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[Roo]

If I was rich, I'd donate money to them. I don't want them to go ;_;

Yeah, it's a shame. They're a good company with talented people and some great IP's.
If they ever go out of business, I hope they put up for sale all their franchises because I would be sad to see their work dissapear with them.

 

[IceDoesntHelp]

Yeah, it's a shame. They're a good company with talented people and some great IP's.
If they ever go out of business, I hope they put up for sale all their franchises because I would be sad to see their work dissapear with them.

I sure do hope they do. Would hate to see the Metro, Darksiders and Saints Row series go down the drain.

 

[Mlatador]

Back in July 2011, Aonuma said that he had been involved in Wii U's development for about 2 years since "the stage where we started to bring things all together and decide what to make of this new system." He adds that it was around the time of when he started to involved in the meetings and most of his efforts were primarily focused on the creation of the Zelda HD tech demo.

Vigil Games had pointed out some hints on the state of Wii U dev kits:

- One of the first third-parties to receive dev kits. Nintendo said itself that it decided to give dev kits out earlier than usual to select third-parties.

- They got Dark Siders 2 up and running on Wii U hardware in about 5 weeks. Reported a few days after after E3 2011 in June. By then, the game was said to be fully running on the hardware.

- Prior to E3, the design of the dev kit's controller was that of a giant and clunky GameBoy. At the time oft E3, the controller design was not the same one they were in possession of.

- The developer received 2nd generation dev kit back in July, a month later.

- Last month, Nintendo apparently reported that some third-parties were in possession of final dev kits. It also revealed that Wii U has NFC technology and some info on the Nintendo Network.Tecmo said that the state of the hardware was still constantly changing. Capcom said that the info they know about the Wii U they were made aware of recently (and perhaps in the current dev kits they have) was not representative in the E3 form of the console.

It makes me wonder when Nintendo's external first-party developers received dev kits. Maybe it was as in October 2010. Monolith Soft and Retro were naturally in a good position to immediately work on new projects for the console given that they're last titles came out in June and November 2010. After that, Retro had limited involvement in Mario Kart 7's development while Monolith contributed something to Skyward Sword.

great news summary. didn't know monolith was slightly involed in the development of skyward sword.

 

[royalan]

Pre-final development hardware is always less powerful than what ends up in the final kits. You should already know that, being a 'game devloper' and all. Why don't you verify that you work in the industry by PMing one of the mods? They've done it before with other users. Otherwise we have to assume you are a simple troll.

EDIT: Crap, beaten to the punch. Gotta press refresh more often.

That is one sexy dev kit.

 

[disap.ed]

And I am going to stand by that until we get a new kit that proves otherwise.

It will have some factors that are superior like Memory amount(though bus speeds are slow) but other things (GPU) are slightly less than what we have come to expect from the current gen systems. I am sure if a game a is built from the ground up on the console it will look nice, but porting anything from the HD twins over will take a hit.

That's why a number of devs said that the WiiU version will be the definite version?

 

[HylianTom]

Pre-final development hardware is always less powerful than what ends up in the final kits. You should already know that, being a 'game devloper' and all. Why don't you verify that you work in the industry by PMing one of the mods? They've done it before with other users. Otherwise we have to assume you are a simple troll.

EDIT: Crap, beaten to the punch. Gotta press refresh more often.

oOoooOohhh.. the gauntlet has been thrown down. Let's see what happens next..

 

[Roo]

I sure do hope they do. Would hate to see the Metro, Darksiders and Saints Row series go down the drain.

In this hypothetical case, I really don't care what company gets the franchises as long as they keep them coming but I think it would be a nice acquisition for Nintendo because besides of Metroid and F Zero, they lack of mature-looking (hardcore according this gen) games and those could fill that void pretty well =P

 

[-Pyromaniac-]

I really dislike Darksiders for some reason that I find hard to explain, hard to get excited about that. But I do like the way Vigil is acting and treating the WiiU.

 

[lednerg]

oOoooOohhh.. the gauntlet has been thrown down. Let's see what happens next..

The gauntlet was already thrown down the last time he came here and posted this stuff. A mod assured him it would be easy and safe to do.

Mind you, it would only prove that he has access to an email address with a game developer's domain in it. It wouldn't prove that the guy does anything more than empty garbage cans at said dev house.

 

[idwl]

with the news that Nintendo is looking to revive some 3rd party IPs it got me thinking. What if Nintendo is working with sega to make a Shenmue launch title, I mean that would definitely get a lot of the 'hardcore' gamers to buy day 1

 

[HylianTom]

The gauntlet was already thrown down the last time he came here and posted this stuff. A mod assured him it would be easy and safe to do.

Alrighty then. Let's see how long this takes. I might provide timekeeping notes, if things stay slow here at work today. It's like Christmas Eve around here right now..

It's been about 50 minutes.
*tick tock*
pretty simple, low bar to clear..

 

[Donnie]

And I am going to stand by that until we get a new kit that proves otherwise.

It will have some factors that are superior like Memory amount(though bus speeds are slow) but other things (GPU) are slightly less than what we have come to expect from the current gen systems. I am sure if a game a is built from the ground up on the console it will look nice, but porting anything from the HD twins over will take a hit.


Looking at what they are bringing to the table, Nintendo is more concerned about price than power. It is almost like they are competing with the Xbox 360/Ps3 and ignoring what ever the xbox3/ps4 turn out to be. Of course that is just my opinion.

Ok why not give us more details then?, you're anonymous and you're already giving details about the system as it is so it should be no problem for you to give a few more details. Tell me how much RAM the dev kit has, the bus width, how many SPU's the GPU has and what speed it runs at.

There's no way on earth that WiiU's GPU is slower than 360/PS3's and there's no way that porting games from them would need to be downgraded so why even bother with these comments? Every developer says otherwise, even the most conservative comments contradict you, here are a few examples:

"There's plenty of horsepower there, so we're not going to have to make any visual concessions at all for Darksiders 2. At a minimum its on par, for sure, Donald said of Darksiders 2's visuals on Wii U versus Darksiders 2's visuals on PS3 and Xbox 360."

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-07-19-wii-u-has-plenty-of-horsepower-dev

"As every new piece of hardware and every new development library comes through we get a greater understanding of the power. With our early research we had been very happy with the output of the box and we expect that that will only go up moving forward. It's still moving," he added, "but I think we'll be able to do anything that we can do on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on the Wii U."

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-07-27-ea-wii-u-can-do-anything-ps3-360-can

These articles are from 7 months ago, so each comment is based on much earlier than current dev kits. Those are the conservative bits of info, other bits talk about WiiU being able to do things that weren't possible this gen on 360/PS3. Are they all lying then?

 

[stupidvillager]

stupidvillager: But Arkam told me...

Master Iwata: Pay no attention to Arkam, we purposely trained him wrong...as a joke.

 

[ReyVGM]

with the news that Nintendo is looking to revive some 3rd party IPs it got me thinking. What if Nintendo is working with sega to make a Shenmue launch title, I mean that would definitely get a lot of the 'hardcore' gamers to buy day 1

How many hardcore gamers bought the game in the first place? I don't remember the game being a huge sales hit.

 

[Maxrunner]

with the news that Nintendo is looking to revive some 3rd party IPs it got me thinking. What if Nintendo is working with sega to make a Shenmue launch title, I mean that would definitely get a lot of the 'hardcore' gamers to buy day 1

what news?

 

[Shion]

with the news that Nintendo is looking to revive some 3rd party IPs it got me thinking. What if Nintendo is working with sega to make a Shenmue launch title, I mean that would definitely get a lot of the 'hardcore' gamers to buy day 1

Nintendo isn't known for spending money on big budget titles though.

what news?

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=35302518&postcount=1

 

[Roo]

with the news that Nintendo is looking to revive some 3rd party IPs it got me thinking. What if Nintendo is working with sega to make a Shenmue launch title, I mean that would definitely get a lot of the 'hardcore' gamers to buy day 1

they should revive their old IPs first... just saying

 

[Maxrunner]

Nintendo isn't known for spending money on big budget titles though.



http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=35302518&postcount=1

Already saw it thanks. Still they should revie their old ips too then.

Star Tropics,
Mach Rider
Baloon fighter
...

 

[Dreamwriter]

Tell me how much RAM the dev kit has, the bus width, how many SPU's the GPU has and what speed it runs at and I might just take you seriously.

Speaking as a game programmer, we wouldn't know anything about the "bus width", unless we were really pushing a system super hard. And then we'd only know it based on how we are being limited, we don't care about actual numbers (like on iPhone 4 where we know the system has a poor fill rate, but we don't know or care exactly what that fill rate is, we just know that we need to keep high-res textures to a minimum on that device). And I doubt Nintendo would include that sort of number in their documentation.

And as far as I'm aware, an SPU is a marketing term Sony/IBM came up with for the dedicated-task processor cores their cell chip has, so unless Wii-U is powered by a Cell there is no "number of SPU's"

 

[tsab]

Speaking as a game programmer, we wouldn't know anything about the "bus width", unless we were really pushing a system super hard. And then we'd only know it based on how we are being limited, we don't care about actual numbers (like on iPhone 4 where we know the system has a poor fill rate, but we don't know or care exactly what that fill rate is, we just know that we need to keep high-res textures to a minimum on that device). And I doubt Nintendo would include that sort of number in their documentation.

And as far as I'm aware, an SPU is a marketing term Sony/IBM came up with for the dedicated-task processor cores their cell chip has, so unless Wii-U is powered by a Cell there is no "number of SPU's"

I think you got it wrong

sony's CELL "SPE" or "SPU" term= Synergistic Processing Element / Synergistic Processing Unit

AMD ATI SPU term= Stream processing unit

 

[blu]

Speaking as a game programmer, we wouldn't know anything about the "bus width", unless we were really pushing a system super hard. And then we'd only know it based on how we are being limited, we don't care about actual numbers (like on iPhone 4 where we know the system has a poor fill rate, but we don't know or care exactly what that fill rate is, we just know that we need to keep high-res textures to a minimum on that device). And I doubt Nintendo would include that sort of number in their documentation.

There are sufficiently good ways to discern the characteristics of a bus. While nobody might care what the exact width or clock of a bus is, most people care about the fundamental characteristics like BW and/or latency of most buses they'd try to do performance-critical tasks over.

But all this is moot, as Arkam said buses were too slow (not this or that unit, but buses in particular) so he should have a darn good idea what he's talking about.

And as far as I'm aware, an SPU is a marketing term Sony/IBM came up with for the dedicated-task processor cores their cell chip has, so unless Wii-U is powered by a Cell there is no "number of SPU's"

These are not the SPUs you're looking for /jedi mind trick

 

[z0m3le]

The only way Arkam's posts make any sense is if he has confused a Wii U kit with a 3DS one. If the Wii U was less powerful than the 360 or PS3, it would be smaller than the Wii.

 

[EloquentM]

You can't just claim information out of the blue without anything to back it up. He still seems like nothing more then a hit and run troll.

 

[HylianTom]

Yup.

Over two hours now. Reeeeeeallly easy process, Arky.

 

[Dreamwriter]

There are sufficiently good ways to discern the characteristics of a bus. While nobody might care what the exact width or clock of a bus is, most people care about the fundamental characteristics like BW and/or latency of most buses they'd try to do performance-critical tasks over.

As a game programmer I've never cared about things like that. Maybe someone programming straight to the core hardware and really pushing the limits, like John Carmack, would, but most game programmers these days don't ever have to think at that low level. Definitely not to the point where they could rattle off specification numbers.

 

[Übermatik]

Arkam is bullshitting us all. Ignore his posts if you like, because they're totally inaccurate and illogical.

There's no need for concern.

Stay indoors.

 

[woo and indeed hoo]

Arkam is bullshitting us all. Ignore his posts if you like, because they're totally inaccurate and illogical.

There's no need for concern.

Stay indoors.

If your grandmother or any other member of the family should die, put them outside, but remember to tag them first for identification purposes.

 

[ClovingWestbrook]

But Arkham told me it would be less powerful!

And I am going to stand by that until we get a new kit that proves otherwise.

It will have some factors that are superior like Memory amount(though bus speeds are slow) but other things (GPU) are slightly less than what we have come to expect from the current gen systems. I am sure if a game a is built from the ground up on the console it will look nice, but porting anything from the HD twins over will take a hit.


Looking at what they are bringing to the table, Nintendo is more concerned about price than power. It is almost like they are competing with the Xbox 360/Ps3 and ignoring what ever the xbox3/ps4 turn out to be. Of course that is just my opinion.

smh. You actually believe the Wii U may be less powerful than the current crop of consoles? Wow...

 

[Arkam]

Pre-final development hardware is always less powerful than what ends up in the final kits. You should already know that, being a 'game devloper' and all. Why don't you verify that you work in the industry by PMing one of the mods? They've done it before with other users. Otherwise we have to assume you are a simple troll.

EDIT: Crap, beaten to the punch. Gotta press refresh more often.

I have "verified" my self with the mods and yes dev hardware does tend to get boosted near the end, but until that actually happens I'm not making any assumptions.

And no I am not a software engineer sorry.

 

[jonezer4]

How can I possibly reconcile this power information with the interactive bird demo, which unless my eyes deceive me (or I'm being completely blinded by Nintendo-love), easily trumps anything from this gen. Sure the demo is made from scratch for WiiU, but given what you're saying, it should still not look markedly better than 360 or PS3.

 

[blu]

As a game programmer I've never cared about things like that. Maybe someone programming straight to the core hardware and really pushing the limits, like John Carmack, would, but most game programmers these days don't ever have to think at that low level. Definitely not to the point where they could rattle off specification numbers.

Most game programmers might not. But game platform (aka engine) developers and people whose job otherwise includes discerning the parameters of the hw (so the rest of the developers can do their jobs during the next few years on a friggin expensive project) try to peek as much of the performance characteristics of the device as they possibly can. That includes effective sustainable bandwidths between units they have some control over. Yes I was doing this for long enough to know what my (former) job's description included *tips hat*

 

[FreeMufasa]

And I am going to stand by that until we get a new kit that proves otherwise.

It will have some factors that are superior like Memory amount(though bus speeds are slow) but other things (GPU) are slightly less than what we have come to expect from the current gen systems. I am sure if a game a is built from the ground up on the console it will look nice, but porting anything from the HD twins over will take a hit.


Looking at what they are bringing to the table, Nintendo is more concerned about price than power. It is almost like they are competing with the Xbox 360/Ps3 and ignoring what ever the xbox3/ps4 turn out to be. Of course that is just my opinion.

Looks like my feelings might be true.

 

[z0m3le]

I have "verified" my self with the mods and yes dev hardware does tend to get boosted near the end, but until that actually happens I'm not making any assumptions.

And no I am not a software engineer sorry.

Have you worked on PS3 and 360 hardware before? I don't think there is anyway Nintendo could produce a cheap gpu that isn't more powerful than those consoles in nearly every way. Maybe it doesn't have 32mb edram? If what you're saying is true, then there is no way that it has a >1Tflop compute power, that's easily 4x what current gen can do.

Well, I guess now we wait for a mod, unless he is really trolling and just saying he registered and got an account, or he is a dev but has never touched a wii u. Personally Arkam, I think you're a troll, I wait to be told I'm wrong.

 

[snowdog1971]

Just 3 major things wrong with Arkam's reasoning:

1) Nintendo always use fast RAM, fast RAM means they're going to have a decent sized bus with decent bandwidth. It's pointless having fast RAM otherwise.

2) The GPU in the U is going to be at least 2 generations ahead of the GPUs in the PS3 and 360 and, unless Nintendo have taken leave of their senses, is going to have at least twice as much memory to play with.

3) The Japanese Garden, Zelda and Streets demos were streets ahead of anything that the PS3 and 360 are capable of in terms of processing power.

Sounds like a troll to me.

 

[MDX]

But Arkham told me it would be less powerful!


And I am going to stand by that until we get a new kit that proves otherwise.

It will have some factors that are superior like Memory amount(though bus speeds are slow) but other things (GPU) are slightly less than what we have come to expect from the current gen systems. I am sure if a game a is built from the ground up on the console it will look nice, but porting anything from the HD twins over will take a hit.

You sure you are in the right thread?
We are discussing the WiiU not the 3DS

 

[JonathanPower]

Just 3 major things wrong with Arkam's reasoning:

1) Nintendo always use fast RAM, fast RAM means they're going to have a decent sized bus with decent bandwidth. It's pointless having fast RAM otherwise.

2) The GPU in the U is going to be at least 2 generations ahead of the GPUs in the PS3 and 360 and, unless Nintendo have taken leave of their senses, is going to have at least twice as much memory to play with.

3) The Japanese Garden, Zelda and Streets demos were streets ahead of anything that the PS3 and 360 are capable of in terms of processing power.

Sounds like a troll to me.

He may be not a Troll but just a guy who was disappointed with the hardware...he needs to provide more details about the hardware like actual amount of video and system ram, memory speed, if the memory is unified or spit, GPU speed, CPU details, ecc...this is the only way we will be able to verify if he is legit once the real HW gets revealed...

 

[Duckhuntdog]

And no I am not a software engineer sorry.

Okaaaaaaaay...

 

[stupidvillager]

So Arkam, whats your take on other developers comments on the Wii U? About it being more powerful and being able to create more graphically intense games on it. I'm sure there are multiple versions of Dev kits out there, but to go from less powerful than 360 to substantially more (5x), I dont see it.

 

[ClovingWestbrook]

So Arkam, whats your take on other developers comments on the Wii U? About it being more powerful and being able to create more graphically intense games on it. I'm sure there are multiple versions of Dev kits out there, but to go from less powerful than 360 to substantially more (5x), I dont see it.

Has that even ever happened? A new generation having less powerful and capable hardware than the previous generation? It doesn't even some possible to me.

 

[guek]

This being the single "less powerful than current gen" rumor makes it seem like nothing but a crock of shit.

But don't worry, Arkam. At least Specialguy is on your side through thick and thin.

The other thing is that I felt lherre was really down to earth with us. He was confirmed by mods as being a legit inside source and backed by numerous others. He always said our dreams of a monster Wii U were outlandish, but I feel like he would have made such major deficits in power very clear and obvious.

 

[BowieZ]

Anyone considered a Wii U game case design that is landscape rather than portrait, to emulate the controller? (whether or not it opens up up-down or left-right.) Would be something different for the new era!

The cover could feature a curved white bezel like the controller on which logos (developer, publisher, rating, network capability, etc) can be placed.

/stupid idea

 

[HylianTom]

I have "verified" my self with the mods and yes dev hardware does tend to get boosted near the end, but until that actually happens I'm not making any assumptions.

And no I am not a software engineer sorry.

Yeah.. I have "verified" myself with the mods, too..

 

[MDX]

I have "verified" my self with the mods and yes dev hardware does tend to get boosted near the end, but until that actually happens I'm not making any assumptions.

And no I am not a software engineer sorry.

Is there a reason why you guys have not received the latest dev kit?

 

[guek]

Anyone considered a Wii U game case design that is landscape rather than portrait, to emulate the controller? (whether or not it opens up up-down or left-right.) Would be something different for the new era!

The cover could feature a curved white bezel like the controller on which logos (developer, publisher, rating, network capability, etc) can be placed.

/stupid idea

It's ok, your avatar pic makes all stupid ideas sound like well crafted jokes!

 

[blu]

I have "verified" my self with the mods and yes dev hardware does tend to get boosted near the end, but until that actually happens I'm not making any assumptions.

And no I am not a software engineer sorry.

That's fine. You're still to provide a single bit of quantifiable & verifiable (not necessarily now but in the future) information, though (yes, even re the early devkits). Otherwise it's too darn convenient. 'It's not slower? Oh well, damn those software engineers!'

 

[cyberheater]

Things will start to get very interesting once Arkam gets verified...

 

[stilgar]

Things will start to get very interesting once Arkam gets verified...

Looks like it's done already.

I'm confused.

 

[John Harker]

Is there a reason why you guys have not received the latest dev kit?

they arent all out yet, not even all the procedurals are

 

[Azure J]

they arent all out yet, not even all the procedurals are

That seems so weird for a system launching this year, but I admit I'm not up on things like timing for dev kit launches. What's the usual over-under on how soon to launch everyone gets their near final or final kits?

 

[lordfroakie]

I have "verified" my self with the mods and yes dev hardware does tend to get boosted near the end, but until that actually happens I'm not making any assumptions.

And no I am not a software engineer sorry.

-_-