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New details on Wii U Tablet (Flash Memory! Microphone! Magnetometer!)

Easy_D said:
How is this any different from the current golf games available on Wii? Like the one in Wii Sports? Unless you're one of those gamers who play sitting down :p.

I would assume it's about making it feel more natural to your golf swing.
 
AwRy108 said:
Hopefully they use the magnetometer to attract 3rd parties.

See what I did there?
Rythm.png
 
idwl said:
I'd rather Nintendo puts more into the console than the controller
The fucking hilarity of the thing lies in that the company, Nintendo, was justifying the reduced use on buttons in the Wii controller to simplify operation. Now they comeback with this.

And yes, they should put more thought on the console. I mean not a freaking USB 3 port for external drives? They should know by now how important digital distribution is by now.
 

Chojin

Member
Fucking Magnetometers, how do they-

Ah screw it.


Doesn't the Wii Motion Plus use those too? Or does it just have plumb bob thingies in em?
 
bgassassin said:
I would assume it's about making it feel more natural to your golf swing.
The idea is that you couldn't just faux swing it like you could in Wii sports. With the magnetometer and ir sensor in the tablet, you'd have to exactly position your swing like a real golf club in reference to the controller. In essence, a far more advanced golfing simulator, along with a host of other possibilities.
 

drspeedy

Member
bgassassin said:
I would assume it's about making it feel more natural to your golf swing.

I can't see anyone caring about this in a game... seriously, why would you want to look at the ball in a video game? In real golf yes, but here I agree with others, it's just an expensive accident waiting to happen- no way the controls are sensitive enough to tell if you really put that virtual golf club right over the virtual ball and adjust trajectory, spin, etc. in real time... it'll interpolate, apply one of 50 pre-calculated factors to the shot and play the animation; same as Wii Golf right now. It's faux-immersion.

I assume it's gotta be something that marketers hastily made up so they had enough ideas to present for 20 minutes. Sitting around a table with the E3 reveal just days away, the conversation was basically like a bad episode of Full House...

Executive VP, played by Danny Tanner: "Golly darn, you guys, We haven't got any good reasons for this tablet being included yet, and the big show is tomorrow!"

Uncle Joey: "Well, people could use it as a coaster... it could show virtual coffee stains, in 256 different colors!"

Uncle Jesse: "You idiot! It's gonna be $300! We have to pretend it's got some use past just being a 7" DS screen. I say we make it a virtual snare drum for Rock Band: Jesse and the Rippers..."

Olsen Twin: "Why don't you sit it on the fwoor and pwetend it's the golf tee"

Everyone: "Ahh, that's it! This will be the best E3 ever!"

[Group hug, credits roll]
 
BurntPork said:
Uh, how is it more likely to break the TV than any golf game on the Wii?
Easy_D said:
How is this any different from the current golf games available on Wii? Like the one in Wii Sports? Unless you're one of those gamers who play sitting down :p.

Kulock said:
this idea suggests "set the expensive, hard to replace controller on the ground, where you could be distracted and step on it,

The way I already described, the focus of my point? It's unrealistic given Nintendo's legal paranoia, and with good reason.

And don't tell me people won't make that mistake. Because they would. Nintendo were sued because people hurt their hands playing Mario Party, and Nintendo lost.
 

Kosma

Banned
Refreshment.01 said:
This monstrosity wont match Wii success, the question is how far below would it be. It feels so forced.

Magneto meter instead of multi touch screen. Nintendo has lost it imho.

Wii and DS seem like a fluke now in a long line of decline since the NES.

Both 3DS and WiiU seem like desperate attempts to have some new gimmick that will sell them.
 
ii Stryker said:
Is it not probable that the flash memory is used for a video buffer?
Yes it is, it clearly states that in the document. Among other uses of course.
Crazymoogle said:
flash? No, flash is too slow for that. There will undoubtedly be some actual RAM for that purpose.
Go and read the pdf please :)
Kosma said:
Magneto meter instead of multi touch screen. Nintendo has lost it imho.

Wii and DS seem like a fluke now in a long line of decline since the NES.

Both 3DS and WiiU seem like desperate attempts to have some new gimmick that will sell them.
Well its not an exclusion thing, they could have both. There are some draw backs associated with the multi touch but in the end it brings more than it takes away. The 3DS. How could've escaped Nintendo's reasoning that what made the DS the success it became was the interface and new ways to interact with the games. So the attempt to extend that success was some outdated technology with abysmal battery life and a 3D screen?
Alextended said:
Cool, a Nintendoomed and a 3DS is shit thread, we haven't had one of those in a while. Wait, what?
Wouldn't be better to formulate a worthwhile opinion instead of the standard issue "Nintendo defender response." After all there's some decent discussion going on.
 

Alexios

Cores, shaders and BIOS oh my!
Cool, a Nintendoomed and a 3DS is shit thread, we haven't had one of those in a while. Wait, what?
 

Theonik

Member
[Nintex] said:
Why would Nintendo want to measure magnetic fields?
Get the orientation of the tablet in relation the horizon, it can be used to calibrate and correct the motion sensor. Move also uses a magnetometer though I'm not sure if that's indeed what it is used for.
 
Alextended said:
Cool, a Nintendoomed and a 3DS is shit thread, we haven't had one of those in a while. Wait, what?

Nintendo: We made a controller with less buttons to appeal to a broader audience
reaction: lol, what? now i am supposed to sprint by what?
.
Nintendo: Here, we added some more buttons to make it work with more games.
reaction: lol, what? who would think of grandmas?
.
Nintendo: We have introduced motion control to make it more exciting.
reaction: lol, what? more gimmick that doesn't work?
.
Nintendo: Hey, we added some more sensors to make it really work, iPhone has two of them too.
reaction: lol, what? now you added a magnetometer? hitting the bottom of the pot?
 
Theonik said:
Get the orientation of the tablet in relation the horizon, it can be used to calibrate and correct the motion sensor. Move also uses a magnetometer though I'm not sure if that's indeed what it is used for.
It says is for detection of azimuthal direction data either by using the geomagnetic field or a "local" field. Along with acceleration and angular velocity data is used to calculate the attitude of the WiiUcon.
 

Shikamaru Ninja

任天堂 の 忍者
Kulock said:
Of course I did. It was a "vision reel," that doesn't mean that's going to make into an actual game.

Clunker said:
I believe that about as much as I believed the Kinect concept reel.

Every thing from the Wii and 3DS premiere reel was released as software. Everything from the GameCube premiere reel was a game in development. Everything from that Satoru Iwata presented in the premiere reel is a game in development. Its how Nintendo works. Whether it is released or not is another question.
 

Oppo

Member
I actually thought we knew this stuff. I guessed as much about the magnetometer when I saw that Shield Pose demo. It's a normal motion thing, as others have pointed out. We knew it had all the Wiimote stuff in there basically.
 

SMT

this show is not Breaking Bad why is it not Breaking Bad? it should be Breaking Bad dammit Breaking Bad
AwRy108 said:
Hopefully they use the magnetometer to attract 3rd parties.

See what I did there?

Post of the day, I salute thee.

On another note, the features are reminiscent of the dreamcast controller and n64 controller
 
PortTwo said:
I actually thought we knew this stuff. I guessed as much about the magnetometer when I saw that Shield Pose demo. It's a normal motion thing, as others have pointed out. We knew it had all the Wiimote stuff in there basically.
The magnetometer is there to supplement the absence of the IR sensor in the WiiU controller. Remember the Wii+ remote has accelerometers, Gyro and the IR camera to detect its absolute positioning. In the case of the WiiUcon this is accomplished by using the internal accelerometers, gyro and the magnetometer.

Edit: I know you know this, its just an explanation to the other guys reading the thread.
SMT said:
Post of the day, I salute thee.

On another note, the features are reminiscent of the dreamcast controller and n64 controller
For the most part its the extension of the DS concept for the living room, plain and simple.
 

birdchili

Member
there really isn't anything particularly inelegant about the controller. i was worried about size/weight before the impressions rolled in, but now i'm more worried about the potential being wasted due to other issues (see: wii remote).

using two screens simultaneously is something i'm doing constantly anyway. i'd love it if you could access "channels" or other simple stuff in the os while a game is running, but even just having the two displays opens up lots of options for games (particularly slower-paced stuff where you don't need constant non-blinking focus on second-by-second survival).
 
Refreshment.01 said:
Go and read the pdf please :)

It's a densely packed, 46 page PDF that seemingly doesn't support search. Can you at least suggest a page number?

Yes it is, it clearly states that in the document. Among other uses of course.

Haven't seen it yet. Plenty of mentions how flash can store programs but nothing on holding video/images. What I am seeing is something about the codec LSI having its own internal memory.
 
birdchili said:
but now i'm more worried about the potential being wasted due to other issues (see: wii remote).
That's basically it, they are repeating the Wii environment here, but with the detrimental effect that the WiiU concept for the input device doesn't seem to be as attractive or clever as the Wii one. The WiiU console hardware is gonna get leapfrogged by the competition, therefore having a chance of creating port issues yet again.

The article confirms that Nintendo is planing to use the camera as an input control method like face recognition for example.
Crazymoogle said:
It's a densely packed, 46 page PDF that seemingly doesn't support search. Can you at least suggest a page number?
My apologies crazyMoogle, i should have added the page number in the reply, now im having problems finding it myself. Ill see if i can find it again for ya.

Edit: You were absolutely right Crazy, it was misreading from my part because it says, some programs are stored on the flash memory of the controller and read out to the cpu. But some portion of main memory is used as Vram for the WiiUcon as opposed to using the faster Vram of the GPU, that of course it can be used as frame buffer. I thought the use of the slower flash was an option because the amount of data for framebuffer for the LCD was significantly smaller than the one for the TV. That's my excuse ;)

MikeE21286 said:
Maybe it can gain your relative position in 3D space without having to have glowing balls like the Move controller
That's not a maybe, its already answered in a post in this very page.
 

birdchili

Member
Refreshment.01 said:
the input device doesn't seem to be as attractive or clever as the Wii one.
nintendo is going to try some nutty stuff, that pretty-much goes without saying (they tried wii music with the motion-sensing precision of the original remote), but i think the actual controller is quite clever, if not as out-of-the-box in concept as the remote. i expect that they're ahead of the trend of having a touch-screen-using device to control our tvs, which seems way too sensible to not do.

i hope they're serious about not ditching remote-controlled games (and uis in general, actually), which haven't been explored nearly enough, but Nintendo has been a lot better at saying the right stuff than they have been about implementing it.

i'm slightly reassured by Peter Moore's obvious enthusiasm for the controller - he "gets it", i think. more big devs brainstorming ideas for this type of setup can only result in good things.
 
Saargabath said:
It could be used for calibrating the gyro/position device. I don't know :p

That's what I thought....

Maybe it can gain your relative position in 3D space without having to have glowing balls like the Move controller
 
MikeE21286 said:
That's what I thought....

Maybe it can gain your relative position in 3D space without having to have glowing balls like the Move controller
move have those as well, some posts above says at least.
 
Refreshment.01 said:
Edit: You were absolutely right Crazy, it was misreading from my part because it says, some programs are stored on the flash memory of the controller and read out to the cpu. But some portion of main memory is used as Vram for the WiiUcon as opposed to using the faster Vram of the GPU, that of course it can be used as frame buffer. I thought the use of the slower flash was an option because the amount of data for framebuffer for the LCD was significantly smaller than the one for the TV. That's my excuse ;)

That's alright. Proves I'm not hallucinating this morning. ;)

FWIW, you just have to understand that using flash memory for video frame storage is just too insane, especially for Nintendo.

Flash is:
a) Very, very slow compared to useful VRAM or mask ROM.
b) Too weak to stand up to the continual writes that imaging requires. With cheap flash under Wii U video writes I'd be surprised if it lasted a month.

I'm guessing the controller has some memory on the controller processor (arguably a CPU even if they say it isn't) for handling frames and compression...maybe main memory VRAM is for buffering. Writing the wifi data directly to main memory seems a bit slow to me, unless they are using some fancy low latency setup.
 
All we've learned from this is that it has on board flash memory. Why are people acting like this doc is revealing a ton of new stuff?
 

Jokeropia

Member
Simple compatibility with a stylus is much more important than multi-touch, especially since there are buttons as well. This goes for both 3DS and Wii U.
Brinbe said:
It really is the fucking Homer
The original Wiimote also has flash memory and a speaker, while the magnetometer is likely there to make up for the lack of IR Pointer. If you can't see the point of these things, you're pretty unimaginative.
 

Reallink

Member
I guess this pretty much wraps it up for the Neogaf experts that claimed the controller wasn't going to have any kind of CPU or memory and would only cost Nintendo like $20 to build.
 

StevieP

Banned
Reallink said:
I guess this pretty much wraps it up for the Neogaf experts that claimed the controller wasn't going to have any kind of CPU or memory and would only cost Nintendo like $20 to build.

Nobody said it would cost $20. Realistically, it'll cost slightly more to produce than it does your typical $79-retail 6" GPS unit to make.

It does not have a CPU in any traditional sense of the word, and flash memory in the amount it'll likely have is cheap as heck (like it was when they put a tiny amount in the Wiimote).
 
Oh God, the Wii U sounds so awesome. Mario, Zelda, (pokemon, I hope!), Smash Bros Next, and TONS of third party support makes me drool EVERYWHERE! I can't wait!
 
CriterionDog said:
Oh, does anyone know if the analog sticks are clickable, like the PS3's? I mean like L3 and R3 buttons.

Considering clickable sticks were to add buttons without further cluttering old controllers and that the wii u controller has a touch screen and motion controls...no
 
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