I still play and enjoy BLOPS2.  Its a fun game, made better with the gamepad.  I like the fact that there isn't an overabundance of military shooters on the platform, and the one we have is one with very well tuned game mechanics, good weapon feedback, fun loadout options, etc.

At the moment Nintendo has zero games out for the Wii U. What is worth owning on the Wii U? 

Nope, not a single one.  Pfft.  What were they thinking launching a console with exactly zero games to play?

Yes and Nintendo right now has zero games.

erm...

Look routerbad its clear I absolutely and utterly disagree with you so its pretty obvious nothing has been proven to me. Why on earth would you mention iwata-san in your comment in response. As it stands 100% of the evidence is on my side because the wii u simply isn't performing to the level people like you are claiming. Your argument is some golden dawn where the wii u performs to a higher level but that has yet to happen and I would say it never will at least not to any significant level beyond current performance.

 

Again I'm only saying something that is controversial in this environment which is a nintendo forum. Outside this forum in a multi-console environment most of what I have said is already accepted by the majority.

 

Why not at least wait until there is some evidence to your viewpoint available. That's real evidence based on how the wii u is performing. I'm a wii u owner and would love the wii u to be more powerful than it is but the evidence dictates it is in the same area of performance as 360 and PS3. You'll not win any argument while the wii u is still struggling to outperform 360 and PS3 because most sane people will realise that a console that can not outperform current gen consoles is hardly going to be competitive with next gen consoles that are much more powerful.

Meh, switching subjects again?  What is it with you and straw men?  Where do I start?  Well, for starters, there isn't a single game, not one, that is "struggling to match PS3 performance".  It, isnt happening.  

Exactly 0% of the "evidence" is on your side.  Look, we've put evidence all over this site to the contrary, 90% of it (I can make up statistics too ) is in your quoted comment box.  You try and claim that the hardware that we see in the photographs clearly suggests its lack of "powah" then when you are summarily proven wrong, you go with "the games aren't performing like you are saying".  Make up your mind.

The Wii U performs at a higher level than any 7th generation device.  Simply put, it is more powerful.  Your ridiculous claims that somehow a port from a 7th generation device, using the same engine as a 7th generation device, running code as it would on a 7th generation device (CPU centric), and in some cases only using two of the available cores and still achieving either the same results or better is "evidence" that "Wii U is running on last century hardware" and that "Wii U is equivalent to a current gen system" have been put down time and time again.

I've explained also why you disregard every....single....comment that proves you wrong because you are unwilling to read what people who know more about hardware systems than you say and because you are unwilling to disregard your own confirmation bias.  Simply put, as I have said to you before, Wii U could put out the most technically advanced game engine of all time and you would still claim it is otherwise.

Also as I've said, Nintendo's own launch title proves you wrong instantaneously because it is pulling off effects that are either impossible or were impractical on last generation hardware.  You refuse to listen, or do any research, preferring to prop up straw men to cover your heine.

So you have current, commercially available evidence to take into account and you won't.  Software sells hardware, but software doesn't dictate how powerful the hardware is on its own.  The performance of the system, just the 50% that we know of the system, can be derived very simply.  Just 50% of the Wii U's GPU is more powerful than any of the last gen systems.  Period.  Until we know more about what the other half is used for that much is left up to speculation.  What you can take to the bank is that it is being used.  Now this is just raw performance.  This isnt even mentioning the fact that the logic is much more modern and capable of every single trick that any of the other next gen systems will be capable of, albeit to varying degrees.

What there has not been any evidence of is the Wii U being in even the same ballpark as PS3 or 360.  That's pure fanboyism and confirmation bias.  Everyone knows that you don't judge systems based on ports from different hardware.  PS3 had troubles running RE:R, does that mean that the 3DS is a more powerful system?  Not a chance.

I can point out the "evidence" you keep overlooking as many times as you are backward enough to post ridiculous fallacies on this board.  I've pointed it out multiple times, you are unwilling to read and comprehend.  I'm sure you'll say in some other thread today that there is no "evidence" that the Wii U is more powerful than the HD twins again.  It's bound to happen, you've fallen into a state of psychosis.  You don't even realize what your fingers are doing its drilled so far into your brain.

I mentioned Iwata-San because he did, in fact, make an idiotic statement about the Wii.  You suggested that everyone made similar statements, but no one else has.  No one is saying that the Wii U is as powerful as the PS4, but you'll try and accuse us of that later today as well, because that's what you've become known for.  Weak straw men and idiotic logic that you think supports your argument, but only makes you look foolish.

you opened a can on that one ^^ I agree with you saying that this is only controversial on a Wii U forum, anywhere else it would be considered reasonable (not saying right for the "fangirls").

 

I'm not a technical person when it comes to the Wii U, but I believe what I can see with my own eyes. I haven't seen or played anything on the Wii U that is obviously above the ps360 gen. "Wait till e3" i hear, "give it time" I hear, and sure, I will, but I won't really be surprised if nothing comes out that head and shoulders above the ps360. That killzone trailer is the first time I've had the "yah, THATS next gen" vibe from any of the consoles. (and no, im not a cod whore).

Killzone looks like a last gen game with more RAM for higher res textures.  That is all.  And see my comment RE: NintendoLand.  It is actually doing things that are simply technically unachievable on PS360, because the PS360 hardware does not support the effects.

They did not. They just got butthurt.

They didn't even get butthurt.  Everyone attributes a quote made by an iOS game developer at indie dev con to be the word from activision themselves, it isn't.  It's a mobile app dev with delusions of grandeur spreading rumor haplessly from idle chat that he himself only overheard between two other people who were also unaffiliated with Activision.

It's too bad for the Wii U that most big-named publishers like Activision and EA stepped off. That's really hurting the system since Activision and EA have possibly the largest pools of developers.

Acti haven't stepped off.

I believe Microsoft have even stricter policies than that.

The problem with Nintendo is the lack of communication and long lead times between showing them your dlc and them saying it's okay or not.

BINGO.  They all require testing before DLC can be published because they host the data on their own servers and have to accept payment for it, making them the defacto target if there is an issue.

And yes, Microsoft has always been the most restrictive, for patching, DLC, you name it, even for indies, who can rarely afford to put up with the costs associated with patching XBIG content.

Gotcha ;-)

 

Yeah, I haven't had a chance to play around with that much yet. I want to though. You're right that it isn't the main focus of the console, and I am very happy for that.

Agreed.

While I agree with the sentiment here, I disagree that the Wii U is ahead of its time. So far, I love it and admire it for delivering a home console to people who mostly just want to play games and not worry about TV and other random stuff. But I'd be fooling myself if I thought that it was ahead of its time. 

It does offer an interactive TV service, it just isn't touted as the main focus of the console.

 

Nintendo has detailed on an official Wii U Tour 2013 website six iconic locations where Nintendo fans can test drive the Wii U along with several of the currently available games for the platform.  The first location we’ve already heard about, as the tour kicked off on May 26th in Anaheim, California at Disneyland Resort’s Downtown Disney.  The events are set up as a living room setting with backdrops of some of Nintendo’s most iconic and beloved characters.

Future event locations include:

• Downtown Disney at Walt Disney World Resort near Orlando, FL – June 5th – June 23rd
• Navy Pier 600 East Grand Avenue, Chicago, IL – June 28th – July 21st
• Bloomington, MN – June 28th – July 21st
• Boston, MA – August 10th – September 2nd
• Hollywood & Highland Center – August 10th – September 2nd

A few of the venues have yet to be determined, but they have the cities and dates mapped out to coincide to popular vacation destinations throughout the summer months.

Nintendo have also given a list of what can be seen and experienced at these locations:

• Nintendo Land
• New Super Mario Bros. U
• LEGO City Undercover
• Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate (Demo Version)
• Need for Speed Most Wanted U
• Injustice: Gods Among Us
• Resident Evil Revelations (Demo Version)
• Rayman Legends Challenges App

The events will also let attendees experience the features available on Wii U, to include the eShop, TVii, Wii U Chat, Wii Street U, and more.

Is Nintendo coming to a city near you or a city in your vacation plans? I know I’ll be making a trip to Hollywood to see it for myself.  Let us know in the comments below.

 

http://nintendoenthu...ough-september/

Dealthstroke DLC was confirmed by Amazon, we contacted them to make sure it wasn't a mistake.

http://nintendoenthu...-wii-u-is-a-go/

Jaguar is an x86 chip, meaning that it is generally the same architecture as the first x86-64 chips of 2006. Anything else would be incompatible with Windows and such unless Microsoft rewrote the os for that platform.

Espresso, while being based on the Power architecture, is under the full control of Nintendo which can tailor the chip to handle the exact workload that gaming requires. X86 on the other hand has to be more of a generic chip that handles anything from gaming to daemons/services to Microsoft Office, meaning that not all of it's processing abilities are directly usable for gaming.

No, it has a similar instruction set.  Actual architecture varies greatly between even x86 cores, otherwise they would never need to iterate and create "better" versions of the same architecture.  Just like FLOPS only tells part of the story with graphics instructions, x86 only relays that it is compatible with the x86 instruction set, and more recently, it also confers that it is also compatible with the 64 bit extensions to the x86 instruction set.

Ouya is the same eighth generation as wii u, ps4 and the xboner and is easily beaten by the dreamcast for many types of games. The generation thing is not signfiicant.

 

As for performance this should be judged and based on the specification and the performance of games. As specifications can vary on so many levels and developers can vary the amount of effort used to create games people can always find some way of expressing an opinion that x is better than y on some level. When the wii was launched many claimed it had comparable performance to the 360 and PS3 and there are plenty of old arguments on forums predicting the next wii game would be equal to the  360 or PS3 version. I think for about 2 years there were people predicting this until they finally accepted reality and stopped posting such comments. Same will happen with wii u I'm sure.

I've never seen one person, ever, save Iwata-san himself (who was dead wrong) make a claim that Wii would have games that look anywhere near the same as on PS360.

You are still ignoring everything that's being said and proven to you, and now you are creating fantasy arguments to support your claim again, because you are unable to level with reality yourself.

The HyperScan and the Zeebo were both included in the seventh generation along with Wii, 360 and PS3... Does anyone actually consider them to be on the same level as any of the big three? No. Generation designation doesn't matter.

Arguing that something isn't next gen because of a hardware specification is beyond ridiculous, and it shows that people are willing to rewrite the dictionary to support a flawed argument.

In the grand scheme of things, you are right, it means very little to the end customer what someone wants to call it.

I call the Wii U current gen. How can you call something next gen when it's already released!

It is current gen, PS360 are last gen.

Fair enough. I know Shin'en has used the same engine since their DS games, just adding in new assets when required.

They didn't use the same engine for Nano Assault.  I'm pretty sure they're probably using a modified mtframework for DS and 3DS.

But hasn't Nintendo used pretty much the same engine since Mario 64? I know Shin'en has used the same engine since their DS games, just adding new features when they need new features.

 

Essentially, it doesn't matter if a game is using a new engine, just how it uses the engine.

 

The Wii U will get the enhanced engine. I agree.

No, Nintendo introduced new engines with the GC, and carried them over to the Wii.  They are creating new ones for the Wii U, but demos like the Zelda tech demo ran in a Wii engine that was modified.  The problem is that the COD engine is the same one introduced in 1996.

I am so pumped to play COD Ghost on Wii U. I'm really hoping they unlock the Next Gen tech for this game and show how its a step above the current other competitors. Nintendo should really push then on this. It would help prove its power and sell more units.

The "new engine" for Ghosts is the same engine, with some better plugins.  Also, it was confirmed that Naughty Dog will be using the same engine for PS4 development that they did for PS3 development because what they got out of those engines was "good enough"

At any rate, Wii U would get the enhanced engine.

they have no next gen consoles listed. that means nothing. they said before that next gen would be announced later. dont want to make you feel bad but hey what else do you do to a 10 year old kid.

They do, XBOX One and PS4 are listed for Ghosts.  They officially announced a PS4 version already, the only one that hasn't been announced is the Wii U version.

I'm going to go ahead and bring up the argument I used against a friend. We are not at the point of marginal returns. Console makers make their consoles less powerful so as not to lose so much money and then want you to believe that. Until we are at a molecular level in games, there will always be room for improvement.

It has nothing to do with losing money.  Their silicon budgets for the internals of the consoles are a determinate factor for price point, they aim to make their money back some way, and the gaming market expanded by a factor of three last generation thanks to "casual gaming" so once the software library is up to snuff console makers will make their money back, except for Sony, they still haven't made their money back on PS3.

Diminishing returns isn't something that goes away because you don't believe in it.  GPU makers put out high end cards for 1000s of dollars in some cases that have more shaders and more RAM than mainstream or budget cards, but all they can do is a few more frames or a higher benchmark score. 

Similar to the CPU "add more GHz" then "add more cores" GPU makers are saying "add more shader cores" then "add more RAM" "wider memory bus".  The problem is that more shader cores and more RAM aren't getting the same performance gains they used to, because as these systems get more complex and powerful, the graphics engines that run on them become more efficient and scalable.  Meaning the engines can do more with less hardware, but having more hardware is no benefit to anyone.

I dont want to make you feel bad, for a reason, they removed wii U, after the news came out...

 

ea is paying them lots of bucks NOT TO?  lol

Has nothing to do with EA, Nintendo more than likely saw the news coming out everywhere and wanted it taken down, similar to how Nintendo wanted Activision to wait to announce BLOPS2 for Wii U until they were ready for it.

At any rate, I think its silly, they should just officially announce that it is or it is not coming to the platform.

I see, so it is not as simple as releasing specs for software, and making the hardware engineers work around it (this was also playing into my thoughts, like how all different parts will work with Windows regardless of architecture changes within the x86-64 spectrum to a point). Rapping your head around a closed system is very difficult. It is like capital budgeting, but locking yourself in without any alterations, for years. I never considered it from this angle. 

 

The different levels of memory cache are interesting as well. What is even more pertinent is that Microsoft is using a similar strategy, yet Sony is going with the GDDR5. I have read, but have not fully understood, the concerns on Sony's approach. I also have trouble understanding how 8 Jaguar cores and a 7970m are going to merge into an APU. 

 

One aspect with Sony's system that seems to be apparent is that the power will be exploitable from day one, presuming a game exists that can take advantage of it. However, their approach seems unbalanced to me. I do not know how that cpu/gpu combo will be able to use half of that ram without running into bottlenecks of it's own. Not to mention the obvious reserves for the OS (which I suspect some of those cores/gpu compute unites to be reserved for, and why MS is lower spec in comparison for undoubted OS efficiency vs Sony). 

The GPU will not be a 7970, for starters, at the very most we're looking at a 7770.  Sony is big on putting out numbers that tend to not be true in real life situations, so I wouldn't even count on that at this point.  They claimed RSX had 1.8TFLOPS as well.

You are right in assuming that they'll run into hardware bottlenecks long before memory bottlenecks, where those hardware bottlenecks are is anyone's guess at this point.

The reason MS went with a lower spec, and even Nintendo went with a lower spec is that much of that additional power will be wasted.  PS4 having more power will not show on screen due to the diminishing returns we're seeing in the GPU space, and why GPU makers just add more shaders linearly along with more RAM for their more powerful cards.  Those cards are MUCH more power hungry, run MUCH hotter, yet produce maybe a few more frames than a midrange or budget card.  The benefit of too much power in a closed system like this is limited.  You have to find a balance that works.

First question: OS, why was it in such a bad shape? Honestly, Nintendo sucks at OS creation. The Wii was vwry basic, and the Wii U was an upgrade to it's design. I think they should use Linux, but they haven't listened yet.

As for the developer tools, Nintendo had no excuse. I don't know why they didn't give proper help to the developers. They learned from that mistake, but it was too late.

Hopefully that helps.

Exactly, Microsoft is an OS company, and that shows through brilliantly on the XBONE.

Nintendo is a game company, OS's and online infrastructures aren't in their natural wheelhouse, though I'm sure they're learning very quickly to make it their wheelhouse. 

This may help others reading, and I know it will help my general understanding:

 

My impression of console development is that it gets finalized at some point. The foundation, so to speak, is there. In this case, Nintendo, AMD, and IBM know they are going with a GPU, most likely custom from the 6 series (2010), and the tri-core Power 7/750 base chip. Leaving the gamepad out for a moment, I would presume the only thing left for the box itself would be the clock speeds, amount of cache, and so forth. Or, put another way, that initial dev kit, with the 4850 inside, it should have been the target for the OS. 

 

As they got closer with the gamepad and finalized specs, I would have thought that the OS would have been patched along the way. 

 

What I am having trouble understanding is how the OS was in such a state at launch, and how the dev tools were to the point where launch games were using 2 cores. 

 

Note: I am also under the impression that the MCM is simply a customized e6760 and IBM  solution to fill in the gaps. Without a real target game from Nintendo to show off technical capabilities, it is hard for someone not really tech savvy (like myself) to rationalize the issues they have had outside of the gamepad development (which is an amazing achievement along with the low power consumption). 

The original prototypes and the software environment was built around weaker hardware than ended up in the system, that is true.

Because it took so long to get the hardware finalized, the OS itself was not optimized for it by the time they were preparing for launch.  This is a big reason behind the utter lack of marketing, Nintendo are sandbagging the Wii U intentionally (they know early adopters will buy into it anyway, they just thought there would be more) because they themselves felt the software environment was not ready.

The real problem is that the GPU is so very divergent from the original target hardware, that all of the tools would have had to be rewritten both to take advantage of the GPU at a basic level, and to properly use the gamepad.  For the gamepad they needed to essentially upgrade the target hardware in order to get the performance they were looking for with the gamepad, and AMD tech like eyefinity fits perfectly.

It isn't just a customized 6760, its the other way around, in fact.  Its a custom chip that happens to utilize the AMD unified shader cores from the 6760 that they licensed.  It's a brand new animal that no one was prepared for.

I assume they still haven't nailed down the best clock speeds, and the cache on die was based on their budget for the chip.  They really thought of everything, and companies like Shin'en that really understand GPU tech through and through are able to be authoritative on the fact that there is plenty of power there if you know how to use the system properly, and everything is designed for extreme efficiency.  No clock cycles wasted, as it were.

The great thing is that many of us are already satisfied with how the system basically operates, and that says something, because Nintendo isn't, and they will continue to improve all aspects.

And I'm sure Microsoft did also in the homework stages. And nvidias comment actually hurt ms a bit in public mindshare.

Very true.

Lol

It would also explain nvidia being so bent over nobody choosing them.

And then openly stating the amd solution in the xbox is inferior to the and solution in the Playstation. Actually kinda funny and immature that they'd be so hurt as to let that loose.

Sony did approach them, and wasn't willing to pay, that's why the came out and said what they said.

Not really. Intel chips work with amd GPu.

And amd works fine with power too.

I'm guessing that nvidia was just too expensive. And so was intel.

BINGO