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[Plinko]

Am I the only one who thinks that the Wii U not being uber-powerful as being a good thing? If I was a developer and if the Wii U had a good install base after 6 months or so, I would love to develop for it. Since it doesn't require anything more extreme from where things are now, which would make development easier and cheaper than it would be for future consoles.

One of the biggest concerns developers have for the future consoles is the cost of development vs the projected returns they can make on each game. If Nintendo does better by it's third party devs (promoting games that are not only Nintendo titles), this could be what helps them stay relevant and successful.

I'd tend to believe you if that worked for the Wii, but it didn't.

 

[deviljho]

The standalone CPU is weak, but not the big deal it seems in relation to its HD counterparts due the modern architecture and buffed, feature-laden GPGPU, all of which is discounting the potential 'life-ring' of EDRAM. People are up in arms because the architecture and power-prioritising is being compared to an engineering agenda that is 7 years old at least. Wii U is definitely competitive power-wise, but it's also competitive commercially, meaning that it doesn't have the resources to burn which consumers and even maybe developers expected. People are just going to have to be creative to get performance, as they always have.

The fact that Arkham City AE suffers hiccups is most certainly a result of being crafted on a goddamn ancient engine fine-tuned to run optimally on the hardware it was designed for (seriously, how Rocksteady got Unreal3 to look as good as it does on PS3 of all things is mindblowing). I'm surprised AC runs on Wii U as well as it does.

Likewise, a Wii U game that was developed alongside its PS360 cousins actually turned out better than either in the form of Sonic All Stars Racing Transformed.

I'm not saying that these results are defining examples of the Wii U's pecking order status, but I do feel that the obvious is being overlooked because it's more fun to assume Nintendo have fucked up royally.

I'm not at all worried about Wii U's apparent lack of muscle given that the first batch of games are certainly no slouch when it comes to performance, and developer understanding of the beast is only going to exponentially improve.

Makes sense. Sony doomed. Nintendo doomed. OneBox to rule them all.

 

[efyu_lemonardo]

Am I the only one who thinks that the Wii U not being uber-powerful as being a good thing? If I was a developer and if the Wii U had a good install base after 6 months or so, I would love to develop for it. Since it doesn't require anything more extreme from where things are now, which would make development easier and cheaper than it would be for future consoles.

One of the biggest concerns developers have for the future consoles is the cost of development vs the projected returns they can make on each game. If Nintendo does better by it's third party devs (promoting games that are not only Nintendo titles), this could be what helps them stay relevant and successful.

This exact argument was made in 2007 and quickly dismissed. 2013 will be like watching a rerun.

 

[Krilekk]

I'm more surprised at how someone on the inside thinks its maybe a good idea to throw negative attention in the direction of one of the hands that might feed them.

Regardless of intention or honesty, that Metro dude was fucking dumb to say that.

LOL, Nintendo wants to have the 3rd parties, it's not the other way around. To a developer all platform owners are nothing but a necessary evil that takes a cut of their income away. But with 130 million PS3/360s as an installed HD base nobody is dependant on a Wii U game.

 

[Majmun]

Zelda oot gave me one of the best gaming experiences of my life and the hardware it was on at the time was not as cutting edge as the competition

Are you talking about the N64 or 3DS version?

N64 was definitely "cutting edge" when it launched.

 

[wsippel]

Why on God's green earth did they go with 45nm for their CPU node? Nintendo, I am dissapoint.

Because that's IBM's go-to process for volume manufacturing. The 32nm fab was only opened a few months ago and is nowhere near full capacity.

 

[MYE]

LOL, Nintendo wants to have the 3rd parties, it's not the other way around. To a developer all platform owners are nothing but a necessary evil that takes a cut of their income away. But with 130 million PS3/360s as an installed HD base nobody is dependant on a Wii U game.

So just because you dont seem to need Nintendo now, its okay to stirr up shit with them even though you gain absolutely nothing by doing it?

Okay...

 

[Metal B]

This exact argument was made in 2007 and quickly dismissed. 2013 will be like watching a rerun.

And looking back at some dead companies, it would have been wise for them. While others simply went deeper down and develop for smartphones, now. I would love gaming not go the road of the movie industry and have only some really big companies around.

 

[Coolwhip]

Are you talking about the N64 or 3DS version?

N64 was definitely "cutting edge" when it launched.

Was it? Thankfully I didn't read forums like GAF back then, but was it really?

 

[Ormberg]

Because that's IBM's go-to process for volume manufacturing. The 32nm fab was only opened a few months ago and is nowhere near full capacity.

Oh I see, just figured that 360's CPU was from way back, but the original was 90nm or something.

Ok so that makes sense, thanks.

 

[disap.ed]

Meh. Nintendo sold the biggest selling console last gen; third parties didn't count - its kind of a big ask for them to make their development more difficult.

But they were aware of the importance; in 2011 Reggie stated that the hardware won't be a excuse because it would be up there. Now we learn that devs are having problems to get out the performance of the CPU that they find with PS360. They should have at least put a CPU in there that makes ports possible for a trained ape even, this should be possible after 6 years for god's sake.
I am pretty sure that the GPU is pretty decent, but the problem is that devs won't spend time and money to optimize their engines so that these tasks could be done by the GPU instead of the CPU.

 

[disap.ed]

Because that's IBM's go-to process for volume manufacturing. The 32nm fab was only opened a few months ago and is nowhere near full capacity.

I am pretty curious if they will do a real SOC on the 32nm process in 2 years or so. Would be a lot cheaper I guess.

 

[Mindwipe]

A thought came to me recently. The Wii U vs PS3/360 reminds me a bit of the Super Nintendo, in that the SNES had a much weaker CPU than systems that came out years prior (Genesis and Turbografx) but better graphics. IIRC the SNES had a weaker CPU for backwards compatibility reasons which didn't end up in the system. I wonder if people complained about that in the early '90s...

HEEEECK YES.

The letters pages of CVG, Super Play, Mean Machines etc etc were chock full of people arguing about it and saying Nintendo had crippled the SNES with a 3Mhz processor verses having a much better platform overall and fancy hardware based tricks like Mode 7.

And to be fair, it was definitely a problem in the early days. The SNES versions of R-Type (lunch title) and Contra/Probotector (early title) both had significant slowdown issues where framerates fell when a lot of sprites were on screen.

Different market today though, things are all about ease of cross platform porting for devs across three platforms rather than two and reusing mature engines. Makes a big difference.

 

[Malvingt2]

I feel like Nintendo Ninjas work on this one.. hmm

 

[Shion]

Was it? Thankfully I didn't read forums like GAF back then, but was it really?

Yes, N64 was a beast back in 1996.

 

[efyu_lemonardo]

I'd tend to believe you if that worked for the Wii, but it didn't.

And looking back at some dead companies, it would have been wise for them. While others simply went deeper down and develop for smartphones, now. I would love gaming not go the road of the movie industry and have only come really big companies around.

I agree completely, and maybe Iwata, Yamauchi and Nintendo are actually smarter than all of us and actually planned it this way. They've been going on about rising costs and diminishing returns for over a decade now.

But the industry is so incredibly stubborn that I can see it going either way, to be honest.

The best thing Nintendo can do to get this point across (in my opinion) would be to spend the money they saved on hardware on hardcore software that is considered too niche to make a significant return on investment as a ps4/x720 project.

Maybe this is just what they are doing with Bayontta 2, in which case we can expect to see similar 'revivals of mid-sized games' from them this generation.
If they can do that it would be a glorious triumph in my opinion. At the end of the day I care about support and a rich library, not power.

 

[v1oz]

Why? Is Apple desperate about the 'hardcore crowd' too? Of course not. Nintendo will be perfectly happy with just the casual gamers, since it's the biggest audience aswell.

I dunno if its winning over casuals yet. From what I've seen the system is very un-Nintendo like, where'd you expect it to work right out of the box. It's like a PC where you're constantly doing stuff and updating shit to get games running.

The hour long firmware update when you first switch it on is a big issue. And the barrage of slow unskippable game patches won't win over many casuals. We've even read of WiiU's freezing up and churning out all sorts of error codes. Every other Nintendo console like an iPad was reliable and just worked out of the box. I've never heard of a GameCube or N64 getting bricked.

 

[CronoShot]

Wasn't Broadway itself almost 1/3 (more like 1/4) a Xenon anyway? I seem to remember seeing that somewhere.

 

[FoxSpirit]

It's pretty obvious at this point that if you want to get the most out of the Wii U it requires some reworking of how your engine works. And not every development team will have the capacity for that.

Best results will really come from exclusive titles, or multiplatform engines where they can easily transition to the different architecture.

SNES: no blast processing but the rest kicked ass!!

 

[ramparter]

So how many Pikmin are in it?

4: One reading the code, another sending the code to a secret valley filled with thousand of cell processors, one getting the output and one sending the output to the TV.

 

[StevieP]

Wasn't Broadway itself almost 1/3 (more like 1/4) a Xenon anyway? I seem to remember seeing that somewhere.

Clock for clock, Wii's Broadway would smoke a single 360 core with general purpose code.

The only downside to that architecture in comparison to the PPE in the 360/PS3 is floating point. The PPE design lends itself much better to vectorized code.

Thing is, Jaguar doesn't either. Neither are "beefy" designs.

 

[tmarques]

This exact argument was made in 2007 and quickly dismissed. 2013 will be like watching a rerun.

How many developers have lost their jobs since 2007? Maybe a few of them should try a different approach this time around.

 

[Kouriozan]

I was stupid to think that the Wii U tech talk will end after it gets released

Indeed, it's just the beginning.
We'll have countless thread about PS4/Xbox 3 vs. Wii U too.
Right now it's only PS3/Xbox360 vs. Wii U.

 

[Plinko]

And looking back at some dead companies, it would have been wise for them. While others simply went deeper down and develop for smartphones, now. I would love gaming not go the road of the movie industry and have only come really big companies around.

I completely agree and thought maybe companies would be smarter this time, but look at rising game budgets and the direction these devs are taking the industry.

 

[Chuckpebble]

So how many Pikmin are in it?

This cracks me up because I've seen the system transfer were pikmin pack everything up from the Wii and move it over to the WiiU.

 

[scitek]

I really don't understand the Wii U's hardware makeup. If it has a nice GPU, but slow RAM and CPU, then won't that create a bottleneck? It sounds poorly designed, and that's not something you'd expect from Nintendo.

 

[deviljho]

So how many Pikmin are in it?

4: One reading the code, another sending the code to a secret valley filled with thousand of cell processors, one getting the output and one sending the output to the TV.

This cracks me up because I've seen the system transfer were pikmin pack everything up from the Wii and move it over to the WiiU.

yup

 

[wsippel]

Wasn't Broadway itself almost 1/3 (more like 1/4) a Xenon anyway? I seem to remember seeing that somewhere.

Broadway had a die much larger than it should be at 90nm. It's assumed that a lot of die space is unused and that it's only as big as it is to make room for the required number of IO pins. In theory, assuming linear scaling, a single Broadway core at 45nm would only be about as big as the tiny third die on the Wii U MCM (~2.5mm^2) - Espresso is roughly thirteen times the size of a hypothetical 45nm Broadway core.

 

[Ormberg]

Broadway had a die much larger than it should be at 90nm. It's assumed that a lot of die space is unused and that it's only as big as it is to make room for the required number of IO pins. In theory, assuming linear scaling, a single Broadway core at 45nm would only be about as big as the tiny third die on the Wii U MCM (~2.5mm^2) - Espresso is roughly thirteen times the size of a hypothetical 45nm Broadway core.

Surely Nintendo hasn't done the same with Espresso, filling it up with 'void', so to speak.

Right? *gets anxious*

 

[i-Lo]

Bwhahahaha I said this in the original Metro LL thread. It was inevitable:

Watch these same developers crawl to Nintendo for forgiveness for shaming their honour when they realize that to make money they need to cater to the next gen console that'll have 100% of market share compared to its competitors. You'll see a ton of pandering and flip flopping about CPU then. These devs will see the light and realize that Nintendo's approach to hardware was the wisest one.

 

[wsippel]

Surely Nintendo hasn't done the same with Espresso, filling it up with 'void', so to speak.

Right? *gets anxious*

Dunno. I guess we have to wait/ hope for Chipworks releasing a die shot.

 

[Pie and Beans]

I completely agree and thought maybe companies would be smarter this time, but look at rising game budgets and the direction these devs are taking the industry.

Develop for PC/720/PS4.
Develop exclusively for WiiU.

Gambling: how does it work. Especially when the threat of First Party "Mario Kart machine only" still exists. Nintendo once again making their box a complete hassle for devs to even port CURRENT HD generation code to are the ones at fault. Deflections gotta end somewhere.

 

[Raist]

Boy won't people be surprised when Microsoft and Sony's next machines won't even have CPU's.

They'll have synthetic brains. Believe.

 

[efyu_lemonardo]

Broadway had a die much larger than it should be at 90nm. It's assumed that a lot of die space is unused and that it's only as big as it is to make room for the required number of IO pins. In theory, assuming linear scaling, a single Broadway core at 45nm would only be about as big as the tiny third die on the Wii U MCM (~2.5mm^2) - Espresso is roughly thirteen times the size of a hypothetical 45nm Broadway core.

Your basing this on gecko being 43 mm^2 vs. Broadway's 18.9 mm^2 instead of ~11mm^2?
I did the same calculation and got a size of about 8mm^2 for Wii U CPU, but not everything scales so well, plus there's definitely silicone being added along the way for additional functionality.

Couldn't the difference in size have another explanation?

 

[Plinko]

Develop for PC/720/PS4.
Develop exclusively for WiiU.

Gambling: how does it work. Especially when the threat of First Party "Mario Kart machine only" still exists. Nintendo once again making their box a complete hassle for devs to even port CURRENT HD generation code to are the ones at fault. Deflections gotta end somewhere.

Settle down. If you read through my post history you'll see I'm quite critical of Nintendo's decision on the Wii U CPU, etc.

 

[LeleSocho]

I honestly believe it doesn't matter, since next gen is currently looking extremely risky and niche from both a developer and consumer perspective.

I laugh at this kind of thinking, it's like that a safe approach can only be taken on the WiiU
Non risky and profitable projects can be on any platform.

 

[Zombie James]

I laugh at this kind of thinking, it's like that a safe approach can only be taken on the WiiU
Non risky and profitable projects can be on any platform.

Live and PSN don't exist for some people.

 

[Sexually Aggressive Uncle]

Well at least we can all be thankful that the WiiU has such incredibly low power consumption because that's been a concern around here for years. No longer when looking at our utilities bill will we have to decide how we're going to allocate our wattage for the following month. Sure, we're going to be stuck playing warmed over 360/PS3 ports that have the framerate of a Viewmaster but at least I'll be playing with power now. Nintendo low power.

 

[StevieP]

Well at least we can all be thankful that the WiiU has such incredibly low power consumption because that's been a concern around here for years. No longer when looking at our utilities bill will we have to decide how we're going to allocate our wattage for the following month. Sure, we're going to be stuck playing warmed over 360/PS3 ports that have the framerate of a Viewmaster but at least I'll be playing with power now. Nintendo low power.

It may not be a concern in mine or your part of the world, but it is where the console was designed. For reference, for a console to be "family room ready" or "wife approved" in our part of the world, it can't look and sound like launch 360/PS3 either.

 

[wsippel]

Your basing this on gecko being 43 mm^2 vs. Broadway's 18.9 mm^2 instead of ~10mm^2?
I did the same calculation and got a size of about 8mm^2 for Wii U CPU, but not everything scales so well, plus there's definitely silicone being added along the way for additional functionality.

Couldn't the difference in size have another explanation?

It's really impossible to tell. Yes, the scaling isn't even remotely linear, though IBM at least claimed 80% more transistors per square mm going from 65nm to 45nm - only figure I could find.

 

[Barack Lesnar]

I only read page 1 and 4 but did anyone mention how the OP omitted this part of the first quote?

that the CPU on Wii U on the face of it isn't as fast as some of the other consoles out there.

(the part I bolded)

Pathetic.

 

[StevieP]

I only read page 1 and 4 but did anyone mention how the OP omitted this part of the quote?


(the part I bolded)

Pathetic.

Oh look, it's Heavy.
BTW Heavy, how fast is a consumer Jaguar CPU in comparison to a PPE? (well, look at bobcat since that's out right now)
There's a reason that "4" or "8" of them are consistent rumours, and why they say "on the face of it" for this particular CPU.

Edit: He just added that Jaguar part to his post probably so he wouldn't look too much like a jackass.

Edit: no need to speak to me in the third person. I'm right here. The reason I posted "oh look, it's Heavy" was because I looked through your recent posting history.

 

[Barack Lesnar]

Oh look, it's Heavy.

And? Resorting to insults = defeat.

Edit: He just added that Jaguar part to his post probably so he wouldn't look too much like a jackass.

 

[wsippel]

I only read page 1 and 4 but did anyone mention how the OP omitted this part of the first quote?


(the part I bolded)

Pathetic.

Isn't "on the face of it" the part that should actually be highlighted...?

 

[Easy_D]

I only read page 1 and 4 but did anyone mention how the OP omitted this part of the first quote?


(the part I bolded)

Pathetic.

What's "On the face of it" supposed to mean? At first glance? Or what. Because the way I understand that he's saying "At face value the Wii U's CPU is weaker.. BUT"?

 

[Barack Lesnar]

Edit: no need to speak to me in the third person. I'm right here. The reason I posted "oh look, it's Heavy" was because I looked through your recent posting history.

1) What's wrong with it? 2) Are you really one to talk?

What's "On the face of it" supposed to mean? At first glance? Or what. Because the way I understand that he's saying "At face value the Wii U's CPU is weaker.. BUT"?

I dunno, possibly referring to other parts of the console that make up for it. But he says pretty clearly it's not as fast as the CPUs on other consoles, echoing the Metro engine designer's sentiments in a more PR-friendly manner.

Point of my post was the OP conveniently omitted that part of the quote.

 

[lwilliams3]

Develop for PC/720/PS4.
Develop exclusively for WiiU.

Gambling: how does it work. Especially when the threat of First Party "Mario Kart machine only" still exists. Nintendo once again making their box a complete hassle for devs to even port CURRENT HD generation code to are the ones at fault. Deflections gotta end somewhere.

Third parties will likely have alot cross-generation games with the next-gen and current-gen systems. The success of the PS4 and Durango is not a giving, so there will be publishers that will not focus all of their resources to the top-end systems (PS4/720/higher PCs). Epic's currently unoffically shift with UE4 is reflecting that too.

 

[Kelthink]

Bwhahahaha I said this in the original Metro LL thread. It was inevitable:

Yeah, I'm an expert in Japanese culture too.

 

[lherre]

So even though the CPU is weak, the other components potentially make up for it. Sounds like the architecture demands for a certain approach during the engine's design, not after. So I guess the main issues now is that current engines aren't built to support such architecture.

OK so ...

ports from 360/ps3 -> different aproach because cpu is slower

now

Port from ps4/xbox next where all the components are above wii u's cpu-gpu by a big margin?

I'm really bored about all this threads to be honest. My 2 cents (and it's only my personal opinion) is that we will have ...

- ps4/xbox next/pc
- Wii U/ps3/x360

Ports from ps4/xbox next will be a few.

I think ps3 and x360 will live more than we think.

So my 2 cents here, not more not less

 

[DrWong]

OK so ...

ports from 360/ps3 -> different aproach because cpu is slower

now

Port from ps4/xbox next where all the components are above wii u's cpu-gpu by a big margin?

I'm really bored about all this threads to be honest. My 2 cents (and it's only my personal opinion) is that we will have ...

- ps4/xbox next/pc
- Wii U/ps3/x360

Ports from ps4/xbox next will be a few.

I think ps3 and x360 will live more than we think.

So my 2 cents here, not more not less

As things are going in term of sales for the PS3 in Japan, I'm not so sure (for Japan).