Also 1GB of RAM for the game.
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Secret Developers, The Wii U story - Digital Foundry Series
- Thread starter hesido
- Start date
Also 1GB of RAM for the game.
I think everyone thought that.
I was hoping the U would be a "good enough" system that third parties could support without too much trouble. When reports of the U struggling with 360 ports surfaced I knew Nintendo had gone and done their own thing again.
If Nintendo had made the tablet optional, perhaps supported other tablets as well, dropped Wii support and focused on a system with as much power they could get for $300 I think they would have had a winner. Just look at how the $500 Xbox1 has sold.
Herb Alpert
Banned
I can't imagine nintendo resolve to let a western guy design their console. Probably a matter of pride. No luck that nowadays the gravitation center of videogam industry is in the west... They probably don't even admit it.
DICKS AHOY
Banned
The motion technology used in the Wii was created and licensed from Tom Quinn who's a westerner. I highly doubt them being so insular is that big if at all a race thing.
I think a major issue for Nintendo is release schedule too. They rely on their first party games but that worked for the NES and SNES to N64 era because it was a lot easier to churn out games quicker. The amount of polish in games required now is much higher and the late coming to the HD era screwed them, now every day they are playing catch up and aren't able to produce a wide array of different games for us as all different gamers who desire different experiences. The problem is they are sticking by the books with no real new IPs. Will I play Smash? Yeah probably but I won't be that hyped about it unless it's really good and the online is robust. If Nintendo can prove their online for their first party games is solid, they may have a fighting chance at not having the Wii U completely flop.
Poimandres
Member
I do agree with some posters here that this is pretty much "old news". All consoles have teething issues with developers coming to grips with the systems (some more than others!) but the lack of communication is disappointing. Hardly a big surprise though.
For people clamouring for a "real" source, you do understand why most developers who complain do so anonymously right? It's bad PR for their company if they speak out publicly, so anyone who does make a negative statement no doubt gets in a world of shit.
I'm sure there is a lot of bullshit floating around, but this doesn't seem too outlandish. No doubt most of these issues have been well addressed by now anyway.
For people clamouring for a "real" source, you do understand why most developers who complain do so anonymously right? It's bad PR for their company if they speak out publicly, so anyone who does make a negative statement no doubt gets in a world of shit.
I'm sure there is a lot of bullshit floating around, but this doesn't seem too outlandish. No doubt most of these issues have been well addressed by now anyway.
Seems like the engineer of the original article had his first dealings with a Japanese company. Having lived there it's exasperating that even high up professors at the universities don't speak any English and subsequently only publish in Japanese. Nintendo is hundred percent an extension of this inward culture. I'm not even talking French stubbornness here. It's being completely oblivious to what's happening around you because you only rely on what Japanese media are bringing you (celebrity stuff mostly).
Hero of Legend
Member
Believe it or not, Martin Hollis (former Rare person who directed Goldeneye) worked on the design of the GameCube:
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/132496/from_me_to_wii_martin_hollis_.php
Pre-Iwata, but it counts.
Some, maybe, but not very many in my experience.
The Gekko, Broadway, and Espresso all do 2.31 DMIPS/MHz per core, and we know an ARM Cortex A57 core can do up to 4.7 DMIPS/MHz. Isn't the 7-way superscalar Denver more capable than standard ARMv8-A 64-bit cores? And doesn't Tegra K1's 192 shader, 365 GFLOP GPU performance eclipse a 160 shader Latte at 192 GFLOPs?
Where is Wii U's performance advantage?
a Master Ninja
Member
I'm late to the thread, but the idea of Xbox Live and PSN not even being a point of reference to Nintendo is incomprehensible.
tassletine
Member
I think everyone here should remember that Digital Foundries bread and butter is to point out minor differences in frame rates, and make headlines from things that aren't even visible to the majority of the people who play the games. In short, their entire business is to get people arguing over minor differences to generate traffic.
No console is free from problems just before release and dragging this stuff up yet again, a year later no less, seems extremely sensationalistic. Basically exaggerating the most difficult portion of the consoles development and preaching it as gospel to feed the "Nintendo is doomed" news which seems so popular now.
No console is free from problems just before release and dragging this stuff up yet again, a year later no less, seems extremely sensationalistic. Basically exaggerating the most difficult portion of the consoles development and preaching it as gospel to feed the "Nintendo is doomed" news which seems so popular now.
Shin'en basically confirmed on twitter what I said earlier:
The developer had clearly porting issues and it might not have been as bad (or bad at all) developing a brand new game.
Also:
Now, we can't compare big games to their small eShop games, but I think the thing got blown a little bit out of proportion.
The developer had clearly porting issues and it might not have been as bad (or bad at all) developing a brand new game.
Also:
Now, we can't compare big games to their small eShop games, but I think the thing got blown a little bit out of proportion.
Yeah, I remember this too. Would be great to bring him (or someone of his experience) back.
I think with the tech available now resp. in the next two years if shouldn't be too hard to make a competitive console with low power suckage.
8 ARMv8 or Puma+ cores @ 2GHz
1024 SU GPU @ 1GHz
8GB GDDR5/6 or if available HMC, no eDRAM!
Modules (up to 32GB, later up to 64GB), 32GB SD cards are now <15€ and will probably be <5€ in 2 years. Nintendo will get these even cheaper. Also most games I downloaded on WiiU would fit into a 8GB module.
No point in still implementing a disk drive if downloads will be more and more important and WiiU BC is not given anyways.
Would allow a compact, low power and relatively inexpensive box with higher performance than the Next-Gen twins.
Will not happen 
Because the game-specific comments fit better with NFS. Mii support, enhanced night time lighting, PC textures (="we added polish features" re: GPU), almost the exact same talking points as the NFSMWU tech interview (also from DF) around release (toolchain problems, documentation), using the exact same idiom when talking about the CPU ("punching above its weight"), they key phrase "we eventually shipped our game" (NFS came out in Spring after they took a break and regrouped for the WiiU port with final kits). Might be forgetting something but I think that's the big indicators.
EA publicly stated that they dropped support for Wii U, while T2 didn't do so:
The Secret Developers said:
then please explain why more recent games games like ACIV, NFSMW and B:AO, DE:HRDC are technically superior on the wiiU.
anybody sensible would logically realise that those 'struggling 360 ports' were the result of developers getting used to the wiiU architecture and attempts at optimising said games for this hardware that were built from the ground up on the 360 -because these consoles work significantly different from each other.
c'mon dude.
not that having a '1up' on the ps360 versions is anything major to write home about, mind you. seeing as the wiiU is newer hardware, it really should be the expectation.
i swear it's really getting tiring of appearing like i'm 'sticking up' for this console. i'm really not. it's not the most forward thinking system, and there are several things about its design that i take issue with, but someone has to inject common sense now and then, because really, hardly anyone else is doing it.
SaintMadeOfPlaster
Member
Pretty much.
The Wii U definitely leans closer to the 360/PS3 power level than the XBone/PS4, but using shoddy 360 ports is not the best way to make that case.
ACIV isn't technically superior.
NFS: MW isn't recent.
B:AO isn't technically superior.
DE: HRDC I don't know about, but going on the above I won't take your word for it
EA publicly stated both that they "currently" had no WiiU titles in development and also that they did and/or might very well do so in the future. It was a contradictory back and forth last year.
Take Two never said anything but they clearly did halt WiiU support since all they ever released was one single piece of software for WiiU.
Apophis2036
Banned
But an 'in-between' consoles is exactly what WiiU is. It has a slower clocked but far more efficient CPU (much like PS4/Xbone), 4x the RAM with the eDRAM greatly improving the bandwidth and a more powerful and more modern GPU which also supports GPGPU functions. It's certainly more capable than PS360 but much closer to the last gen consoles than PS4/Xbone in computational terms.
Unfortunately we will have to rely on X, Bayonetta 2 and maybe Retro with another Metroid Prine to see what the console is capable of visually away from the normal cartoon Nintendo art style.
Budget, developer talent and time is far more important in video game development nowadays than just hardware grunt as is evidant with GTA V on PS360.
ACIV isn't technically superior.
NFS: MW isn't recent.
B:AO isn't technically superior.
DE: HRDC I don't know about, but going on the above I won't take your word for it
For what it's worth NFS:MW also had features cut (lower online player count), likely IMHO due to low CPU performance.
Dragon1893
Member
Interesting read but nothing here is really surprising though I had to do a double-take on the "nobody here has experience with Live and PSN" part. lol WTF?
DICKS AHOY
Banned
And that's my point; something that was significantly powerful enough for 3rd parties even if they weren't that efficient developers to have multiplats running at 1080/60 on the Wii U at launch would've been an attractive position for Nintendo to be in for a year (and then when the PS4/One hit they could have started to market their once powerful next-gen console as a cheaper alternative which even now they can't do due to the price), but instead the opposite happened where even games over a year old like Arkham City run noticeably worse on the system.
Without getting too technological because I'm not even going to pretend I can make an argument in that area and know what I'm talking about one hundred percent, but this strikes me as the PS3 core problem; it may very well be slightly more powerful than the competition, but from a 3rd party perspective what's the point if it's way more of a hassle to program on with a tight dead-line and results in shittier 3rd party ports?
Projectjustice
Banned
Agreed, click bait articles are important to these websites these days.
Go read my post again, you missed my point completely.
Had the U been the "in between" system we expected none of the ports would have struggled until the PS4/XB1 gen, instead I now worry that 3party support will dry up as they shift to the new systems.
Note that this has nothing to do with Nintendo or the WiiU but that article reminds me of a game I worked on a couple of months ago. It was a PC port of a Japanese console game that was actually ported by the Japanese dev.
At some point we realized that the dev had no idea what Steam was and also didn't know what a 360 controler was and the fact that it worked on a PC.
At some point we realized that the dev had no idea what Steam was and also didn't know what a 360 controler was and the fact that it worked on a PC.
SmokedMeat
Gamer™
I was ready to buy Batman Origins for Wii U as I thought I recalled hearing on GAF that it was the superior version despite missing online play. Then I watched a Face Off only to find it's actually the worst version of the game. So yeah, not only missing online play, but the worst frame rate of the group, and worst visually.
I could maybe excuse a launch game, but a second generation Wii U game still falling behind the other versions? Not good. I hear AC IV is bad as well.
Apophis2036
Banned
But PS4 with all it's grunt doesn't even run ports of last gen games at 1080p/60fps. Need for Speed Rivals and ACIV are both 1080p/30fps and BF4 had to run at 900p to achieve 60fps (it's no where near 60fps on most of the conquest maps, still a fantastic mp game mind you).
The ports (and the word port is very important = software built to take advantage of completely different hardware) for WiiU esp the early games were extremely cheaply done, they were developed by tiny teams and in most cases they were farmed out to C level / mobile teams and the launch games esp had almost impossible to meet deadlines.
In an ideal World where WiiU sold 12 million units in it's first year and the core games sold well you would see third parties takes it seriously and build decently sized / skilled development teams dedicated to the WiiU versions of cross platform games and the results would be far, far different. I believe that if the correct budget / team / time frame was given to WiiU multiplatform games, developers could get PS360 games to run at 720p/30fps stable/v-sync/ with improved textures and effects on WiiU. We will never see it now though as hardware sales are awful and more importantly so are the core software sales.
Unfortunately we shall never see what WiiU is really capable of from third parties.
abstract alien
Member
I don't want to assume which game this is, but it's pretty telling lol
This along with the "HD development was harder than expected", there is not an adequate enough facepalm for this.
While I agree with Nintendo's ethos on focusing on the interface for the games, because they are the best at doing that and the games show, they seriously need to update the tech they put it on, even if it's raw horsepower is inbetween what the gap between PS3 --> PS4 should be adequate enough to get the tailend of the type of games that are going to be appearing on PS4/XB1 only. looking forward, and it's gone far beyond just copying what MS and Sony do with XBL and PSN, they need to get with the standard period, smartphones have a better online infrastructure ffs.
prag16
Banned
Almost everything in the article indicates it was a launch game. Everything but the word "eventually" which doesn't necessarily indicate a delay. Having delayed, regrouped and released four months late would be a pretty damn big thing to leave out.
While some of the comments may have been PR, much of what Criterion said publicly contradicts this story.
Also iirc NBA 2K13 had a few enhancements, but I'll have to look that up when not posting from my phone.
To be fair, it had *a* feature altered. Nothing "cut" outright. And not plural. We also don't know the reasoning. It could be due to the CPU but it's purely speculation at that point. No other games that I know of have reduced player count online on Wii U.
He also cured the anonymous dev's cancer thru the phone.
Well I may have exaggerated that a bit, but at least at the university lab I was working at, the computer science professor supervising it was highly esteemed amongst his colleagues, because he was able to publish and travel abroad. And that was one of the higher ranking universities. My wife published an article in a Japanese conference, and her paper was the only English one in the proceedings.
Of course that still happens in France and Germany as well, but at least in Germany, and to a lesser extent but increasingly France, if you don't publish internationally, you have no career. Certainly at least outside of academia, and the article reinforces this, very few people are able to converse in English.
astrogamer
Member
From what I gather, this article is only really relevant to porting a game and this article is mainly discussing the pre-release devkits. The different focus on GPU over CPU seems to make it difficult to transition the code easily which requires more effort which isn't so easy to get in the limited timespan for a port. I would expect similar issues in the other next gen consoles if they weren't a couple times powerful as the Wii U to begin with. So basically, the Wii U is designed like next gen without the power of next gen
The indies are having no more difficulty for making Wii U games because they are making the games from the ground up most often with the Wii U as the lead platform of consoles.
The indies are having no more difficulty for making Wii U games because they are making the games from the ground up most often with the Wii U as the lead platform of consoles.
It would also be a pretty revealing detail to include.
DICKS AHOY
Banned
And yet he couldn't prevent Knack from turning out the way it did.
megabytecr
Member
I think others have mentioned it, but even with mature tools, Wii U versions are relegated to small teams, budget and time constrained. So I can see that coupled with unfinished tools and poor support being a disaster.
freezamite
Banned
And besides that, I presume that netcode would be something that attacks the strengths of the WiiU CPU (DMIPS) where the WiiU clearly surpasses the Xbox 360 CPU even in synthetic tests that wouldn't take advantage of the bigger L2 caches of those CPUs...
Herb Alpert
Banned
Fair enough, totally forgot about the wiimote and didn't know about the gamecube.
Now, westerner or not, I hope the man in charge of the hardware of the next console will be more open to third parties. The way they act with indies and the way they kind of push Dan Adelman in the US as a credible interlocutor gives me hope. Perhaps in 2 generations.
prag16
Banned
Heh. It's anybody's guess what the landscape will look like in 10-12 years...
A lot of the low level hardware stuff is done by NTD in Seattle, and NERD is apparently also working on hardware.
It does mention the eDRAM, there's a paragraph in there saying the main memory bandwidth isn't as worrying as we thought as it's able to pre-cache most things letting the GPU run at full tilt.
I was thinking it was too much: build a cutting edge, next gen console and design a game as well at the same time. Something had to give. And I'm glad it was the game.
Only difference is the PS4 and XBO going x86.....being more closer to modern day PC's...that some, many games were probably partly developed on last gen. Shouldn't that mean even easier development, even if they have to start from the ground up?
I remember reading about Rovio having problems with porting Angry Birds to Android phones that didnt have a similar gpu to iPhones.
Angry Birds ran better on the Droid 1 vs the HTC Incredible when it was first ported...and the Inc was a newer phone with better specs. Part of the issue was the gpu. Angry Birds had to be tweaked alot for HTC and Samsung phone when it was first ported. And the lowly Droid 1 had fewer issues. (Droid 1 and a few later Motorola Android phones had a similar gpu to the iPhone)
I wonder if thats an issue with the Wii U. I mean I I would assume porting a game and making it work on another console would be alot faster than starting from the ground up. Even tho the PS3, 360 and Wii U all use Power PC....there might be some other things with the Wii U that might cause problems. Having a better gpu or one thats on par with the PS3 and 360 should help. And it doesnt explain how some devs that have upcoming PS3, 360 games saying they arent doing a Wii U version.
All I know is Nintendo shouldn't market the Wii U as competing with the PS4 and XBO. I think they indirectly did when it launched...and that might have been a mistake.
efyu_lemonardo
May I have a cookie?
What doesn't make sense to me is how Nintendo hasn't found a solution to this problem by now. You'd think after multiple console SDKs initially without proper documentation or support in English they'd hire a few translators to work alongside the hardware/tools developers.
I can understand early tools and support being incomplete, as this is something that happens with every new hardware launch, but there's no reason for the language barrier to make this an even bigger issue.
I half wonder if Knack wasn't just a project to get his team used to programming for the new system.
ProfessorMoran
Member
Nintendo simply doesn't care about HD game development and it shows, to them making games pretty is just a necessary evil and they know that even if their first party games don't look as good fans will still buy them, they tried to design a console that is cheap to manufacture and cheap to make games for, they weren't looking forward to these newly launch hardware and trying to stay competitive. And they won't.Pretty succesful joke overall
Honestly this is a great insight into the period around WiiU s launch, but let's not act like the parts about WiiUs poor tool chains and lack of support from Nintendo at launch are new information. They royally fucked up and we've known that for some time.
LordOcidax
Member
So basically the problem with the Wii U was porting the code from another console (Like the one from the Eurogamer article). And that the early tools for dev kits had problems, also bad support from Nintendo in that time. But, these days, according to some devs is a straightforward process. (better support from Nintendo and better tools). And according to Slightly Mad Studio and others devs is not in the same league a the PS4, but is a pretty capable machine, and is above the 360 and PS3 in terms of graphics. So... Why Eurogamer make emphasis in the bad side of the info?. Whats the point?. Because nothing on this article is news for a lot of Gafers. With the PS4 and the One. The devs can bypass a lot of trial-and-error time ($$$) beacuese the raw power. With the Wii U is a different story thats true. But with the time we are going to get better looking games. (Especially the exclusives). Thats why i cant wait to see the Shin'en game.