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WiiU "Latte" GPU Die Photo - GPU Feature Set And Power Analysis

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krizzx

Junior Member
Some people need to pretend the Wii U has been maxed out since day one, to fit their misguided idea of what "Next Gen" really is.

I thought I was alone in noticing this. Well, now that Wii hardware matter is settled, lets get back to new game footage analysis.

Is that parallax mapping or tessellation on the ground in the video? You can actually see depth in the spaces between the rocks and I doubt that was done with raw polygon power for it would take a lot.

http://imageshack.us/a/img845/4863/20130504114501greenshot.png
20130504114501greenshot.png
 
I thought I was alone in noticing this.

Nope, I've just been lurking and finally decided to speak up. people assume the worse when it's Nintendo and honestly I find it funny more so when it's the "tech" experts who think they know what they are talking about because they read a Wikipedia article a few days ago.
 

AzaK

Member
I really don't understand why one wouldn't think this is Wii U footage. You must be blind or ignorant to think this is outside the capabilities of the Wii U. Hell, I'm sure the Wii U can do even better than what was shown even (the Wii U isn't even past year 2 yet).

Well if someone is developing a PC version and the only console is Wii U I'd expect them to have PC as lead SKU. Almost no dev tools cost, can show the game off the best and a big market compared to Wii U.

Anyway, until I hear it's Wii U footage I'll not be getting any hopes up.
 
Nope, I've just been lurking and finally decided to speak up. people assume the worse when it's Nintendo and honestly I find it funny more so when it's the "tech" experts who think they know what they are talking about because they read a Wikipedia article a few days ago.

Another awesome comment about Wii U was that there is no learning curve developing for Wii U, lol.

Even Nintendo had to learn the new hardware... As Iwata said in Januarys investors meeting.
 
Well if someone is developing a PC version and the only console is Wii U I'd expect them to have PC as lead SKU. Almost no dev tools cost, can show the game off the best and a big market compared to Wii U.

Anyway, until I hear it's Wii U footage I'll not be getting any hopes up.

If PC was the lead platform, why the hell would they port it to Wii U, of all consoles?

Not saying this isn't PC footage, but I am in the boat that what we've seen is more than capable on Wii U hardware.
 

Hermii

Member
If PC was the lead platform, why the hell would they port it to Wii U, of all consoles?

Not saying this isn't PC footage, but I am in the boat that what we've seen is more than capable on Wii U hardware.

This is a Unity game isnt it ? In that case the Wii U would be a natural choice for porting. And belive it or not, Wii U is currently the most indie friendly console.
 
This is a Unity game isnt it ? In that case the Wii U would be a natural choice for porting. And belive it or not, Wii U is currently the most indie friendly console.

Unity 4 pro comes free with every Wii U dev kit, wich Nintendo, (in some cases) even "lends" for free in some cases (Shovel Knights). So in best case scenario, starting your Wii U version of your Unity project costs you 0 bucks.

And even if you have to buy the dev kit... Its pretty cheap, for a dev kit. I think 2500 or 3000 dollars or something around that.
 
And yet, in this day and age, we still have people who still believe and insist that the Wii hardware can't do normal mapping at all. It saddens me when I read the last 2 pages.
Don't confuse those who were saying that the Wii's TEVs don't support it (as in, it would require assistance from resources outside the GPU to get it running properly) to people that was saying that it couldn't be done at all (which I believe no one was arguing.)

Another awesome comment about Wii U was that there is no learning curve developing for Wii U, lol.

Even Nintendo had to learn the new hardware... As Iwata said in Januarys investors meeting.
Funny enough, that argument was used for both pro and anti-Nintendo fans. The pro-fans argued that Nintendo will have little to no learning curve for this generation and will be able to develop HD games without too much trouble. The other type of fans indirectly used this logic when they used NSMBU and Nintendoland as an example of how "weak" the system is. Both sides was being silly on that, though that thread on Iwata admitting to their developing difficulties was a bit ridiculous.

Back on topic, Nintendo may have requested some interesting GPU features due to their unique perspective of hardware due to being removed from the evolution of modern shaders. They also listened to feedback from third-party developers, so what we are seeing in Latte may be a hybrid of different GPU architectures starting from the r700. A friend of mine has suggested that the shader architecture may have been influenced by the newer VLIW4, which would match up with Iwata stating that Latte is a GPGPU and some development issues that devs had.
 

krizzx

Junior Member
Another awesome comment about Wii U was that there is no learning curve developing for Wii U, lol.

Even Nintendo had to learn the new hardware... As Iwata said in Januarys investors meeting.

I don't think that is what he was saying at all.

Don't confuse those who were saying that the Wii's TEVs don't support it (as in, it would require assistance from resources outside the GPU to get it running properly) to people that was saying that it couldn't be done at all (which I believe no one was arguing.)

They said the Wii, GC, and their games. They spoke nothing of the TEV or any other hardware components. They were quite specific.
 

Nilaul

Member
Now we have some new fodder for the lighting.

http://www.ign.com/videos/2013/05/03/shadow-of-the-eternals-teaser-trailer

That lava scene really had some good lighting. That definitely looks next gen to me for those who keep trying to denounce the next gen capabilities of the GPU. The detail on the character cloths and faces also speaks for a much higher polygon throughput.



Now to wait for people to come up with every angle they can to dismiss it.

Why are we comparing a downloadable game, made by a team of 8 people? There certainly not pushing the WiiU to the max, and they certainly will overlook a lot of stuff, in optimization and in their engine.
 

Rolf NB

Member
About normal mapping and the Wii, i can say from experience that the system DOES support it. Even without SMGs and the Conduits there is a homebrew port of Quake on Wii that runs with much improved visuals, dynamic shadows and normal mapping:
http://beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=54480
<...>
This is EMBM. It perturbs texture lookups with an offset maps, and as such can be implemented even on hardware with low channel precision. It has been implemented on several pre-"DX8 class" graphics chips (Kyro II, Radeon 7xxx series).

EMBM can only simulate the reflective (and refractive) parts of a bump map response.

When people talk about normal mapping, they mean full reconstruction of higher-detail response on a reduced-poly surface, i.e. specular and diffuse response. Doom 3 et al used this to deliver the appearance of very high geometric detail while keeping actual polycount low.

maps.jpg


800px-Normal_map_example.png


I have never heard of a Gamecube or Wii game that does this.
 

Nilaul

Member
This is EMBM. It perturbs texture lookups with an offset maps, and as such can be implemented even on hardware with low channel precision. It has been implemented on several pre-"DX8 class" graphics chips (Kyro II, Radeon 7xxx series).

EMBM can only simulate the reflective (and refractive) parts of a bump map response.

When people talk about normal mapping, they mean full reconstruction of higher-detail response on a reduced-poly surface, i.e. specular and diffuse response. Doom 3 et al used this to deliver the appearance of very high geometric detail while keeping actual polycount low.

maps.jpg


800px-Normal_map_example.png


I have never heard of a Gamecube or Wii game that does this.

Just saying, it has been done in conduit:

IGN: Is Wii really capable of true normal-mapping? Is that feasible in-game?

Scott: Yes, absolutely. Our artists create tangent space normal maps and apply them to models just as you would for any other platform. Our tools compress them into Wii specific formats and the renderer uses them for advanced per-pixel lighting, reflection, and refraction. At first we in ATG were concerned about the performance of these techniques on the Wii but found that it was capable of far more than we initially expected. Not only were we able to do normal mapping but we implemented a full unified lighting model that allowed for true per pixel lighting calculation from many dynamic lights, combined with radiosity light maps, and a projected texture light (more to come), on complex multitexture materials with detail mapping, UV animation, specularity, color gloss maps, HDR and much more, all in a unified configurable pipeline. The key was our engineers experience and understanding of the underlying mathematics and physical principals of light and rendering. We were able to remap standard rendering techniques to the unique hardware in the Wii in a way that allowed maximum flexibility, but we didn't stop there. We developed several new Wii hardware specific tricks and techniques like Dynametric Light Tightening, Reframbriance, and ¡Approxiflexion! that contribute to The Conduit's performance and unique graphics style.

Eric: The techniques our artists use to generate their art assets are functionally identical. They create high resolution meshes in Zbrush to generate normal maps which are applied to lower resolution game models.

Anyone remembers turok on n64? Dammm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=FCLhdqOpMQE
 
Seriously, am I the only one not impressed by that trailer? It doesn't look like anything that wouldn't be capable of happening on the PS360.
You are not alone here, first that is probably not runing on Wii U hardware (i could totally see the system doing in it at 720P) but since it's a crowd sourcing proyect the prototype must be runing on PC.

And it doesn't look like much, even worse considering we havent seen gameplay. Something like Beyond Two Souls looks way more impresive visually than that. I cant even believe people compare UE4 elemental demo with that (o_O!)
 

FLAguy954

Junior Member
You are not alone here, first that is probably not runing on Wii U hardware (i could totally see the system doing in it at 720P) but since it's a crowd sourcing proyect the prototype must be runing on PC.

And it doesn't look like much, even worse considering we havent seen gameplay. Something like Beyond Two Souls looks way more impresive visually than that. I cant even believe people compare UE4 elemental demo with that (o_O!)

Eww, who the hell is doing that?! It's no where near the elemental demo.
 
Eww, who the hell is doing that?! It's no where near the elemental demo.
My friend this is a Wii U specs thread expect the impossible, expect the outrageous:
Don't go nuts with this but those particles vaguely remind me of the UE4 Elemental demo. Is this game running on the Unity 4 Pro Engine?
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=56837280&postcount=3601
That is defnitely next gen If I've ever seen it though.

Not quite what UE4, but then again, this is real game footage as opposed to a tech demo.
That's what I was going to say, reminds me a lot of the UE4 tech demo.
 
My friend this is a Wii U specs thread expect the impossible, expect the outrageous:

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=56837280&postcount=3601

Two of the posts you quoted just said that it reminded them of the Elemental Demo, which makes some sense with that gif being a vocanic environment and all. Even the one that did a direct comparison admitted it was not on the same level... in a dismissal sort of way I admit.

Someone actually made this statement and wasn't joking? lol!
There have been extremes on both sides of the argument. It's difficult to tell who is joking. ;)
 

i-Lo

Member
The ps4 is "last gen hardware" compared to my newest gaming box too, but you enjoy the platform for the games it has, not how many gigaflops its GPU can produce. If it doesn't live up to your expectations, write it off and get something more to your tastes. Showing up in threads about a box that you have very little interest in because of "shitty hardware" or what have you is counterproductive both to the thread itself and your own interests.

A whole generation ahead! Wow! Words can't capture the magnificence of such technology.
 

Schnozberry

Member
A whole generation ahead! Wow! Words can't capture the magnificence of such technology.

Generations mean less and less as we carry forward. There is much to improve in terms of visual fidelity in games, but I would rather game designers focus more on smarter AI, better level design, and more relatable characters and stories than graphics at this point. I don't mean that no effort should be put into forwarding graphics technologies, but too tight a focus on graphics generally means growth in other areas gets retarded to a degree.
 
There's no way that video is running on Wii U hardware. I'm not saying the Wii U couldn't handle it, it could afaik, but why would they record that video from a Wii U and not from a computer where it would most likely look better? Also, in the ot for this video, someone was saying it wasn't made recently but a couple years ago. If true, that would rule out Unity 4, right?

Edit:
The more I think about this, the less I get it.

Silicon Knights owes millions to Epic games.

Silicon Knights developers a prototype for Eternal Darkness 2 (allegedly using Activision money)

Silicon Knights declares bankruptcy and closes shop (with no official announcement or internet-accessible declarations)

A new company called Precursor Games, with Silicon Knights staff comes into existence. Do they still owe Epic the millions?

Precursor Games use a Silicon Knights developed prototype video created allegedly from misused Activision funding, to fuel their own Kickstarter, for a game they describe as a sequel in a franchise in which they do not own the Intellectual Property or patents...?

Is that about right?

But of course I don't know if this is accurate.
 

Toski

Member
Generations mean less and less as we carry forward. There is much to improve in terms of visual fidelity in games, but I would rather game designers focus more on smarter AI, better level design, and more relatable characters and stories than graphics at this point. I don't mean that no effort should be put into forwarding graphics technologies, but too tight a focus on graphics generally means growth in other areas gets retarded to a degree.
Raw hardware specs will play a huge part in advances in these fields. Even visual fidelity will help with more relaetable characters. The problem is the financial viability of it all, and the Wii U specs doesn't help with this.
 
Raw hardware specs will play a huge part in advances in these fields. Even visual fidelity will help with more relaetable characters. The problem is the financial viability of it all, and the Wii U specs doesn't help with this.

Well, better level design and more relatable characters have very little to do with specs at this point. You mainly need talented designers and writers, as well as publishers who are willing to accommodate titles that don't have the potential to sell multiple millions of copies. Honestly, with big publishers seemingly ignoring the Wii U, Nintendo should be at least pushing for smaller, more risk-friendly studios to create novel experiences for their platform. Hopefully their accommodations for indies will facilitate such projects.
 

HTupolev

Member
There's no way that video is running on Wii U hardware. I'm not saying the Wii U couldn't handle it, it could afaik, but why would they record that video from a Wii U and not from a computer where it would most likely look better?
Image quality and texture quality in the video disagree strongly with that analysis. It doesn't make all that much sense to render the game on PC for graphical power purposes, and then have things running at obvious console settings.
 

Schnozberry

Member
Raw hardware specs will play a huge part in advances in these fields. Even visual fidelity will help with more relaetable characters. The problem is the financial viability of it all, and the Wii U specs doesn't help with this.

Hardware specs play a role in limiting what is possible, of course, but I don't think the most important advancements in game design or better stories will have much to with growth in those areas. If the indie surge has taught us anything it's that truly charming video games are suppressed in many ways by the pressure cooker that is modern major studio development. We need more artist independence and less game decisions made by the marketing departments.

I digress, but I think this is something Nintendo is doing well at the moment with low cost dev kits with Unity Pro and the web framework. The improved e-shop policies are a positive development as well.
 

krizzx

Junior Member
This game has created a trifecta of contradictions from Wii U detractors.

1. Straight out the door, there are people who deny the Wii U can run it which leads to the initial contradiction.
2. These same people claim that it is beneath what the PS3/360 can do and that X on said console looks better.
3. We know that the Wii U is stronger than the PS3/360 and can do more, making a loop.

How can a game be beneath the capabilities of one console when a stronger console can't produce it? They are simultaneously saying the that game is not advanced and that it is too advanced at the same time.

Am I the only one who finds this odd? Its like they are saying "The Wii U can't run it, but just in case it can, the game doesn't look all that great.". That's the vibe I'm getting from a few statements. Its as if they are preemptively setting up some form of defense.
 
This game has created a trifecta of contradictions from Wii U detractors.

1. Straight out the door, there are people who deny the Wii U can run it which leads to the initial contradiction.
2. These same people claim that it is beneath what the PS3/360 can do and that X on said console looks better.
3. We know that the Wii U is stronger than the PS3/360 and can do more, making a loop.

How can a game be beneath the capabilities of one console when a stronger console can't produce it? They are simultaneously saying the that game is not advanced and that it is too advanced at the same time.

Am I the only one who finds this odd? Its like they are saying "The Wii U can't run it, but just in case it can, the game doesn't look all that great.". That's the vibe I'm getting from a few statements. Its as if they are preemptively setting up some form of defense.
Are they the same people? If so... XD
 

HTupolev

Member
This game has created a trifecta of contradictions from Wii U detractors.

1. Straight out the door, there are people who deny the Wii U can run it which leads to the initial contradiction.
2. These same people claim that it is beneath what the PS3/360 can do and that X on said console looks better.
3. We know that the Wii U is stronger than the PS3/360 and can do more, making a loop.

How can a game be beneath the capabilities of one console when a stronger console can't produce it? They are simultaneously saying the that game is not advanced and that it is too advanced at the same time.
Not really.

What's outrageous about this? The comparisons are obviously stopping at the lava scenes. No one is saying this game is UE4 tier.
There were one or two suggestions that a technical comparison could be had, albeit still recognizing the UE4 demo's superiority.

Personally, I don't think the comparison exists beyond the art style of the scene. Totally different effects at play. Like the particles - totally different behaviour between Elemental and this demo. The particles in this demo also don't really look remotely as impressive as the comparison would suggest; aside from how sharply bloomed they are (which would be atypical of games made more than a decade ago), they wouldn't have looked out of place in an oXbox or Gamecube game in terms of number and apparent physics.
 
Yes reminds me of the Zelda HD demo from E3 2011. as soon as it was shown i hear MANY people sayingit wasnt that impressive and ps360 could pull it off. then now i hear people say Wii U was running on PC specs at the time and the Wii U in final form isnt able to run that demo. Man E3 can come soon enough so we will have a firm grasp on what the console can produce.
Everything shown at E3 will be prerendered or look like an N64 game.
 
I would assume that it's running on PC hardware, not because it's particularly impressive (I don't see it...), but because apparently much of the work on this demo was done years ago while burning away Activision's cash when Dyack was supposed to be developing X-Men: Destiny. IIRC, SK also burned through a bunch of government grant money - so anyone crowdfunding this in hope of a Wii U game coming out of it should probably heed the phrase "Caveat emptor." Is there really any guarantee that "Precursor Games" even has Wii U devkits?
 
This is EMBM. It perturbs texture lookups with an offset maps, and as such can be implemented even on hardware with low channel precision. It has been implemented on several pre-"DX8 class" graphics chips (Kyro II, Radeon 7xxx series).

EMBM can only simulate the reflective (and refractive) parts of a bump map response.

When people talk about normal mapping, they mean full reconstruction of higher-detail response on a reduced-poly surface, i.e. specular and diffuse response. Doom 3 et al used this to deliver the appearance of very high geometric detail while keeping actual polycount low.

maps.jpg


800px-Normal_map_example.png


I have never heard of a Gamecube or Wii game that does this.

Unless I'm mistaken, then this is also how 3DS games are able to look acceptably comparable graphically to much more powerful machines in spite of it's relatively low polygon pushing ability.
 
Yes reminds me of the Zelda HD demo from E3 2011. as soon as it was shown i hear MANY people sayingit wasnt that impressive and ps360 could pull it off. then now i hear people say Wii U was running on PC specs at the time and the Wii U in final form isnt able to run that demo. Man E3 can come soon enough so we will have a firm grasp on what the console can produce.

Nintendo can show whatever they want. No matter how much Wii U may shit on PS360, to SOME people it will never look better than PS360 games.

Thats an E3 prediction that im 100% sure of!
 

JAYSIMPLE

Banned
I don't think it really matters to be honest. Those people will buy one if they want one, the rest will shit on it. screw em. There will be games that justify it's purchase for a lot of gamers.

More importantly I come here to actually see if anything has been found out and still there is nothing 6 months after launch really :/
 
Glad I came in this thread, I was wondering too if that trailer could of possibly ran on Wii U. Its looks good. Even if something else could "technically" blow it out the water the fact doesnt change that it looks good.
 
Glad I came in this thread, I was wondering too if that trailer could of possibly ran on Wii U. Its looks good. Even if something else could "technically" blow it out the water the fact doesnt change that it looks good.

I see nothing that looks like its out of the capablities of Wii U. Also i think we need to rely on Nintendo to show off the capabilities this year. And no one else.
 

AzaK

Member
I see nothing that looks like its out of the capablities of Wii U. Also i think we need to rely on Nintendo to show off the capabilities this year. And no one else.
Retro specifically because I think they're the only one who would do graphics that peope want to compare against. A 3D Mario might be wickedly high tech but put it next to an Uncharted and detractors would still claim UC looks better.
 
I see nothing that looks like its out of the capablities of Wii U. Also i think we need to rely on Nintendo to show off the capabilities this year. And no one else.
Nintendo is all Im relying on. Any game that comes out or trailer gets shown and it looks impressive, In my mind Im thinking Nintendo will top that. Cant wait for E3.
 
Nintendo is all Im relying on. Any game that comes out or trailer gets shown and it looks impressive, In my mind Im thinking Nintendo will top that. Cant wait for E3.

Retro specifically because I think they're the only one who would do graphics that peope want to compare against. A 3D Mario might be wickedly high tech but put it next to an Uncharted and detractors would still claim UC looks better.


Also i think Iwata saying "Wii U isn't underpowered and we have to prove it" at an invesotrs meeting, of all places, is a sign, that visually impressive titles are coming.

And yeah Retros game might be a visual showcase too.
 

Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
yeah im over it... its just the way it is. to some Wii U maxed out on LAUNCH day... FACT!

There might be an explanation how even Nintendo itself, which did manage to produce some kick ass titles for the N64 not a trivial console to code for, was not playing with mature enough dev kits until very late in its development cycle (by their own admission)... but that and the length of their R&D cycle for Wii U compared to the state they launched with make for a whole different can of worms.

With Wii U what could be confusing for many people is seeing a console where the software for the first six months of the platform's life honestly does not blow out of the water or at least show a clear difference from the previous generations of consoles. Even the N64 which did not come out many years after PSOne and Saturn was able to easily turn heads with SM64 and not just because it played so well... it looked awesome too.

Take Amiga vs C64, SNES and Genesis/Mega Drive vs NES and SMS, PSOne and Saturn vs SNES and Genesis/Mega Drive, PS2/GCN/Xbox vs PSOne and Saturn, PS3/Xbox 360 vs PS2/GCN/Xbox, GBA vs GBC, DS vs GBA, 3DS vs DS, PS Vita vs PSP, etc...
Amongst the software titles for the new platform succeeding the previous one in the list I just wrote down, even talking about the first six months or so, there was at least a title which turned heads quite strongly... the new platform would show quite a good glimpse of what was coming :).

So far Wii U has not done that, they have yet to show it. They did a great jump over the Wii, but most people expected a similar jump over what PS3 and Xbox 360 offered.
 

JAYSIMPLE

Banned
totally agree... but we are in the HD age. no matter if people want to believe or not diminishing returns is here. i havent seen much of anything that has wowed me. the closet thing is the deep down demo. i will be very impressed if PS4 or 720 can push those graphics (in more of an open world) day one. i think the Wii U is "weak" "underpowered" "last gen" talk is getting ridiculous. it all about certain techniques now and engine optimization. Once Wii U is tappedis goignto produce amazing graphics. Not the same scale as ps4 and 720 but it WILL impress.

nothing has wowed me on the ps4 either, I see that stuff everyday on my PC. I think we are passed being wowed. Look at metro last lights physics, I get to see that in little over a week. It looks just as impressive as anything on the ps4, i would say more impressive personally. The wii u Might not wow you in the graphical sense, the same as the ps4 with me.

I havea feeling the ps4 will wow me in a different way tho. Something I don't know yet. the same with the wii u
 

Hermii

Member
There might be an explanation how even Nintendo itself, which did manage to produce some kick ass titles for the N64 not a trivial console to code for, was not playing with mature enough dev kits until very late in its development cycle (by their own admission)... but that and the length of their R&D cycle for Wii U compared to the state they launched with make for a whole different can of worms.

With Wii U what could be confusing for many people is seeing a console where the software for the first six months of the platform's life honestly does not blow out of the water or at least show a clear difference from the previous generations of consoles. Even the N64 which did not come out many years after PSOne and Saturn was able to easily turn heads with SM64 and not just because it played so well... it looked awesome too.

Take Amiga vs C64, SNES and Genesis/Mega Drive vs NES and SMS, PSOne and Saturn vs SNES and Genesis/Mega Drive, PS2/GCN/Xbox vs PSOne and Saturn, PS3/Xbox 360 vs PS2/GCN/Xbox, GBA vs GBC, DS vs GBA, 3DS vs DS, PS Vita vs PSP, etc...
Amongst the software titles for the new platform succeeding the previous one in the list I just wrote down, even talking about the first six months or so, there was at least a title which turned heads quite strongly... the new platform would show quite a good glimpse of what was coming :).

So far Wii U has not done that, they have yet to show it. They did a great jump over the Wii, but most people expected a similar jump over what PS3 and Xbox 360 offered.

Its a 33 watt machine. Performance per watt is very good, but you cant expect miracles from 33 watts.
 

Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
nothing has wowed me on the ps4 either, I see that stuff everyday on my PC. I think we are passed being wowed. Look at metro last lights physics, I get to see that in little over a week. It looks just as impressive as anything on the ps4, i would say more impressive personally. The wii u Might not wow you in the graphical sense, the same as the ps4 with me.

I havea feeling the ps4 will wow me in a different way tho. Something I don't know yet. the same with the wii u

I try to keep platforms like the PC away from this comparison. Even with the SNES one could have said the same thing using the Amiga as comparison, but again we are comparing two different worlds. Anything we can install Windows on it is a PC nowadays and can run games... what would have been workstation, server, cluster level HW before is a PC to some.
 

MDX

Member
So far Wii U has not done that, they have yet to show it. They did a great jump over the Wii, but most people expected a similar jump over what PS3 and Xbox 360 offered.


Thats right, there are two things about the current gen that puts next gen to a disadvantage.

One: Its been a long cycle. I recall the original Xbox, was beginning to show some exceptional looking titles before the 360 replaced it. But the 360 and PS3 have been around long enough to really showcase many great looking games. Look what the PS3 is now pumping out now, for example.


Two: The budgets and manpower behind some of these games are bigger than feature films. And I dont know how many developers or publishers can sustain such budgets this gen.
 

JAYSIMPLE

Banned
I try to keep platforms like the PC away from this comparison. Even with the SNES one could have said the same thing using the Amiga as comparison, but again we are comparing two different worlds. Anything we can install Windows on it is a PC nowadays and can run games... what would have been workstation, server, cluster level HW before is a PC to some.

This is very true but i think we are in a different world now. Amiga might have had the graphics but the snes had the games and certain games that used the power very well, which is what I am getting at here. Wii u will deffo be able to do some magic when the right engine comes along etc. Why i brought up the pc was to highlight that it has been a horribly long generation and sadly PC's are a generation ahead with current games. Metro looks as good as anything we have seen for next gen. Next gen is here and now. It just goes to show with the amount of cross generation games coming. Also the new consoles are closer to pc architecture than ever before. I think it's going to be a horribly slow start to the next gen. A painful transition and a lot of company's won't make it, unless they still support all consoles, which will stop truely next gen experiences from coming along
 
Unless I'm mistaken, then this is also how 3DS games are able to look acceptably comparable graphically to much more powerful machines in spite of it's relatively low polygon pushing ability.
That is correct. The system is generally weaker than the Wii, but its fixed modern shaders extensions give the 3DS a clear advantage over it. It is also why it's seems to be simpler to downports games to the 3DS compared to the Wii.
 

wsippel

Banned
So far Wii U has not done that, they have yet to show it. They did a great jump over the Wii, but most people expected a similar jump over what PS3 and Xbox 360 offered.
Not even the PS4 is showing that big of a jump anymore. The laws of thermodynamics and diminishing returns have kicked in. Not that there are no improvements, but they're far less obvious now - you can certainly see them in stills, you can see them even better when carefully analyzing footage, but you'll hardly notice much actually playing an engaging game.
 

Mastperf

Member
Not even the PS4 is showing that big of a jump anymore. The laws of thermodynamics and diminishing returns have kicked in. Not that there are no improvements, but they're far less obvious now - you can certainly see them in stills, you can see them even better when carefully analyzing footage, but you'll hardly notice much actually playing an engaging game.
Except that all we've seen of PS4 is unfinished software and if it can look as good as the reveal, Deep Down is easily a generational leap from 360/PS3.
 

wsippel

Banned
Except that all we've seen of PS4 is unfinished software and if it can look as good as the reveal, Deep Down is easily a generational leap from 360/PS3.
Yeah, I don't see it. Does it look better? Sure. Great particle engine for example. But the "leap" is still nowhere near PS2 -> PS3.
 
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