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Wii U Speculation Thread The Third: Casting Dreams in The Castle of Miyamoto

ASTROID2

Member
wii2vk3.jpg

I'll take a 1000 of thoes.
 
*googles*

The one from last year was...

Kirby Wii reveal, Rhythm Heaven Wii, 3DS update for eShop and stuff, "Pokemon is in development for Wii and 3DS" (we can surprise that the Wii one was Pokepark 2, I think?), and Pandora's Tower.

That's a lot of stuff. I hope Nintendo continues the trend from the last quarterly meeting and unveils some more stuff about the Nintendo Network. Also, games, but I'm less hopeful about that now that Nintendo Direct exists.
 

Bagu

Member
Is there a nintendo direct scheduled for next month?

Btw, we should brace ourselves for april 1st.

April 1st->Internet: Don't believe a thing that released today! It's common sense!
April 1st->Nintendo: Let's leak some things. No one will believe it! It's goes against common sense!
 
Originally Posted by Gabe Newell - 6/22/2011:
"Wii U seems to be a lot more powerful than the previous generation. It sort of fits better into the scalability in terms of graphics performance and CPU performance, so I think it'll be a lot easier for us to fit it into our scalability model. We've always loved Nintendo. Now it's a lot easier to look at Wii U and have it fit within that framework."


This is great to hear. Even though it's old.
 

Anth0ny

Member
Regarding the Smash Bros Gamecube controller stuff.....



wii2vk3.jpg




Nintendo released this in Japan. I would hope something similar comes here maybe that plugs into the bottom of the wii remote.

In all honesty, I was never a fan of the classic controller. The Pro was better because of the handles, but I always preferred my analog stick in the 'main' thumb position.

In all honesty, if they gave the Wavebird the L2 and R2 and a bigger D-Pad, it'd be perfect in replacing the Classic Controller Pro.

Likewise, if they mapped the face buttons on the Wii U Tablet the same way as the GCN controller (and maybe fixed the analog, I have not tried it) then I'd be happy.


Then again, we are discussing such small things. We can never expect Nintendo to appease us. Playing on the Wii U Tablet should be fine, and I'm sure we'll all adjust to the button configuration.

That's fake.

If it was real, I'd know.
 

antonz

Member
Is there a nintendo direct scheduled for next month?

Btw, we should brace ourselves for april 1st.

There should be some sort of news from Nintendo. March 31st is end of the Fiscal Year. So they have to start talking the new Fiscal Year
 

Hero

Member
Regarding the Smash Bros Gamecube controller stuff.....



wii2vk3.jpg




Nintendo released this in Japan. I would hope something similar comes here maybe that plugs into the bottom of the wii remote.

In all honesty, I was never a fan of the classic controller. The Pro was better because of the handles, but I always preferred my analog stick in the 'main' thumb position.

In all honesty, if they gave the Wavebird the L2 and R2 and a bigger D-Pad, it'd be perfect in replacing the Classic Controller Pro.

Likewise, if they mapped the face buttons on the Wii U Tablet the same way as the GCN controller (and maybe fixed the analog, I have not tried it) then I'd be happy.


Then again, we are discussing such small things. We can never expect Nintendo to appease us. Playing on the Wii U Tablet should be fine, and I'm sure we'll all adjust to the button configuration.

Nintendo released an extended wired Gamecube controller with the Wii logo on it, not a Wavebird. If they had, I would've bought 4.
 

Make the Dpad a bit bigger, make it corded or wireless, make the face buttons "silent" tactile micro switches, replace the C-Stick with a second GCN analog, add adjustable tension to the sticks, reduce wear and tear making it super durable, add a 2nd shoulder bumper on the left and make both buttons like the Dual Shock. Announce it at E3 as the "Nintendo Wii U Pro" next gen gamepad, sell it for $75-$80. Perfect controller, everybody rejoices.

And then let 3rd party guys make a PC adapter for it.
 

Anth0ny

Member
Nintendo just needs to bundle a four port GC to USB dongle with every copy of Smash Bros Wii U. No need to buy controllers!

If Sakurai can bundle a freaking stand with every Kid Icarus, he should be able to bundle a GC to USB dongle with every copy of Smash 4 =)
 

Linkhero1

Member
If Sakurai can bundle a freaking stand with every Kid Icarus, he should be able to bundle a GC to USB dongle with every copy of Smash 4 =)

Agreed. Can't wait to see how it pans out. Hardcore Smash fans will be disappointed if we don't get some way to us a GC controller. I wouldn't mind them creating new ones just for the Wii U. I'd just buy them again haha.
 
With these recent hints, will Nintendo reveal something during their investors meeting at the end of next month?

I'll be interested to hear how much money they've spent getting the Havok and Autodesk middleware and MULTI IDE for developers for free use. I'd assume they have to reveal such things to investors..?
 

Christine

Member
Panning around the camera while sailing was one of the highlights of WW for me. So god damn beautiful.

Panning the camera around while sailing is what led to my realization that I don't really value games as audio/visual experiences, that I wasn't enjoying this game, and that I should stop playing.
 

TriGen

Member
The Wavebird was great, considering how focused they want everyone to be on the new sub-screen controller however I doubt we see a new "secondary" controller released for quite a while. It was said at last E3 that all Wii accessories would work on the Wii U, right? I believe that would mean that the CC/CCP will be playable with the Wii U along with the Wiimotes, I wonder if because of that Nintendo will feel like that's enough controller options and won't release any new controllers during the gen or if they will come up with something else.
 

ecosse_011172

Junior Member
Surely if Thraktor was right about the HD7770 then there wouldn't be the slightest whisper of "slightly better than current gen", his logic makes sense but I can't see it being true with so many leaks/rumours suggesting it being far closer to the current gen.
 

EDarkness

Member
Surely if Thraktor was right about the HD7770 then there wouldn't be the slightest whisper of "slightly better than current gen", his logic makes sense but I can't see it being true with so many leaks/rumours suggesting it being far closer to the current gen.

I think most of the comments about the system have been pretty positive. That said, there are lots of things that can fly in the face of performance, and with dev kits in a state of flux, it would be hard to be a good judge of overall power, even though on paper it may be quite a bit more powerful. We'll know for sure in a couple of months, but I have a feeling it's going to be a pretty nice machine overall. Not the most powerful compared to the upcoming Sony/Microsoft platforms, but efficient and easy to make games for.

The only thing I think people need to accept (at least in the beginning) is that a lot of devs won't up-res or update their game for the Wii U. At least not initially. Granted it would be great to see higher texture quality at the very least, but whether or not companies do this is the real question. Don't expect it.
 

LOCK

Member
Surely if Thraktor was right about the HD7770 then there wouldn't be the slightest whisper of "slightly better than current gen", his logic makes sense but I can't see it being true with so many leaks/rumours suggesting it being far closer to the current gen.

I think most of the comments about the system have been pretty positive. That said, there are lots of things that can fly in the face of performance, and with dev kits in a state of flux, it would be hard to be a good judge of overall power, even though on paper it may be quite a bit more powerful. We'll know for sure in a couple of months, but I have a feeling it's going to be a pretty nice machine overall. Not the most powerful compared to the upcoming Sony/Microsoft platforms, but efficient and easy to make games for.

The only thing I think people need to accept (at least in the beginning) is that a lot of devs won't up-res or update their game for the Wii U. At least not initially. Granted it would be great to see higher texture quality at the very least, but whether or not companies do this is the real question. Don't expect it.

I think when it comes to comments from anybody working with the Wii U, from art people to programmers, you have to consider these specific view points:

A) They probably don't fully understand the hardware yet. (Or old dev kits)
B) Visually they may not notice any differences but the hardware is in fact advanced. (Lazy devs?)
C) The hardware is only a slight improvement.
D) The hardware is a noticeable improvement.

So I think it should be a general rule to ignore comments and rely on actually specs, Nintendo, and released media. Any comment by somebody in the development community could be skewed due to happenstance of their current viewpoints, i.e. why we have highly variable comments.
 

DCKing

Member
Surely if Thraktor was right about the HD7770 then there wouldn't be the slightest whisper of "slightly better than current gen", his logic makes sense but I can't see it being true with so many leaks/rumours suggesting it being far closer to the current gen.
Yeah, I'm with you on this. Maybe I have too much respect for developer's skills and views.

The comments on the system are a confused mess. An HD7770 would easily perform better than 'touched up 360 game in 720p + Upad' like IdeaMan indicated, which either means the Wii U is not powerful or that developers are incapable or unwilling to do much with it right now.
 
Yeah, I'm with you on this. Maybe I have too much respect for developer's skills and views however.

The comments on the system are a confused mess. An HD7770 would easily perform better than 'touched up 360 game in 720p + Upad' like IdeaMan indicated.

I agree with this as well, however is it out of the realm of possibility that hd7770 like performance could be final target?
 

antonz

Member
I think the point is if that were the target, we would have more indication of that being the case by now

Well what we have now is a bajillion contradictions. We really have no real firm grasp of anything to be totally honest. The original devkit specs if true were already a large jump over the current HD consoles.We are told the kits have improved since the original so if it improved from what we are supposed to know as base stats its impossible for it to just be on par.

That said Gaming journalists are some of the shittiest out there. Mr Art Director can say one thing and through editing and selective hearing its reported as something else. Happens all the time. Look at the 2GB Eshop limit thing.
 

EDarkness

Member
Well what we have now is a bajillion contradictions. We really have no real firm grasp of anything to be totally honest. The original devkit specs if true were already a large jump over the current HD consoles.We are told the kits have improved since the original so if it improved from what we are supposed to know as base stats its impossible for it to just be on par.

That said Gaming journalists are some of the shittiest out there. Mr Art Director can say one thing and through editing and selective hearing its reported as something else. Happens all the time. Look at the 2GB Eshop limit thing.

People will simply believe what they want to believe. Either way, I think we have more reports of the system being good than it being bad. So I don't think there's any reason for people to worry about it.
 

AzaK

Member
Well what we have now is a bajillion contradictions. We really have no real firm grasp of anything to be totally honest. The original devkit specs if true were already a large jump over the current HD consoles.We are told the kits have improved since the original so if it improved from what we are supposed to know as base stats its impossible for it to just be on par.

Sure, but we have also had no one saying Wii U is jaw dropping, which I'd imagine they would if it was an HD7770 right?
 
Surely if Thraktor was right about the HD7770 then there wouldn't be the slightest whisper of "slightly better than current gen", his logic makes sense but I can't see it being true with so many leaks/rumours suggesting it being far closer to the current gen.

Hard to say.

Most people's expectations are a product of some combination of:
Nintendo's utter silence
TDP ballooning out of control for GPUs the last few years
Developer comments that don't mean anything without a whole hell of a lot of context that wouldn't make sense to most of us anyway

Or the shortened version of this, which is that we know precisely nothing about what hardware is in there and probably won't know much more until well after launch.
 

Gahiggidy

My aunt & uncle run a Mom & Pop store, "The Gamecube Hut", and sold 80k WiiU within minutes of opening.
Isn't Vigil the only on the record developer to comment on the power? Regardless, they are making a cross platform Wii U game so they aren't going to delve into the advanced feature set of the GPU, I believe.

The developers who are making games targeted to the hardware are the ones that could tell you where it places on the modern processor continuum. Such as the Killer Freaks team. But they aren't talking.
 

EDarkness

Member
Sure, but we have also had no one saying Wii U is jaw dropping, which I'd imagine they would if it was an HD7770 right?

Who's making a Wii U only game with the budget to make something "jaw dropping"? Maybe Nintendo? And even then would they talk about it? Most of the games we know about for the Wii U are ports. I doubt very seriously that any of those games are using the Wii U as the lead platform. So we won't be getting much of that until at least the next batch of games come out.
 

antonz

Member
Sure, but we have also had no one saying Wii U is jaw dropping, which I'd imagine they would if it was an HD7770 right?

Developer comments are hard to gauge by because no one is really supposed to be talking and anything that does get said is usually stupidly vague and then you are left to the integrity of the site,mag etc reporting on the incredibly vague stuff.

Even if the Wii U ends up with nothing more than a modernized 4850 type GPU it would offer considerable advantages over xenos etc. that studios have to want to take advantage of. THQ is not a publisher thats sitting on a boatload of cash tossing it every which direction for improvements for instance.
 

guek

Banned
Sure, but we have also had no one saying Wii U is jaw dropping, which I'd imagine they would if it was an HD7770 right?

Yeah, but keep in mind that Thraktor is also saying the early dev kit would have just had a significantly underclocked 4770.
 

DCKing

Member
Sure, but we have also had no one saying Wii U is jaw dropping, which I'd imagine they would if it was an HD7770 right?
To be fair it's impossible Nintendo would get the full HD7770 treatment or something of the same performance. The HD7770 is a beast with the highest clock speed of any GPU and a TDP equal or larger to the original Xbox 360 GPU. It's also made on a small production process that is likely unavailable just yet for the mass production required for a game console.

The best case scenario is a simplified HD7770 design with less compute units (max 8 instead of 10), a simpler customized shader architecture and a significantly lower clockspeed (600-700 MHz instead of 1000), I think.
 

Linkhero1

Member
Sure, but we have also had no one saying Wii U is jaw dropping, which I'd imagine they would if it was an HD7770 right?

To be fair not many third party titles aimed for launch will use the full power of the console. Just look at the 360 launch. Not saying it's definitely going to be jawdropping, but we haven't heard much from developers working on non-multiplat games.
 

MDX

Member
Someone just told me Nintendo will not be supporting backwards compatibility with the WiiU. Has anybody else heard this?
 

ecosse_011172

Junior Member
I can't shake the feeling that if a chip even close to an underclocked HD7770 providing say 700-800GFLOPS was the target then the possibility of the console being just a 360 1.2-1.5 would never have been mentioned by anyone as the jump is far too great for any dev to make that kind of suggestion.

WRT the apparent Vigil change in stance from last year, we can only assume that either
a) the initial target spec has been lowered (even if there were some later improvements from v3 to v4 or whatever) since then or
b) due to a lack of confidence in the initial user base/projected sales or other external influences, they have decided to spend as little as possible on the port and not take advantage of the additional horsepower.

However, as they are producing a PC version and will have higher res textures available it seems odd that they would choose b).

Don't get me wrong, I want the machine to be as powerful as possible but I can't help but think that the higher expectations in this thread just can't be true :-(
 
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