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Shin'en Interview on WiiU Hardware: GPU "several generations ahead of Current Gen"

T

The_Lump

Banned
Interesting interview with Shin'en. Basically confirming a lot of what we suspected: That the WiiU requires developers to tailor their engines to the console's strengths to see it's "next gen" capabilities.

http://hdwarriors.com/wii-u-specs-fit-perfectly-together-gpu-several-generations-ahead-of-current-gen/

“The Wii U GPU is several generations ahead of the current gen. It allows many things that were not possible on consoles before. If you develop for Wii U you have to take advantage of these possibilities, otherwise your performance is of course limited. Also your engine layout needs to be different. You need to take advantage of the large shared memory of the Wii U, the huge and very fast EDRAM section and the big CPU caches in the cores. Especially the workings of the CPU caches are very important to master. Otherwise you can lose a magnitude of power for cache relevant parts of your code. In the end the Wii U specs fit perfectly together and make a very efficient console when used right.”
Click to expand...

Raises some interesting points, & I thought it was worth it's own thread and some new discussion on Nintendo's philosophy with this console's design.

Kill with fire if old.


Edit: Edited title and put 'GPU' in bold for those who weren't reading it correctly.


Edit: in an effort to save the thread from the gates of hell, I changed the thread title in here to be less "confusable". Would be cool if a mod changed it properly on the boards :D
 
D

Deactivision

Member
Other quotes from the same interview:

‘We only know you need to treat the Wii U differently then those consoles because of a very different and in our view more accessible architecture. There is a lot power to unleash in the Wii U. Enough power for many years to come, at least from our point of view.

‘We know many people see us as Wii U experts. That is because we got a lot of technical praise for Nano Assault Neo but it’s not well deserved. Only very tiny bits of Nano Assault Neo took advantage of the Wii U architecture. We had the game from start in 720p at 60fps. We drew the complete game world twice for TV and GamePad. We had tons of overlays, special effects and even camera streaming and still had no GPU or CPU problems. So we simply had no reason to dig deep into the architecture. We didn’t expected to be seen as the spearhead of Wii U graphics as it undeserved, when looking at what the Wii U can truly achieve.‘
Click to expand...

‘We learned a lot with Nano Assault Neo. For one of our upcoming games we will use all that and will unlock more of the ‘Wii U’s power.’

‘Tessellation itself is not resource heavy on recent GPUs but it depends on actual usage. Although even previous consoles had these features you saw it only very rarely used. People often think of it as an easy way to get free ‘level of detail’. That doesn’t work. It’s because of certain visual problems associated with adaptive tessellation. We already tried various tessellation ideas and it is a very handy tool for certain situations.’

‘We think FAST would certainly deserve a sequel because it had a very fresh take on an age old genre. However, we can at least confirm that we currently work on two Wii U games that will be announced after this summer.’
Click to expand...
 
2

2+2=5

The Amiga Brotherhood
“The Wii U GPU is several generations ahead of the current gen."
Lol, do they know what "several" means?
 
R

Rogue_Ledr

Banned
OH come on!

They are still arguing the power of the WiiU hardware. Didn't we settle this debate?

We have new hardware coming to us this year and we are analyzing the Wii U hardware?
 
stuminus3

stuminus3

Member
2+2=5 said:
“The Wii U GPU is several generations ahead of the current gen."
Lol, do they know what "several" means?
Click to expand...
Do you?

GPU technology generations are measured in months, not years. You're thinking console generations.

Anyway, interesting stuff, but it's not going to matter either way. Nintendo's problem with third parties goes far deeper than GPU tech.
 
H

Heyt

Banned
Shin'en define themselves as "Nintendo fanboys" and never developed a single game for a console not made by Miyamoto's company.

But you can believe them if it makes you feel better.
 
D

diaspora

Member
I don't think any of the dev critique of the Wii U was ever aimed at the GPU though- I think that's one area of the console we can assume as being relatively weak sure, but not PS360 weak. The CPU on the other hand is something else entirely...
 
K

Krowley

Member
Yeah, I think he is talking about PC-card generations, not console generations...

I'm sure he's overstating things to some degree, but assuming he is right, and the graphics card can allow for games that look a lot better than PS360 games, why did Nintendo use such an atypical design? Why not use something that would be easy for devs to learn and take advantage of?
 
C

Captain Smoker

Member
Backfoggen said:
Aren't these the dudes who said there is no noticeable difference between 720p and 1080p.
Click to expand...
No.

They said that their Wii U game benefits more from 720p + enhanced effects than the same game in 1080p - enhanced effects.
And Nano looks good in 720p.



People here try really hard to badmouth positive comments.
 
A

AkiraGr

Banned
Still majority of GAF has the illusion that the Wii U GPGPU or CPU are weak. This guys code to the metal with there games on the Wii or Wii U. Middle ware engines are not tailored for exotic architecture that is the Wii U. Industry is working on middle ware engines that's why Wii U power is not visible at the moment.

Also according to this guys the middle ware engines need to be tailored for the Wii U that means more money on developing time that third parties are not willing at the moment to invest.

Wii U IS powerfull not Ps4 or Xbone level but close.
 
N

nhlducks35

Member
Backfoggen said:
Aren't these the dudes who said there is no noticeable difference between 720p and 1080p.
Click to expand...

Yup

Nano Assault Neo is running in 720p yes. We had the game also running in 1080p but the difference was not distinguishable when playing. Therefore we used 720p and put the free GPU cycles into higher resolution post-Fx. This was much more visible. If we had a project with less quick motions we would have gone 1080p instead i guess.
Click to expand...
 
R

Raide

Member
Heyt said:
Shin'en define themselves as "Nintendo fanboys" and never developed a single game for a console not made by Miyamoto's company.

But you can believe them if it makes you feel better.
Click to expand...

I guess they only think about what came before the Wii-U, so they are probably right in their opinion because they are referring to the Wii.
 
T

The_Lump

Banned
Rogue_Ledr said:
OH come on!

They are still arguing the power of the WiiU hardware. Didn't we settle this debate?

We have new hardware coming to us this year and we are analyzing the Wii U hardware?
Click to expand...

I don't think they're "arguing", they're being interviewed and were obviously asked about it.

They're developers, so I figured their perspective on the subject was discussion worthy.

If you don't want to discuss it, you may be in the wrong thread...
 
D

diaspora

Member
Krowley said:
Yeah, I think he is talking about PC-card generations, not console generations...

I'm sure he's overstating things to some degree, but assuming he is right, and the graphics card can allow for games that look a lot better than PS360 games, why did Nintendo use such an atypical design? Why not use something that would be easy for devs to learn and take advantage of?
Click to expand...

The GPU afaik isn't that exotic, the CPU is relatively speaking.
 
B

Blades64

Banned
People are just gonna take the "several generations ahead" comment and trash it, not even reading the rest of the article.
 
D

Doc Holliday

SPOILER: Columbus finds America
Yes they live in a complete vacuum where the specs of machines that have been out for 7 years are not known. It's not they're talking about the Wii U as a whole, just the GPU.
 
K

komicturtle

Banned
Well, people believe Insomniac for their "Wii U is current gen" when they only worked on PlayStation. What's wrong with Shinen coming forward on this? Those who worked extensively on Wii U share the same sentiments.
 
T

The_Lump

Banned
Blades64 said:
People are just gonna take the "several generations ahead" comment and trash it, not even reading the rest of the article.
Click to expand...


Yeah I probably shouldn't have put that in the title on 2nd thoughts...

Was hoping this wouldn't turn to shit and would attract some new discussion that doesn't get swallowed up in the GPU/CPU specific threads.
 
D

Damian.

Banned
There are reflections and shading on some characters/enemies in NintendoLand that tell me that the Wii U is decently ahead of the 360/PS3.
 
B

Barack Lesnar

Banned
AkiraGr said:
Still majority of GAF has the illusion that the Wii U GPGPU or CPU are weak. This guys code to the metal with there games on the Wii or Wii U. Middle ware engines are not tailored for exotic architecture that is the Wii U. Industry is working on middle ware engines that's why Wii U power is not visible at the moment.

Also according to this guys the middle ware engines need to be tailored for the Wii U that means more money on developing time that third parties are not willing at the moment to invest.

Wii U IS powerfull not Ps4 or Xbone level but close.
Click to expand...

They ARE weak, and it's not close to PS4 or Xbone, with the former being a full console generational leap over the Wii U. That's not "close". X1 is probably a 2/3 or 3/4 leap over the U.
 
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