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Digital Foundry vs Watch Dogs on Wii U

krizzx

Junior Member
Its true though, Wii U owners claimed it was a great port until evidence came out that it wasn't. Same thing happened with nearly all Wii U ports of games.

No, most didn't. The majority claimed it was another sloppy port with little time or money put into it that didn't take any advantage of any of the platforms technical strengths. Console strenghts doesn't lead to glitches like shaking water and jumping shadows.
 

bobeth

Member
You honestly believe this port got the budget and development time that is necessary to be as good as it could be?

Cmon son. You must think ac:u had enough time in the oven as well, right along with bf4.
Don't call me son. I'd say it's as good as it can be with the budget they had. Don't blame Ubisoft for thinking other consoles deserve more time and money..
 

axisofweevils

Holy crap! Today's real megaton is that more than two people can have the same first name.
Was Rayman & Zombii U the only competent games from Ubi to come out on the Wii U?

Zombi U was in a terrible state when it launched. It had a major game breaking bug in it that took months to patch.
 

krizzx

Junior Member
One camp seems to believe this is a bad port as per common bad port evidence. The other seems to want to insist that there are little to no problems with the port or the developer, but that it is the consoles capabilities fault purely for any and all problems while ignoring anything that demonstrates otherwise.

Business as usual.
 
It's forum speculation, nothing even remotely enough to have a clear opinion, yet you call their work shitty. You have no idea what you're talking about..

This is a circular argument:
So... its NOT a shit port and DF are wrong?

This is a topic about how it IS a shit port.
What about that statement is forum speculation?

It is late because the WiiU team were moved to help get the release ready for other platforms, this is a matter of record, and also not forum speculation.

So why should potential WiiU purchasers be fine that they got a port that is both late and shit? Why is that "insulting especially because of their work on the PS4?"
 
This just got completely dodged by console bashers.
Because it's a minor improvement in a more than unseemly performance envelope.

They should have cut some of the AI and collision routines. Paired down the civilian count. Anything to take off the load from the CPU. This would in theory help immensely with the framerate, and potentially have freed up resources for the one area WiiU stands to make an advantage over PS3/360. In the purely visual. Texture res and shader ops.

It could have been some weird half worse half better than endeavor. Instead it's overall just worse.
 

RexNovis

Banned
It's forum speculation, nothing even remotely enough to have a clear opinion, yet you call their work shitty. You have no idea what you're talking about..

What part of regular drops to unplayable low framerates is not shitty?!? This is unbelievable. You guys are defending UbiSoft for releasing another damn travesty. CONSUMERS SHOULD BE OUTRAGED WHEN THEY RECEIVE A DAMN NEAR BROKEN PRODUCT! Enough with this bullshit "well you don't know" defense. THERE IS NO EXCUSE. period. End of story.

On multiple releases across multiple platforms their standards of quality have been absolutely appalling. At what point are we supposed to be outraged exactly?!? It's absolutely unconscionable to me that people have The gall to come in these threads and straight up defend UbiSoft's anticonsumer bullshit practices. Wake the hell up and stand up for yourselves as consumers.
 

casiopao

Member
you should do your research. most of multiplatform games perform worse on wiiu. just to name them, both batman games, both cod, both AC, Micky, resident evil, dark siders, tekken, ninja gaiden, watch dogs, splinter cell according to DF, and both sonic all star and disney infinti 2 run at the lowest resolution compared to 360/ps3 versions.

Splinter Cell, Sonic All Star perform much better than PS3 here. Why it is in the list?

Tekken even had its exclusive content.
 

krizzx

Junior Member
What part of regular drops to unplayable low framerates is not shitty?!? This is unbelievable. You guys are defending UbiSoft for releasing another damn travesty. CONSUMERS SHOULD BE OUTRAGED WHEN THEY RECEIVE A DAMN NEAR BROKEN PRODUCT! Enough with this bullshit "well you don't know" defense. THERE IS NO EXCUSE. period. End of story.

On multiple releases across multiple platforms their standards of quality have been absolutely appalling. At what point are we supposed to be outraged exactly?!? It's absolutely unconscionable to me that people have The gall to come in these threads and straight up defend UbiSoft's anticonsumer bullshit practices. Wake the hell up and stand up for yourselves as consumers.

They are't simply defending Ubisoft. They seem to have a goal of exonerating the developer in order to push fault onto the console and manufacturer as much as possible. I have seen this since launch with people who normally bashed and "hated" EA coming to defend and support EA when they made slights against Nintendo and their platform. I believe this is the same mentality.
 

soy.

Banned
Garbage port to a dead console. Nobody should be surprised that Ubisoft mailed this one in.
fanboy (or casual junker) detected.

any real gamer know that this gen race are relatively healthy
sony are ahead with niche gap, wiiu in second and gaining momentum as they're launching great titles, and xbone really close to the wiiu -also catching up with the promise of upcoming titles

Man people in the WatchDogs Wii U thread were saying it was alright, but I knew right away after that guy posted video of it that it was seriously borked. The framerate seemed straight slide show at times. Guess I wasn't too far off the mark with what my eyes were seeing, 'cause goddamn.

Anyway, Nintendo Wii U owners should skip this lame game anyway, regardless of the performance. So I hope this pushes even more to stay away from this turd game :p
i'm actually one of the people in that thread

and i'm never buying it.
some cracks after seeing pretty screenshots, but many are still not buying this crap
yeah, most wiiu owners will skip this lame game

Hype deflated.
what hype?

any speck of hype was already dead when ubicrap announced that they're using the gamepad for cheap MINIMAP function

I have nothing against the wiiu, but the fact that most ports are worse then ancient 360/ps3 hardware is laughable to me. come on Nintendo, last gen was 8 years, at least make your new hardware easily out class last gen consoles.
i know that u're ninjablade, but some others might read this, so i'll reply anyway :p

nintendo do made their hardware easily out class last gen consoles...
in terms of price.
this is what nintendoes: they made stuff as good as possible, when it's as cheap as possible. that's just what they do...
sometimes it work, sometimes
ign makes it seems like
it doesn't. google some sega's gamegear vs nintendo's gameboy history.

=========

damn i really sound like a nintendo stupid fanboy in here...
c'mon gaf, don't make me do this... at least learn ur stuff, guys... we are all gamers here aren't we?? gamers are supposed to be like... smart and intelligent and stuff??
 

impact

Banned
One camp seems to believe this is a bad port as per common bad port evidence. The other seems to want to insist that there are little to no problems with the port or the developer, but that it is the consoles capabilities fault purely for any and all problems while ignoring anything that demonstrates otherwise.

Business as usual.
GAF has seen an increase in Ubisoft astroturfers lately...
 

SMOK3Y

Generous Member
what can ya expect its a Ubi port only good Ubi game ive seen come out lately is FC4 everything else seem to be pretty shit on any console/PC
 
Secondly, WD and AC:U are shit. Either all platforms that run them are shit, or they did a shitty job optimizing them. Pick one, i know i have.

I don't agree, Watch Dogs was fun and a much better and varied game than the yearly AssCreed. It is also gorgeous maxed out on PC if you can live with a locked 30fps.
 
You honestly believe this port got the budget and development time that is necessary to be as good as it could be?

Cmon son. You must think ac:u had enough time in the oven as well, right along with bf4.

Return on investment on this contractually obligated port is likely low enough that this didn't even get the same kinda effort that stealth released cod nintendo Ports do.
Stevie, your argument is not formulated in a meaningful way because there isn’t a single publisher-sponsored modern 3D game that is getting the budget and the development time that is necessary to be ‘as good as it could be’.
Time and budget constraints are normal, platform aspecific and publishers rather aim to release something that is ‘good enough’ than something ‘as good as it could be’ within an acceptable timeframe.

Framerates dipping to 20-25 fps under stress moments are nothing new or unacceptable for multiplatform open world games. If this Wii U version is ‘shit’, so were the PS3 and X360 versions. I don’t get the ‘rage’ for having a version that's in the same ball park as the PS360 version, especially not from an audience that didn’t care for having next-gen hardware or performance in the first place.

If you want the version that’s ‘as good as it could be’, you simply buy the PC version which isn't compromised and tailored around last-gen specifications instead of complaining about how shitty the WiiU version is because for a platform like the WiiU, this version is 'good enough' imo.
 
a little off topic but certainly interesting:

The official software sales for germany (nov 17- nov 22):
Wii U
1. ( 1 ) Mario Kart 8 (Nintendo)
2. (NEU) Watch Dogs (Ubisoft)
3. ( 2 ) Hyrule Warriors (Nintendo)


yeah, that doesn't mean much but afaik there wasn't a non-nintendo game in this charts a long time.

source: GfK Entertainment (via gamefront.de)
 
a little off topic but certainly interesting:

The official software sales for germany (nov 17- nov 22):



yeah, that doesn't mean much but afaik there wasn't a non-nintendo game in this charts a long time.

source: GfK Entertainment (via gamefront.de)

Did it chart in the overall German chart?
 

Veal

Member
Because the CPU is garbage. Underpowered, less efficient in nearly every aspect compared to the PS3 and 360
Isn't this wrong? Doesn't the Wii u have a triple core CPU (without the hyper threading equivalent that 360 has) design running at much lower clock speeds and wattage than the ps3 and 360? Depending on the resources put in to development, the system manages beat or come close to last gen performance in games. Wouldn't that make it MORE efficient than last gen?
 

Amir0x

Banned
I love how people keep placing the sole blame on Ubi and not on the WiiU's hardware.

What else could they do besides canceling it altogether? The game is taxing, it's not surprising that it doesn't run smoothly.

there really is genuinely absolutely no Ubisoft fuck up you won't try to defend and shift blame away from

"What else could they do", as if their only option was to release a disaster port because it's out of their hands or some shit.

What else could they do? Tone down visual settings until it ran at acceptable framerate. Cancel the game, yup. Design a game to a systems limitations, yup (and instead more creatively utilize the gamepad to make up for it). Delay the game further, yup. Sell the game for $20 instead since it's borked crap, yup.

Their options are literally endless, but nope Ubisoft isn't to blame because they announced Watch Dogs for Wii U and the Wii U is not powerful. Yup. Targeting a game that knowingly would run shit on the platform - or rather that you're too incompetent to customize the graphics settings so that it runs at pretty consistent 30fps at least - is Ubisoft's fault, full stop. Nobody else is at fault. NOBODY.
 

tassletine

Member
Zombi U was in a terrible state when it launched. It had a major game breaking bug in it that took months to patch.

It's exaggerating to call it terrible. I played it through 3 times without encountering the bug (or knowing it was there).

AC Unity is much more serious as you can't play through without noticing problems or getting pissed at how it runs.
ZombieU whilst not massively polished, due to a small dev crew, was in a much, much better state. The same as most games I'd say.
 

tassletine

Member
there really is genuinely absolutely no Ubisoft fuck up you won't try to defend and shift blame away from

"What else could they do", as if their only option was to release a disaster port because it's out of their hands or some shit.

What else could they do? Tone down visual settings until it ran at acceptable framerate. Cancel the game, yup. Design a game to a systems limitations, yup (and instead more creatively utilize the gamepad to make up for it). Delay the game further, yup. Sell the game for $20 instead since it's borked crap, yup.

Their options are literally endless, but nope Ubisoft isn't to blame because they announced Watch Dogs for Wii U and the Wii U is not powerful. Yup. Targeting a game that knowingly would run shit on the platform - or rather that you're too incompetent to customize the graphics settings so that it runs at pretty consistent 30fps at least - is Ubisoft's fault, full stop. Nobody else is at fault. NOBODY.

I think the telling thing is how badly the gamepad is utilised. A game like this should have had extra features tacked on if they cared. They obviously didn't.
 

krizzx

Junior Member
It's exaggerating to call it terrible. I played it through 3 times without encountering the bug (or knowing it was there).
.

I didn't. I hit the bug first time through. That's without accounting for all the times the game froze and other game ending bugs I encountered, like Zombis that had to be kill to progress not spawning or spawning outside of the environment where they couldn't be killed.

I recall that there were actually two game breaking bugs as well
 

Doczu

Member
I didn't. I hit the bug first time through. That's without accounting for all the times the game froze and other game ending bugs I encountered, like Zombis that had to be kill to progress not spawning or spawning outside of the environment where they couldn't be killed.

I recall that there were actually two game breaking bugs as well

Well at least after they patched the game thee only bug i had was during the last escape i tried to loot a crorpse and the inventory screen didn't show up. Sadly i could only reset the game. One bug during the whole game. On the other hand i tried to play Unity... Ubisoft is just inconsisted. A small b team made a less bugged game and ironed out the biggest offnders, but if you think about how much money goes into their main AAA production... Why all these bugs?
 

Amir0x

Banned
I think the telling thing is how badly the gamepad is utilised. A game like this should have had extra features tacked on if they cared. They obviously didn't.

I mean there's just so many things they could have done to make this port acceptable.

The truth is that as Wii U continued to tank, they put their janitors and interns on it and locked them in a closet and forgot it existed until they re-emerged, eyes shielded by their arms, saying they got... well, an approximation of something that could technically be called Watch Dogs finished
 

Crossing Eden

Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
there really is genuinely absolutely no Ubisoft fuck up you won't try to defend and shift blame away from

"What else could they do", as if their only option was to release a disaster port because it's out of their hands or some shit.

What else could they do? Tone down visual settings until it ran at acceptable framerate. Cancel the game, yup. Design a game to a systems limitations, yup (and instead more creatively utilize the gamepad to make up for it). Delay the game further, yup. Sell the game for $20 instead since it's borked crap, yup.

Their options are literally endless, but nope Ubisoft isn't to blame because they announced Watch Dogs for Wii U and the Wii U is not powerful. Yup. Targeting a game that knowingly would run shit on the platform - or rather that you're too incompetent to customize the graphics settings so that it runs at pretty consistent 30fps at least - is Ubisoft's fault, full stop. Nobody else is at fault. NOBODY.
I'm not saying that it's not a bad port. I am however saying that the developer itself isn't the main issue, and like others have said, customizing graphics settings for a port isn't as easy as flipping a couple switches, setting code to wiiU and then calling it a day. Graphics aren't infinitely scalable.
 

krizzx

Junior Member
I'm not saying that it's not a bad port. I am however saying that the developer itself isn't the main issue, and like others have said, customizing graphics settings for a port isn't as easy as flipping a couple switches, setting code to wiiU and then calling it a day. Graphics aren't infinitely scalable.

Devs ported Call of Duty 4 on the PS3/360 to the Wii, and it ran fine. Please, stop this nonsense.

There is nowhere near enough difference between these systems to where they could not fix those problems with moderate work. They simply did not care about the Wii U version enough to do it.
 
there really is genuinely absolutely no Ubisoft fuck up you won't try to defend and shift blame away from

"What else could they do", as if their only option was to release a disaster port because it's out of their hands or some shit.

What else could they do? Tone down visual settings until it ran at acceptable framerate. Cancel the game, yup. Design a game to a systems limitations, yup (and instead more creatively utilize the gamepad to make up for it). Delay the game further, yup. Sell the game for $20 instead since it's borked crap, yup.

Their options are literally endless, but nope Ubisoft isn't to blame because they announced Watch Dogs for Wii U and the Wii U is not powerful. Yup. Targeting a game that knowingly would run shit on the platform - or rather that you're too incompetent to customize the graphics settings so that it runs at pretty consistent 30fps at least - is Ubisoft's fault, full stop. Nobody else is at fault. NOBODY.

its easier said then done, aside from nintendo games, most technically demanding third party games really do suffer framerate rate wise on wiiu. even platinum games has horrible framerate for games targeting 60fps. i think its nintendo job to offer a friendly environment for developers, why would they want to put major effort on a lastgen port of a new console, that has a unproven user base when it comes to third party game sales. watch dogs is probably the most technically demanding game on wiiu so the results are expected.
 
Devs ported Call of Duty 4 on the PS3/360 to the Wii, and it ran fine. Please, stop this nonsense.

There is nowhere near enough difference between these systems to where they could not fix those problems with moderate work. They simply did not care about the Wii U version enough to do it.

silly comparison. it was a whole new engine built for the wii.
 
I'm not saying that it's not a bad port. I am however saying that the developer itself isn't the main issue, and like others have said, customizing graphics settings for a port isn't as easy as flipping a couple switches, setting code to wiiU and then calling it a day. Graphics aren't infinitely scalable.

They had 6 whole months to do this. Why shouldn't we expect them to make the game run acceptably on a system they announced it for? Do you know how stupid your justification sounds?
 

Crossing Eden

Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
Devs ported Call of Duty 4 on the PS3/360 to the Wii, and it ran fine. Please, stop this nonsense.

There is nowhere near enough difference between these systems to where they could not fix those problems with moderate work. They simply did not care about the Wii U version enough to do it.
Pretty bad comparison.

They had 6 whole months to do this. Why shouldn't we expect them to make the game run acceptably on a system they announced it for? Do you know how stupid your justification sounds?
Because they only had 6 months to make a CPU heavy game that was made with next gen in mind run well on the WiiU without heavily modifying the engine altogether, something which is incredibly hard to do within a limited time span.
 

Crossing Eden

Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
Er... what? Yes they are. Not literally infininitely but for the purposes of this argument there aren't any actual limits on how far you can scale a framebuffer
Oh ok then, but how much would users tolerate the game looking worse than the ps3 and xb360 version to get it to well run?
 

krizzx

Junior Member
Pretty bad comparison.

Not even remotely. It shows that if devs want a game to work properly, they will get it to work properly. That's the entire point of optimization. You tweak the software until it runs well on the system. If something is causing problems, you remove it or change it to something that doesn't cause problems. If there is room for something better, you make it better.

Dev's deicde how a game runs on a system, not the system.
 
Oh ok then, but how much would users tolerate the game looking worse than the ps3 and xb360 version to get it to well run?

For an open world game there are literally hundreds of variables that can be changed to increase performance so you have no point of comparison to make on how much 'worse' it would look if achieving a steady framerate was at any time a goal of this game.
 
Pretty bad comparison.


Because they only had 6 months to make a CPU heavy game that was made with next gen in mind run well on the WiiU without heavily modifying the engine altogether, something which is incredibly hard to do within a limited time span.

So your justification is we should accept a game that was announced for the system and then delayed yet still runs like shit because optimizing it is hard? That's what you're going with?
 

TI82

Banned
It's kind of sad to see the fans frothing at the mouth to attack devs when the majority of Wii U ports perform worse than 360/PS3. After a while you have to wonder if Nintendo took third party opinions at all when designing the system since they supposedly wanted to be more open to them.
 

StevieP

Banned
It's kind of sad to see the fans frothing at the mouth to attack devs when the majority of Wii U ports perform worse than 360/PS3. After a while you have to wonder if Nintendo took third party opinions at all when designing the system since they supposedly wanted to be more open to them.

I don't think insulting the devs is the proper course of action (as in, literally the folks who had a set time to make this port work). It's the publisher that dictates how much time/money/staff it allocates to each project. Given more staff/time/money/etc this port could've ended up smoother.

Yes, you can say the Wii U's CPU is weak, but that's where scaling projects come in. Sort of like how devs are having to scale their "next gen" projects to work on PS4.
 

Crossing Eden

Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
Not even remotely. It shows that if devs want a game to work properly, they will get it to work properly. That's the entire point of optimization. You tweak the software until it runs well on the system. If something is causing problems, you remove it or change it to something that doesn't cause problems. If there is room for something better, you make it better.

Dev's deicde how a game runs on a system, not the system.
It's a pointless comparison because it's comparing a very scaled back fps game to an open world game. And not every game can run on every platform. Definitely not while attempting to maintain at least a similar experience.

For an open world game there are literally hundreds of variables that can be changed to increase performance so you have no point of comparison to make on how much 'worse' it would look if achieving a steady framerate was at any time a goal of this game.
If they would've heavily altered the game world then it would've probably taken more than 6 months to develop this port. Is there also a point of comparison for how much better it would run had they completely scaled back everything about the game?

So your justification is we should accept a game that was announced for the system and then delayed yet still runs like shit because optimizing it is hard? That's what you're going with?
Never said that at all. Can posters stop putting words in my posts?
 
Never said that at all. Can posters stop putting words in my posts?

What point are you trying to make then? We're consumers, they are offering a product and a venue that helps us evaluate products is telling us that it technically runs like shit. They announced the game for the system and have now delivered it (late) and it's not up to par. Why the fuck should we not be critical of the work they produced? They want us to spend money on it.
 

TI82

Banned
ubisoft fanboys are an actual thing that exists?

There might be like one or two that line up for midnight releases of every Ubi game but I doubt it.

They are just angry fans that want to lash out in any direction they can.
 

Crossing Eden

Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
What point are you trying to make then? We're consumers, they are offering a product and a venue that helps us evaluate products is telling us that it technically runs like shit. They announced the game for the system and have now delivered it (late) and it's not up to par. Why the fuck should we not be critical of the work they produced? They want us to spend money on it.
The point i'm trying to make is that the WiiU is not a perfect console that can handle every single port of any game regardless of the product, so it's unfair to the devs to place the sole blame on them and not the hardware they were working with, especially when there are other examples of 3rd party games not running very well on the WiiU.

There might be like one or two that line up for midnight releases of every Ubi game but I doubt it.

They are just angry fans that want to lash out in any direction they can.
Oh how I love blanket statements about fans of a dev.
 
Not even remotely. It shows that if devs want a game to work properly, they will get it to work properly. That's the entire point of optimization. You tweak the software until it runs well on the system. If something is causing problems, you remove it or change it to something that doesn't cause problems. If there is room for something better, you make it better.

Dev's deicde how a game runs on a system, not the system.

you're talking about the biggest franchise in gaming being remade to basically fit the wii, which had a huge user base, it was a small investment risk for Activision. how many 360/ps3 games were ported to wii? Not many.
 
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