Support NeoGAF

[Trevelyan9999]

What he's saying is nonsense. Does he have proof that every single one of those ports were cut and paste jobs?

I don't have "proof" but it makes sense to any Third Party to be cautious and not devote too many resources to a new console with no user base. That's all the proof I need that these are "cut and paste" ports in terms of working on the graphics and performance.

They basically just needed to get these games playable and running semi decent enough and they did that. Anything more would be a waste of time and would go unnoticed by the majority of people buying the Wii U and it's launch games.

 

[The_Lump]

Considering that its pretty much the basis for his argument, yes.

I've edited my post. But no, that's not the basis of his argument. Everything else would still be a reasonable assessment of the facts/speculation we've built up regarding the CPU.

 

[frankie_baby]

*Looks at port performance*
*Looks at Wii U exclusive performance*

Seems pretty obvious to me. Obviously some tinkering had to be done, but he's pretty much right, the ports are... Well... Quick and dirty ports. Shock, I know.

Really? I heard that OoOE CPU's can run IoE just as well as non OoOE CPU's (Dunno what to call them, lol).

The way I see it (I'm not technical just the impression I've got from posts I've read) an ooe processor could run ioe code just as well as long as cores/threads/clock speed are equal, if clock speed is lower (as it definitely is in the wii u CPU compared to 360) then it will run the code craply

 

[grimshawish]

Trevelyan9999 am guessing this would explain why Nintendo went with the low speed despite not costing 'that' much more?

They know they at least can work around it pretty effectively; in fact their entire development will be based on that architecture.

So that slightly extra cost across millions of consoles becomes less and less appealing. Especially for a company that sold 90m units with next to no support; and whose employees have nearly always worked under the assumption of low third party support.

 

[Saint Gregory]

Trevelyan9999 am guessing this would explain why Nintendo went with the low speed despite not costing 'that' much more?

They know they at least can work around it pretty effectively; in fact their entire development will be based on that architecture.

So that slightly extra cost across millions of consoles becomes less and less appealing. Especially for a company that sold 90m units with next to no support; and whose employees have nearly always worked under the assumption of low third party support.

I would think that Nintendo's reason for going with this CPU are pretty obvious. While it doesn't save them much (if anything) in terms of costs per CPU it does save them a ton by being able to build a smaller console without the expense of an advanced thermal cooling solution.

If MS had opted for something more advanced for cooling in the 360, the whole RRoD problem would never have happened.

 

[Trevelyan9999]

The way I see it (I'm not technical just the impression I've got from posts I've read) an ooe processor could run ioe code just as well as long as cores/threads/clock speed are equal, if clock speed is lower (as it definitely is in the wii u CPU compared to 360) then it will run the code craply

Yes indeed. This is exactly the basis of what some developers are complaining about. They simply don't want to re-code games from the ground up to take advantage of the OoOE operations of the Wii U CPU when it's actually the most important feature to get the most of the CPU performance.

Hence = ports that run a tad worse than the made from the ground up games for Xbox 360.

Ports of Xbox 3 or PS4 would fair better since they would be built using the same principle of the Wii U CPU/GPU albeit those systems would be higher specs than Wii U. So basically the performance would be less on Wii U with a few corners cut but the core game should/would look very close to the other systems due to the Wii U's development being made with modern tech.

-See The Witcher 2 Xbox 360 vs PC

Bgassassin made a good assessment and I stand by what he said: Wii U's games would be like how PS2 vs Xbox Splinter Cell games were. The Xbox had more bells and whistles but the games weren't a huge leap over PS2.

 

[grimshawish]

I would think that Nintendo's reason for going with this CPU are pretty obvious. While it doesn't save them much (if anything) in terms of costs per CPU it does save them a ton by being able to build a smaller console without the expense of an advanced thermal cooling solution.

Ah. I remember DF saying when they saw picks of the Wii U internals that the heatsink/fan didn't look like enough to deal with the internals. Guess thats that explained. Thanks.

 

[DragonSworne]

How much "coding" will be needed for WiiU specifically as game engine advance and include the WiiU architecture at it's core?

Shouldn't all this be no more effort in the coming years as engines mature?

Surely not the individual games being coded will need to be altered for WiiU, but just the graphics engines they are running on.

 

[MDX]

What he's saying is nonsense. Does he have proof that every single one of those ports were cut and paste jobs?

He just explained how big the dev team was for Call of Duty.
And earlier a poster made a list of who was working on the WiiU ports.
From the list it was clear that they were handed to:

1. Small internal teams - CoD
2. Outsourced to unknown teams - ME3
3. Purposely made to run and look the same - ACIII
4. Rushed - probably everyone for launch

etc

 

[Trevelyan9999]

Trevelyan9999 am guessing this would explain why Nintendo went with the low speed despite not costing 'that' much more?

They know they at least can work around it pretty effectively; in fact their entire development will be based on that architecture.

So that slightly extra cost across millions of consoles becomes less and less appealing. Especially for a company that sold 90m units with next to no support; and whose employees have nearly always worked under the assumption of low third party support.

You can call me "Trevelyan" for short

That Iwata asks about the Wii U hardware was very telling at just how much Nintendo cared about this consoles development. They put in so much effort in this console and it really is going to show in the next few years. Ports should never be a gauge of a console's true power or performance capabilities.

Just ask PC gamers for the last 7 years having to endure crappy ports from Xbox 360 that were not optimized to run on high spec PC's very well (or any PC for that matter).....

 

[NBtoaster]

Normally, this really would be a case where the answer is "eDRAM". You'd expect that the massive bandwidth proveded for the FB by storing it in the eDRAM would be perfect for rendering lots of transparencies.

So I don't really get what's going on there, since I'm sure that even the "dirtiest" port stores its FB in eDRAM.

Would that indicate the eDRAM speed/bandwidth isn't that great?

 

[Saint Gregory]

Just ask PC gamers for the last 7 years having to endure crappy ports from Xbox 360 that were not optimized to run on high spec PC's very well (or any PC for that matter).....

I think that a really good recent example is the ZoE HD collection. Both of the HD twins are exponentially more powerful than the PS2 and Konami could surely build a game from the ground up for those systems that would put the ZoE collection to shame. But the reality is that neither system could handle direct ports of ZoE2 due to the way it pushed the PS2's unique architecture and Konami wasn't going to invest in rebuilding the game to take advantage of the HD twins.

The big difference there is that no one tried to use the ZoE collection to suggest that the PS360 combo isn't powerful enough to compete with the PS2.

 

[deviljho]

The big difference there is that no one tried to use the ZoE collection to suggest that the PS360 combo isn't powerful enough to compete with the PS2.

Let's get a thread going. Or five...

 

[Death Dealer]

Ports of Xbox 3 or PS4 would fair better since they would be built using the same principle of the Wii U CPU/GPU albeit those systems would be higher specs than Wii U. So basically the performance would be less on Wii U with a few corners cut but the core game should/would look very close to the other systems due to the Wii U's development being made with modern tech.

-See The Witcher 2 Xbox 360 vs PC

Bgassassin made a good assessment and I stand by what he said: Wii U's games would be like how PS2 vs Xbox Splinter Cell games were. The Xbox had more bells and whistles but the games weren't a huge leap over PS2.

I don't think Wii-U's cpu/gpu GPGPU will matter when it comes to receiving ports of PS4/720 games. I think it will actually get worse compared to now. Wii-U's GPU is better than this gen's, but by all accounts its CPU is not even up to par with PS360. It's got 3 tiny power PC cores running at half the speed of X360's Xenon. Some heavy hitters at B3D don't even think Wii-U's CPU could handle Skyrim. GTA V must be very CPU intensive. It's not going to get better when the lead platforms have modern 4-8 core multithreaded X86 CPUs with 4x the available system memory of Wii-U. The gap will just grow larger. Wii-U will get PS4/720 ports in name only. It will be a completely different game likely made by a different team. Not the same game with the graphics sliders turned down.

 

[MDX]

Yeah we don´t know wich part the eDRAM plays in the memory system.

My guess is that its plays a very important part in adressing the badwidth/latency issues.

Its also the memory controllers and the proximity of the GPU to the CPU.

Here is how I see it

What's more powerful, a plane or a bike?
Would you take a plane to go visit your friend across the street?
No, only if he or she was on another continent.

The issue with video cards for PCs is that the GPU is at a distance from the CPU.
The further away it is, the more latency you will encounter. So to make the CPU and GPU
communicate as fast as possible, video cards need to have fast ram, large bandwidths and strong GPUs. Just like an airplane needs a large runway vs a small street for a bike; and a powerful engine to cross long distances at a super speeds compared to a bike.

What Nintendo did was to basically put the GPU right next to the CPU. The minute they did that, they didn't need an airplane anymore. They could basically get away with using a bike to get the same results. In return, such R&D meant they could make a less expensive console and pass those saving to the customer. Nintendo did not go cheap with producing the WiiU, they went smart.

If Nintendo kept the same architecture as they have done with their previous consoles. Then it would be like taking a bike to visit your friend on another continent.

My analogy might be completely wrong, but thats how I understand it.

 

[MDX]

I think that a really good recent example is the ZoE HD collection. Both of the HD twins are exponentially more powerful than the PS2 and Konami could surely build a game from the ground up for those systems that would put the ZoE collection to shame. But the reality is that neither system could handle direct ports of ZoE2 due to the way it pushed the PS2's unique architecture and Konami wasn't going to invest in rebuilding the game to take advantage of the HD twins.

The big difference there is that no one tried to use the ZoE collection to suggest that the PS360 combo isn't powerful enough to compete with the PS2.

Good point, look what happened when they tried to port Wii games to the PS3

Graphics are also a mixed bag. If the original No More Heroes was like a live version of "Anarchy in the U.K." by the Sex Pistols, this HD version is like a studio recording of the same song. Sometimes, the extra polish improves the experience, and sometimes it diminishes it. Low-res textures and polygon-based objects rendered in HD sometimes look a little worse because of the increased clarity of detail, though when it comes to lighting and color saturation, there is no denying that they game looks better on the PS3. Travis is also really shiny and bumpy now, both dressed and undressed. He went from wearing standard-looking clothes to having one of the shiniest, wrinkliest jackets on the planet. He also went having a fairly average build to having huge, glistening, six-pack abs and bumpy, semi-anatomically correct muscle arms. If that's your thing then you may prefer this PS3 version. As for me, I think this HD port looks neither better nor worse than the Wii original, just different (especially when factoring in the additional slow down and screen tearing).

Read more at http://www.destructoid.com/review-no-more-heroes-heroes-paradise-209298.phtml#pSb8SKs4tEG5Bz9W.99

Whats the excuse for screen tearing and slow down on the PS3 from a low budget Wii game port?

What is frustrating is that the game now suffers from screen tearing, more slowdown, and collision-detection bugs

Read more at http://www.destructoid.com/review-no-more-heroes-heroes-paradise-209298.phtml#pSb8SKs4tEG5Bz9W.99

 

[Glorified G]

Bgassassin made a good assessment and I stand by what he said: Wii U's games would be like how PS2 vs Xbox Splinter Cell games were. The Xbox had more bells and whistles but the games weren't a huge leap over PS2.

As I said before I don't think anyone besides a developer who had previous hands on experience with the ps2/gc/xbox can make a direct comparison like that. And a confirmed developer on gaf even said it would be bigger than that.

 

[bigtroyjon]

I think that a really good recent example is the ZoE HD collection. Both of the HD twins are exponentially more powerful than the PS2 and Konami could surely build a game from the ground up for those systems that would put the ZoE collection to shame. But the reality is that neither system could handle direct ports of ZoE2 due to the way it pushed the PS2's unique architecture and Konami wasn't going to invest in rebuilding the game to take advantage of the HD twins.

The big difference there is that no one tried to use the ZoE collection to suggest that the PS360 combo isn't powerful enough to compete with the PS2.

The game being in a higher resolution invalidates your entire point.

 

[test_account]

I like looking into this thread just to see hilarious posts like this

Out of curiosity, what do you think is false or wrong with what he wrote?

 

[bobeth]

Its also the memory controllers and the proximity of the GPU to the CPU.

Here is how I see it

What's more powerful, a plane or a bike?
Would you take a plane to go visit your friend across the street?
No, only if he or she was on another continent.

The issue with video cards for PCs is that the GPU is at a distance from the CPU.
The further away it is, the more latency you will encounter. So to make the CPU and GPU
communicate as fast as possible, video cards need to have fast ram, large bandwidths and strong GPUs. Just like an airplane needs a large runway vs a small street for a bike; and a powerful engine to cross long distances at a super speeds compared to a bike.

What Nintendo did was to basically put the GPU right next to the CPU. The minute they did that, they didn't need an airplane anymore. They could basically get away with using a bike to get the same results. In return, such R&D meant they could make a less expensive console and pass those saving to the customer. Nintendo did not go cheap with producing the WiiU, they went smart.

If Nintendo kept the same architecture as they have done with their previous consoles. Then it would be like taking a bike to visit your friend on another continent.

My analogy might be completely wrong, but thats how I understand it.

There is no way anyone could fit a bike in a wiiU..

 

[Death Dealer]

As I said before I don't think anyone besides a developer who had previous hands on experience with the ps2/gc/xbox can make a direct comparison like that. And a confirmed developer on gaf even said it would be bigger than that.

I believe Iherre said the difference between Wii-U and PS4/720 will be larger than Dreamcast to Xbox.

 

[Meesh]

Yes indeed. This is exactly the basis of what some developers are complaining about. They simply don't want to re-code games from the ground up to take advantage of the OoOE operations of the Wii U CPU when it's actually the most important feature to get the most of the CPU performance.

Hence = ports that run a tad worse than the made from the ground up games for Xbox 360.

Ports of Xbox 3 or PS4 would fair better since they would be built using the same principle of the Wii U CPU/GPU albeit those systems would be higher specs than Wii U. So basically the performance would be less on Wii U with a few corners cut but the core game should/would look very close to the other systems due to the Wii U's development being made with modern tech.

-See The Witcher 2 Xbox 360 vs PC

Bgassassin made a good assessment and I stand by what he said: Wii U's games would be like how PS2 vs Xbox Splinter Cell games were. The Xbox had more bells and whistles but the games weren't a huge leap over PS2.

Such a great post, sums up everything a non-tech guy like me was wondering the whole time but didn't or couldn't see the answeres for. So it seems the CPU is kinda a pain in terms of porting games to now, but in the near future could be an asset? How attractive though do you think the whole package deal is when considering games made for the wiiu from the ground up? Does the architecture lend itself In your opinion to a smoother development process or is that me imagining shit?(wishful thinking)

 

[Saint Gregory]

Whats the excuse for screen tearing and slow down on the PS3 from a low budget Wii game port?

Well the thing is that everyone has seen the PS3 do better. There's nothing in this first group of games that anyone can point to that invalidates the "LOL BELOW CURRENT GEN!" trolling going on right now. But let's be real, when better looking games do come then the argument will just shift from the WiiU not being on par with the PS360 to the WiiU not being on par with the PS4/720.

The game being in a higher resolution invalidates your entire point.

So if the collection was ported at its original resolution the PS360 would be able to handle the game at PS2 performance? So they would just be on par with the PS2 then?

 

[QaaQer]

Good point, look what happened when they tried to port Wii games to the PS3





Whats the excuse for screen tearing and slow down on the PS3 from a low budget Wii game port?

the excuse is that it's a low budget wii port, not a system launch version of a $500 000 000+ selling franchise that nintendo pimps as having dramatically better graphics.

Look, I'm sure the wii u games will look and play better in year 5 than year 1. But there is no reason to believe that this system has much in the way of grunt. TDP is very low (35W), the die size of the cpu is small given its node, nothing has been shown by nintendo to make people go 'wow', and nintendo has a recent history of releasing very low cost low spec systems.

I'd be happy to be proven wrong, I really would. But I'd need more to go on than if's and but's.

 

[fritolay]

Hey everyone, do we know the specs on this thing yet?

 

[Brashnir]

Well the thing is that everyone has seen the PS3 do better. There's nothing in this first group of games that anyone can point to that invalidates the "LOL BELOW CURRENT GEN!" trolling going on right now. But let's be real, when better looking games do come then the argument will just shift from the WiiU not being on par with the PS360 to the WiiU not being on par with the PS4/720.

So if the collection was ported at its original resolution the PS360 would be able to handle the game at PS2 performance? So they would just be on par with the PS2 then?

By the time those better-looking Wii U games come out, those other consoles will be out as well, so it will be a natural comparison.

That the Wii U is not immediately demonstrably better than the 7-year-old Xbox 360 says all anyone really needs to know about it. When the 360 came out it was immediately demonstrably better than the 4-year-old Xbox and Gamecube.

 

[test_account]

Its also the memory controllers and the proximity of the GPU to the CPU.

Here is how I see it

What's more powerful, a plane or a bike?
Would you take a plane to go visit your friend across the street?
No, only if he or she was on another continent.

The issue with video cards for PCs is that the GPU is at a distance from the CPU.
The further away it is, the more latency you will encounter. So to make the CPU and GPU
communicate as fast as possible, video cards need to have fast ram, large bandwidths and strong GPUs. Just like an airplane needs a large runway vs a small street for a bike; and a powerful engine to cross long distances at a super speeds compared to a bike.

What Nintendo did was to basically put the GPU right next to the CPU. The minute they did that, they didn't need an airplane anymore. They could basically get away with using a bike to get the same results. In return, such R&D meant they could make a less expensive console and pass those saving to the customer. Nintendo did not go cheap with producing the WiiU, they went smart.

If Nintendo kept the same architecture as they have done with their previous consoles. Then it would be like taking a bike to visit your friend on another continent.

My analogy might be completely wrong, but thats how I understand it.

This example is about latency, but it doesnt concider the power though. To use the airplane and bike example: An airplane can carry a lot more than what a bike can. An airplane could carry 50 ton in one ride, while you need to take maybe a thousand rides with the bike to carry the same amount. While a bike is faster to use on very short travels, the total amount of time the bike would use to carry 50 ton could exceed the time that the airplane uses. So even if the WiiU has amazing latency between the CPU and GPU, it might not necessarily be a too good indicator of how much workload it can do at the same time.

 

[Saint Gregory]

By the time those better-looking Wii U games come out, those other consoles will be out as well, so it will be a natural comparison.

That the Wii U is not immediately demonstrably better than the 7-year-old Xbox 360 says all anyone really needs to know about it. When the 360 came out it was immediately demonstrably better than the 4-year-old Xbox and Gamecube.

It's been a long, long time but to my memory the 360 great looking launch games were all first and 2nd party. I was a day one 360 owner and it got its fair share of lazy Xbox/PS2 ports to go along with great looking stuff like Kameo and PGR2. The 360 also had the added benefit of pretty much all 3rd party devs using it as the baseline for HD development which isn't happening for the WiiU and likely wouldn't have happened even if it was more powerful than it is due to Nintendo's relationships (or lack thereof) with 3rd party developers.

Nintendo seems to be content to launch with NintendoLand and NSMBU, two games that couldn't possibly be used as graphic benchmarks on any system due to their art styles so it's not hard to gauge why there's nothing to be wowed by at launch. I'm not giving Nintendo a free pass for that either, they said their goal with this console was to win back the hardcore set and it's pretty obvious that they've failed spectacularly so far.

 

[Fourth Storm]

Wonder how the various latencies on Orbis/Durango are gonna be. As they're rumored to be SoC, there's real potential I would think.

 

[AmFreak]

Sorry but, can an OoOe cpu run like In Order? Is this something that devs can enable/disable at runtime?

That's the joke.
One of the points of an OOE processor is that he increases performance without the influence of the programmer.

 

[sp3000]

Ports of Xbox 3 or PS4 would fair better since they would be built using the same principle of the Wii U CPU/GPU albeit those systems would be higher specs than Wii U. So basically the performance would be less on Wii U with a few corners cut but the core game should/would look very close to the other systems due to the Wii U's development being made with modern tech.

This argument is getting tiring. It's already been confirmed that MS and Sony's consoles will be x86 based, while the WiiU is PowerPC based. These are vastly different architectures that will make porting very time consuming between the two.

The "core game" will not be close at all. In fact, there probably won't even be a core game since third parties will have given it the same status as the Wii at that point.

The armchair programmers in this thread are obvious, claiming to know better the developers actually working on the system

 

[Doc Holliday]

I'm not giving Nintendo a free pass for that either, they said their goal with this console was to win back the hardcore set and it's pretty obvious that they've failed spectacularly so far.

Remember this is the same company that thought the release of Animal crossing would be enough for the hardcore. I think they believe the 3rd party efforts would be enough for launch.

 

[Fourth Storm]

When someone decaps the GPU. But it's possible to make educated guesses:

Renesas UX8 eDRAM comes in three configurations: 1MB macro on a 128bit or 256bit bus, or 8MB on a 256bit bus. Wii U has 32MB eDRAM, so the bus should be either 1024, 4096 or 8192bit wide. The eDRAM should be clocked at either 486 or 729MHz, which leaves us with six possible configurations:

1024bit, 486MHz: 57.9GB/s
1024bit, 729MHz: 86.9GB/s
4096bit, 486MHz: 231.7GB/s
4096bit, 729MHz: 347.6GB/s
8192bit, 486MHz: 463.5GB/s
8192bit, 729MHz: 695.2GB/s

Hmm. Flipper broke up its texture cache into 32 macros, each addressable simultaneously. Bandwidth here would obviously be much greater than the 512 bit bus to Flipper's texture cache, but I wonder if latency requirements might have influenced their decision in regards to Wii U's eDRAM config.

 

[MDX]

This example is about latency, but it doesnt concider the power though. To use the airplane and bike example: An airplane can carry a lot more than what a bike can. An airplane could carry 50 ton in one ride, while you need to take maybe a thousand rides with the bike to carry the same amount. While a bike is faster to use on very short travels, the total amount of time the bike would use to carry 50 ton could exceed the time that the airplane uses. So even if the WiiU has amazing latency between the CPU and GPU, it might not necessarily be a too good indicator of how much workload it can do at the same time.

Thats right, my point was that you dont need airplane power to travel short distances.
Regarding the amount of information that needs to be taken to the location, is something else. But I believe Nintendo has taken care of this with specialized memory controllers.

 

[ColdBlooder]

Guys... Are you still blabbering about the RAM?

When i see games like Lego City lookin great, then TO ME, the RAM is not an issue anymore... Calm down. guys, play some games. Thats what were here for.

 

[TheDeadHeroAlistair]

This argument is getting tiring. It's already been confirmed that MS and Sony's consoles will be x86 based, while the WiiU is PowerPC based. These are vastly different architectures that will make porting very time consuming between the two.

The "core game" will not be close at all. In fact, there probably won't even be a core game since third parties will have given it the same status as the Wii at that point.

The armchair programmers in this thread are obvious, claiming to know better the developers actually working on the system

At the same time, in Gen 6, there was an SH-4 processor, an MIPS processor, a PowerPC processor, and an x86-derivative processor. Ports were of relatively decent quality all around, even when the PS2 or Dreamcast weren't used as the baseline for development. Of course, code wasn't as complex as it is now, but at the same time, development teams and budgets were much smaller.

 

[Roo]

Guys... Are you still blabbering about the RAM?

When i see games like Lego City lookin great, then TO ME, the RAM is not an issue anymore... Calm down. guys, play some games. Thats what were here for.

you're kidding right?
we all are here to know Wii U's specs.... pfff please!

Spoiler

amirite?

 

[Saint Gregory]

you're kidding right?
we all are here to know Wii U's specs.... pfff please!

Spoiler

amirite?

Well, some of us are here for the specs. The rest are here to laugh and point.

 

[Barack Lesnar]

Guys... Are you still blabbering about the RAM?

When i see games like Lego City lookin great, then TO ME, the RAM is not an issue anymore... Calm down. guys, play some games. Thats what were here for.

Cringe-worthy post.

 

[bigtroyjon]

So if the collection was ported at its original resolution the PS360 would be able to handle the game at PS2 performance? So they would just be on par with the PS2 then?

My point is that it's not the same game, running worse. Black OPs 2 running at 1080p on the WiiU would clearly put the Wii U on a plane above the other two, even if performance suffered a bit at times.

 

[Saint Gregory]

My point is that it's not the same game, running worse. Black OPs 2 running at 1080p on the WiiU would clearly put the Wii U on a plane above the other two, even if performance suffered a bit at times.

A couple things: no one here (I hope) is suggesting that the WiiU is the leap over the PS360 that they are above the PS2. Also, the entire point of the ZoE HD collection was that the games be in HD (which they are but barely since it's 720P) so a lot of the dev budget went into getting the games running in higher resolutions.

We have no idea how much time or effort went into the BLOPS2 port but it appears to be a direct port of the 360 version since it's the exact same resolution but with a less stable framerate. It shouldn't be used as a basis for gauging the WiiU's abilities any more than the ZoE collection or any other port is for gauging the other HD consoles.

 

[lostinblue]

My point is that it's not the same game, running worse. Black OPs 2 running at 1080p on the WiiU would clearly put the Wii U on a plane above the other two, even if performance suffered a bit at times.

Except it runs at 880x720 like on the x360.

Not detracting from your original point, but not a good example.

 

[ColdBlooder]

Cringe-worthy post.

Alot of posts in this thread are.

And the worst part is... Even if Nintendo released official specs. The talk wouldn´t stop.

 

[Brashnir]

It's been a long, long time but to my memory the 360 great looking launch games were all first and 2nd party. I was a day one 360 owner and it got its fair share of lazy Xbox/PS2 ports to go along with great looking stuff like Kameo and PGR2. The 360 also had the added benefit of pretty much all 3rd party devs using it as the baseline for HD development which isn't happening for the WiiU and likely wouldn't have happened even if it was more powerful than it is due to Nintendo's relationships (or lack thereof) with 3rd party developers.

Nintendo seems to be content to launch with NintendoLand and NSMBU, two games that couldn't possibly be used as graphic benchmarks on any system due to their art styles so it's not hard to gauge why there's nothing to be wowed by at launch. I'm not giving Nintendo a free pass for that either, they said their goal with this console was to win back the hardcore set and it's pretty obvious that they've failed spectacularly so far.

Sure there were PS2/Xbox ports, but in all those cases, the 360 version (Even the crappy GUN port) were clearly and demonstrably better than the previous-generation console versions. The ones that didn't have much in the way of an increase in model/environment details had a massive leap in resolution and image quality.

We're not seeing that with Wii U. At all.

 

[lwilliams3]

This argument is getting tiring. It's already been confirmed that MS and Sony's consoles will be x86 based, while the WiiU is PowerPC based. These are vastly different architectures that will make porting very time consuming between the two.

The "core game" will not be close at all. In fact, there probably won't even be a core game since third parties will have given it the same status as the Wii at that point.

The armchair programmers in this thread are obvious, claiming to know better the developers actually working on the system

The reason the Wii received the "status" you referring to was due to third party developers not believing that Wii will be successful. Going by how many ports Wii U is getting compared to Wii, that will probably not happen again. As long as the Wii U gets a decent userbase, third-parties will likely ports at least some games to it.

On a related note, I believe that there will be quite a few cross-generation games during the early years of the PS4/Durango life.

 

[Smurfman256]

Question: how would the eDRAM improve the overall Bandwdth of the main RAM?

 

[wonderdung]

Really? I heard that OoOE CPU's can run IoE just as well as non OoOE CPU's (Dunno what to call them, lol).

Yeah his whole set of assumptions is backwards. You don't get to blame slower ports on developers not making use of oooe because it makes no sense and reveals a serious misunderstanding of the issue.

 

[Trevelyan9999]

This argument is getting tiring. It's already been confirmed that MS and Sony's consoles will be x86 based, while the WiiU is PowerPC based. These are vastly different architectures that will make porting very time consuming between the two.

The "core game" will not be close at all. In fact, there probably won't even be a core game since third parties will have given it the same status as the Wii at that point.

The armchair programmers in this thread are obvious, claiming to know better the developers actually working on the system

Yes it's getting very tiring. I don't claim to know more than a developer, just using common sense, something that has escaped many when it comes to the Wii U.

Even if the Next Gen Xbox and Playstation use x86, they will still be using a modern CPU that's capable of OoOE just like the Wii U and all modern CPU's. Wii U ports that are treated with care from a Third Party would be able to take advantage of what the system has to offer in it's own custom box and they will use these features once Wii U development starts taking off. Just like what developers have used to "fake" effects that look like something from DX11 on Xbox 360 and PS3, the same can be done on the Wii U, except the Wii U already is capable of those effects without faking. How much of those effects at the same time might be questionable though.

Yet again, people some how think that these games are going to look ugly or something when all it's going to be is a different kind of pretty. Diminishing returns will continue to diminish further and further and just how much money are developers willing to spend on Xbox 3 and PS4 to make their games closer to CGI quality? Is it worth it to them? You have to consider that as well.

Wii U seems like it's going to be a developer friendly system for devs looking to get some money back by releasing some nice quality efforts on the eShop. Not to mention if they do up their efforts on the ports they will earn consumer trust. Nintendo of course will need to show themselves what the system can really do in the end.

No doubt Zelda, Metroid, Smash Bros. and a new 3D Mario game will be so stunning graphically that all those higher specs of other consoles won't mean a damn thing when you see them running on Wii U.

 

[QaaQer]

No doubt Zelda, Metroid, Smash Bros. and a new 3D Mario game will be so stunning graphically that all those higher specs of other consoles won't mean a damn thing when you see them running on Wii U.

do you know how fanboyish silly you sound?

 

[Trevelyan9999]

do you know how fanboyish silly you sound?

No I didn't, thank you for letting me know.......

I guess I'm referring to how Nintendo develops games with an amazing art direction and now that the tech can actually help achieve some of that art to the fullest extent in game, it's exciting to see what they have cooking.