17 replies to this topic

[Mike12Nite]

Shin'en has given us some vital information on what the Wii U is truely and effortlessly capable of. If you think about it, what developer really focused on pushing the hardware this year? Of course we have 3d world, pikmin 3 and zelda, but those are highly stylized and most likely not focused on really taking advantage of every bit of the consoles power. 3rd parties are not putting any effort to take advantage of any of the Wii U's newer capabilities in ports, there's been confirmations on neogaf that devs arent using the dsp, they're only using about 10mb of the edram and of course the ps360s cpu' are very different from the Wii Us. fourthstorm on neogaf reported hearing that compute shaders weren't fully usable. With all of this going on for the year and gaming websites like eurogamer nailing the notion that the console is underpowered into every Wii U article, it can really mess with everyone's perception about the system, when in reality we dont know jack about the console.

Shin'en however, for some reason are constantly raving about the console. They seem to be having a breeze making a true next gen game on the system.

Here's what shin'en has confirmed about their upcoming Wii U game Fast Racing Neo:

4-8k textures
Deferred render
Vsync enabled
Cascade filtered soft shadows
Hdr
Tessellation
60fps

Now they haven't come out and told us the resolution, but I dont think shin'en would bother using 4k-8k textures if the resolution was going to be 720p as it wouldn't be as noticable. They didnt bother making nano assault neo 1080p because it didnt make much of a visual difference. Im going to go ahead and guess this game is also going to be 1080p because they bothered to go with not just 4k but 8k textures too, and they'd likely want it to be as visable as possible, otherwise 2k textures would be enough.

Now the fact that the Wii U is achiving this in it's second year by a 5 man team speaks volumes about it's power. It would take a pretty decent gaming rig to run something like this game.

Some other interesting things we've heard from devs

Project cars using particle shadows and multi threaded shadow rendering

Two tribes finding a "new" hardware feature in the Wii U that shaves off 100mb of texture memory.

Its so easy to get caught up in the first year of a console, and let the uninformed gaming sites and comment sections drill that overly negative "underpowered" montra into our heads, but if the Wii U can have game that is a defrred render, using 4k-8k textures, with vsync enabled, tessellation and at 60fps, it sounds damned future proof to me, and sounds like shin'en werent talking hot air.

Btw sorry for the sucky writing , im on a phone.

[Pjsprojects]

From what i gather a large chunk of the graphics chip is custom so comparing it to the others is pointless. I'm already happy with WiiU graphics and that's what counts, as long as the person playing the games on the console is happy.

 

Pretty much every thread on every forum about WiiU ends up the same way,let em all get on with it...

[SailtheSeas]

Is it a case of the Wii U being "underpowered" or is it a case of developers being "lazy"?

 

I'm not for moment saying that developers are lazy, but it does seem as though third party developers want all consoles to have the same architecture, so they can make one game and then port that game straight over, brush it up a bit and make mega bucks from that.

 

Companies like Activision, EA and Ubisoft are too busy churning out annual sequels, prequels and releases of their popular franchises to spend time learning how to get the best out of each of the systems they want to put their games on.

 

Companies like Shin'en will spend many months with a system and will learn how to get the best out of the system. This is why I want to see Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft giving a large enough platform to smaller developers and thus enabling those developers the chance to put their games out on systems because these small developers are as committed to making great games to get their companies on the map (so to speak) as they are about making money.

 

I don't want mediocre rubbish like 007 Legends and Fast and Furious Showdown, I want games like Project Cars and Lego City Undercover on the Wii U.

Edited by SailtheSeas, 30 December 2013 - 01:33 PM.

[Mike12Nite]

Custom is definatly the right word.Having fast high bandwidth edram right on the gpu die has never been done and isnt being done by the ps4/x1. Not only that but the cpu has full access to that high bandwidth very fast edram. Im betting wii u will be a console that is going to get very far with optimization, imagine if nintendo unlocks more of the other gig of ram for games, and we dont even know if that extra 3mb of fast ram are usable yet. I really really do hope the wii u has some kind of christmas miracle this holiday with 3rd party titles. I want 3rd partys to continue working on the Wii U, I wanna see what they can do whem they try.

[Raiden]

Devs are not the only ones being lazy. So is Sony and Xbox for basically making PC's. Nintendo's only problem and I mean this to reflect in a negative way on the industry itself is they still make a true console. Custom from head to toe. How consoles used to be and even to a good extent PS3 was more a console than PS4. MS always made PC's in a console box. Today with mostly western developers being the most popular games most western devs are PC first console second. Many of them do not like optimization...just code dumping. I applaud Shin'en for having a massive set for doing what they do.

[AdmiralClassy]

While shin'ens game does sound like it will be good graphically, I think we really should wait until we see some actual footage of it.

 

 

2014 should be the year we learn whether or not the wii u can keep up the the other two

[Pjsprojects]

Do we know when the game is due out?

[Happy Monk]

They can talk the talk but can they walk the walk?

[Mike12Nite]

Shin'en has walked the walk over and over again which is why i believe them. The original Wii game Fast Racing looks gorgeous and so does jet rocket on Wii. Nano assault neo on Wii U made my jaw drop. Id post pics but mobile yadi yada

these guys are the abyss team. True respectable skilled developers.

[NintendoReport]

They can talk the talk but can they walk the walk?

 

If previous work is any indication, they are magicians.

[3Dude]

They can talk the talk but can they walk the walk?

Shin en has been walking the walk for a very long time.

[Mewbot]

Shin en has been walking the walk for a very long time.

That video was so incredibly 90s. I don't even know what it was about but I liked it.

 

Also, the only Shin'en game I've ever bought was "Fun! Fun! Minigolf!" and I hated it. Please tell me their other games are better than that thing. 

Edited by R00bot, 30 December 2013 - 04:19 PM.

[3Dude]

R00bot, on 30 Dec 2013 - 7:16 PM, said:
That video was so incredibly 90s. I don't even know what it was about but I liked it.

Also, the only Shin'en game I've ever bought was "Fun! Fun! Minigolf!" and I hated it. Please tell me their other games are better than that thing.

You could say that they make more exciting games than mini golf.

Although this would be the one to look at for an idea of their next wii u game.

[Lupaie]

 

After this I don't understand why Nintendo isn't licensing the FZero franchise to Shinen. Miyamoto said he doesn't see any new angles and as such there would be no excuse for them to make that investment. But I could see a eShop version developed by Shinen that would just bring Fzero X to the HD era. 

Edited by Lupaie, 31 December 2013 - 12:08 AM.

[GAMER1984]

After this I don't understand why Nintendo isn't licensing the FZero franchise to Shinen. Miyamoto said he doesn't see any new angles and as such there would be no excuse for them to make that investment. But I could see a eShop version developed by Shinen that would just bring Fzero X to the HD era.

nintendo

[Happy Monk]

By walk the walk I also meant can they make a game in which the gameplay lives up to the graphics? There closest to an awesome game was Nano Assault Neo, but it was too short. Fun Fun Minigolf was decent enough and Nano Assault EX was pretty good but flawed. I'd like them to make a game that is very good, not just the graphics.

[Alex Atkin UK]

I think saying that basing a console on PC hardware is being "lazy" is very narrow minded.

 

The point is that costs have been constantly going up and if developers say they need thing to be easier you would be a fool to ignore them.

 

You also make it sound like neither Sony or Microsoft did any customisation at all which is not true.  They did exactly what Nintendo did, started with off-the-shelf designs and revised them accordingly.  The PS4 has a custom network processor and DSP, the Xbox One also has a custom DSP although arguably sticks much closer to the PC design - but as the company who makes Windows that is hardly surprising.

 

Consoles were custom because they had to be, PCs were very inefficient and this has slowly improved.  Nintendo stick with custom because it means exclusive titles have a huge advantage, but that is also why their key titles have taken so long to come out on Wii U.  Its also really annoyed the third-parties which is hardly a logical business decision.

 

So if anything, I would say its Nintendo that are shooting themselves in the foot here stubbornly refusing to change with the times.

[Falco]

call the game f-zero ultra