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[Panajev2001a]

What got them over the WiiU development environment hump, CPU, supposed lower bandwidth, GPU with less shaders?

They didn't optimize 360 or PS3 code for WiiU, you still have to code for the WiiU actual hardware.

Forgive developers for thinking that porting code designed to target 8 years old hardware should be relatively easy on a brand new $349 box.

Nintendo designed a console without involving third parties as much as it should and incapable of easily outperforming its much competition in every sense of the way nor stand up to the new generation of consoles just around the corner. Years and software droughts later, we are discussing how smart Nintendo is when cutting Wii U's life short and moving titles to the NX (who cares about the people that bought into the Wii U hype, right ?).

 

[ninjablade]

The performance was accidentally achieved on WiiU, if P(games) had more time, 360 or PS3 would have similar performance.

I read his mind cyber style.

*than

*without

So you are saying possibilities are excuses???

You're going to say that the Wii U Zelda only runs well because of the style, aren't you???

What got them over the WiiU development environment hump, CPU, supposed lower bandwidth, GPU with less shaders?

They didn't optimize 360 or PS3 code for WiiU, you still have to code for the WiiU actual hardware.

this is just speculation, not a fact, another excuse. no matter the excuses we got plenty of multiplatform games to compare, and you get a significantly better experience on 360, many games running 5fps better, the 3 games that do have have advantage on wiiu are pretty minuscule comparison. to me that lines up with wiiu specs.

 

[blu]

i figured you would be smarter then this, i really don't understand why would anybody in there right mind would compare a port from 2009 as proof if hardware power, oblivion ran better on ps3 then 360, and it was a later port, is that proof the ps3 is more powerful? it had a bout the same improvements as bayo on wiiu, or witcher 3 in 4 months it has a huge increase in framerate. pretty sure in 2014 platinum has better development tools and resources, plus experience on hd hardware then 2009. games these days get graphical upgrade all the time with patches, its not like bayo maxed out the 360 or something in 2009.

care to explain why the majority of multiplatform games run worse on wiiu, with out to resorting to lazy dev, out sourced, or low budget which are really just excuses.

Bayo1/360 and Bayo1/U were done by P*, whereas Bayo1/ps3 was not ported by P*.

Same with NFS:MW and Trine2 - all three versions were done by the core team. Same with Rayman Origins, where the wiiU SKU was the leading one and the dev had no issues whatsoever with that SKU.

When you have non-CPU-FLOPS-bound titles and the core team is doing the ports you get good/definitive results on the wiiU. To put it in even simple words, when the wiiU development received the competence and the resources, the results were at the very least not worse than the other two platforms.

Bu..bu..bu those raw numbers! And that double RAM! /smh, son

Forgive developers for thinking that porting code designed to target 8 years old hardware should be relatively easy on a brand new $349 box.

Yep, I'm sure they're enyoing themselves greatly with that SPE->jaguar porting... /s

 

[ninjablade]

Bayo1/360 and Bayo1/U were done by P*, whereas Bayo1/ps3 was not ported by P*.

Same with NFS:MW and Trine2 - all three versions were done by the core team. Same with Rayman Origins, where the wiiU SKU was the leading one and the dev had no issues whatsoever with that SKU.

When you have non-CPU-FLOPS-bound titles and the core team is doing the ports you get good/definitive results on the wiiU. To put it in even simple words, when the wiiU development received the competence and the resources, the results were at the very least not worse than the other two platforms.

Bu..bu..bu those raw numbers! And that double RAM! /smh, son


Yep, I'm sure they're enyoing themselves greatly with that SPE->jaguar porting... /s

tekken tag, mickey, ninja garden razors edge, sonic racing, and dark siders 2, were done by the core teams, and they ran or looked worse, you can make excuses all you want, but the specs perfectly line up, of course certain developers will get different results, but the way your looking is ridiculous only the good ports count, ignoring the bad ones or making excuses.

 

[blu]

tekken tag, mickey, ninja garden razors edge, sonic racing, and dark siders 2, were done by the core teams, and they ran or looked worse, you can make excuses all you want, but the specs perfectly line up, of course certain developers will get different results, but the way your looking is ridiculous only the good ports count, ignoring the bad ones or making excuses.

Now you're just slinging shit at the wall, seeing if anything sticks. How very ninjablade of you.

 

[Mithos]

There was never such an option across those three. Heck, there's no such an option in 360/ps3 -> xbone/ps4 ports.

And that is after you've already done the actual porting, i.e. you have some form of the code and assets running, which would have already taken up resources. And before you've spent resources for marketing and distribution on the platform.


That happens only on PC.

Wii U with a 3.2Ghz CPU, and that ~320Gflop GPU we first thought it was.
I wholeheartedly believe that a better hardware in the Wii U would have made the task of porting so much easier for third parties to the extent that a game that on 360/PS3 that is 720@~30fps would have instantly hit that mark even before they have had to spend a year getting it ready for release.


Oh and I apologize for my initial comment starting an avalanche, I never expected... =/

 

[OG_Original Gamer]

No one is ignoring bad ports, but bad ports happen on more capable hardware. Batman on PC rings a bell this gen. Don't get me wrong, on a technical stand point I was disappointed in the WiiU.

For all the shitting on WiiU you do, I hope you can explain how Bayo1 could be achieved on lesser hardware? Although more modern, with a CPU that had DICE running for the hills.

 

[LizardKing]

Hey Nintendo fans, you really need to stop fighting the gamers who don't think like you, who do use specs as a purchasing decision, who do consider what third party games are available, and who need a certain type of online system etc. You need them to be successful.

Specs are a huge part of that like it or not. Nintendo went into the Wii with a 30 million loyal user base and came out of the wii with a 12 million loyal user base. That decision to underpower the Wii lost them a lot of gamers and really hurt them long-term putting them into the position they're in today. It was fools gold

 

[ninjablade]

Now you're just slinging shit at the wall, seeing if anything sticks. How very ninjablade of you.

they were comparing it to ninja garden 3 vanilla.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=523095

impressions were it ran much better then the wiiu version, too bad it never got a df comparison.

 

[Cheeseman Battitude]

I've bought Nintendo hardware day one since the Gamecube, so yes.

 

[Panajev2001a]

Bayo1/360 and Bayo1/U were done by P*, whereas Bayo1/ps3 was not ported by P*.

Same with NFS:MW and Trine2 - all three versions were done by the core team. Same with Rayman Origins, where the wiiU SKU was the leading one and the dev had no issues whatsoever with that SKU.

When you have non-CPU-FLOPS-bound titles and the core team is doing the ports you get good/definitive results on the wiiU. To put it in even simple words, when the wiiU development received the competence and the resources, the results were at the very least not worse than the other two platforms.

Bu..bu..bu those raw numbers! And that double RAM! /smh, son


Yep, I'm sure they're enyoing themselves greatly with that SPE->jaguar porting... /s

If they only had a lot of flexible programmable vector units sitting somewhere close by... Mmmh . Once you balance most of the vector code between GPU compute and your AVX units, you are still left with a lot easier to tackle general purpose cores than the PPE/PPX cores ever were.

I remember your posts about the Mario GPU design or the custom eDRAM with shared CPU and GPU access, there is plenty to talk about its architecture and it would not be the first architecture with lots of manpower spent in ingenious ways that reaches a target that is not what the market or the company itself wanted to back (I still think we saw a fraction of what the IA64 architecture could provide and we never had it compete on the same manufacturing node as its internal Core competition not the same level of investment once the ex EV7/8 team was handed the reigns).

Nintendo, who I am more and more convinced has nowhere near the grip on their supply chain companies like Apple or even Sony and Microsoft do (considering how Wii U was barely making a profit at launch), targeted something (and in a way that could have been a lot more third party friendly) which the third party community did not really want and that limited the reach of its USP's too. It is not just having a machine which could not run circles around the 8 year older competition at the kind of launch price it launched at, but it is difficult to argue that better specs would have allowed the Wii U OS designers to deliver a much faster UI and user flow through the console, keep MiiVerse always loaded or find a way to avoid long time consuming game-to-MiiVerse-to-game trips.
PS4 and Xbox One were also not coming out just a year before the next generation of consoles was supposed to arrive... which makes them a lot better positioned for developers to target and optimise code for. Overall they are a far larger jump from PS3 and Xbox 360 than Wii U is.

 

[blu]

Wii U with a 3.2Ghz CPU, and that ~320Gflop GPU we first thought it was.
I wholeheartedly believe that a better hardware in the Wii U would have made the task of porting so much easier for third parties to the extent that a game that on 360/PS3 that is 720@~30fps would have instantly hit that mark even before they have had to spend a year getting it ready for release.

Even if wiiU turned out having those exact initially-speculated specs (heck, I was speculating back then about those for those same reasons - 360 CPU-FLOPS-parity), it would still have had issues with heavy SPE-utilizing ps3 ports, just like ps4 has. Would it have been easier to get 360->wiiU CPU-FLOPS-bound ports? Sure. Would we have received those, given how the market turned out. Nope. I mean, if it was just a matter of cpu-FLOPS-disparity, we'd have got 360-originating "sub-par" CPU-limited ports, and other proper (non-CPU-limited) ports - lots and lots of those. We hardly got anything like that. Why? Because of the reasons I've been stating - market conditions and corresponding ROI prospects.

Oh and I apologize for my initial comment starting an avalanche, I never expected... =/

It's ok, ninjablade is our resident, erm, graphics and hw specs expert ;p

If they only had a lot of flexible programmable vector units sitting somewhere close by... Mmmh . Once you balance most of the vector code between GPU compute and your AVX units, you are still left with a lot easier to tackle general purpose cores than the PPE/PPX cores ever were.

I remember your posts about the Mario GPU design or the custom eDRAM with shared CPU and GPU access, there is plenty to talk about its architecture and it would not be the first architecture with lots of manpower spent in ingenious ways that reaches a target that is not what the market or the company itself wanted to back (I still think we saw a fraction of what the IA64 architecture could provide and we never had it compete on the same manufacturing node as its internal Core competition not the same level of investment once the ex EV7/8 team was handed the reigns).

Nintendo, who I am more and more convinced has nowhere near the grip on their supply chain than company like Apple or even Sony and Microsoft have (considering how Wii U was barely making a profit at launch), targeted something (and in a way that could have been a lot more third party friendly) which the third party community did not really want and that limited the reach of its USP's too. It is not just having a machine which could not run circles around the 8 year older competition at the kind of launch price it launched at, but it is difficult to argue that better specs would have allowed the Wii U OS designers to deliver a much faster Susi and user flow through the console, keep MiiVerse always loaded or find a way to avoid long time consuming game-to-MiiVerse-to-game trips.
PS4 and Xbox One were also not coming out just a year before the next generation of consoles was supposed to arrive... which makes them a lot better positioned for developers to target and optimise code for. Overall they are a far larger jump from PS3 and Xbox 360 than Wii U is.

I'm far from the thought nintendo pulled all the right spec moves with the wiiU.. Heck, I'm so far from that that FLOPS is not even the first item on my list. And I largely agree with your assessment of nintendo's supply chain, erm, prowess - wiiU's delayed launch was a direct result of that. I just hate bastardizations of the subject of the sort 'my numerological skills tell me this console should produce this result, compared to that other console' - things are never x-vs-y straight, let alone for the grasp of numerologists.

As re ps3->ps4 ports - I'm not saying devs could not eventually extract the cumulative performance from the ps4; I'm saying there's no 'so overpowered it's cake-easy to port to from last gen' scenario this gen.

 

[Panajev2001a]

When you have non-CPU-FLOPS-bound titles and the core team is doing the ports you get good/definitive results on the wiiU. To put it in even simple words, when the wiiU development received the competence and the resources, the results were at the very least not worse than the other two platforms.

Do you think that if you gave the Xbox One SDK to the same non core teams, even last year, that they would have had the same trouble in getting those ports up to par or clearly beyond their PS360 counterparts compared to what their achieved on Wii U?

My point is that the target Wii U was aimed at by Nintendo hurt them, not that their engineers produced crappy subpar technology.

 

[Panajev2001a]

Even if wiiU turned out having those exact initially-speculated specs (heck, I was speculating back then about those for those same reasons - 360 cpu-FLOPS-parity), it would still have had issues with heavy SPE-utilizing ps3 ports, just like ps4 has. Would it have been easier to get 360->wiiU CPU-bound ports? Sure. Would we have received those, give how the market turned out. Nope. I mean, if it was just a matter of cpu-FLOPS-disparity, we'd have got 360-originating "sub-par" CPU-limited ports, and other proper (non-CPU-limited) ports - lots and lots of those. We hardly got anything like that. Why? Because of the reasons I've been stating - market conditions and corresponding ROI prospects.


It's ok, ninjablade is our resident, erm, graphics and hw specs expert ;p

How does that take into account the possibility that what we know now about the market for Nintendo's consoles is because of the choices they made and not despite them?

To put it in saner and less unnecessarily convoluted terms , if they targeted a more powerful hardware that allowed developers to more easily make launch ports, jump on the UE4 bandwagon, and be more reassured that the investment they put in their Wii U code base was a safer long term bet (and that they could share more of their Xbox One and PS4 engines and solutions with Wii U), do you really think that third party support would not have turned out different?

People said that in addition to Nintendo bein a bit behind the times with internal practices and tools that they sounded like they would deliver a badly positioned console, not much faster than its predecessors and still a lot slower than its upcoming competition that was indication of a company not working enough to meet third party developers needs... and that this would hurt their handed unless they captured light in a bottle again... It was not anti-Nintendo fanboyism.

 

[sörine]

Do you remember when the quad-core Vita was announced? That was part of the message from day one.

What did specs ever do for Vita?

Well, Sony did hide the specs where it probably mattered: 333 MHz CPU and 111 MHz GPU clocks. It's like the Wii U of handhelds.

 

[tbd]

I play games, not specs.

Edit: Oh, a ninjablade thread. Don't waste your time, folks.

What? I fled from an European board because of some guy shitting on Nintendo all day as though Iwata himself ploughed his mother, even though he openly admitted that he never even plays Nintendo games. Mods didn't give a shit. Wasn't even a kid, was a dude in his 30s or 40s. Does this board really have its own version?

What the fuck is going on with some people?

 

[TheGreatMightyPoo]

What? I flee from an European board because of some guy shitting on Nintendo all day as though Iwata himself ploughed his mother, even though he openly admitted that he never even plays Nintendo games. Mods didn't give a shit. Wasn't even a kid, was a dude in his 30s or 40s. Does this board really have its own version?

What the fuck is going on with some people?

No, shadowblade isn't that old.

 

[Spaghetti]

yeah, i wouldn't buy a nintendo platform in the future to play 3rd party non-exclusive titles anyway.

it'd be nice if the NX was genuinely competitive though.

 

[TDLink]

I know it's a ninjablade thread so I'm not going to bother arguing with him.

To answer the question though: absolutely. Yes.

I buy Nintendo platforms to play Nintendo games. Do I want their games to look the best they can? Yes. But it's not like they look like shit right now. NX will definitely be better than where we're at with Wii U and I'm already fine with that level of graphical fidelity. I don't care about technical specs. I just want good games. Nintendo consistently produces some of the best games in the business. As long as they do, I'll keep buying their platforms to play those games.

 

[Kebiinu]

Is this a 16 page argument with Ninjablade?

In any case, I'll buy it regardless. Specs aren't an issue to me, I know it'll be stronger than the Wii U, and I was happy with it. So I'll be happy with this, too!

 

[blu]

Do you think that if you gave the Xbox One SDK to the same non core teams, even last year, that they would have had the same trouble in getting those ports up to par or clearly beyond their PS360 counterparts compared to what their achieved on Wii U?

My point is that the target Wii U was aimed at by Nintendo hurt them, not that their engineers produced crappy subpar technology.

Non-core teams would have definitely had easier time with a hypothetical "xbone" wiiU. How easy though? You say, 'so easy that wiiU market would have turned out entirely differently'. And this is where we disagree - I'm saying nintendo made a bunch of strategical planning mistakes, and those were far more crucial than any benefits from a hypothetical xbone parity.

Nintendo struggled with:
1) their platform launch - in terms of schedules and devkit deliverables - so bad that they launched a mere year before the combined onslaught of the competition, in a very half-baked form, at that.
2) their 1st year lineup schedule - remember, back when there actually was some 3rd party support to fill in the blanks?
3) product identity - wii-who?
4) last but not least, their target-audience message - 'you'll be getting core nintendo IPs.. eventually.. perhaps'. That's a muddled a message as it gets. And I'm saying that as somebody who found Nintendoland simply amazing. The market did not necessarily share my tastes, though. No Zelda launch date, no Metroid launch date. Nothing to heat up the red-ocean market.

Nintendo could have launched a full-blooded Steam machine-level of hw, and the above points would have still killed their gen, right there.

How does that take into account the possibility that what we know now about the market for Nintendo's consoles is because of the choices they made and not despite them?

To put it in saner and less unnecessarily convoluted terms , if they targeted a more powerful hardware that allowed developers to more easily make launch ports, jump on the UE4 bandwagon, and be more reassured that the investment they put in their Wii U code base was a safer long term bet (and that they could share more of their Xbox One and PS4 engines and solutions with Wii U), do you really think that third party support would not have turned out different?

People said that in addition to Nintendo bein a bit behind the times with internal practices and tools that they sounded like they would deliver a badly positioned console, not much faster than its predecessors and still a lot slower than its upcoming competition that was indication of a company not working enough to meet third party developers needs... and that this would hurt their handed unless they captured light in a bottle again... It was not anti-Nintendo fanboyism.

So let's do this psychic experiment..

NX will launch very soon. The way I envision it, it will be very close to your hypothetical nintendo "xbone".

If nintedo pull another wiiU, erm 'bag of tricks' (see points above, as strong examples), I say NX technical prowess will not help it one bit to escape repeating wiiU levels or market performance. And that will be two good years before the competition, so it will have two good years of tech parity, whatever that means for the general population ; )

So I say let's wait and see how events unwind.

 

[TDLink]

Oh and even if the system has top of the line specs, it doesn't mean third parties are suddenly going to flock to the system.

Gamecube had better specs than PS2 but more third parties developed for PS2.

Wii had lower specs than 360/PS3 but was the best selling system on the market. And third parties just threw shovelware and party games on there instead of porting their actual AAA titles.

Third parties don't care if Nintendo has the best specs. They don't care if they have the #1 console. They just don't like making games for Nintendo.

Now with that in mind, Nintendo does have good relationships with most of the Japanese third parties. We're already seeing some early pledging of support from Square. And Namco and Capcom have both supported Nintendo over the years.

The western companies (which is what most people talk about nowadays) just don't care though. Their mindset is that only Nintendo games sell on Nintendo platforms, so it's not worth making a Nintendo version. As long as that mindset persists it doesn't matter what kind of specs the NX has.

 

[TheGreatMightyPoo]

Oh and even if the system has top of the line specs, it doesn't mean third parties are suddenly going to flock to the system.

People seem to be missing this point.

Let's say the NX whatever it is is surprisingly powerful and easy to develop for.

You'll see another bullshit third party montage of developers praising it and some of them might put their games on it but when they don't sell, they will jump ship.

 

[P90]

Yes. We are a Nintendo/Sony/Apple family. As long as the NX plays Nintendo games, we will buy it.

 

[SuperLeviathan]

For the console, sure.

For the handheld: There's going to be an awful lot of things it won't be able to do if the specs aren't up to snuff (see OG 3DS), so no.

 

[pestul]

I don't need to know the hardware specifics (it's also fun to try and figure them out), but I will need to be confident that it's quite competitive power-wise with features and visuals. I would like to see at least modest 3rd party support as well.

 

[Agent Unknown]

I want it to be more powerful but games and better support (which me might be getting from Japan at least with all the rumblings from SE, Chunsoft, and Level 5 to name a few) are far more important. And as much as I loathe EA, the system needs to be at least powerful enough where they have no qualms about being on board. Guy at work told me his neighbor recently remarked to him something to the effect of "I really enjoy my Wii U but wish I could l play Madden on it too.

They can't pull another garden demo switcheroo that's for sure. As skilled as they are, Takeda and his hardware folks need be kept in check this time. This obsession they have with small size, ultra low power is unbalanced and really hurt Wii U's specs.

 

[What A Time To Be Alive]

Kinda yeah. While I do care about the games, it would be cool to own a powerful Nintendo console again.

 

[Astral Dog]

One very important thing to remember, is Nintendo are making two systems here, they are going to sell a handheld first, and that comes with its own limitations.

dont believe they are going to be out of their way to make the system strong, this powerful machine that goes beyond PS4 easily, that would be very strange coming from them unless they can offer a decent price, on the other hand i dont believe they will be out to make it weak either,as we saw what happenef to Wii U and even Nintendo is not going to repeat that, they learned a few things and cant repeat the same risks. Third party support is neccessary and that needs at least One/PS4 level.

But one thing is for sure, regardless of how powerful console NX truly is, most of the library is going to be shared, so dont expect "impressive" graphics that are going to blow their Wii U games out of the water. At least at first. Expect a lot of 1080p/60fps ports though.

The shared library is not something i see discussed here.

 

[Vena]

Non-core teams would have definitely had easier time with a hypothetical "xbone" wiiU. How easy though? You say, 'so easy that wiiU market would have turned out entirely differently'. And this is where we disagree - I'm saying nintendo made a bunch of strategical planning mistakes, and those were far more crucial than any benefits from a hypothetical xbone parity.

Nintendo struggled with:
1) their platform launch - in terms of schedules and devkit deliverables - so bad that they launched a mere year before the combined onslaught of the competition, in a very half-baked form, at that.
2) their 1st year lineup schedule - remember, back when there actually was some 3rd party support to fill in the blanks?
3) product identity - wii-who?
4) last but not least, their target-audience message - 'you'll be getting core nintendo IPs.. eventually.. perhaps'. That's a muddled a message as it gets. And I'm saying that as somebody who found Nintendoland simply amazing. The market did not necessarily share my tastes, though. No Zelda launch date, no Metroid launch date. Nothing to heat up the red-ocean market.

Their catastrophic stumble with HD development (which effectively categorizes almost all of your points as the underlying reason) was a damn "noose + rock + river to drown in" combo on the WiiU.

 

[blu]

Their catastrophic stumble with HD development (which effectively categorizes almost all of your points as the underlying reason) was a damn "noose + rock + river to drown in" combo on the WiiU.

Yep, that summarizes the situation quite aptly.

 

[nikeboy94]

Hardware does matter. I want Nintendo to do well in the industry and they need those multiplatform games to be on Nintendo. I love my WiiU but there's not much going for it if you've completed most of the first party games. I kinda wish NX would come out when PS5/Xbox4 launch, because if it launches in the middle of this gen with specs equalling PS4/XB1 then it'll be over shadowed by next-gen 4 years later.

Anyways to answer the question, I'm gonna wait for more information on the NX before I make any decisions to buy it.

 

[nephilimdj]

Like the WiiU and 3DS, most likely wait a year

 

[Chmpocalypse]

It depends on two things.

Software
If NX offers a large enough selection of games that:
a. Appeal to my gaming tastes
b. Provide must-play experiences that are worth owning an entire console for

Then I'm probably going to buy it.

The problem here is that Nintendo's current output isn't doing a very good job at ticking those boxes for me. Back in the day, I felt the need to own their consoles because I didn't want to miss stuff like Zelda 1, SMB3, F-Zero, Super Metroid or Ocarina of Time. I just don't feel the same need based on what Nintendo makes these days.

At the end of the day, as disappointing as Wii U's hardware was, the main reason why I decided to skip the console was its software, not its hardware.

Pricing
When a company wants to sell me a console that costs $99, I adjust my expectations accordingly. A $99 box is a budget product, so I don't expect it to provide me with good specs, high-budget exclusives, quality services and 3rd party games like Witcher 3.

When I'm asked to buy a console that costs hundreds of dollars, though, my expectations are, inevitably, very different. Basically, Nintendo isn't going to get a free pass here. They will need to either exceed, or at least match, my expectations in regards to specs, 1st party exclusives, 3rd party support and services. If they can't do that, then maybe it's time for them to adjust the price of their products based on what they actually can offer.

Indeed. They're just not that special anymore.

 

[Silraru]

As long as there are games I want to play on it and I have budget for it, yes. Specs don't mean much to me when considering whether to buy a console or not.

 

[Kindekuma]

As long as the NX has good games, that's all that matters.

 

[oSoLucky]

Specs play a part in 3rd party support, so the specs will matter for me. Nintendo publicly releasing them, I could care less about. I'll probably never buy another system that's essentially only being supported by first party again.

 

[Hello.]

Oh, they are very very many other issues that Nintendo must address other than transparency that they nearly completely lack.