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[Apophis2036]

a and b are constants. Ignoring small tweaks these were not going to see changes. Over the last year and a half I would get info dealing with a and c. And during that time in the WUSTs I was trying to take that info and figure out what b would be. My optimism was based on what I would hear in regards to c. If some were saying this is what we were seeing with c, then they were doing that on a and b. Just because we're now finding actual info on b doesn't magically change c. Let's say you were blind-folded, had a plate of food placed in front of you, and said that was one of the best things you've tasted. However when you take the blindfold off, you find out it was made with worms. Even once you find that out, it doesn't take from the fact it's the one best things you ever tasted. Likewise, just because we are finding out details Nintendo didn't give out doesn't degrade what I've been saying because the performance still came from the specs we didn't know about before. And at the same time the performance will improve as devs learn fully what they can and can't do with the hardware.

Couldn't agree more, once we see what Nintendo EAD, Retro, Monolith are doing with the hardware only blind Sony / MS fanboys will care about WiiU's CPU / Ram speeds.

Third party games will get better with each wave, as on EVERY console.

Good to see you back, if only for a day or two .

 

[big_z]

So, even with a weak CPU, will the GPU still generate some games that look a step up from today's home consoles? Or what?

Could something like Portal 2 be possible on Wii U, or would the CPU not be able to cope?

The wii u can't match a 360/ps3 in terms of raw horse power but can do more modern graphical effects. So if you keep things simple you can do some nicer stuff but more complex games will struggle on the system. It's similar to the ps1/64 days. Ps1 could push more but the n64 had tricks to make up for it.

The real problem with wii u is that it isn't as port friendly like Nintendo was telling developers due to the CPU. They should have upped the speed or gone quad core.


Portal 2 should be possible. That game doesn't require much horse power.

 

[Thunder Monkey]

He was not and is not an insider, and the blind faith people had in his speculations were a big part of the problem.

He wasn't the "insider".

They were lherre, Ideaman, and arkam.

They were the closest things we had in WUST to actual sources.

And they generally just gave us base expectation with little to no detail. Because they didn't want to get fired. Notable goal. Most of us in those threads were going by what we had. Some of those expectations were obviously higher than reality. Some of them highly so. Bg really wasn't one of them. PS2 to their Xbox , and pure numbers that no one in their right mind would think Nintendo couldn't hit.

If you want to shit on someone shit on me for not lowering the bar further. For not always making sure they realized "Nintendo is crazy enough to completely forgo the numbers games in all arenas if it fits their ends." Shit on me for not saying "N64 with expansion pack versus GCN/Xbox." Instead of thinking it would see differences on the scale of an M2 over the N64.

Bg is cool. Apparently overzealous. But who in their right fucking mind would think any company would bottleneck their systems one defining feature in it's GPU by hamstringing it to anemic memory bandwidth?

I sure as fuck didn't.

So please guys. Just give it a rest. We're fucking idiots. I can quote a certain Nintendo loving mod who couldn't believe that shit. I can quote a Durante. People that aren't exactly stupid that were genuinely surprised. And most of them just used the metric of "bare minimum of what you'd expect out of a case that size."

It might be harder to get mad at me because I'm perfectly willing to admit that I'm apparently insane enough to think Nintendo would try to hit a 2012 minimum in some respect.

 

[NBtoaster]

a and b are constants. Ignoring small tweaks these were not going to see changes. Over the last year and a half I would get info dealing with a and c. And during that time in the WUSTs I was trying to take that info and figure out what b would be. My optimism was based on what I would hear in regards to c. If some were saying this is what we were seeing with c, then they were doing that on a and b. Just because we're now finding actual info on b doesn't magically change c. Let's say you were blind-folded, had a plate of food placed in front of you, and said that was one of the best things you've tasted. However when you take the blindfold off, you find out it was made with worms. Even once you find that out, it doesn't take from the fact it's the one best things you ever tasted. Likewise, just because we are finding out details Nintendo didn't give out doesn't degrade what I've been saying because the performance still came from the specs we didn't know about before. And at the same time the performance will improve as devs learn fully what they can and can't do with the hardware.

This doesn't really work because we've had this stuff rumored before release, by Arkam. He directly said the RAM was slow, and even that it was less powerful than the 360. And critisized the CPU.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=34909953&postcount=5407

It's a certainty that devs knew about the RAM before release. If Nintendo didn't tell them and just said "if you're running poorly please cram everything you can into the eDRAM" without giving details they could probably figure it out too.

 

[Thunder Monkey]

Oh and I still do expect Nintendo games to be hot. No matter the capability of the platform.

Some of their teams made really pretty stuff on the Wii. That's no easy task. But now I'm not really expecting 3rd party ports to look or run great, because of just baffling design decisions. I mean if the thing is successful and sells enough 3rd party wares they could try to make it work.

But good God it's looking like that is going to be a hell of a gulf in the coming years.

 

[Apophis2036]

This doesn't really work because we've had this stuff rumored before release, by Arkam. He directly said the RAM was slow, and even that it was less powerful than the 360. And critisized the CPU.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=34909953&postcount=5407

Who was the guy who said the final WiiU devkit gave 'several hundred percent increase in performance' a couple of weeks ago ?

 

[bgassassin]

This doesn't really work because we've had this stuff rumored before release, by Arkam. He directly said the RAM was slow, and even that it was less powerful than the 360. And critisized the CPU.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=34909953&postcount=5407

?

You're not disagreeing with what I said.

He wasn't the "insider".

They were lherre, Ideaman, and arkam.

They were the closest things we had in WUST to actual sources.

And they generally just gave us base expectation with little to no detail. Because they didn't want to get fired. Notable goal. Most of us in those threads were going by what we had. Some of those expectations were obviously higher than reality. Some of them highly so. Bg really wasn't one of them. PS2 to their Xbox , and pure numbers that no one in their right mind would think Nintendo couldn't hit.

If you want to shit on someone shit on me for not lowering the bar further. For not always making sure they realized "Nintendo is crazy enough to completely forgo the numbers games in all arenas if it fits their ends." Shit on me for not saying "N64 with expansion pack versus GCN/Xbox." Instead of thinking it would see differences on the scale of an M2 over the N64.

Bg is cool. Apparently overzealous. But who in their right fucking mind would think any company would bottleneck their systems one defining feature in it's GPU by hamstringing it to anemic memory bandwidth?

I sure as fuck didn't.

So please guys. Just give it a rest. We're fucking idiots. I can quote a certain Nintendo loving mod who couldn't believe that shit. I can quote a Durante. People that aren't exactly stupid that were genuinely surprised. And most of them just used the metric of "bare minimum of what you'd expect out of a case that size."

It might be harder to get mad at me because I'm perfectly willing to admit that I'm apparently insane enough to think Nintendo would try to hit a 2012 minimum in some respect.

And I even said several times I wasn't an insider and that I was passing on what I learned/was told.

But I disagree on being overzealous.

 

[NBtoaster]

?

You're not disagreeing with what I said.

You're saying that the information on release about the RAM and CPU performance are new info, part of "b", information not given to developers aren't you? But we've heard about that long before consoles were opened and inspected.

Who was the guy who said the final WiiU devkit gave 'several hundred percent increase in performance' a couple of weeks ago ?

I think it soemone said 5-6 frames in their case.

 

[Thunder Monkey]

?

You're not disagreeing with what I said.



And I even said several times I wasn't an insider and that I was passing on what I learned/was told.

But I disagree on being overzealous.

You would!

*shakes fist*

I'm not even scared of ya anymore!

*kicks shin*

You're saying that the information on release about the RAM and CPU performance are new info, part of "b", information not given to developers aren't you? But we've heard about that long before consoles were opened and inspected.

RAM was an honest mistake.

Early dev kits tend to just be specialized PC's. Thinking that the same low clock DDR3 would remain in the finalized system is just nutty.

You see where I'm going with this. We weren't crazy enough for Nintendo.

If they hadn't just beat me senseless I'd feel shame for making them that angry.

 

[bgassassin]

You're saying that the information on release about the RAM and CPU performance are new info, part of "b", information not given to developers aren't you? But we've heard about that long before consoles were opened and inspected.

I didn't say it was new. And devs were not given clock speeds, which I've mentioned many times before. They knew it was "slow" because of actual development. That's why I listed that under b because the actual details were not given. This time last year people I know with actual info thought it might be GDDR3. The type of memory was never given either from what I remember. Like I was saying b was always constant and that knowing the actual details of b now doesn't all of a sudden affect c.

You would!

*shakes fist*

I'm not even scared of ya anymore!

*kicks shin*

Dang it TM! *hobbles out of thread*

 

[i-Lo]

Can someone confirm that the tablet controller can be connected to the main system for recharging while still being able to use it to play games or use it for other tasks?

 

[H3rTz DoNuT]

Can someone confirm that the tablet controller can be connected to the main system for recharging while still being able to use it to play games or use it for other tasks?

You can do it, but you don't connect the controller to the system it has its own AC adapter.

 

[Doc Holliday]

Can someone confirm that the tablet controller can be connected to the main system for recharging while still being able to use it to play games or use it for other tasks?

I don't think so

You can do it.

To the system via USB? You can charge while playing with the power supply that's included but I'm not sure you could do it with a mini usb cable plugged in the Wii U.

 

[guek]

Can someone confirm that the tablet controller can be connected to the main system for recharging while still being able to use it to play games or use it for other tasks?

unfortunately it can only be charged via a wall socket. But it can definitely be used while plugged in.

 

[Brad Grenz]

Can someone confirm that the tablet controller can be connected to the main system for recharging while still being able to use it to play games or use it for other tasks?

It doesn't connect to the base unit. It has its owner AC adapter for charging. You can play while it is plugged in.

 

[Thunder Monkey]

One day plugging them into your penis won't just be a dream, but a reality.

 

[onQ123]

Sup BG!

"My God, The Dead Has Arisen"

 

[NBtoaster]

I didn't say it was new. And devs were not given clock speeds, which I've mentioned many times before. They knew it was "slow" because of actual development. That's why I listed that under b because the actual details were not given. This time last year people I know with actual info thought it might GDDR3. The type of memory was never given either from what I remember. Like I was saying b was always constant and that knowing the actual details of b now doesn't all of a sudden affect c.

But c has never been anything special. The original E3 demos, Arkams posts, this years E3 showings, reports of hardware on par, and now on release, evidence of what both first and third party devs have been getting from the hardware has always resembled 360 performance, give or take. In your analogy, it doesn't resemble worms that were the best thing ever tasted, it's worms that tasted like worms.

 

[Instro]

One day plugging them into your penis won't just be a dream, but a reality.

Nintendo innovation yo.

 

[H3rTz DoNuT]

To the system via USB? You can charge while playing with the power supply that's included but I'm not sure you could do it with a mini usb cable plugged in the Wii U.

My bad, I though he was just not aware of the fact that you don't change the controller through the USB but its own AC Adapter.

In that case you can't charge it through USB but you can still play games and do all other things while the controller is charging.

 

[i-Lo]

Thanks for the info guys.

 

[bgassassin]

But c has never been anything special. The original E3 demos, Arkams posts, this years E3 showings, reports of hardware on par, and now on release, evidence of what both first and third party devs have been getting from the hardware has always resembled 360 performance, give or take. In your analogy, it doesn't resemble worms that were the best thing ever tasted, it's worms that tasted like worms.

Well first I've never claimed c to be anything special. What I have claimed is that Wii U from a power perspective is a mid-gen console. I've said said it's asinine to judge its capabilities based on PS360 ports and 1st party titles that fall under the category of not being big budget titles that Iwata said would be the case. My analogy is fine as far as I'm concerned.

And you keep touting Arkam (who I believed from the get go) and are only focusing on a portion of what he said.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=42010101&postcount=1420

Some yes. But the same problems are still present if you are porting a game over from the Xbox360. So if companies dont want to invest retooling games, you will get crappy(downgraded) ports.


That said,I am nothing but excited for the console and cant't wait to see the first round of games made from the ground up on the WiiU. That is when we will see what this little beast can do!

 

[H3rTz DoNuT]

Nothing will matter anyway once Wonderful 101 is out...

 

[bgassassin]

By the way, did I see it correctly somewhere that Wii U has a dual-core arm?

 

[NBtoaster]

Well first I've never claimed c to be anything special. What I have claimed is that Wii U from a power perspective is a mid-gen console. I've said said it's asinine to judge its capabilities based on PS360 ports and 1st party titles that fall under the category of not being big budget titles that Iwata said would be the case. My analogy is fine as far as I'm concerned.

And you keep touting Arkam (who I believed from the get go) and are only focusing on a portion of what he said.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=42010101&postcount=1420

Well I await whatever your sources are cooking up. By your optimisim, they're getiing better things out of the system than anything that has been shown so far.

But the question remains just how much retooling is required in third party engines to not get downgraded ports, and if it is reasonable.

 

[bgassassin]

Well I await whatever your sources are cooking up. By your optimisim, they're getiing better things out of the system than anything that has been shown so far.

But the question remains just how much retooling is required in third party engines to not get downgraded ports, and if it is reasonable.

I agree with everything you just said. I also look forward to seeing if the optimism is warranted.

 

[Thunder Monkey]

Well I await whatever your sources are cooking up. By your optimisim, they're getiing better things out of the system than anything that has been shown so far.

But the question remains just how much retooling is required in third party engines to not get downgraded ports, and if it is reasonable.

At this point I can't see the design of the system as anything other than a clusterfuck for 3rd party relations.

I mean games made specifically for it? They should look great. But in an era of uniformity Nintendo continues to do whatever the fuck they want.

 

[KojiKnight]

But in an era of uniformity Nintendo continues to do whatever the fuck they want.

To be fair... it's worked for them. Nintendo is the most conservative gaming company in the world. Easily. Nintendo doesn't bend to outside forces, outside forces bend to Nintendo and Nintendo will continue to be that way until something really big happens to change that.

If Wii U is even moderately successful, I expect them to continue that trend to Next-next gen as well. Literally, the only way Nintendo is going to truely change is if the Wii U is so bad for them that they have to cut it's life cycle early.

 

[Thunder Monkey]

To be fair... it's worked for them. Nintendo is the most conservative gaming company in the world. Easily. Nintendo doesn't bend to outside forces, outside forces bend to Nintendo and Nintendo will continue to be that way until something really big happens to change that.

If Wii U is even moderately successful, I expect them to continue that trend to Next-next gen as well. Literally, the only way Nintendo is going to truely change is if the Wii U is so bad for them that they have to cut it's life cycle early.

I really doubt it.

If there was any time to be able to get something small, cheapish, and powerful now was it. I think this is the track Nintendo is on now. Designing every system like it will bomb. Like they'll only get 21 million or less people to buy them.

Cut costs in manufacturing to make sure a degree of profitability is attained early on, and artificially stagnate development costs to a level they think they can sustain. That level might currently be lower than I initially thought.

 

[lwilliams3]

By the way, did I see it correctly somewhere that the Wii U has a dual-core arm?

I'm not sure if was specifically dual-core, but wsippel did say that he found some evidence that the Wii U has a multi-core ARM processor

 

[FyreWulff]

I really doubt it.

If there was any time to be able to get something small, cheapish, and powerful now was it. I think this is the track Nintendo is on now. Designing every system like it will bomb. Like they'll only get 21 million or less people to buy them.

Cut costs in manufacturing to make sure a degree of profitability is attained early on, and artificially stagnate development costs to a level they think they can sustain. That level might currently be lower than I initially thought.

Designing every system like it will bomb is a fairly decent strategy though. They don't have other businesses and departments to hide the losses in.

They always gives themselves an out when possible. They have to be able to weather a down generation and then just try again 5 years later.

If Nintendo had done what Sony did, and released a console that wiped out all the profits made off the last one - we'd be talking about who's going to be buying their IP at auction right now.

 

[Glorified G]

If Nintendo had done what Sony did, and released a console that wiped out all the profits made off the last one - we'd be talking about who's going to be buying their IP at auction right now.

The most annoying strawman used in these arguments. It's either Nintendo releases cutting edge tech at $600 console that suffers huge loses or worefully underpowered tech that struggles to keep up 7 year old hardware.

Don't some people realize Nintendo has other options?

 

[FyreWulff]

The most annoying strawman used in these arguments. It's either Nintendo releases cutting edge tech at $600 console that suffers huge loses or worefully underpowered tech that struggles to keep up 7 year old hardware.

Don't some people realize Nintendo has other options?

Yeah, except you can do stuff on the Wii U that you can't do on the 360 or PS3, so it's not "struggling to keep up with 7 year old hardware" either.

 

[Thunder Monkey]

Designing every system like it will bomb is a fairly decent strategy though. They don't have other businesses and departments to hide the losses in.

They always gives themselves an out when possible. They have to be able to weather a down generation and then just try again 5 years later.

If Nintendo had done what Sony did, and released a console that wiped out all the profits made off the last one - we'd be talking about who's going to be buying their IP at auction right now.

Well duh.

I admit that it's prudent... but it's also becoming a significant detriment to continued support. They can't prop a platform alone, and WiiU seems to be a step in the wrong direction for winning the support of 3rd parties. Unless it's literally supposed to be an "anything goes" console... kind of like Wii.

That's a sobering thought.

 

[Warm Machine]

Reading through that speculation thread it looks like a lot of people owe Arkham an apology.

 

[FyreWulff]

Well duh.

I admit that it's prudent... but it's also becoming a significant detriment to continued support. They can't prop a platform alone, and WiiU seems to be a step in the wrong direction for winning the support of 3rd parties. Unless it's literally supposed to be an "anything goes" console... kind of like Wii.

That's a sobering thought.

They propped the N64 and GameCube up on their own.

Also, I don't know how the Wii U is a step in the wrong direction for third parties.

- Much less restrictive patching than Xbox or PS3
- Almost 100% free cert cost for patches and DLC
- Developers and publishers can set their own prices, and can lower them at will for sales
- The hardware is quite capable enough of handling games made on current established middleware (Unity, UE3, idtech_, Anvil, etc), saving third parties money in dev and research costs while offering enough new functionality and possibilities to go beyond what they could do on existing hardware.

 

[KojiKnight]

Well duh.

I admit that it's prudent... but it's also becoming a significant detriment to continued support. They can't prop a platform alone, and WiiU seems to be a step in the wrong direction for winning the support of 3rd parties. Unless it's literally supposed to be an "anything goes" console... kind of like Wii.

That's a sobering thought.

I think Nintendo is, rightly, going after indies more this gen. The fact that their digital store is currently posed to be the best for them (no fees for DLCs, patches, etc) could mean that Nintendo has more or less decided against courting multi-plats... With dev costs set to raise again this coming gen (despite what some people would have you believe) and with it, undoubtedly either a rise in the price of games OR the loss of more studios (or both) Nintendo could be setting themselves up to weather another great game industry collapse.

Whether you agree with Nintendo or not... there is no doubt they are A: Not going anywhere anytime soon and B: Resourceful as all F***ing get out. They are the only pure gaming company still in the business of making consoles, and like it or not... they've been manipulating nearly every trend in gaming since they hit the market.

 

[tenchir]

I'm not sure if was specifically dual-core, but wsippel did say that he found some evidence that the Wii U has a multi-core ARM processor

Whether it is multicore or not, the Wii U has to have an ARM processor because the Wii had one for BC. This is from the wiibrew page:

The Hollywood includes an ARM9 core to handle I/O and security, nicknamed the Starlet. This is a very interesting piece of hardware, as it basically does everything that makes a Wii different from a GameCube.

NEC ARM926EJ-S SoC.
Big endian for compatibility with the Broadway
ARM and thumb instruction set
Clocked at 243MHz (Hollywood clock)

Looks like the Wii's OS ran on this rather than on Broadway?

The Wii's firmware is in the form of IOSs (thought by the Wii homebrew developers to stand for 'Input Output Systems' or 'Internal Operating Systems'[2]), which run on a separate ARM architecture processor to other Wii software (nicknamed Starlet by the Wii homebrew community, as it is physically located inside the graphics chip, the Hollywood, so it is a small part of Hollywood. The patent for the upcoming Wii U indicates a similar device which is simply named "Input/Output Processor"[3]). These control input and output between the code running on the main processor (the PowerPC "Broadway" processor) and the Wii's hardware features that did not exist on the GameCube, which can only be accessed via the ARM.

If the Wii U OS ran on an ARM processor, this could explain why it seems so slow?

 

[ShadowFox08]

Did anyone read and post this article yet?
http://www.zeldainformer.com/news/c...ii-u-is-powerful-its-just-next-generation-pow

Is the Wii U's GPGPU really based off of Radeon HD 5670(this supports direct X11 graphics)?

 

[KojiKnight]

Whether it is multicore or not, it has to have an ARM processor because the Wii had it.

Err... not the soundest of logic... but ultimately true. We know the Wii U has an ARM processor that likely handles the same security and I/O tasks.

(edit) Shadowfox: Don't trust any information you get from zelda informer. They will literally post anything regardless of how terribly wrong it is. Just check their "leaked wii U specs" they reported earlier this year.

 

[EatChildren]

I'm curious, how did gaf react to wii specs, reveal and launch? I completely ignored the chaos back then lol

Much like this, there was a good portion of people who knew the Wii totally, couldn't, wouldn't be as underpowered as it seems, because there was no way Nintendo would/could put an overclocked GameCube in that little white box.

 

[guek]

Did anyone read and post this article yet?
http://www.zeldainformer.com/news/c...ii-u-is-powerful-its-just-next-generation-pow

Is the Wii U's GPGPU really based off of Radeon HD 5670(this supports direct X11 graphics)?

Zelda informer? Ruh roh

...*starts reading*

 

[chertipros]

Did anyone read and post this article yet?
http://www.zeldainformer.com/news/c...ii-u-is-powerful-its-just-next-generation-pow

Is the Wii U's GPGPU really based off of Radeon HD 5670(this supports direct X11 graphics)?

1 don't trust zeldainformer (I thought it was banned?)
2 it was debunked a page back

 

[tenchir]

I just found some info about the Wii U OS and ARM from a banned website, so not sure if it's reliable. It's not hard to find if you google "wii u arm os".

 

[Thunder Monkey]

Much like this, there was a good portion of people who knew the Wii totally, couldn't, wouldn't be as underpowered as it seems, because there was no way Nintendo would/could put an overclocked GameCube in that little white box.

It kind of hurts to see them go through it. Especially those that can't just go "Wow... WTF Nintendo?"

 

[AzaK]

The unfortunate part was those of moderate expectations were still shooting too high. I'm one of them, as was Fourth Storm (of which he just admitted).

Most expectations on the forum at large were "Better than PS3/360." Even Durante fell prey to lofty expectations. But at the time few aside from specialguys and Van Owens seriously thought it would be in any way appreciably weaker.

When two or three are the most notable detractors... especially when they lack any form of tact, they tend to be marginalized. And in some ways they ended up being closer to reality than those we can see are arguing with pure intent.

But we still have no idea what the machine is capable of. So anyone can be right, or it could be somewhere in the middle of the stupid "weaker than current gen" and "Close to Orbis/Durango"

But c has never been anything special. The original E3 demos, Arkams posts, this years E3 showings, reports of hardware on par, and now on release, evidence of what both first and third party devs have been getting from the hardware has always resembled 360 performance, give or take. In your analogy, it doesn't resemble worms that were the best thing ever tasted, it's worms that tasted like worms.

C has been pretty special I think, if you look back to the Bird demo. That thing was gorgeous and rendering full scenes to both the TV and GamePad. Whether the console is now weaker than that remains to be seen.

I wonder if the costs for the GamePad just blew out and they decided to adjust down some other features.

 

[Thunder Monkey]

But we still have no idea what the machine is capable of. So anyone can be right, or it could be somewhere in the middle of the stupid "weaker than current gen" and "Close to Orbis/Durango"

Unless the GPU and eDram are packing an army of bandwidth ignoring purple Pikmin I'm pretty sure the dream of WiiU easily handling ports from the 360/PS3 are out the window (even if possible... would any publisher dedicate the money?) and of receiving anything more than the occasional pity port from Durango/Orbis. You're talking about not only a lacking CPU, but a GPU that has to fight for very limited memory bandwidth. There's only so much 32MB eDram is going to be able to do to help in a memory sense.

And because of that the GPU will be cockblocked. If it had any true potential for general purpose code... this didn't help. So limited CPU, limited GPU because of low bandwidth DDR3. An esoteric design by any stretch. And probably not suitable for much more than Nintendo's greatest hits.

Most devs aren't going to have the time or money to tailor their games around the WiiU's strengths and faults.

 

[Dreamwriter]

The original Wii power situation was strange, looking back on it - the first anyone heard of the Revolution being "less than powerful" was when Nintendo's own VP of Corporate Affairs (Perrin Kaplan) said it would be "2 to 3 times" as powerful as a Gamecube ("It's not about turbo power, it's what you do with it.") And even though it was Nintendo themselves who said it, tons of people were disbelieving. The GAF thread on that was amazing. The next day, however, news started spreading around the internet that Kaplan's statement had been wrong...but it wasn't Nintendo who took it back, it was IGN who only said "The information was later determined to be false," without attributing a single source, yet everybody totally believed that, because they so much wanted the Revolution to be powerful and didn't think Nintendo would release something that wasn't.

However, a few months later, IGN posted a news story with rumored specs they got from developers, and those specs matched up with what Kaplan had said (and there was even some thought that it may be less than 2 times as powerful). And at that point, everyone totally believed them. They wailed and gnashed their teeth and said Nintendo were morons, but they didn't disbelieve the low specs.

Note, this was all long before the system was released, before it even got its "Wii" name, before any game footage had been released. So it was quite a different circumstance than we are seeing these days with the Wii U, where even after the system has launched, people are arguing about system power.

 

[Master Nairb]

Rumor: "Wii U is about to take over the gaming industry."

- An anti-nintendoer after playing the new console
November 2012