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Rumor: Wii U final specs

Ridley327

Member
So MS spending 500 million to advertise the kinect is an arms length?

Unless I'm really remembering the past few E3s wrong, I'm pretty sure that everyone on this board has complained about MS devoting most of their press conferences to the casual crowds. I mean, hell, the Kinect stuff was toned down this year, and they were still focusing heavily on casuals with all of the media partnerships that were announced.

"Keeping them at arm's length?" More like "bear-hugging them into submission."
 

KingKong

Member
These specs seem outdated now, imagine what theyll be like 5 years from now

No DX11 and USB 3, really? 1gig?

Even if its about game quality, they are going to be severely limited in what they can do, and I doubt third parties will focus on making games for it when its so far behind the next xbox and ps4
 

Triple U

Banned
So MS spending 500 million to advertise the kinect is an arms length?
Im pretty sure they are regretting that these days.
You think the industry won't miss Nintendo, that is insanity.

Nintendo is an institution for video games... just because they aren't rocking the COD's and GTAIV... they have been one of the longest lasting video game companies, their franchises are synonmous with video games as anybody else... every generation needs to have what Nintendo provides... family friendly gaming as much as the need for supposed "mature" violent content.

Im saying companies like IW(as an example of many many third parties) who made close to nothing on the Wii wouldn't miss it.
 
Yes, as a minigame. :-(

Disappointing specs, I was quite surprised how powerful the 3DS is (unless you compare it to the Vita), but this is underwhelming. No chance that we see Xbox 720/PS4 ports on WiU.

Not that specs are completely irrelevant, but odds are Wii U would be a long way from being guaranteed such titles even if it were packing dual Keplers.
 

10k

Banned
Final specs from VGLeaks, who have bought us many wonderful leaks in the past, including the Wii U devkit leak just before Nintendo's E2 2012 conference.



For what it's worth, I can vouch that these are specs I've heard.
C'mon Nintendo, could have at least used 2GB of RAM and supported shader model 5.0
 

Triple U

Banned
Unless I'm really remembering the past few E3s wrong, I'm pretty sure that everyone on this board has complained about MS devoting most of their press conferences to the casual crowds. I mean, hell, the Kinect stuff was toned down this year, and they were still focusing heavily on casuals with all of the media partnerships that were announced.

"Keeping them at arm's length?" More like "bear-hugging them into submission."

Wii and casuals are not mutually exclusive. Just because Sony may put a twitter app on its system doesn't mean they are trying to out-Nintendo, Nintendo..
 

jerd

Member
These specs seem outdated now, imagine what theyll be like 5 years from now

No DX11 and USB 3, really? 1gig?

Even if its about game quality, they are going to be severely limited in what they can do, and I doubt third parties will focus on making games for it when its so far behind the next xbox and ps4

I'm really having a hard time imagining as big of a disparity between Wii U and the other two upcoming consoles as we have now between Wii and PS360
 

wazoo

Member
Im saying companies like IW(as an example of many many third parties) who made close to nothing on the Wii wouldn't miss it.

IW like Infinity Ward ??

Because COD sold between 1 and 2M each year on Wii. close to nothing ? So this industry as a whole is close to nothing by your standards.
 

Ridley327

Member
Wii and casuals are not mutually exclusive. Just because Sony may put a twitter app on its system doesn't mean they are trying to out-Nintendo, Nintendo..

That's fine for Sony, since their casual grab has been entirely half-assed, but that does not excuse MS at all. They went after them hard, and there's no denying that they want to keep them.

You cannot call their strategy "keeping them at arm's length" by any serious metric. They have a legitimate shot of outselling the Wii in the US thanks to it.
 

gofreak

GAF's Bob Woodward
Okay let's include some more context to expand upon the SD vs HD argument that you seem to care about so much to include the Nintendo DS with the Wii. Looks like a lot more people didn't care about visuals.

It was raised from the first post, and as I admitted there I was honing in on apparent attractions in the home console market alone. I think the it's a more difficult thing to account for - how drivers in mobile/social reflects on drivers in the home console market. They may not be aligned.

Even just within home consoles, of course, graphics/'power' are not a simply dominant driver. At all. All I'm saying, though, is that 'the blockbuster', the high-end AV approach etc.. by the numbers it doesn't seem like it was a driver of relevance to just a small number of people. When people bought home consoles, people chose the machines carrying those qualities quite a lot. Maybe it's coincidence, but if we argue that, one could argue that the low-fi-ness of Wii and its market popularity were also coincidental. (I don't believe $250 was achievable only within the power envelope Nintendo chose, but hey...maybe there's an argument to be made there.)
 

ASIS

Member
Wii and casuals are not mutually exclusive. Just because Sony may put a twitter app on its system doesn't mean they are trying to out-Nintendo, Nintendo..

Sony has a jack of all trades but master of none this generation, which is precisely why its in such a pickle situation. You say they are not trying to out-do Nintendo yet they are doing a hell of a lot more than just putting apps on their system now aren't they?
 

elektrixx

Banned
That's two more USB's than my PlayStation.

I think this console will be the last under Iwata. I have to get this thing because Mario's on it, but I lack any confidence in this being "impressive" hardware.
 

Pimpbaa

Member
I thought these specs were rumored a while ago (3 wii cpu cores more recently, and a dx10 gpu since the rumors first started). Anyway, an API specific for the GPU will help tons since it will allow access to stuff that directx didn't for AMD dx10.1 class GPUs (like tessellation).
 

Triple U

Banned
IW like Infinity Ward ??

Because COD sold between 1 and 2M each year on Wii. close to nothing ? So this industry as a whole is close to nothing by your standards.

Yeah less than a tenth of what it sells on other platforms(and that's generous). You seriously think they would be hurting if there was no Wii?
 

Thraktor

Member
This info isn't all that surprising. No solid details on either CPU or GPU, and the 1.5GB with 512MB currently reserved for OS is what I'd expected.

I wouldn't be too concerned by the phrase "enhanced Broadway" to be honest. For one thing, the console's getting Assassin's Creed 3 on day 1, which is a game that's fairly demanding on the CPU, so it's at least on-par with the XBox360's CPU in real-world terms. Secondly, Nintendo don't actually give detailed schematics and low-level info on the architecture of the CPU. They'll give the instruction set, and the main pertinent features (number of cores, cache size, etc.). Because the processor is (almost certainly) binary compatible with the Wii's Broadway CPU, the instruction set is a superset of the instruction set of Broadway, and the features are a superset of the features of Broadway. This means that anyone looking at the details will see all of Broadway's idiosyncratic instructions and features, along with a bunch of new ones, and would easily conclude that the cores are "enhanced Broadways".

This would miss out on a lot of the "under the hood" changes that the new CPU may have, such as a new instruction pipeline, more aggressive out-of-order execution, lower cache latency, etc., etc., which wouldn't necessarily be known to developers pre-launch. The CPU could be an almost completely different architecture while still retaining a feature-set that would make it look like it's an "enhanced Broadway".
 

def sim

Member
The Wii U would be Tienshinhan (with one hand), the PS4 is Alistair Overeem, and the Xbox 8 is a Crown Victoria undercover cop car with half a tank of gas.
 

Hero

Member
It was raised from the first post. I think it's a more difficult thing to account for - how drivers in mobile/social reflects on drivers in the home console market. They may not be aligned.

Another thing that I think is hard to identify is the overlap of consumers who bought both a PS3 and an Xbox 360. With each system having enough exclusives to offer the enthusiast core market reason to buy both HD twins there is bound to be overlap. Should these be people be counted twice in an argument of people who favor better visuals?

Even just within home consoles, of course, graphics/'power' are not a simply dominant driver. At all. All I'm saying, though, is that 'the blockbuster', the high-end AV approach etc.. by the numbers it doesn't seem like it was a driver of relevance to just a small number of people. When people bought home consoles, people chose the machines carrying those qualities quite a lot. Maybe it's coincidence, but if we argue that, one could argue that the low-fi-ness of Wii and its market popularity were also coincidental. (I don't believe $250 was achievable only within the power envelope Nintendo chose, but hey...maybe there's an argument to be made there.)

This I could agree with because back in 2006 Iwata even explained that the adoption rate of HDTV's at the time was too low to warrant them chasing after that market. By this point in 2012 with HDTVs being quite affordable its certainly a negative stigma but again, following a normal 5 year cycle generation a Wii HD system coming out in 2011 would've been fine for Nintendo. This past year has been really awful for everyone all around. As another factor into the argument, do you think data showing how many people are actually properly connecting their HD system to an HDTV is important?

The fact that there was billions upon billions of money made that had nothing to do with Nintendo?

That's not what the graph was showing. The graph was showing overall growth for the entire industry. No one said nobody but Nintendo made money.
 

EuroMIX

Member
Even if its about game quality, they are going to be severely limited in what they can do, and I doubt third parties will focus on making games for it when its so far behind the next xbox and ps4

I doubt 3rd parties would focus on making games even if it wasn't.
 

jerd

Member
This info isn't all that surprising. No solid details on either CPU or GPU, and the 1.5GB with 512MB currently reserved for OS is what I'd expected.

I wouldn't be too concerned by the phrase "enhanced Broadway" to be honest. For one thing, the console's getting Assassin's Creed 3 on day 1, which is a game that's fairly demanding on the CPU, so it's at least on-par with the XBox360's CPU in real-world terms. Secondly, Nintendo don't actually give detailed schematics and low-level info on the architecture of the CPU. They'll give the instruction set, and the main pertinent features (number of cores, cache size, etc.). Because the processor is (almost certainly) binary compatible with the Wii's Broadway CPU, the instruction set is a superset of the instruction set of Broadway, and the features are a superset of the features of Broadway. This means that anyone looking at the details will see all of Broadway's idiosyncratic instructions and features, along with a bunch of new ones, and would easily conclude that the cores are "enhanced Broadways".

This would miss out on a lot of the "under the hood" changes that the new CPU may have, such as a new instruction pipeline, more aggressive out-of-order execution, lower cache latency, etc., etc., which wouldn't necessarily be known to developers pre-launch. The CPU could be an almost completely different architecture while still retaining a feature-set that would make it look like it's an "enhanced Broadway".

*Gaf ignores post and continues complaining*
 

beril

Member
These specs seem outdated now, imagine what theyll be like 5 years from now

No DX11 and USB 3, really? 1gig?

Even if its about game quality, they are going to be severely limited in what they can do, and I doubt third parties will focus on making games for it when its so far behind the next xbox and ps4

So for someone who's never touched the Direct3D api and doesn't follow high end PC games very much, exactly what does DX11 actually mean feature wise? The one thing I keep hearing is tesselation but that's been as good as confirmed anyway, and even the 3DS has geometry shaders.
 
300px-Duct-tape.jpg
 

KageMaru

Member
Another thing that I think is hard to identify is the overlap of consumers who bought both a PS3 and an Xbox 360. With each system having enough exclusives to offer the enthusiast core market reason to buy both HD twins there is bound to be overlap. Should these be people be counted twice in an argument of people who favor better visuals?

Why would this not apply to the Wii as well? Many people saw the Wii as a second system and if a 3rd party title appeared on both the Wii and PS360, I'd bet most would go with the higher end version.

This I could agree with because back in 2006 Iwata even explained that the adoption rate of HDTV's at the time was too low to warrant them chasing after that market. By this point in 2012 with HDTVs being quite affordable its certainly a negative stigma but again, following a normal 5 year cycle generation a Wii HD system coming out in 2011 would've been fine for Nintendo. This past year has been really awful for everyone all around. As another factor into the argument, do you think data showing how many people are actually properly connecting their HD system to an HDTV is important?

No. People will look for HD content as long as they have a HD system, even if it isn't connected properly.
 
Disappointing specs, I was quite surprised how powerful the 3DS is (unless you compare it to the Vita), but this is underwhelming. No chance that we see Xbox 720/PS4 ports on WiU.

We don't know the specs of these systems but if we're assuming that they'll be much more powerful than Wii U maybe we'll be getting Ouya ports instead which seems to be where more creative force could be anyway. I think the whole AAA-graphics-mentality is killing creativity in the industry.
 
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