Ive been really enjoying the conversations here and learning a lot. I can tell many of you are real pros and I appreciate taking the time to analyze this and discuss for the pure curiosity of it. Especially in the past few pages here there's been some great work in labeling, discussing, etc as we try to wrap our heads around this. I dont think I know enough about the hardware schema to dispute any of the die shot analysis, and certainly not Fourth Storms work so I dont mean to come across as combative. That said he made a statement a while back that I wanted to clarify based on past examples. I understand the rationale for thinking the wii u is 160 shaders as well as the size discrepancies and other factors that make that range 160-320. The truth is we dont have much in-game evidence one way or another to draw on and so I wouldnt want preconceived ideas to influence or bias the analysis.
Originally Nintendo did say the game was going to be 1080p right on their official website. Experience Mario like never before
in full 1080p HD, only on the Wii U console!
http://mynintendonews.com/2012/10/11/new-super-mario-bros-u-will-run-at-1080p/
Admittedly that doesnt really mean anything. As you say 1080p is a buzzword so a marketing person could have written that on the site not knowing any better. I couldnt find a link so maybe I am mistaken but I thought I remembered Iwata clearing up the NSMBU 1080p thing saying that they experimented with it at 1080p but chose not to do it for the launch game (possibly implying they could have done it with more time? I'm speculating).
To put this in perspective I googled for a list of xbox 360 launch titles and unfortunately found a kotaku article that I am very begrudgingly linking here.
http://kotaku.com/the-xbox-360-had-18-games-at-launch-heres-what-they-l-509057349
Granted, Criterion Games is an exceptionally talented studio and in a different league than say NeverSoft, but the point remains. Games like Tony Hawk American Wasteland, which were developed for the PS2 generation, are not dramatically (or at all) better looking on the much more advanced Xenos architecture. I bring it up because Ive read many people in this thread point to Black Ops 2 Wii U as proof that the system is NOT in any way more capable than PS/360.
But looking back to the silly Kotaku article, even Perfect Dark Zero looks awful in comparison to todays 360 games and Rare was a very talented developer, especially back then. They were also bought my Microsoft for a gajillion dollars and so Id assume were given time, budget, and tools to complete that project. So it makes me cringe a little to read best they could squeeze for a brand new system, with small team, small budget, based on previous gen code, and completing it in a couple months.
Im not making an argument for or against the hardware I just wanted to caution against having a myopic graphical comparison between 360 and Wii U and having that influence die shot interpretation. So take that for what its worth and please please please dont start debating launch 360 games. Lets just agree to say that graphically they have improved substantially over its lifetime. And as Ive shown through past example in this post, ports of previous generation games do not automatically drastically improve on drastically more powerful hardware. (JordanN Im implying that the 360 was drastically more powerful than the PS2, and NOT implying that the Wii U is drastically more powerful than anything ; ) )