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The Wii U Speculation Thread VI: The Undiscovered Country

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H

Hoo-doo

Banned
Jaruru said:
Nintendo once said that was possible to make the Wii to play DVD, it's up to the consumer to pay the licensing fees. this was end up dismiss of cos'. but it will be wonderful in case for Wii U :O :O :O :p
Click to expand...

Either way, I think it's kind of bullshit, I expect that basic functionality from my games consoles these days.
I think it's awesome that my PS3 is both a games console, Blu-ray player and media center all in one.
 
blu

blu

Wants the largest console games publisher to avoid Nintendo's platforms.
IdeaMan said:
It's a continuation of an earlier post where i said that studios received the newest dev kit, with separated drives + writers & discs to burn their project on it, they are forced by Nintendo to bring them on bluray (for retail titles). Concretely, if someone play Darksiders 2 on the showfloor, it will be from Wii U discs (or at the very least, the demo was brought on disc).

A tiny hyping tidbit.
Click to expand...
This is a bit conjectural, though, as I don't think there will be any retail games in finished/near-finished QA stage - it will be all E3-designated demos. And nintendo have no reason to force devs to put demos on blu-rays - that'd be just extra hassle for no real reason. So while I expect devs to put everything retail on disks when released, I don't actually expect to see anything run off optical media on the show floor. But that's just my guess.
 
I

IdeaMan

My source is my ass!
Hoo-doo said:
Yeah. Nintendo doesn't want to pay the licensing fees.



You are starting to sound like a crazy person. I think this insider position has gone to your head a little bit.
Click to expand...

What ?

Seriously, i'm just posting a message, without any teases, about foreign studios currently burning their demos on Wii U discs, and i have people with anger management problems that jump on me saying that ?

jeez -_-
 
J

JohnTinker

Limbaugh Parrot
I would love to be able to pop in a DVD or BluRay and watch it on the pad somewhere else in my house. Yes I know watching on a 7" screen defeats the purpose of 1080p for BluRay, but I want to watch Ren & Stimpy in bed, dammit.
 
I

IdeaMan

My source is my ass!
blu said:
This is a bit conjectural, though, as I don't think there will be any retail games in finished/near-finish QA stage - it will be all E3-designated demos. And nintendo have no reason to force devs to put demos on blu-rays - that'd be just extra hassle for no real reason. So while I expect devs to put everything retail on disks when released, I don't actually expect to see anything run off optical media on the show floor. But that's just my guess.
Click to expand...

Don't know if it's the case for every games, every studios, but big third-parties have an obligation from Nintendo to bring what they intent to show on those discs. They received it, with special writers, a few weeks ago.

Now, maybe the smaller projects will be brought on HDD, SD cards, etc.
 
blu

blu

Wants the largest console games publisher to avoid Nintendo's platforms.
IdeaMan said:
Don't know if it's the case for every games, every studios, but big third-parties have an obligation from Nintendo to bring what they intent to show on those discs. They received it, with special writers, a few weeks ago.
Click to expand...
Ok, if you know that for a fact then I concur. But that's something which I would not have imposed on devs if I were in the position to do it, as I see no real advantages to that - just extra pressure on devs who are already in crunch (E3 is some pretty bad crunch time). Again, that under the premise there are no 3rd party wiiU games in near-finished state.
 
I

IdeaMan

My source is my ass!
blu said:
Ok, if you know that for a fact then I concur. But that's something which I would not have imposed on devs if I were in the position to do it, as I see no real advantages to that - just extra pressure on devs who are already in crunch (E3 is some pretty bad crunch time). Again, that under the premise there are no 3rd party wiiU games in near-finished state.
Click to expand...

Actually, thinking about what you say, it's interesting to cross-read it with the info i gave.

Why ambitious titles, from third-parties, are required to be burned on Wii U discs and brought at E3 2012 in this support ? Maybe the units Nintendo will bring on the showfloor aren't able to run a game from the internal flash memory or from external HDD, maybe their projects are too big this late in their development, even in a demo form, to be simply brought on SD/HDD. It could point toward a system not fully ready yet to run titles of a certain size from something else than discs, Nintendo could be working on the additional storage solutions, etc. Or it could be for other reasons (like the copyright one that Dreamwriter explained), or be just that way and we don't have to read too much into it.

See (for the two thinking the info is not a big deal :p), even a small tidbit could generate interesting speculations :p
 
D

Dreamwriter

Member
blu said:
This is a bit conjectural, though, as I don't think there will be any retail games in finished/near-finished QA stage - it will be all E3-designated demos. And nintendo have no reason to force devs to put demos on blu-rays - that'd be just extra hassle for no real reason. So while I expect devs to put everything retail on disks when released, I don't actually expect to see anything run off optical media on the show floor. But that's just my guess.
Click to expand...
What do you mean, for no reason? The Wii-U, like all of Nintendo's hardware, has copy protection. You can't copy a game onto it from USB, or run a game from USB that wasnt downloaded from that system. Dev kits look nothing like final systems, so Nintendo is going to want to have final systems on the floor. They could secretly have dev kits hidden behind each unit, but that would be pointless (and Nintendo doesn't like to do that, though they ocasionally have to).
 
R

radioheadrule83

Banned
Jaruru said:
Nintendo once said that was possible to make the Wii to play DVD, it's up to the consumer to pay the licensing fees. this was end up dismiss of cos'. but it will be wonderful in case for Wii U :O :O :O :p
Click to expand...

You bring up a good point.

Wii would not have made a very good DVD player even if they'd enabled it, no dedicated DSP to handle AC3 / Dolby / DTS, no optical out, limited video options, and the drive was designed to be backwards compatible with the Gamecube's miniCAV discs which probably entailed certain customisations. Even homebrew which is designed to enable the drive to play DVDs doesn't quite get it working right, and I have to wonder if that is because of instruction sets that the drive was configured to understand or something - perhaps they never really planned for the possibility.

The Wii-U disc format is reported to use a variant of the China Blue High-def DVD format, so its blue-laser tech, but not necessarily blu-ray. That probably means we won't see blue ray playback, but if they got Panasonic to deliver a drive in a forward thinking way, it could have the instruction sets needed to change laser colour/attenuation, and enable reading of said discs. The U will have opitcal output via the HDMI port this time, and a DSP that could be used for processing audio and video, so it is potentially a much more capable console in this regard if they ever choose to put out an add-on or software upgrade.

I don't think they will, but it would be a nice surprise if the hardware is capable and they choose to do it someday... it doesn't personally bother me if they do or they don't. Blu-Ray players are cheap these days, and I'm betting a lot of people who care about it have PS3s. Between all the licenses that would need to be signed, its omission might end up saving us $20-40+ on a system.
 
blu

blu

Wants the largest console games publisher to avoid Nintendo's platforms.
Dreamwriter said:
What do you mean, for no reason? The Wii-U, like all of Nintendo's hardware, has copy protection. You can't copy a game onto it from USB, or run a game from USB that wasnt downloaded from that system. Dev kits look nothing like final systems, so Nintendo is going to want to have final systems on the floor. They could secretly have dev kits hidden behind each unit, but that would be pointless (and Nintendo doesn't like to do that, though they ocasionally have to).
Click to expand...
You think the show floor units will be actual retail units? I sincerely doubt it.
 
S

Shadow Hog

Member
weird said:
I WANT CRATES!
Click to expand...
Oh, good, because my TF2 backpack is overflowing with the bastards.

IdeaMan said:
Third-parties titles & demos brought at E3 2012 are currently burned on Wii U "bluray" or it's already done recently for some.

Guys, it's coming !
Click to expand...
Hard to believe it's so soon, honestly. Doesn't even really feel like the hype's especially building up in me, yet, even knowing that Nintendo's the one of the big three to show off what the next generation will bring (if with marginally-better-than-current-generation graphics).
 
G

GameplayWhore

Member
Van Owen said:
Why is this a big deal...? It's either that or run the games off a drive...
Click to expand...

I personally consider it extemely interesting that games until now have been digitally stored and that the physical Wii U has not had an optical drive until at least now. It leads open to the possibility, however remote, of Nintendo releasing a lower cost version of the Wii U which has no optical drive (but perhaps can be expanded externally with one) and starts out digital only. I think this would be a megaton of the "fucking huge" variety. It would also mean that the system could be incredibly cheap towards the end of the generation, as drive (both optical and magnetic) costs are two major components which do not decrease much over time.

I would totally buy a Wii U that had zero moving parts (save for fans, I guess) if I had the option of adding on my own hard drive and a branded optical drive, especially if it meant a lower entry cost.
 
D

DXB-KNIGHT

Member
BD1 said:
Do you think Iwata, Miyamoto and the gang have made it to the US yet?

Has Iwata cleared customs? :)
Click to expand...

1288127-needlemouse1.jpg
Click to expand...
.
 
V

ViewtifulJC

Banned
I can't tell if Iwata is closing his fist like "I'm 'bout to rock these mothafuckas, they don't even know" or he's putting his cartoony hand on the window like "yeeeees, soon you will all kneel to me"
 
G

GameplayWhore

Member
ffdgh said:
can the 2nd one be called justice league unlimited?
Click to expand...

Oh, man, that running storyline about the Justice Lords and the League HQ having a giant downward-facing death ray and the government trying to build a contingency plan and the Flash speed forcing the shit out of Luthor… Oh man, I have to go back and watch the entire run.
 
V

Van Owen

Banned
GameplayWhore said:
I personally consider it extemely interesting that games until now have been digitally stored and that the physical Wii U has not had an optical drive until at least now. It leads open to the possibility, however remote, of Nintendo releasing a lower cost version of the Wii U which has no optical drive (but perhaps can be expanded externally with one) and starts out digital only. I think this would be a megaton of the "fucking huge" variety. It would also mean that the system could be incredibly cheap towards the end of the generation, as drive (both optical and magnetic) costs are two major components which do not decrease much over time.

I would totally buy a Wii U that had zero moving parts (save for fans, I guess) if I had the option of adding on my own hard drive and a branded optical drive, especially if it meant a lower entry cost.
Click to expand...

Or it means Nintendo just didn't have drives that can play unreleased high density discs or the discs themselves ready yet. I don't think it's incredibly uncommon for software in development to run off HDDs.
 
H

helium121

Banned
In not sure if this has been posted and it definitely goes under the RUMOR listing but Games Radar is saying that Final Fantasy Versus 13 is being changed to Final Fantasy 14 and is coming to PS 3 and Wii U this year. They have a video up that is either a really good fake or true.
 
J

JohnTinker

Limbaugh Parrot
helium121 said:
In not sure if this has been posted and it definitely goes under the RUMOR listing but Games Radar is saying that Final Fantasy Versus 13 is being changed to Final Fantasy 14 and is coming to PS 3 and Wii U this year. They have a video up that is either a really good fake or true.
Click to expand...
No, and its a terrible fake.
 
L

lordfroakie

Member
helium121 said:
In not sure if this has been posted and it definitely goes under the RUMOR listing but Games Radar is saying that Final Fantasy Versus 13 is being changed to Final Fantasy 14 and is coming to PS 3 and Wii U this year. They have a video up that is either a really good fake or true.
Click to expand...
Fake and you mean 15. 14 is already out :p
 
D

daakusedo

Member
Of course it's all about nda. Since that last eurogamer interview it seems you can't even speak of "DRC". And it was called digital resistive current, whatever it means.
 
G

GameplayWhore

Member
Van Owen said:
Or it means Nintendo just didn't have drives that can play unreleased high density discs or the discs themselves ready yet. I don't think it's incredibly uncommon for software in development to run off HDDs.
Click to expand...

Oh, sure, that's why I noted that it was a remote possibility.

I'm just hopeful because I use my Wii in the manner I described. My games¹ run off an external hard drive, so there's no rotatin' going on in the system itself. It's a nice way to give the machine a longer life. These things are more complex than the old indestructible Ataris, so some of us have to take extra steps if we want to keep 'em going.




¹ legally purchased. I'm one of the good hackers.
 
E

Effect

Member
The more I think about it, as strange as it might sound, I'm more interesting in finding out what Nintendo is doing for the 3DS this E3. That has been my system of choice lately.I had been slowly moving toward hand held gaming (dedicated portables not iOS/Android. Never will I go there.) in the last few years anyway but it's really taken off with the 3DS. I mainly play it home the huge positive is that I can simply pick it up and play while watching TV or doing something else around the house. I close the game and put it on the charger and the game suspends and I can just jump right back into it later. I can play it in bed before going to sleep or doing something real quick as soon as I wake up.

Being able to possibly play games on the Wii U controller is one of the big draws for the system for me in the end because of how my gaming time is. I rarely want to sit down in front my TV, in another room, to simply play a game unless it's a very specific game (Xenoblade, Zelda, or Mario for example). I rather play on the hand held. It's why I'm cheering for Sony to turn the Vita around. So I can comfortably be a 3DS/Vita gamer first with a Wii U as my secondary setup. This is why the lack of games coming from Japan (written off western companies) to the US on the 3DS is so annoying.

Just hope the conference isn't 100% Wii U related but more 50/50.
 
T

Thraktor

Member
Dreamwriter said:
What do you mean, for no reason? The Wii-U, like all of Nintendo's hardware, has copy protection. You can't copy a game onto it from USB, or run a game from USB that wasnt downloaded from that system. Dev kits look nothing like final systems, so Nintendo is going to want to have final systems on the floor. They could secretly have dev kits hidden behind each unit, but that would be pointless (and Nintendo doesn't like to do that, though they ocasionally have to).
Click to expand...

Discs burned by developers won't run on final systems, though, they'll only run on dev kits. The show-floor units are likely to have their copyright protection measures configured to accept these discs, but perhaps it hasn't been possible to do this for games running off flash memory or hard-drives.

radioheadrule83 said:
You bring up a good point.

Wii would not have made a very good DVD player even if they'd enabled it, no dedicated DSP to handle AC3 / Dolby / DTS, no optical out, limited video options, and the drive was designed to be backwards compatible with the Gamecube's miniCAV discs which probably entailed certain customisations. Even homebrew which is designed to enable the drive to play DVDs doesn't quite get it working right, and I have to wonder if that is because of instruction sets that the drive was configured to understand or something - perhaps they never really planned for the possibility.

The Wii-U disc format is reported to use a variant of the China Blue High-def DVD format, so its blue-laser tech, but not necessarily blu-ray. That probably means we won't see blue ray playback, but if they got Panasonic to deliver a drive in a forward thinking way, it could have the instruction sets needed to change laser colour/attenuation, and enable reading of said discs. The U will have opitcal output via the HDMI port this time, and a DSP that could be used for processing audio and video, so it is potentially a much more capable console in this regard if they ever choose to put out an add-on or software upgrade.

I don't think they will, but it would be a nice surprise if the hardware is capable and they choose to do it someday... it doesn't personally bother me if they do or they don't. Blu-Ray players are cheap these days, and I'm betting a lot of people who care about it have PS3s. Between all the licenses that would need to be signed, its omission might end up saving us $20-40+ on a system.
Click to expand...

The Wii U discs aren't based on China Blue HD format (which is just another name for HD-DVD), and I don't know where that rumour started, to be honest. They're based on Blu-Rays. The reason for the Wii, and most likely the Wii U, not playing DVDs/Blu-Ray films is two-fold. The first, obvious reason is that they'd have to pay licensing costs. The second is that Nintendo's disc formats have all been CAV. This means that the disc spins at a constant rate, resulting in higher data rates when reading from the outer edge of the disc, and lower data rates from the inner edge. Comparatively, DVDs and Blu-Rays are CLV, which means the rate of rotation of the disc changes to ensure a constant data rate. While the drive is most likely capable of both, running in CAV mode leads to a much longer life for the drive than CLV mode. Nintendo puts a lot of care into making sure that their hardware lasts as long as possible, so not playing DVDs/Blu-Rays, and hence not having the drive operate in CLV mode, is one of the decisions they make to achieve that.
 
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