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THQ PR figure talks about reaction to CPU claim, but developer concern remains

N

nickcv

Member
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...-slow-cpu-claim-but-developer-concern-remains

THQ
Yesterday Eurogamer spoke with THQ's Huw Beynon, who works full time as a representative of 4A Games and Metro, to expand on Shishkovtsov's comment. [Note: Eurogamer did not talk to the guy who made the comment and is the Chief Technical Officer of 4A Games.]
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“It's a very CPU intensive game. I think it's been verified by plenty of other sources, including your own Digital Foundry guys, that the CPU on Wii U on the face of it isn't as fast as some of the other consoles out there. Lots of developers are finding ways to get around that because of other interesting parts of the platform.

“I think that what frustrates me about the way the story's been spun out is that there's been no opportunity to say, 'Well, yes, on that one individual piece maybe it's not as... maybe his opinion is that it's not as easy for the way that the 4A engine's been built as is the others."
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“But I understand that there's a real appetite in the media at the moment because the Wii U is a hot topic to spam some stories that are going to attract a lot of links if they present it in a certain way.”
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“We looked at Wii U as a target platform,” Beynon said. "It's a really small studio. There were 50 for Metro 2033, there are 80 now. With Metro 2033 most of their experience was with the PC. The Xbox 360 was their first console version. We've now added PlayStation 3 to the mix."

“We genuinely looked at what it would take to bring the game to Wii U. It's certainly possible, and it's something we thought we'd like to do. The reality is that would mean a dedicated team, dedicated time and effort, and it would either result in a detriment to what we're trying to focus on, already adding a PlayStation 3 SKU, or we probably wouldn't be able to do the Wii U version the justice that we'd want."
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DICE
Last night Gustav Halling, lead designer on Battlefield 3: Armored Kill at Swedish studio DICE, backed up Shishkovtsov, saying on Twitter he was concerned about the impact the next Xbox and PlayStation will have on the Wii U and "annoyed" that Nintendo "don't think ahead at all".

“This is also what I been hearing within the industry, too bad since it will shorten its life a lot when new gen starts,” he said.

“GPU and RAM is nice to have shaders/textures loaded. Physics and gameplay run on CPU mostly so player count is affected etc.”

“I don't actually know what makes it slow, but enough 'tech' people I trust in world are saying the same things.”

But, “Should be a great fun platform if you are a Nintendo fan the coming years and the memory and GPU part looks good!”
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Omega Force (Tecmo Koei)

Eurogamer said:
At the Tokyo Game Show in September, Akihiro Suzuki, producer of the Dynasty Warriors franchise, told Eurogamer the performance of the Wii U version of Warriors Orochi 3 Hyper was impacted by it.

"For games in the Warriors series, including Dynasty Warriors and Warriors Orochi, when you have a lot of enemies coming at you at once, the performance tends to be affected because of the CPU,” he said.

"Dealing with that is a challenge."

bildschirmfoto2012-1151o1o.png
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Digital Foundry Chief
“Outside of dev circles the Wii U CPU is a bit of a mystery. Just about the only confirmed facts are that IBM has produced it and it's been fabricated on a 45nm process - just like the combined CPU/GPU in the Xbox 360."

“Based on rough calculations, the Wii U CPU occupies the same amount of silicon - and so has a roughly similar amount number of transistors - as a single Xbox 360 core in the Xenon tri-core processor. Transistor count alone can't be used to judge 'power' as such (though that's what Moore's Law is based on) but it's safe to say there'd need to be a huge amount of efficiency gains to produce anything like the same amount of processing power as the 360 with that silicon budget."

Leadbetter added: "While we're on the subject of power, it is worth pointing out that an Xbox 360 Slim draws around 70 watts from the mains. The Wii U is closer to 35 watts. In terms of overall performance from power consumed, that's rather impressive.”
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M

Maxrunner

Member
nickcv said:
Digital Foundry ChiefLeadbetter added: "While we're on the subject of power, it is worth pointing out that an Xbox 360 Slim draws around 70 watts from the mains. The Wii U is closer to 35 watts. In terms of overall performance from power consumed, that's rather impressive.”
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What?
 
B

Busty

Banned
Log4Girlz said:
Boy won't people be surprised when Microsoft and Sony's next machines won't even have CPU's.
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The CPUs will be replaced with little PR people that will go to work spinning stories as soon as someone removes the plastic casing of the console.
 
E

Erethian

Member
It's pretty obvious at this point that if you want to get the most out of the Wii U it requires some reworking of how your engine works. And not every development team will have the capacity for that.

Best results will really come from exclusive titles, or multiplatform engines where they can easily transition to the different architecture.
 
N

nickcv

Member
TheD said:
We already have a thread for this don't we?
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well, we have the thread with the original news, but i thought that one became too long, and now we have more comments from 3 different parties.

posting it there i thought would have resulted into no one reading it.

if mods think this thread should be merged with the other one i'm fine =D
 
R

radioheadrule83

Banned
I think you missed the best quote from Huw Benyon:

“But I understand that there's a real appetite in the media at the moment because the Wii U is a hot topic to spam some stories that are going to attract a lot of links if they present it in a certain way.”
Click to expand...
 
N

nickcv

Member
Nintendo-4Life said:
What you are saying is ridiculous... Right? Please tell me this is not the case. One third? What?!!
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he is spinning this comment:

“Based on rough calculations, the Wii U CPU occupies the same amount of silicon - and so has a roughly similar amount number of transistors - as a single Xbox 360 core in the Xenon tri-core processor. Transistor count alone can't be used to judge 'power' as such (though that's what Moore's Law is based on) but it's safe to say there'd need to be a huge amount of efficiency gains to produce anything like the same amount of processing power as the 360 with that silicon budget."
 
Z

Zzoram

Member
Nintendo-4Life said:
What you are saying is ridiculous... Right? Please tell me this is not the case. One third? What?!!
Click to expand...

Did you not read the OP?

Digital Foundry Chief

“Outside of dev circles the Wii U CPU is a bit of a mystery. Just about the only confirmed facts are that IBM has produced it and it's been fabricated on a 45nm process - just like the combined CPU/GPU in the Xbox 360."

“Based on rough calculations, the Wii U CPU occupies the same amount of silicon - and so has a roughly similar amount number of transistors - as a single Xbox 360 core in the Xenon tri-core processor. Transistor count alone can't be used to judge 'power' as such (though that's what Moore's Law is based on) but it's safe to say there'd need to be a huge amount of efficiency gains to produce anything like the same amount of processing power as the 360 with that silicon budget."
Click to expand...
 
A

ASIS

Member
Zzoram said:
Did you not read the OP?

Digital Foundry Chief
Click to expand...

nickcv said:
he is spinning this comment:

“Based on rough calculations, the Wii U CPU occupies the same amount of silicon - and so has a roughly similar amount number of transistors - as a single Xbox 360 core in the Xenon tri-core processor. Transistor count alone can't be used to judge 'power' as such (though that's what Moore's Law is based on) but it's safe to say there'd need to be a huge amount of efficiency gains to produce anything like the same amount of processing power as the 360 with that silicon budget."
Click to expand...
I'm not a tech guy, so even though I read that comment I thought there was probably more to the story than that. So there is a potential that its only a third of the power of the CPU?
 
L

Log4Girlz

Member
Nintendo-4Life said:
I'm not a tech guy, so even though I read that comment I thought there was probably more to the story than that. So there is a potential that its only a third of the power of the CPU?
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Different architecture. I don't think it'll be a simple third of the power, but yeah much much weaker anyway.
 
Z

Zzoram

Member
Metal B said:
I believe, he comes to this conclusion, since Wii U's CPU only needs 1/3 of the energy of the Xbox 360 CPU.
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Wrong. That conclusion is due to the Wii U CPU being 1/3 the silicon of the Xbox 360 CPU and both being 45nm indicating approximately the same transistor count for equal size silicon.

Even if it's a different architecture, there is no way it's even close to Xbox 360 CPU power with 1/3 the transistors.
 
R

radioheadrule83

Banned
Zzoram said:
So it looks like the Wii U CPU could be potentially only 1/3 the power of the 360 CPU?
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No. The system draws half as much power as the slim 360, and its cranking out comparable games, its safe to assume that the efficiencies needed (that DF talk about) are in fact there to some degree. I'm guessing its weaker than Xenos in some ways, but not onerously. I've no doubt we'll get better, more informed quotes in the weeks and months ahead.
 
A

ASIS

Member
Log4Girlz said:
Different architecture. I don't think it'll be a simple third of the power, but yeah much much weaker anyway.
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From what I gather a lot of the process made by the CPU this gen has converted to the GPU in "modern architecture". At least that's how the arguments have been going on, CPU is gimped, but GPU will make up for it.

The question is, if the CPU really is THAT weaker, does it matter?
 
R

radioheadrule83

Banned
Nintendo-4Life said:
The question is, if the CPU really is THAT weaker, does it matter?
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The supposition about what it means and whether anything about the system makes up for it, is just that really -- supposition. While I've no doubt the arguing and speculation will go on unabated, you are posing questions that nobody here can really answer. Not yet.
 
L

Log4Girlz

Member
Nintendo-4Life said:
From what I gather a lot of the process made by the CPU this gen has converted to the GPU in "modern architecture". At least that's how the arguments have been going on, CPU is gimped, but GPU will make up for it.

The question is, if the CPU really is THAT weaker, does it matter?
Click to expand...

There are kinds of code that just inherently run better on general purpose CPU's.
 
O

Oblivion

Fetishing muscular manly men in skintight hosery
“Based on rough calculations, the Wii U CPU occupies the same amount of silicon - and so has a roughly similar amount number of transistors - as a single Xbox 360 core in the Xenon tri-core processor.
Click to expand...

Wow, I didn't know that they knew that.

edit: Wait, are they saying the WHOLE Wii-U CPU has roughly the same amount of transistors as one core, or is it a core to core comparison?
 
U

urfe

Member
I'm going to judge the WiiU's ability on the main Mario and Zelda game for the system.

The Wii has shown that third party developers are for the most part lazy (or incapable?). Mario Galaxy and Skyward Sword looked amazing.
 
T

Thoraxes

Member
Zzoram said:
So it looks like the Wii U CPU could be potentially only 1/3 the power of the 360 CPU?
Click to expand...

See, when hardware evolves, so do the manufacturing processes. It's why when you see smaller or newer revisions of consoles, you'll notice they provide the same experience as the older model, but still maintain the same efficiency.

For instance, the power consumption and size of the components of the PS3 from the Phat > Slim > Super Slim have GREATLY reduced the power consumption and size of the components needed to run the PS3 since the original modeal.

In the long run, as these companies figure out how to get more out of less in their systems, they end up saving money by figuring out ways to increase efficiency by producing cheaper parts without sacrificing the integrity of their system, to ensure parity across all their models.

Essentially, what that last comment about is that they're amazed at the design efficiency that Nintendo has pulled off to make something with that kind of fidelity that has such low power-consumption with a greatly reduced amount of parts (saving your bills a few bucks a month, and reducing the heat a system produces). It is probably extremely efficient for them to produce as well, and will help them on the road to quick profitability as they further reduce everything in size down the line.
 
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