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[rjc571]

More RAM slightly better GPU but 3 cores at 1.24 GHZ

Wii U's CPU is OOE while PS3 and 360 are IOE, which more than makes up the difference in clock speed. Same reason why the early Core 2 Duos blew away the later Pentium Ds even though they were only running at half the speed.

 

[FyreWulff]

I refuse to believe actual gameplay will look anything like that. I imagine that's an in-engine "cinematic" if you will.

I don't remember the last time Nintendo has done this. They've said the Zelda trailer was actual gameplay.

 

[GameAddict411]

There are only two advantages to the wii u, the first is the ram size and the gpu better architecture. Outside of those the PS3/X360 are actually more powerful in every other aspect. Every multiplatform game shows that.

 

[AcademicSaucer]

what a lot of people in this thread understand as power, is not what they think, a console capabilities arent measured by a single metric

 

[Radec]

No released game yet that shows it can beat the ps3/360's last lineup of exclusives as far as eye candy goes.

 

[Kurt]

Specs is only a word.
To be honest, the ps3 was also x more powerfull then the xbox 360.
Most of those game looked better on xbox 360.

I really really like to see a game which we could compare between wii u and xbox one (and ps4) Using the same game.

I'm talking about the same game such as :
- Watchdog
- Project cars
- ...

(Same screenshot.)

Please show me the big gap, that's only what i'm asking right now

 

[AcademicSaucer]

Wind Waker was pushing grass like that on the GameCuve, it's nothing mind- blowing.

I need one of those .

 

[Jack cw]

what a lot of people in this thread understand as power, is not what they think, a console capabilities arent measured by a single metric

What I see and play on the screen and its fidelity is not the metric to judge? What is it then?

 

[Durante]

Overall, there isn't really a huge difference either way. Its biggest advantage is probably the amount of RAM, and the biggest disadvantage is probably the SIMD performance of the CPU.

 

[co1onel]

I refuse to believe actual gameplay will look anything like that. I imagine that's an in-engine "cinematic" if you will.

Don't Nintendo games usually end up looking better than early footage when released?

 

[mo60]

There are only two advantages to the wii u, the first is the ram size and the gpu better architecture. Outside of those the PS3/X360 are actually more powerful in every other aspect. Every multiplatform game shows that.

Need for speed says hi. If I recall the devs were able to use higher res textures for that game. The WiiU version was close to the low end PC version of the game in terms of graphics if I recall. Trine 2 also proves the point you made wrong. It runs at a higher resolution and does not use a dynamic resolution solution to control the framerate.

 

[Cuburt]

There are only two advantages to the wii u, the first is the ram size and the gpu better architecture. Outside of those the PS3/X360 are actually more powerful in every other aspect. Every multiplatform game shows that.

Multiplats that were programed for CPU centric hardware that don't take advantage of the Wii U's modern GPU?

Too bad developers working on Wii U versions of games usually don't seem to get much of a budget to work with. I credit Most Wanted to Criterion's technical wizardry rather than EA giving them the budget to make the game look good since we all know how EA's relationship with Nintendo went.

 

[Eusis]

Overall, there isn't really a huge difference either way. Its biggest advantage is probably the amount of RAM, and the biggest disadvantage is probably the SIMD performance of the CPU.

Yeah, I think the most profound difference will be seen with Zelda just because it's actually going for a more open world setting, so it's possible whatever it does there is stuff that wouldn't be seen in GTAV or Bethesda RPGs.

 

[Panajev2001a]

I lol at how people debated how much more powerful the PS3 was/weaker the 360 was for 6 years and then the Wii U comes out and it's "as powerful" as both of them. Some people want the idea to stick so bad that it's more of a slightly suped up last-gen console rather than a weaker current-gen console that they try to put it on par with the 360.

The question should be how much more powerful is the Xbox One really if it can't pull of 1080p like the PS4? That seems to be the metric people want to use for next-gen now.

Nintendo focused on cost, compact size, and low power consumption when developing Wii U much more than they pursued performance. Their console also wanted to pack an additional screen in the GamePad controller which increased costs.
There is just so much you can deliver when your target power consumption rating is below 60 Watts or so and the technology you manufactured your chips is not light years beyond the competition.

Wii U is not in the same performance bracket as PS4 and Xbox One. About 5x less usable RAM for games (1 GB vs 5 GB, with 1 GB reserved for the OS vs 3 GB reserved for the OS), a gulf in processing power by all estimations (<0.5 TFLOPS for the GPU vs 1.3-1.8 TFLOPS), etc...

This does not take anything away from how good their first party software can look with proper use of the HW and great art direction, but the HW is not vastly more powerful than Xbox 360 and PS3. If it were, developers would have been able to port all those Xbox 360/PS3 games to Wii U without a lot of effort and made them run much better... Things turned out differently when Wii U launched and Wii U struggled with ports excepts in rare cases where the developer had much newer SDK's and spent quite a lot of effort on the port (which tells you the console could not effortlessly run circles around the other two consoles).

 

[airmangataosenai]

To be honest, I I don't see anything coming out for the Wii U that looks on par with some of the better late gen PS3 games like GT6 or Last of Us. To me, the best looking Wii U game is still Assassin's Creed.

 

[HTupolev]

Wii U's CPU is OOE while PS3 and 360 are IOE, which more than makes up the difference in clock speed. Same reason why the early Core 2 Duos blew away the later Pentium Ds even though they were only running at half the speed.

For unpredictable and highly sequential code, sure, Espresso's short pipeline and out-of-order capabilities will likely make up a lot of that difference, and outperforming Xenon in some cases would not surprise me.

For some predictable, carefully-structured, patterned parallel computational tasks, Xenon could in theory outperform Espresso by MORE than the clock speed difference.

It's not as simple as "one is more capable than the other." It's also worth noting that Xenon is a significantly larger processor than Espresso; there's more than a paradigmatic difference here.

 

[Panajev2001a]

Multiplats that were programed for CPU centric hardware that don't take advantage of the Wii U's modern GPU?

It remains to be seen how much performance delta is left in the GPU once you have used it to close the CPU performance gap, but the bigger point for third parties working on Wii U launch software is: why should a console launching 6 years later and positioned by its manufacturer as starting a new generation of consoles have so much trouble at porting games designed for so much older HW?

The fact that some developers put it in the same performance bracket as Xbox 360 and PS3 when talking about 3D graphics generations is also telling. This does not mean that it is not more powerful than those two, it just means that it is not in the same performance bracket as PS4 and Xbox One and that's okay.

 

[pieatorium]

Yeah, I think the most profound difference will be seen with Zelda just because it's actually going for a more open world setting, so it's possible whatever it does there is stuff that wouldn't be seen in GTAV or Bethesda RPGs.

open worlds can be incredibly cpu taxing too though so it's possible it might be limited by that. IIRC even though it was the est looking version NFSMW wiiu had lower car counts than the other versions.

 

[Windom Earle]

Need for speed says hi. If I recall the devs were able to use higher res textures for that game. The WiiU version was close to the low end PC version of the game in terms of graphics if I recall. Trine 2 also proves the point you made wrong. It runs at a higher resolution and does not use a dynamic resolution solution to control the framerate.

Rare exceptions don't really prove anything though. NFS texture advantage is most likely due to the increased RAM which is indeed one of the biggest advantages the console has over the older platforms. But wasn't the mp of NFS downgraded in terms of player count? The console lacks brute force in terms of processing power. But for some reason people have a hard time accepting that. I remember arguing with another poster a few months ago who claimed that the AC4 performance analysis of DF was incorrect because the game was "smooth" for him.

I love my Wii U but I can accept that the hardware is quite weak. Won't prevent it from getting great looking Nintendo games.

 

[danmaku]

It's basically the definitive 7th gen machine. Better than PS360, but can't match the 8th gen consoles.

 

[AmyS]

Wii U's advantage over 360/PS3 is that the Latte GPU has a more modern feature-set, including a newer Shader Model, than the older Xenos/RSX GPUs, and Wii U has more RAM.

In terms of *raw* GPU and CPU performance/speed and the console's external bandwidth (12.8 GB/sec) Wii U is actually behind both the 360 and the PS3.

 

[KiraXD]

No game of ps3 or xbox 360 came close to :

...

or

mario kart 8

And so on...

The gap is bigger then expected.

However if we looking it at a global scale, both 3 next gen consoles did not blow me away with next gen gfx. The gap between the wii and wii u is large. but the gap between xbox 360 and ps3 to xbox one and ps4 is verry small.

youre joking with the inclusion of Xenoblade Chronicles X right? You really dont believe that there are no games on PS3 or 360 that come close to that... ?

Here lets play a game! its called Xenoblade Chronicles X or PS2 game! ready?!

I even leveled the playing field by using a game made by the same developer!


Heres a comparison (ill even use a TERRIBLE PS3 game) of character models from PS3 version of Star Ocean

and heres Xenoblade Chronicles X

Id say the GAP between the PS3 and Wii U isnt as big as you make it out to be...


Thats not to say that XCX wont be an awesome game (its one of the Wii U games that im waiting to buy a Wii U for...) but the difference in PS3, 360 and Wii U isnt a very big one.

 

[Deleted member 125677]

PS360 had 512MB RAM, Wii U has 2GB, a much more powerful GPU and a more modern and effective multi-core CPU as well (despite being clocked low). The difference is most noticeable in first party games that really takes advantage of the architecture in games like 3D World, MK 8 and DK TF. You could never have had games looking and playing like this at 60fps on ps360.

Screenshots are a terrible way to really display the difference -- not least because of compression and people cherry-picking all kinds of weird shots from the web -- but also because image quality is just one variable here. You have to play a ps360 game and Wii U game side by side to really notice the gap.

 

[Dranakin]

The fact is the Wii U is at least slightly more powerful - period.

I accept this, but I can tell you that many folks here do not agree with this as a "fact."

 

[Spinluck]

Nintendo doesn't push for 1080p like a large portion of other devs for a start.

Smash is 1080p 60fps

Looks phenomenal.

 

[Phediuk]

We have seen nothing of Zelda Wii U other than a shot of an empty field and a short cutscene.

I saw nothing there that could not have been on 360 or PS3.

 

[Poimandres]

Mario Kart and Donkey Kong are more impressive to me than most anything (GTA V) last gen at a near flawless 60fps and 720p. There is so much color, so much going on compared to the drab brown and grey colors of most last gen games. This is all within the first year of the console coming out.

Might wanna check your calendar man. Neither Mario Kart or DK were first year titles.

 

[clem84]

I can tell you what I'm seeing on screen.
- The WiiU's GPU is capable of more advanced lighting. I think this is something everyone can see. The lighting is Mario Kart 8 and many other games is spectacular. It gives games a certain look that we never saw in 360/PS3 games.
- The polygon complexity of the models seems to be slightly higher. I'm not even sure about that one but the geometry of games like SM3DW seems higher then in most 360/PS3 games. If there is a difference it's very small.
- On paper it should be able to draw better looking textures because it has twice the RAM for games and a more advanced GPU but this is something we have yet to see. Unless someone cares to correct me with screenshots.

That's about it.

 

[Spinluck]

No released game yet that shows it can beat the ps3/360's last lineup of exclusives as far as eye candy goes.

LOL

Right.

Good joke.

 

[Synless]

Might wanna check your calendar man. Neither Mario Kart or DK were first year titles.

1.5 year, sorry.

 

[Tidus_Great]

i dont see anything on wii u that outclasses the last of us, god of war 3, beyond two souls etc....

 

[Poimandres]

1.5 year, sorry.

Hehe your point still stands, they are great looking games!

 

[KiraXD]

LOL

Right.

Good joke.

is there a Wii U game that looks as good as The Last of Us? (i believe this is was he was partially referencing in terms of PS3's last lineup of exclusives.

 

[mo60]

Rare exceptions don't really prove anything though. NFS texture advantage is most likely due to the increased RAM which is indeed one of the biggest advantages the console has over the older platforms. But wasn't the mp of NFS downgraded in terms of player count? The console lacks brute force in terms of processing power. But for some reason people have a hard time accepting that. I remember arguing with another poster a few months ago who claimed that the AC4 performance analysis of DF was incorrect because the game was "smooth" for him.

I love my Wii U but I can accept that the hardware is quite weak. Won't prevent it from getting great looking Nintendo games.

I don;t care about the WiiUs power either. I thought I heard that NFS online mode had less players because of nintendo's network and not the cpu.

 

[Hermii]

There are only two advantages to the wii u, the first is the ram size and the gpu better architecture. Outside of those the PS3/X360 are actually more powerful in every other aspect. Every multiplatform game shows that.

Multiplatform games where programmers have had years to adapt their engines to ps3/ 360 hardware. They don't utilize the strengths of the cpu, they don't use the edram in an optimal way, they are optimized for different hardware cause its good enough and it would be a huge job to rewrite all that code.

 

[Windom Earle]

I don;t care about the WiiUs power either. I thought I heard that NFS online mode had less players because of nintendo's network and not the cpu.

Would be a weird reason but I guess it's possible.

I really hope Bayonetta 1 hits locked 60fps on Wii U. That game deserves it and it would be a good case for the power of the Wii U.

 

[mo60]

Smash is 1080p 60fps

Looks phenomenal.

The Character models look great, but the environmental textures are okay.The Image Quality is better than mario kart 8.I played the game recently at a best buy event recently

 

[Mokujin]

All 3 are in the same ballpark and each one has some advantages over the others, while in raw numbers I think PS3/360 were still ahead WiiU GPU has more modern tech and memory setup is a lot better, eDRAM + a lot more memory than PS3/360 (4X)

I don't expect to see anything that couldn't have been done in PS360 but even if its no next get it can still push some pretty nice games.

 

[Spinluck]

is there a Wii U game that looks as good as The Last of Us? (i believe this is was he was partially referencing in terms of PS3's last lineup of exclusives.

Sure, if we take into account framerate, IQ, and so on.

Nintendo could make a lot more of their games look better if their focus was on photorealistic games (or realism with stylistic touches), with 30fps, and iffy IQ here and there.

I got to see Smash in person, and I think it looks better than Last of Us. Couldn't even spot any jaggies, and it was a smooth 1080p w/60fps (no drops). That was a demo build too.

Mario 3D World looks great, DKC: Tropical Freeze looks great, Pikmin 3 (minus some bad textures), Wind Waker HD, Mario Kart 8 (lots of jaggies when blown up though, like most PS3 and 360 games), and so on. Zelda looks like it will continue to carry that torch of games that play extremely well and smooth, and also have fantastic aesthetics.

It's not a life changing jump, but it is there, and it has really allowed their animators to shine. They've been doing a fantastic job.

The Character models look great, but the environmental textures are okay.I played the game recently at a best buy event.I played the game recently at a best buy event.

I honestly couldn't tell. Everything looked great while playing. Of course in Smash the textures aren't made to be zoomed up on even though the game allows you to.

The stage with the worst ones was Skyloft, and I think that was because it was ripped out of Skyward Sword's assets (at least it looks like it was).

 

[Radec]

is there a Wii U game that looks as good as The Last of Us? (i believe this is was he was partially referencing in terms of PS3's last lineup of exclusives.

Nope.

They always do that Nintendo art style.

 

[OzPinoy]

is there a Wii U game that looks as good as The Last of Us? (i believe this is was he was partially referencing in terms of PS3's last lineup of exclusives.

The Last of Us isn't impressive. More than 80% of the game I spend fighting erratic sub 20's frame per second just for the sake of achieving such visual infidelity with no HBOA in sight.

 

[ugoo18]

youre joking with the inclusion of Xenoblade Chronicles X right? You really dont believe that there are no games on PS3 or 360 that come close to that... ?

Here lets play a game! its called Xenoblade Chronicles X or PS2 game! ready?!

I even leveled the playing field by using a game made by the same developer!


Heres a comparison (ill even use a TERRIBLE PS3 game) of character models from PS3 version of Star Ocean

and heres Xenoblade Chronicles X

Id say the GAP between the PS3 and Wii U isnt as big as you make it out to be...


Thats not to say that XCX wont be an awesome game (its one of the Wii U games that im waiting to buy a Wii U for...) but the difference in PS3, 360 and Wii U isnt a very big one.

Not sure what exactly you're trying to say here. Especially considering that there are good character models (Or at least much better than some of the ones you chose) in the game as well such as this one.

Also no one is talking about the character models as the reason for Xenoblade being impressive. It's the world itself. A world that if Xenoblade Wii is anything to go by we haven't even scratched the surface of yet.

 

[andromeduck]

is there a Wii U game that looks as good as The Last of Us? (i believe this is was he was partially referencing in terms of PS3's last lineup of exclusives.

Nintendo generally isn't one to release at 20 FPS

 

[Hermii]

Would be a weird reason but I guess it's possible.

I really hope Bayonetta 1 hits locked 60fps on Wii U. That game deserves it and it would be a good case for the power of the Wii U.

Bayonetta 2 would be a good case. You can see both games in the trailer and 2 looks miles better in my opinion.

 

[Kurt]

youre joking with the inclusion of Xenoblade Chronicles X right? You really dont believe that there are no games on PS3 or 360 that come close to that... ?

Thats not to say that XCX wont be an awesome game (its one of the Wii U games that im waiting to buy a Wii U for...) but the difference in PS3, 360 and Wii U isnt a very big one.

Lol. Why are you taking closeup character shots instead of showing shots of the environment.

It's strange that some of you want to defend their last gen system that much.
Again show me the different of the same game of a wii u game vs xbox one without comparing a character shot, don't give a f* about that.

 

[Spinluck]

The Last of Us isn't impressive. More than 80% of the game I spend fighting erratic sub 20's frame per second just for the sake of achieving such visual infidelity with no HBOA in sight.

There were jaggies and bad textures in certain areas of the game that made it looks pretty dated.

If anything, it just showed the mileage on last gen consoles. A 30fps* (with drops), decent IQ, and so on. It's not an ugly game, I'll admit I think it's impressive in that they pulled it off on PS3, but it is funny that we are getting what will be the definitive version on PS4.

Bayonetta 2 would be a good case. You can see both games in the trailer and 2 looks miles better in my opinion.

Yup.

 

[Smiles and Cries]

youre joking with the inclusion of Xenoblade Chronicles X right? You really dont believe that there are no games on PS3 or 360 that come close to that... ?

Here lets play a game! its called Xenoblade Chronicles X or PS2 game! ready?!

I even leveled the playing field by using a game made by the same developer!


Heres a comparison (ill even use a TERRIBLE PS3 game) of character models from PS3 version of Star Ocean

and heres Xenoblade Chronicles X

Id say the GAP between the PS3 and Wii U isnt as big as you make it out to be...


Thats not to say that XCX wont be an awesome game (its one of the Wii U games that im waiting to buy a Wii U for...) but the difference in PS3, 360 and Wii U isnt a very big one.

this is silly because using the in game model to compare because they use similar anime style does not take into consideration the size of the world they are sitting in. XCX does not play inside a tiny area box that is the main reason character poly count is limited

Agreed WiiU is not a leap beyond PS360 but even the original Wii Xenoblade had a far bigger world than any JRPG you can throw at it and that has to do with how the developer designed the world. So using Monolith Soft's huge worlds are not very fair. It says nothing about hardware power and everything about developer talent.

in saying this what I mean is using different games vs different games tells us nothing about a systems power

the games we need to compare would be ports done by the same team using the same tools

 

[Artorias]

I don't even know what to say to people that think The Last of Us is the best looking last gen game. What in the actual fuck? It's not even the best looking ND PS3 game.

 

[MrCunningham]

Specs is only a word.
To be honest, the ps3 was also x more powerfull then the xbox 360.
Most of those game looked better on xbox 360.

In some ways it was and in other ways it wasn't. Maybe on the CPU side Cell was better than Xenon, but the 360 Xenos GPU was better than the RSX and had an embedded 10MB of eDRAM which gave it an edge in image quality over the PS3 GPU. But apparently the Cell processor could make up for some of the weakness of the RSX. The Xbox 360's unified 512MB's of GDDR3 also made it more developer friendly with third parties, the segregated 256MB GDDR3 and 256MB XDR RAM pools were the culprit in framerate and resolution issues on the PS3 in multiplatform titles . Though a well optimized game could get around that issue.

Overall, I don't think there was a clear cut winner in hardware on either of these machines. Both systems had their up sides and down. XBox 360 was the more developer friendly console of the two systems though, and it showed time and time again in the multiplatform titles.

 

[Olli128]

Wii U has a better graphics card and ram basically. The CPU is still up for debate but right now it performs weaker as devs haven't had 8 years to get used to it.