to see what this puppy looks like (for example, have they really gotten the 32MB eDRAM on the same chip? If so, massive bandwidth, ahoy).

My reasoning behind sticking to those numbers is that I'm guessing the GPU was originally clocked higher (575 Mhz perhaps, like the stock 4830) and then underclocked after the initial reports of overheating dev kits came out, very early on. Then, around January, Nintendo shipped out actual production parts at 32 nm, and this explains the boost in power we heard about around that time. If you look at the other chips in that embedded line, and how they seem to scale, adding 160 more shaders to the e6760's 480 would probably have a minimal effect on TDP.

 

[BD1]

Take this with a grain of salt, but here's a supposed feature set for NiN

Free Online Services
DLC
Online Shop containing Virtual Console, Indy, Freeware and Full Retail Titles
Weekly Discounts
Cross Platform Communication with 3DS, PC, Smartphones and Tablets (at later date)
Video Chat with friends
Account System
Message Boards
Achievements (will be posted on Miiverse, not mandatory)
Multiple Levels of Security*
Web Browser w/flash support, private browsing, on (controller)screen keyboard
Multimedia services including Netflix and Hulu
in-game access to Miiverse and Browser

There's no source listed other than it from the Investor meeting.
http://www.ign.com/boards/threads/t...k-achievements-virtual-console-etc.452555920/

There is nothing there that could be classified as anymore than well researched speculation. I think all that stuff is expected to be there, myself.

 

[Hakai]

Take this with a grain of salt, but here's a supposed feature set for NiN

Free Online Services
DLC
Online Shop containing Virtual Console, Indy, Freeware and Full Retail Titles
Weekly Discounts
Cross Platform Communication with 3DS, PC, Smartphones and Tablets (at later date)
Video Chat with friends
Account System
Message Boards
Achievements (will be posted on Miiverse, not mandatory)
Multiple Levels of Security*
Web Browser w/flash support, private browsing, on (controller)screen keyboard
Multimedia services including Netflix and Hulu
in-game access to Miiverse and Browser

There's no source listed other than it from the Investor meeting.
http://www.ign.com/boards/threads/t...k-achievements-virtual-console-etc.452555920/

Well it could be true, I just don't believe it come from the investor meeting, because no one reported it at the time! So I wouldn't believe it.

 

[Donnie]

Hi Donnie, would you plz be so kind and explain to me why it is pointless?!
In my understanding it would tell me if I have 2 GPU's I have more power possible if I need it or not?

Two GPU's are not necessarily more powerful than a single GPU. The only reason they would use dual GPU's really is if the power they needed just wasn't possible to produce on a single die, which isn't the case here.

 

[Redford]

Fucking disgusting, I say.

 

[Earendil]

Well it could be true, I just don't believe it come from the investor meeting, because no one reported it at the time! So I wouldn't believe it.

Right, that's why I said to take it with a grain of salt. I'm not believing it until I see a verifiable source. But it might make interesting discussion until then.

 

[Donnie]

Right, but modern hardware has a tendency to heat up fast, and greater case volume is required to ensure adequately sized fans and good airflow keep your hardware cool.

As bg said, the original Xbox packed more in the case than the GCN did. It had a bigger disk drive, and internal. It had a HDD. The power brick was internal. Additionally, the Xbox had quite modern hardware for the time, producing a lot of heat.

Size matters, this is a fact, and there is no agenda.

Its also worth mentioning however that GC's space for cooling is quite a lot less than it looks from the outside. That thing was built like a tank

 

[GameplayWhore]

Multiple Levels of Security*

Pfft, this just means that Clipper will get a few weeks to rest before having to start up the Wii U Homebrew thread.


I like how in the original link one of the things not included in Nintendo's online system is "Multi Touch".



Also, yeah, most of that stuff Nintendo has pretty much already talked about or strongly hinted.

 

[stupidvillager]

Two GPU's are not necessarily more powerful than a single GPU. The only reason they would use dual GPU's really is if the power they needed just wasn't possible to produce on a single die, which isn't the case here.

Not only that, but AMD can do six at once with ease. Well depending on the GPU. But the point is, its not one GPU per screen, and hasnt been for a while.

 

[Donnie]

But those ways are also limited and can be expensive to a BoM. Both of us have a similar argument when it comes to Wii U (what's not on the inside), but my argument hasn't been that the case doesn't limit what Nintendo could put into it. It's that the case can handle more than what Nintendo allows. Beyond that there's only so much the case can handle and with the raw power vs heat of GPUs, the gap you saw 10 years ago when looking at form factor is not comparable to what you can see today. The pace of GPU heat grew too fast.

I've made the same argument for PS360 in that they could be better designed for cooling, which in turn would suggest they could handle more power as well.



Wii U is small. Or better yet to make it clearer, its volume is small.

I agree mostly. Though I'd say that the volume difference between WiiU and 360 Slim will probably be quite a bit less than the area difference. I'd guess you probably agree with that, so I'm saying it more for other people's benefit rather than yours

 

[Donnie]

[a]list: With Nintendo, where do you think they came up short in the way they showed the Wii U?

Dean Takahashi: They have a major issue with the capability of the Wii U console where it has a single processor but it has to drive multiple displays. A single graphics chip inside the console has to drive the big screen, the main game screen, but it also has to provide the imagery for the tablet controller, the game pad. And yet the system itself isn’t that powerful. Nintendo only showed games with one game pad controller and the TV. Most games out there, if you’re in a social setting, you want two controllers. Nintendo didn’t show any games that do that. They admitted in a Q&A that the games are going to run slower if you have two game pads and playing on a main display. That’s a fairly big issue for them. They made a good case that you can play with one controller and multiple Wii controllers, what they call asymmetric gaming where one person is looking at the small tablet screen and trying to deploy zombies while the people playing with the controllers were all on the main screen. You come up with very creative, different kinds of games where it’s one against four, or one person going online. They tried to justify and turn into an advantage this major weakness of the Wii U, but I think a lot of people saw this as a weakness. The games themselves were creative. They tried to do something like Wii Sports with NintendoLand, which has mini-games in it that explore the capabilities of the tablet and the touch screen. But there wasn’t an obvious blockbuster within those games. They may have had a good one in ZombieU, but in the demos it didn’t necessarily play that well. Nintendo came up as a pretty big disappointment at E3.

This guy is absolutely clueless..

 

[10k]

You have a dirty mind?

YOU?!

I had to fight myself not to put "cousin minge" between jizz and cheese.

Pfft. I would have said something like "dick cheese all over the vita". Dick Cheese is the taste of the new millennium. Chobot licked the nerd's dick cheese off the vita. Sick woman (I love her)...

Back on topic now.....

Anybody read the kotaku article i posted?

 

[BY2K]

"The Wii U hardware has a great architecture and, most importantly, it is easy for developers to utilise its power. For instance, we have a very action-heavy game with literally thousands of animated objects, but had no problems rendering the complete gameworld, twice, for the Wii U controller display in two-player mode. You could easily take many original Wii titles from Retro Studios or Nintendo and release them again in HD and they would look and play better than many current titles. I believe that the most important resource in game development is the developers, rather than the actual hardware." - Shin'en developer Manfred Linzner

Now if that isn't praise, I don't know what it is.

 

[Fourth Storm]

Now if that isn't praise, I don't know what it is.

Yeah, that's a nice quote. Again, it seems like many of the complaints are coming from devs who are trying to port their Xbox360 or PS3 code over to the new architecture and are encountering hurdles in doing so. Trying to get a physics engine running on the CPU instead of the GPU would be foolish, given what we now know.

 

[Earendil]

Now if that isn't praise, I don't know what it is.

It's not anonymous, so it doesn't count.

 

[Thunder Monkey]

Pfft. I would have said something like "dick cheese all over the vita". Dick Cheese is the taste of the new millennium. Chobot licked the nerd's dick cheese off the vita. Sick woman (I love her)...

Back on topic now.....

Anybody read the kotaku article i posted?

The challenge comes in skirting the bounds. Trying not to piss off a mod, while still saying something disgusting, reprehensible, or just plain fun (friends on meat hooks).

You burn too hard, and you end up prematurely dead.

You don't want to end up going out like "I'd kick her in the back of her knee and anally rape her." guy.

 

[Thunder Monkey]

This has been an important public service announcement from UYID.

Unleashing your inner deviant.

 

[Vermillion]

Chobot started it!

I wouldn't want to lick a controller you guys touched.

Gross.

Damn. Thunder Monkey just said he wouldn't lick a controller you guys touched. Thunder Monkey. Is anyone seeing this?

 

[Thunder Monkey]

Damn. Thunder Monkey just said he wouldn't lick a controller you guys touched. Thunder Monkey. Is anyone seeing this?

I'd lick other things, but that's neither here nor there.

 

[GameplayWhore]

Yeah, that's a nice quote. Again, it seems like many of the complaints are coming from devs who are trying to port their Xbox360 or PS3 code over to the new architecture and are encountering hurdles in doing so. Trying to get a physics engine running on the CPU instead of the GPU would be foolish, given what we now know.

To their credit, it has been considered somewhat normal practice for unoptimized code to still be faster on a newer system for the last couple decades, has it not?

 

[MDX]

Just want to remind people that unlike other consoles, and very similar to the GC, the WiiU is meant to be placed in one position- horizontal. The option for vertical is not there. This tells me thats its part of Nintendo's design on keeping the console cool. Otherwise, they wouldnt take away the option of placing it how you want, imo.

I think the question that people should be asking, given whats inside the WiiU, if Sony or MS had to build the box for it, would they end up building bigger housings than Nintendo? I suspect quite possibly. I can imagine Nintendo puts a lot of R&D into thermal control than what Sony or MS might do.

 

[Thunder Monkey]

To their credit, it has been considered somewhat normal practice for unoptimized code to still be faster on a newer system for the last couple decades, has it not?

To a degree.

But we are talking about a system at the maximum of 3 times faster, more efficient, larger RAM pool etc,.

That isn't that much of a difference. Most of that increase being eaten away if you use complex scenes on the Upaddler. Add in unoptimized code and the issues seen make sense.

Sad thing about this situation?

If these sloppy ports don't sell we can kiss any chance of them really putting resources into the system goodbye.

 

[MDX]

To their credit, it has been considered somewhat normal practice for unoptimized code to still be faster on a newer system for the last couple decades, has it not?

But thats not the concept behind consoles is it?
Consoles tend to be highly specialized designs that require developers to put extra work in to get interesting results out.
See PS3 with the Cell, See Wii & GC with TEV, etc.

 

[GameplayWhore]

To a degree.

But we are talking about a system at the maximum of 3 times faster, more efficient, larger RAM pool etc,.

That isn't that much of a difference. Most of that increase being eaten away if you use complex scenes on the Upaddler. Add in unoptimized code and the issues seen make sense.

Oh, I know that. I'm just saying that "Without extra optimization, it can be slower than what we're already used to." is a pretty valid complaint, so long as the complaint is not twisted into "It's slower than what we're already used to."

Sad thing about this situation?

If these sloppy ports don't sell we can kiss any chance of them really putting resources into the system goodbye.

If they don't sell? We had sloppy ports selling well in the Wii launch window, and the result was the same as you describe.

 

[Fourth Storm]

To their credit, it has been considered somewhat normal practice for unoptimized code to still be faster on a newer system for the last couple decades, has it not?

I suppose it depends on how extensive the documentation Nintendo provided was. If it's as vague as that "spec sheet," then, no, you can't blame those devs for just porting over what they have and seeing what happens. And who knows what changes have been made along the way. Lherre said a while back that there was 2-way SMT and now we're hearing that that may not be the case.

 

[Thunder Monkey]

Oh, I know that. I'm just saying that "Without extra optimization, it can be slower than what we're already used to." is a pretty valid complaint, so long as the complaint is not twisted into "It's slower than what we're already used to."




If they don't sell? We had sloppy ports selling well in the Wii launch window, and the result was the same as you describe.

Generally the ports that sold well were at least competent. CoD isn't my thing, but they sold pretty well on Wii, and in response they devoted more resources to what was essentially an exclusively "remade" 360 game on Wii.

That's no menial task. Probably much cheaper than making the game on PC/360/PS3 as a whole, but the amount of cuts made while still maintaining a consistent style was impressive.

Other than that... RE4? Ports... especially sloppy ones, didn't maintain a very equitable market on Wii.

 

[Donnie]

Generally the ports that sold well were at least competent. CoD isn't my thing, but they sold pretty well on Wii, and in response they devoted more resources to what was essentially an exclusively "remade" 360 game on Wii.

That's no menial task. Probably much cheaper than making the game on PC/360/PS3 as a whole, but the amount of cuts made while still maintaining a consistent style was impressive.

Other than that... RE4? Ports... especially sloppy ones, didn't maintain a very equitable market on Wii.

But look at one of the examples you mentioned, RE4 which sold very well on Wii. Yet instead of further mainstream titles Wii owners got on rails RE based shooting games, which sold worse than RE4 did. At no point did they think "well a last gen port of our mainstream RE game sold much better than these on rails shooters, hmm how about we release a new game similar to RE4?", it amazes me the way these companies think.