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Eurogamer Source: Nintendo's Wii U toolchain is "fighting us every step of the way"

N

Nirolak

Mrgrgr
If other developers feel this way as well, I find this rather surprising, since I remember comments about the 3DS noting how much easier it was to develop for than the DS was toolchain wise.

I guess I could be hallucinating about those comments though since they're hard to google.

Eurogamer said:
Software quality will undoubtedly improve over the coming months, but with Microsoft and Sony looking to launch their own next-gen consoles within the year, time is not exactly on Nintendo's side. One developer working on a key AAA franchise port told us anonymously that the Nintendo toolchain is "fighting us every step of the way", suggesting that plenty of work still needs to be done in getting development workflow up to scratch. Will the tools improve in time? Will publishers have the time and the financial incentive to stick with it?
Click to expand...
Source: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/df-hardware-nintendo-wii-u-review
 
S

ScreenSplitter

Member
Will the tools improve in time? Will publishers have the time and the financial incentive to stick with it?
Click to expand...

WILL GOKU HAVE THE POWER TO DEFEAT FREIZA?

Yes, most definitely to both of those questions. Drumming up drama all round. Porting process is very rarely straightforward on new systems, right?
 
Z

ZedIndyLil

Member
It'll be very interesting if we ever get more behind-the-scenes info in the development of the Wii U since E3 2011. Sounds like, despite all that time, so many things were changing hardware-wise that 3rd-party developers really weren't in a position to make good ports.
 
C

Captain Smoker

Member
Nirolak said:
I think they mean "in time for sustained third party support" judging by the context of the entire statement, as opposed to "will they improve over time".
Click to expand...
Just being a little sarcastic. ;)

I hope they fix these launch problems soon, but that's how things go, I'm confident.
 
G

GPsych

Member
Can someone with better knowledge of this stuff answer a question? When a dev gets a devkit, are the tools updated via software updates just like a patch? Or, does nintendo eventually just send a brand new devkit with all new tools?
 
C

chubigans

y'all should be ashamed
GPsych said:
Can someone with better knowledge of this stuff answer a question? When a dev gets a devkit, are the tools updated via software updates just like a patch? Or, does nintendo eventually just send a brand new devkit with all new tools?
Click to expand...

Usually you get new devkits up until the launch of the system. You always get software updates for major OS releases.
 
G

GPsych

Member
chubigans said:
Usually you get new devkits up until the launch of the system. You always get software updates for major OS releases.
Click to expand...

Ah, that makes sense. So is it safe to say that 3rd party devs just recently acquired the finalized kits? If that's the case, I would hope that the 2nd wave of games/ports would probably be better optimized...
 
N

netBuff

Member
Cerebral Assassin said:
It's really odd how some developers have claimed it was an easy system to work with & others are having such issues.
Click to expand...

It's really no mystery: Publicly, developers are claiming the Wii U to be very easy to work with as to not cause problems with Nintendo or their own PR while privately (and even on this forum, remember arkham?) they voice their real opinion.

GPsych said:
Ah, that makes sense. So is it safe to say that 3rd party devs just recently acquired the finalized kits? If that's the case, I would hope that the 2nd wave of games/ports would probably be better optimized...
Click to expand...

The 2nd generation of 3rd party software won't matter all that much with PS4/Xbox 720 launching next year.
 
T

TheNatural

My Member!
netBuff said:
It's really no mystery: Publicly, developers are claiming the Wii U very easy to work with while privately (and even on this forum, remember arkham?) they voice their real opinion.



The 2nd generation of 3rd party software won't matter all that much with PS4/Xbox 720 launching next year.
Click to expand...

Seems like the Gamepad stuff is simple, the actual optimizing the game isn't. Even the ports that are poor graphically got good comments on Gamepad usage.
 
D

Donnie

Member
The_Hitcher89 said:
Would the WiiU not have a massive advantage in making the toolset easy to develop for, with the length of time that the roughly equal ps3/360 have already been out for?
Click to expand...

Its not a Xbox 360 or PS3 though, its completely different hardware which requires completely different API's and tools.
 
C

Cerebral Assassin

Member
netBuff said:
It's really no mystery: Publicly, developers are claiming the Wii U to be very easy to work with as to not cause problems with Nintendo or their own PR while privately (and even on this forum, remember arkham?) they voice their real opinion.
Click to expand...

There is a huge difference between not wanting to upset Nintendo & claiming it took a couple of days to get a game running on the machine.
 
P

phosphor112

Banned
netBuff said:
It's really no mystery: Publicly, developers are claiming the Wii U to be very easy to work with as to not cause problems with Nintendo or their own PR while privately (and even on this forum, remember arkham?) they voice their real opinion.
Click to expand...
And those ports all turned out like crap. =S
 
C

chubigans

y'all should be ashamed
GPsych said:
Ah, that makes sense. So is it safe to say that 3rd party devs just recently acquired the finalized kits? If that's the case, I would hope that the 2nd wave of games/ports would probably be better optimized...
Click to expand...

It's more than likely the case, yeah.
 
T

The Boat

Member
We need to get Jackson (and any other devs) in this thread. Every other report so far has said the opposite and considering historically we always heard devs complain about these things publicly I doubt they would be afraid to speak the truth. Unless this is about the SDK changing a lot up to the final version.
 
Oppo

Oppo

Member
This quote brought to mind something that wsippel mentioned earlier, back in June...

wsippel said:
The most common IDEs are Visual Studio (Microsoft), Xcode (Apple) and Eclipse (open source). A toolchain is basically a set of applications to translate source code to something the machine actually understands and consists of compilers, linkers, assemblers, build systems, debuggers, profilers and the like (often hidden behind or part of an IDE). The most common toolchains are the one integrated in Visual Studio, the one integrated in Xcode, and the stand alone GNU toolchain (open source). For Wii U, Nintendo decided to go with the GHS MULTI IDE and toolchain, a rather exotic and expensive suite that is typically used in high reliability, high security embedded development (like medical, industrial and military applications). It's simply not a familiar environment for game developers, most of which most likely never even heard of GHS, which means that it requires additional training and education.
Click to expand...

Maybe this is along the same lines as the Eurogamer dev quote, sounds very familiar.
 
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