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[IdeaMan]

The CPU is not 1X Xbox360.
The results of specific benchmarks, engines, middleware, could be. But developers have (or will with further optimizations) more processing capabilities than on Xbox360 (and not only thanks to the audio DSP, I/O chip, etc.).

BUT it seems it won't reach a leap comparable to the RAM amount. A moderate advancement, a lot from efficiency (out of order, instructions, cache, etc, i touched upon that before)

For the GPU, it won't be 1,5X Xbox360 when developers will be more accustomed to its specifics, when the SDK, middleware, engines, API, and other elements will be, again, more refined, etc.

 

[nasos_333]

So now we use off-screen Assassin's Creed 3 footage to compare the Wii U to the PS360

Oh, and the infamous x360 multiplier is back, too!

http://img689.imageshack.us/img689/5753/02d41e4cef37f4orig.jpg

Xbox 360 AC1 pic

Indeed, even AC1 looked miles better than those

Are there any pics of the xbox 360 version of AC3 ?

Comparing to the PS3 version is not the same as comparing it to the 360 one, we need that to get the full picture

 

[Jinko]

Meaningless comparison. A bulk of improvements doesn't come from using more of the system's resources as much as it domes from using those resources smarter. Developers already know how to use systems of 360/PS3/WiiU ballbark, therefore WiiU's graphics output improvements won't be as dramatic as they were during PS360 lifetime. Not to mention majority of 3rd party developers will be researching PS4/Xbox 3, not WiiU.

Yea the majority of the games we have seen are from Nintendo themselves who have no such experience.

When we can see side by side comparisons of 360 vs Wii-u on AC3 then we can talk, even then its unlikely Ubi will upgrade the game in any significant way.

 

[Alexios]

Good luck fitting Battlefield 4 and COD Modern Warfare 4 in it...

You know Modern Warfare 3 was ported to Wii right? And that in a similar power gap, BF3 was ported down to PS360, right? And that you haven't actually seen Modern Warfare 4 to know exactly what kind of features it has that would need to be cut down for a less powerful platform than Sony/MS will push, right? And that you haven't seen the power of those other platforms either, right? Or even the power of this platform beyond vague specs and quick ports, right? Then why you trollin?

 

[shinra-bansho]

Wii u also has 3x the amount of RAM that the ps3 and 360 have. That alone means its in a different generation.

512 MB of it is supposedly used/reserved for the OS compared to the 32 MB and 64 MB of the 360 and PS3 respectively, iirc, and it has two screens to deal with though.

 

[darthdago]

So now we use off-screen Assassin's Creed 3 footage to compare the Wii U to the PS360

Oh, and the infamous x360 multiplier is back, too!

Hey Nibel, super Avatar!! Morgen 20:45 geht die Post ab!!

Ja und der Multiplikator ist zurück...leider...

 

[Kentpaul]

Wrong.

The ram size alone will give devs a lot of options in size of levels, texturing or various other things the HD twins don't have any more resources to do.

I already can't play 360/PS3 games because I'm so used to gaming on the PC, so another gig ram ain't going to put the wiiu onto my radar.

 

[Jonm1010]

Wrong.

The ram size alone will give devs a lot of options in size of levels, texturing or various other things the HD twins don't have any more resources to do.

And what happens next year when all those devs are now using their next gen engines to ramp up development for the much more powerful 720/ps4 systems?

I feel like nintendo has set themselves up to get ports for the next year and then once the new systems launch its downgraded versions or no versions all over again. A system once again left with shovelware, down ports and first party only games on a system that looks noticeably years behind.

 

[Log4Girlz]

The Last of Us really shocked me. If someone told me it was for PS4 I would have believed them (with 1st gen games always looking far less advanced than later games naturally). Once Retro shows their hand, I think people are going to be real impressed. If what they are working on is a bit more linear than what I envisioned earlier, it will be that more impressive on a raw technical level.

 

[nasos_333]

The Last of Us really shocked me. If someone told me it was for PS4 I would have believed them (with 1st gen games always looking far less advanced than later games naturally). Once Retro shows their hand, I think people are going to be real impressed. If what they are working on is a bit more linear than what I envisioned earlier, it will be that more impressive on a raw technical level.

Indeed, same for Beyond, Gears Judgment and Halo 4

All look like something launch next gen titles could be like imo

 

[gogogow]

You know Modern Warfare 3 was ported to Wii right? And that in a similar power gap, BF3 was ported down to PS360, right? And that you haven't actually seen Modern Warfare 4 to know exactly what kind of features it has that would need to be cut down for a less powerful platform than Sony/MS will push, right? And that you haven't seen the power of those other platforms either, right? Or even the power of this platform beyond vague specs and quick ports, right? Then why you trollin?

Not even, the Wii U having modern shaders makes a huge difference.

 

[Naked Prime]

maybe we should rate developers and publisher with a bs multiplier. So is UBI Soft 1.5X EA or 2X Activison? Mikami 4X Inafune or 2.75X Suda 51?

 

[Kentpaul]

And what happens next year when all those devs are now using their next gen engines to ramp up development for the much more powerful 720/ps4 systems?

I feel like nintendo has set themselves up to get ports for the next year and then once the new systems launch its downgraded versions or no versions all over again. A system once again left with shovelware, down ports and first party only games on a system that looks noticeably years behind.

This.

Another generation of downgraded ports No thanks. I like my systems with a bit of juice in them to strive my gaming experience forward.

 

[Bear]

512 MB of it is supposedly used/reserved for the OS compared to the 32 MB and 64 MB of the 360 and PS3 respectively, iirc, and it has two screens to deal with though.

I keep hearing this, but wouldn't it make more sense if it is 512 mb of flash memory reserved for the OS and future updates? I'm pretty sure using half a gig of RAM isn't even possible for a console OS, that kind of overhead is well into Windows territory.

 

[Alexios]

Not even, the Wii U having modern shaders makes a huge difference.

Um, I think you need to re-read my post as that observation which I didn't dispute only reinforces its point.

Though I don't think we know exactly how modern the architecture is, and how it will compare to as of yet unknown systems.

 

[Log4Girlz]

Indeed, same for Beyond, Gears Judgment and Halo 4

All look like something launch next gen titles could be like imo

The bad part is...I really do feel that Retro and perhaps Monolith Soft will be the only devs to really ring out every ounce of power from the Wii U. The vast majority of everything on the system will be below the aforementioned games. The Wii U just is not powerful enough to guarantee big jumps in graphic quality with any given engine. It would take work and effort, something that costs money.

 

[Margalis]

I'd say the people who have seen both versions running in person have a slightly clearer view than we do judging the game off streaming internet video. Or do you think they are simply out to hate on Nintendo for no reason?

I saw both running in person.

Did you?

 

[Horse Armour]

I keep hearing it, but wouldn't it make more sense if it is 512 mb of flash memory reserved for the OS and future updates? I'm pretty sure using half a gig of RAM isn't even possible for a console OS, that kind of overhead is well into Windows territory.

The full OS and a web browser running in the background could easily use that up.

 

[shinra-bansho]

I keep hearing this, but wouldn't it make more sense if it is 512 mb of flash memory reserved for the OS and future updates? I'm pretty sure using half a gig of RAM isn't even possible for a console OS, that kind of overhead is well into Windows territory.

It does seem ridiculously large - considering the OS usage of the current gen HD twins - but that's just the rumor I've seen floating around here.

 

[Xdrive05]

You know, Nintys A-teams, which is basically the core of why gamers care about them at all, have no experience at all on this level of hardware. It will be exceedingly interesting to see if they can even keep up with 3rd party teams who have been working in this space for 6 or 7 years now.

Not to go OT, but anyone else curious about that?

 

[bomma_man]

I keep hearing this, but wouldn't it make more sense if it is 512 mb of flash memory reserved for the OS and future updates? I'm pretty sure using half a gig of RAM isn't even possible for a console OS, that kind of overhead is well into Windows territory.

from what people have been saying it's just a precaution - they'd rather have too much than not enough - then when it's finished they'll optimise the shit out of it.

 

[JoshuaJSlone]

But 1,5 x is about wha'ts needed to render the same thing (than ps360) on the main screen + streaming (0.5) extra ressources to the tablet.

Hardly. Most of the cases we've seen are inventory/map/controls on second screen, and those that aren't (NSMB, Rayman) are usually mirroring the main view. That at 480p takes faaaar less than half the resources of the main screen at 720+p.

 

[blu]

Meaningless comparison.

Let's see..

A bulk of improvements doesn't come from using more of the system's resources as much as it domes from using those resources smarter.

Nope. The bulk of the improvements during the lifespan of a console come from two things:

1. Better hw utilisation (i.e. putting a bigger number of those transistors to better use).
2. Algorithmic advancements - people invent new and improved graphics algorithms all the time (see deferred shading this gen).

Developers already know how to use systems of 360/PS3/WiiU ballbark

They do? You mean, every game released for the past two years on the ps360 has been Uncharted material?

.. therefore WiiU's graphics output improvements won't be as dramatic as they were during PS360 lifetime.

Nope. They will be just as dramatic where it comes to budget/effort/dev skill/algorithmic know-how advancements.

Not to mention majority of 3rd party developers will be researching PS4/Xbox 3, not WiiU.

That's only partially true. The bulk of the graphics algorithms advancements are not cutting-edge shade-models -reliant. Most things invented for the Orbis/Durango will be applicable to anything from the wiiU to the ipad (to a different scale, naturally).

 

[Log4Girlz]

You know, Nintys A-teams, which is basically the core of why gamers care about them at all, have no experience at all on this level of hardware. It will be exceedingly interesting to see if they can even keep up with 3rd party teams who have been working in this space for 6 or 7 years now.

Not to go OT, but anyone else curious about that?

Pikmin looked like a high-res Wii game. NSMBU didn't even bother to run at 1080 p. Nintendo Land could easily be ported to Vita with no real loss in quality. Other than Retro and Monolith Soft, I don't see anyone pushing anything.

 

[Alexios]

Pikmin looked like a high-res Wii game. NSMBU didn't even bother to run at 1080 p. Nintendo Land could easily be ported to Vita with no real loss in quality. Other than Retro and Monolith Soft, I don't see anyone pushing anything.

Because Wii Play, WarioWare, New Super Mario Bros. Wii, Wii Music, etc, pushed the Wii as much as Super Mario Galaxy and Skyward Sword (regardless of the game's quality in other areas) did, right? Come on, dude...

 

[szaromir]

Yea the majority of the games we have seen are from Nintendo themselves who have no such experience.

They don't but they have great source material (PS360 games throughout the years) which is well documented. They don't need to guess which approach is the best since PS360 devs already made that work for them.

Nintendo's problem isn't how WiiU compares to PS360 but will it be able to run the same games as PS4/X3 (even downgraded, but with the same fundamental game behind). Wii couldn't and that's what killed the platform in the long run, not SD output.

 

[Krappadizzle]

Ubisoft??? The same guys who said that the Wii U would only support one Gamepad!! Seems Legit xD

Or Nintendo who said the same thing until this e3?! It seems like after last e3 when they said wii u would only support 1 pad it got such negative feedback that they probably added in some extra HW to make sure it could support at least 2. Ubisoft is not at fault. Though this is like any console generation, the initial batch of software to come out isn't too much better looking than the end of the previous gen. I want Nintendo to succeed like some, but a poor port on newer hardware isn't going to help that cause. Nintendo had a poor showing for a new console, I was expecting something to be as good if not better than what we have already had for the past 5+ years. I'm not gonna count the big N out yet though, it's still way too early for an unreleased console to say that it can't deliver.

 

[Captain Smoker]

Pikmin looked like a high-res Wii game. NSMBU didn't even bother to run at 1080 p. Nintendo Land could easily be ported to Vita with no real loss in quality. Other than Retro and Monolith Soft, I don't see anyone pushing anything.

EAD 3 should be in the same league.

And EAD Tokyo.

 

[sykoex]

This.

Another generation of downgraded ports No thanks. I like my systems with a bit of juice in them to strive my gaming experience forward.

Personally (and I think most people feel this way), the price of a Nintendo console is worth it for the first party offerings alone. Anything on top of that is just icing on the cake.

 

[Margalis]

Pikmin looked like a high-res Wii game.

No. It really didn't.

 

[Dambrosi]

Fuck sakes, another Wii power rumour from an anonymous source.

When will you guys learn?






And even if true - Wii's CPU is as powerful as Cell? Last I heard, Cell's still a beast.

 

[Log4Girlz]

Because Wii Play pushed the Wii as much as Super Mario Galaxy and Skyward Sword (regardless of the game's quality) did, right?

I think Pikmin 3 is indicative of what Nintendo is capable of with the Wii U. It is not anything like a Mii themed purposely simple game.

No. It really didn't.

Yeah it did.

 

[gogogow]

So which team did the Zelda Wii U tech demo, because the lighting and detailed environments were pretty amazing looking.

 

[venne]

We'll probably see cell phones passing it in power in two or three years.

What a boneheaded move.

 

[googleplex]

Wii u also has 3x the amount of RAM that the ps3 and 360 have. That alone means its in a different generation.

LOL No.

If you put 512mb in a PS2 it wouldn't put it in the same generation as the PS3 and 360.

 

[amstradcpc]

So which team did the Zelda Wii U tech demo, because the lighting and detailed environments were pretty amazing looking.

Epic?. It was unreal engine IIRC.

 

[Log4Girlz]

So which team did the Zelda Wii U tech demo, because the lighting and detailed environments were pretty amazing looking.

Probably Retro, ahuahuahuahua.

 

[sykoex]

No. It really didn't.

For reference this is Pikmin in the Dolphin emulator.

Pikmin 3 looks much better imo.

 

[Captain Smoker]

So which team did the Zelda Wii U tech demo, because the lighting and detailed environments were pretty amazing looking.

EAD 3, the Link was basically from Twilight Princess.

Epic?. It was unreal engine IIRC.

lol

 

[Alexios]

I think Pikmin 3 is indicative of what Nintendo is capable of with the Wii U. It is not anything like a Mii themed purposely simple game.

I think it clearly isn't far above such efforts, for whatever reason. What, just because it's fully 3D with glimpses of nice capabilities here and there they must have given it as much attention and budget as they would to 3D Mario? Don't be silly, seriously. Even a HD SMG would look better, nevermind being able to clean up the textures, the polygon edges, improve the lighting, make areas bigger and busier, etc. They don't even have to take advantage of the new capabilities in any meaningful way to far surpass what's been shown of Pikmin 3. But I'm sure they'll eventually do a lot more than just that for the appropriate games. Why do people think they're tech dumb? They've always adopted new technologies quite well, if not better than others, as long as their systems had it. Like, going from 2D to 3D, where they also arrived quite late outside SNES prototyping but came out with staples of 3D design.

 

[MDX]

The central processing unit (CPU) of the U Wii is as powerful as the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, but the graphics processing unit (GPU) is one and a half times as strong. That is what an employee of Ubisoft stated to Insidegamer.

Ok, so what I take from this is that the WiiU CPU by itself is as powerful as the PS3 and 360.
And the GPU is by itself 1.5 x more powerful than the those two. So that makes the WiiU around 3.5 to 4x more powerful than those consoles. AMIRITE?

 

[Log4Girlz]

For reference this is Pikmin in the Dolphin emulator.


Pikmin 3 looks much better imo.

IMO its only marginally better. And remember, Pikmin 1 and 2 were designed on Gamecube.

The pikmin themselves are identical and do not show any extra geometry, nothing is using tesselation, flat textures, albeit higher res, simple shaders on everything.

Pikmin 3 is doing nothing impressive technically speaking.

 

[tkscz]

The CPU is not 1X Xbox360.
The results of specific benchmarks, engines, middleware, could be. But developers have (or will with further optimizations) more processing capabilities than on Xbox360 (and not only thanks to the audio DSP, I/O chip, etc.).

BUT it seems it won't reach a leap comparable to the RAM amount. A moderate advancement, a lot from efficiency (out of order, instructions, cache, etc, i touched upon that before)

For the GPU, it won't be 1,5X Xbox360 when developers will be more accustomed to its specifics, when the SDK, middleware, engines, API, and other elements will be, again, more refined, etc.

So it all comes down to they don't know what they're doing? Got cha.

Serious note, we know it supports compute shaders, something this gen doesn't, and has it's own tessellation unit. The question is, at what levels are these two equal to? The 360 has a tessellation unit that's DX9 level, which is no where near DX10 level, let alone DX11. Will the WiiU's be closer to DX10.1 or DX11? Same goes for the computer shaders (sense DX10.1 supports those too). If they are close to DX11 (OpenGL 4.1) than there is nothing to worry about. Geometry may not be as high, but with a high shader level, you wouldn't know/care.

 

[Margalis]

Pikmin 3 looks much better imo.

Compare Pikmin 3 to Overlord for 360, a similar game. Pikmin looks better and runs at at least 2x the framerate.

...flat textures, albeit higher res, simple shaders on everything.

I would love for you to explain what high res "flat textures" are. I suspect it will be humorous.

 

[everthustodeadbeats]

That's nice, but in about a year, the Wii U will be an underpowered outlier compared to the actual console standard.

 

[jonno394]

IMO its only marginally better. And remember, Pikmin 1 and 2 were designed on Gamecube.

The pikmin themselves are identical and do not show any extra geometry, nothing is using tesselation, flat textures, albeit higher res, simple shaders on everything.

Pikmin 3 is doing nothing impressive technically speaking.

Don't care, don't care and don't care. The game is bright, attractive and a huge sep up from any Nintendo game i've owned before, thats all that most Nintendo fans and Nintendo only console owners wil ask for.

 

[speedpop]

You know, Nintys A-teams, which is basically the core of why gamers care about them at all, have no experience at all on this level of hardware. It will be exceedingly interesting to see if they can even keep up with 3rd party teams who have been working in this space for 6 or 7 years now.

Not to go OT, but anyone else curious about that?

People need to accept the difference between the aesthetics of artistic design versus graphical power. Blizzard, a developer who primarily lives on the PC landscape, has shown that you don't need to create bleeding eye candy to make your games sell by the truckload while looking delicious. It helps that their art design team is huge and relatively talented despite what some may say about the art itself within their games.

The simple fact that Nintendo managed to pump out something like Mario Galaxy and Skyward Sword on the underpowered Wii should speak volumes, let alone view what Retro did with Donkey Kong Country Returns or what Monolith Soft accomplished with Xenoblade. All one has to do is look at those games running in Dolphin to see what they are capable of and why people clamored for Nintendo games in HD for years.

 

[Takuya]

So.... this can't launch for more than $250. lol

 

[monome]

almost everything 01net came to leak more than a year ago is true about WiiU or 3DS...guess this is true too ->

french : http://www.01net.com/editorial/537994/nintendo-et-la-creation-le-poids-du-mythe-et-la-realite-(3-5)/

 

[rezuth]

I realized in the video of AC3 for wii u that frame rate and polycount was like ass compared to other versions. Half times doesn´t mean 0.5 x times?.

Framerate is a bit worse but polycount? Can you back that up?