After reading some members that are reluctant to believe in my messages, and I understand it perfectly, I want to give some details, even if I have chosen my words carefully and thought I took every precautions in the world in my first post. I will repeat or clarify a few:
- In France, in the 90’s, there were for a sole manufacturer, 5 and more magazines, monthly for the most. Add the other papers dedicated to one brand, and the even more numerous non-specialized ones. All these publications had dozens of “journalists” working for them. At the end of the 90’s and of course during the 2000, there were many game websites serious enough to have some contacts with the industry. So there are several thousands of “game journalists”, this is not an accomplishment, something that supports or not some credibility. And I’ve said “former”.
- Above all, I want to protect my sources, so I would prefer to stop posting than endangering them, even if what I’m saying is nothing revolutionary, several people, techies, with good reasoning skills, have guessed for weeks or even months what I’ve learned. My posts are more like information consolidation a tad tinted here and there, and it’s already that isn’t it ?
- For how I communicate, I’m just trying to spice things up, put some fun in my contributions and in the thread. Having information and wanting to share it, doesn’t exclude the use of smileys and funny pictures. I intend to participate in NeoGAF in a relaxed, laid-back manner. And the teasing, the suspense, the anticipation, before a platform and its software presentation, is my favorite moment in this sector like many of you, so understand that I want to partake in it. The wait before E3 will be long, I could get some info, vague, I want to distill them to cultivate buzz and speculation, I have already explained that, and some have completely understood. And to answer to people like bg, I know that these posts have a limited scope or reach, the discussions have developed without me before my subscription, they will continue after, I'm not a vip on this topic, I thought I was clear on that point with the over-the-top use of trial & attempt vocabulary, I even said “a drop in the ocean”, I can’t be clearer on the fact that what I know is not groundbreaking and will not revolutionize the debates, but maybe crop them a little and, like any other, feed them. Sorry and a bit saddened that this teasing part gets on the nerves of some, or is seen in another way that it should have been: simply to entertain my involvement and write in a light-hearted approach. The situation is rather simple, I prefer to disclose my info little by little for a long time, instead of unleash all in 4 cryptic lines, it’s more exciting, and more easy to analyze them, confront them, and talk about them, separately.
- There is nothing very insiderish or to brag about. Today, thousands of people are close to the Wii U dev kits or what they’re displaying on the screens. You can imagine that many of them talk to their friends.
- I saw nothing myself, I had second-hand information through people away from all the programming part and other jobs where they could have really benchmarked and dissected the hardware. What I know is therefore more related to impressions, experiences. There is a dose of subjectivity.
- When reporting news, i don't want to make revelations, but just nurture the discussions and help killing in the egg non-constructive speculations that have spread even on other language forums, such as Wii U = 1x Xbox360, Wii U has a very limited amount of ram, etc.. While remaining vague to not spoil the surprise if Nintendo decides to give a detailed specs sheet, which I doubt since they have not done that for a long time, I bring elements of information to try to silence these deceiving rumors and help redirect the debates on more accurate roads.
- From my perspective, proactive communication is good, especially with hardcore gamers, who enjoy a non-negligible influence and can convey a sticking negative image of a product founded on rumors speaking of underpowered material. It costs nothing to do a preemptive strike and say "that, from what I know, it will not happen”. The exact components are still unknown, but instead of seeing speculations power ranging from 0.7 / 0.8x to 10x xbox 360, you can narrow this range, I know that as a board member and a game nerd, I would prefer that than to keep considering the under-the-ground and over-the-top rumors in my tech talks and be disappointed in the end. It's more of a damage control than anything else, Nintendo should pay me
or employ one of their PR guy to reassure from time to time people for who “1080p box – checked” is not enough and give up to the temptation of underestimating the Wii U power.
- It has no effect on a whole new revelation of the Wii U at E3. I am a responsible guy, I do not want to spoil the momentum that they build for this event. Anyway, with what I know, there is no risk (read: I am far from knowing everything), I respect their apparently adopted communication strategy to unleash everything at E3 2012, and as they have said 100 times, this console will be mainly based on the concept, the experience, rather than on the hardware.
- I don’t know the most important things and more specific specs of the machine, like details on the CPU and the GPU. If a Nintendo representative passes by and is counting on a surprise about the components, well, they can be reassured, I have no revelations to make. And if I were to find out, I would not do it for the reasons explained, I will impose myself a NDA even if I’m not in the industry.
- My main goal while creating this account, isn’t to make revelations, it’s primarily to share my ideas. The problem is that I’m a junior member so can’t create threads where it will be easier to develop them. So in the meantime, I post here and there on NeoGAF. It just turns out that I have some info regarding the Wii U so I want to share it, and help making the buzz grow in a controlled manner, which is beneficial to Nintendo, company that I like. I want to capitalize on this participation to help me really enter the world of game development.
- On the fever which has suddenly possessed the thread yesterday: saying that the Wii U is closer to 2x Xbox360 than 5x (I've said it umpteen times), that we must be reasonable in our expectations, that there are parameters which make the whole comparison thing hard and variable (primarily because of the padlet usage you’ve guessed it), I hope to help keeping in check some expectations. My post on the impression of my sources (in response to guek from what I remember), who are more “interested” than super-excited about the hardware go in that direction. This is the opposite of overhype, it is not clear? In the message about the ram, I added that I expected roughly 1GB, and from what I know it’s more and I was quite surprised by that yes. But read again, I’ve never said “amagad it’s big !”. And the memory isn’t everything, and EVEN with a somewhat surprising amount of ram
for me, the felt experience that I’ve heard remains 2x.
TLDR: Feel free to believe me or not, I never said it was 100% legit news, on the contrary, I insisted on the specific context in which I got this info, and various parameters that make it to be taken with caution. It’s at a small level, I do not have complete information, and I told many times that there would be nothing really exclusive. Still, It can be interesting.
- Not only you must keep a cool head, but I encourage you to use your critical mind and to doubt what I’ll say. But do it in a civil manner please and try to avoid personal attacks. Now I’ll not spend my time to justify myself and paint big warning notices every two seconds. But I understand some of the doubts and it is quite normal. The only way to alleviate that is through the test of time. I’ll try to give other info that can be verified/proved to be right in the future.
- Oh and I only posted here, I don’t have an account on Beyond3D boards so don’t invent me some new nickname here and there
- And lherre said that he only knows that arkam is legit in the position he claimed to occupy (someone who work in a studio), and again, it’s not my case, I’m not a developer, I relay second-hand knowledge.
Phew !
And because a whole message of justification doesn’t quite match the idea that I have of my contribution here, some information that people who worked on previous machine can speculate on.
I’m talking in a SDK V2 context. The info is roughly 2 months old. Wsippel said a few days ago that a 2.02 version is available.
- Now, how much optimized is the SDK with each .XX iterations ? I don’t know
- What are Nintendo habits concerning SDK, an evolution from 2 > 2.02 in apparently a few months is quick or not ? It is a sign of stabilization, or on the contrary “small” iterations can bring a lot of new things ?
- It is a sign that they focused themselves more on hardware changes (evolution from v4 to v4.2 rather fast, a "v5" available, etc.) than optimization of the software development kit until recently ? (for this, i think it often happens for SDK numbers to be less advanced than hardware dev kit).
Any developer hindsight would be appreciated