Wertville

LittleKuriboh is going to make something of this, I am certain.

Wertville pretty much said it for me.

What are you even talking about, there was no mention of multiplayer in the quote? The Gameboy Advance cannot be compared to the Vita in any way, one of the reasons it failed is the Gameboy advance is worser than the GameCube's own controller so who would exactly want to use it? The Vita is better than the PS3 controller in the fact that not only does it have the controls of the PS3 controller it has got a lot more as well.

Just don't know what you're getting at.

What he's getting at is that developers won't make use of the connectivity in a big way. As with the GBA and DS, the only time they will be used is with small features that barely make a difference, simply because requiring a Vita is too big a requirement; the relative failure of Four Swords: Adventures, Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles and FF:CC:Echoes of Time will make sure of that.

I'm sorry but it does matter. ok we know most people on this site loves nintendo exclusives. but if exclusives weren't an issue why pay im sure what will be 350-400 price for a new console that barely does what a ps3 can do.

er... barely does?  I'm sorry, but this is a bit unfair (though I get that you're shouting because you feel that people are ignoring your point).

I agree that graphics matter.  Crisp, detailed visuals (within any art style) absolutely add to the experience of gaming, on multiple levels, from story immersion to raw impact of the events in which you are participating.  I bought an Xbox 360 because of the new gameplay experiences afforded by the more powerful system... and though I have argued in the past that graphics are not the most important thing about a game (and, indeed, still believe this to be absolutely true), I must say that visual power is a major component of the impact that games can have on a person who plays them.

The fact is, however, that the WiiU will certainly be more powerful than the current consoles on the market.  This is not in doubt.  That it mostly likely will not double or treble their power does not concern me, for reasons stated ad nauseum elsewhere and by everyone else here.  The fact that it offers an innovative new controller, the most power on current market, and the support of some excellent franchises (1st, 2nd, and 3rd party) makes it a very appealing prospect to me, as a gamer.

Now, if you are one of those who INSIST that MS and PS have uber-awesome next-gen consoles - super machines 1000x more powerful than their current consoles and able to run spectacular game engines beyond any current developers' wildest imaginings - just waiting to be announced, well then, I just can't think of what to say.  I don't think that this is likely, and I'm not even sure that it is possible from a technological/marketing point of view... but I could always be wrong, and I guess that we'll have to wait until something is actually announced by those companies to know for sure.  

If such an announcement happens... good on them, and well wishing to those who can afford it.  Personally, I am not ready to put down the $1000 that such a tech-beast would have to cost!

I’m probably going to wait for a price drop to get it. And I’m not just saying that (cause everyone always just “says” that) I really mean it because it doesn’t make sense for me at the moment. I really do want one badly, but I already bought the 3DS and my money’s gonna be tied in that system, buying games for it, etc. And who knows how much games will be, I wouldn’t be surprised if they were more than the 3DS ones to make up for the system being cheap. Also, there’s only a few games I would want, so by the time I get it there will be a huge array of games for to to choose from (esp things like jrpgs, final fantasy, dbz, hopefully sly cooper, stuff like that which is my fav).

Even with that being said, I’m not sure about the PSVita succeeding in the long run. Sony and their business decisions in reference to profits and security concerns me a bit, and there’s a few other iffy things. The 3G model is an absolute joke, not only is it $50 extra, you most likely have to pay a monthly subscription to AT&T on top of that. Who the hell wants another data plan, that’s why we have smart phones…actually, I don’t even HAVE a smart phone atm because of the data plan price.

I think software will be pretty decent, although it might take a while to see genuine/quality games…except this is only natural! 3rd party developers have SO MUCH on their plates these days, now having demand to make up full fledge games for PS3/360, PSVita, 3DS, and Wii U. That’s 5 systems, each capable and requiring full length “console worthy” games. In the past, all portable system’s games did not take near as much work to produce and with quality. You can see what I’m talking about today with the lag in releases with the 3DS. Remember the SEVERAL awesome games revealed in development since LAST e3??? And most are still not even out! You can probably expect these similar issues with the PSVita. But remember, I’ve been talking about 3rd party games (because I think those play a very vital roll for a system’s long term survival). Now if we consider first party, Nintendo clearly has the upper hand, being that they supply content that is of general better quality, attention, and in much higher quantity with many different franchises.

Another point I think I should make (now that I’ve made a tangent into the competition between 3DS and Vita) is that I think the 3DS graphics are being highly underrated by a lot of people. This is because most probably haven’t even played with the 3DS, or if they have not enough. Just looking at screenshots and gameplay vids isn’t enough because, it doesn’t translate well in respect to quality or the 3D. After watching the trailers for 3DS on E3, they became available on my 3DS in actual 3D, and they looked exceptionally better in person on the system. Kid Icarus looked extremely more crisp and vibrant, and Resident Evil looks VERY VERY close to a 360/PS3 game. I think this is due to an array of things, one being that game makers have developed techniques for better graphics rendering with system specs that don’t seem all to powerful. Another is that graphics look better on handhelds, because the screen is smaller, making for a crisper resolution and leaving less for the eye to fond over. A third aspect about the graphics, and this is only true with 3DS, is well…the 3D. The screen is rendering the picture twice (one for each eye) and this creates a more complex graphical enhancement. BECAUSE it’s in 3D and because you’re getting two pictures, you’re getting more graphics perspective. You can experiment with this phenomenon by pausing your 3DS on a nice 3D screenshot and going back and forth between 3D and 2D. Notice that in 3D not only is it there the obvious impulse that it’s now in 3D, but the graphics overall are better. It’s like your seeing it like you see things in real life. Again, going back and forth with the slider, the colors are more vibrant in 3D and you can see slightly to the left or right around the character making it seem like your looking at something that actually exists. In conclusion, this is an aspect of the system that highly adds to the graphics quality and I urge you to try it, because it’s often overlooked when not pointed out; you’re either busy playing the game and you’re usually not constantly switching back between 2D and 3D.

So yea, I’ve wasted way too much time writing on this forum lol . We can can speculate all we want (with all the awesome gloriousness of fanboys catfighting haha) about the competition between these two, but who really knows….only time will tell! Long live gaming, w00t!!!

Get ready for a proper Feldian-length post, everyone.

-snip-

That's sounds unnecessarily complicated. See the little sync buttons on the tablets and the console? Just press both at the same time and you're connected. Easy.

I have my doubts about whether WLAN would actually be fast enough to withstand the connection. Doing some quick calculations, streaming a 1280x720 image to the controller at 60 FPS will require roughly 158 MB of bandwidth per second. Add a fairly standard 16-bit 44100 Hz stream of stereo sound to that, as well as sensor, touchscreen, and button readings, and we're at around 160 MB per second, give or take a megabyte.

So-called gigabit WLAN (the fastest kind we've got) tops out at 125 MB per second. Unless compression is applied, which would degrade video and sound quality (as well as potentially introduce lag, use additional processing power, and make the controller more expensive because they'll have to include decoding hardware in it), WiFi just won't be able to take it.

It's likely that the technology at work is actually WirelessHD, or a derivative thereof (if you're confused, WirelessHD is a wireless standard for the transmission of HD video - basically, it's a wireless version of HDMI). Its bandwidth can be anywhere from 512 MBps to just over 3 GBps, depending on its implementation. If our data stream is 160 MBps, 4 tablets would require 640 MB of bandwidth per second - that's comfortably within the range of WirelessHD. So I doubt that bandwidth is the issue.


More likely, there are probably two reasons Nintendo may not be so hot about multiple tablet controllers. For one, those tablets look pretty darned expensive. I imagine they would go for anywhere from $80 to $120. Buying three more of them in addition to a $300-$400 console would cost a small fortune - and Nintendo has never been a company about charging outrageous prices for hardware (except maybe just a little bit with the 3DS).

Second, I think a lot of people aren't realizing how much sheer power would be necessary to deliver four 720p images in addition to a 1080p one, at 60 FPS, while also calculating everything else in a game like AI and whatnot. The console will have to render just under 6 million pixels per frame - 60 times per second. Point is, you're asking for an awful lot of performance by asking for four tablets. The amount of graphics hardware they'd have to cram into the console for it to be able to handle all that would bring the cost up to what many will probably think is an outrageous level. Worse yet, a huge part of the console's power will remain unused whenever you play single-player games - the cost premium that would be necessary to support four tablets would be an unnecessary expense in the eyes of those who play games mostly for personal enjoyment than for multiplayer (myself included).

I'm sure it could but it would have to be with low settings, lol.



I was impressed with the background but something about the bird just seemed off...idk what it is.

Anyways, that was a tech demo, not representative of graphics during actual gameplay.

Remember the Quantic Dream's tech demo for the PS3 that had everyone's jaws dropping to the floor? Well it took Quantic Dreams 4 years to actually to be able to make a game with those visuals (Heavy Rain) and even then it wasn't on par with that original tech demo...and to even get close to it, the entire game had to be done in QT events.

Other than Heavy Rain, no game has even come close to what they showed off in that Tech Demo for the PS3 and we're well into the systems life cycle...if games were going to be able to do it, they'd have done it already.

It's entirely possible (if not likely) that it'll be the same for the Wii U with it's tech demo's.

Not that it would be a bad thing, it's still a MAJOR step up from the original Wii and short of people who made the massive mistake of actually buying into all the b/s pre-reveal hype no one expected a modern day graphical powerhouse from Nintendo.



I'm not against Nintendo, I love me some Zelda, Mario, DK and Kirby. I'm against people who try to irrationally overrate products or features of products.

You have to look at Nintendo's attitude regarding tech demos and general tech specs. Really the reason Nintendo stopped releasing technical specs regarding its systems is what happened with GameCube. Sony and Microsoft give the media fluffed specs regarding their consoles, which simply wasn't possible in a full game setting. Nintendo on the other hand were more honest and openly discussed the capabilities of the GameCube and the whole situation soured on them. This isn't Sony or Microsoft where consistently you can expect them to show case a tech demo simply not possible on the hardware in a game. Nintendo's tech demos for certain franchises for instance often end up not quite as impressive as the finished product and it wouldn't be like Nintendo to show case a demo that didn't represent what the console is truly capable of pulling off.

My impression is that its graphics capabilities are not far beyond the current competition.  That is probably plenty enough power anyway, but at the same time they don't want to reveal specs because people would judge the system on the fact that the specs are similar to five year old products, despite that you shouldn't.

We're rapidly approaching a threshold where graphics across the board are going to be impressive and they simply won't matter anymore.  There will still be improvements, but they won't be defining systems like they were a decade ago, when everybody was debating what system had the best capabilities.

The industry in the modern era is about marketing, software, and services.  Hardware matters more in form than raw tech specs.

What's most important about Wii U on the technical side is its architecture.  Work on the system to an extent carries over from the current generation.  Don't expect visuals of Wii games to get much better than you see in their first year.  Developers already know how to achieve results with the hardware because they've worked on the Xbox 360 for years.  Of course they aren't identical, but they're going to find all the ins/out/tricks a lot faster this time.

Your impression is quite off then. Both demos to some degree showcased effects simply impossible to replicate with current generation consoles. That's without mentioning that both demos where running at 1080p native resolution in real time while pulling off Global Illumination, high quality textures, and ext. Literally only a few PC games on their highest settings can do some of the things being done in both demos. The more impressive demo the Japanese Garden Demo is specifically stated as being based on an older version of the hardware and Zelda tech demos always are worse than the final product. Their choice regarding the demos perhaps wasn't the best. It would of helped get the capabilities of the console around to specific crowds of individuals if one demo had been a realistic urban setting (a FPS ext). We've more or less already meet the threshold where most individuals have a hard time telling several of the current improvements in graphics compared to the capabilities of the current consoles. That has a lot to do with the fact majority of it is very subtle and that no developer has really embraced tessellation. What improvements can be seen for next generation consoles also really need to be seen in person or the original video files as recordings lose quite a bit of detail.

Look at the attached pictures of the Spaceworld Zelda tech demo and Zelda: Twilight Princess. There's quite a big difference. If the new Zelda tech demo is already beyond PS360 level, a Nintendo IP at the end of WiiU's life cycle is going to look awesome.

I just tried that. Nothing happens. Are you sure this isn't a mod/admin only thing.

...turns out it was an admin-only thing. But not anymore.

I fixed the permissions. Every registered member should be able to see the reputations now.

"Sony and MS's consoles are going to be more powerful since they will come out after Cafe, but the gap will be small and all 3 consoles will be able to share ports unlike this generation."

That's one area where I have to disagree, I don't even view Cafe is truly ushering in the next generation of consoles because of the fact that according to most reports it's barely superior in power than the PS3...which to me makes it Nintendo's offering of a console finally worthy of the current generation whereas the Wii is more comparable to the systems of the previous generation just attaching motion controls. If Cafe truly is barely beyond the level of the PS3 that would mean that for the gap between the PS4/720 and Cafe to be minimal than Sony and Microsoft would have to make minimal advances to the power of their consoles...something I just don't see happening.

Oh really? Rumours say Nintendo is using an ATI 4850/4870 and a 3-core IBM CPU. That would make it much more powerful than PS3. So I don't know what you are talking about. There is NO feasible tech MS and Sony can use to blow away that tech especially when they'll be looking to launch at least a year after Cafe so it doesn't get two or more years on the market by itself.

If Cafe is barely more powerful than systems that were released 5 and 6 years ago than it shows that Nintendo obviously did not attempt to capitalize on advances in technological capabilities, something that Microsoft and Sony are both well known for doing and I just don't see any way that they don't do so for the 2014 consoles.

Maybe MS is well known for powerful tech, although this is only their second generation.

But Sony has never had the most powerful console in any of their previous gens. Both N64 and GC (plus XBox) were more powerful than PS1 and PS2.

This is Sony's first gen being the most powerful and it didn't end as well for them as the last ones.

Do I think they'll ignore Cafe? No, however...using the userbase as an example isn't the best way to go here. Look at the userbase of the Wii yet it can't be denied that 3rd party developers HAVE largely ignored the Wii in favor of the PS3 and the 360 and your kidding yourself if you believe that the 360 and PS3 having far superior power than the Wii isn't part of the reason for that.

It certainly isn't anything to do with ease of development for the consoles because it's well known that the PS3 is by far the most complex console to develop for yet the PS3 still has vastly superior 3rd party support (including exclusives) than the Wii.

The Xbox 360 was the base console for building games (due to the architecture) before porting to PS3. PS3 was similar in power to 360 so it was easier to port to it than Wii. Plus the combined userbase of the 360 and PS3 are more than Wii's alone.

The Wii's architecture was out-dated and almost required building the game from ground-up for it. That's why devs didn't port to it. It was too much of a hassle.

Nintendo is said to be using an easy-to-port to architecture, so Cafe won't be facing that problem. The architecture will similar to the one used for PC games and the 360, so ports will be easy.

why does the PS3, the most expensive system to develop for have a line up of 3rd party exclusives superior to that of the cheaper to develop for Wii? Your obviously overestimating the effect of development costs on a companies decision on what console to make AAA titles for.

Erm...3rd party exclusives are paid for by Sony. Devs get money to build those games. Nintendo doesn't really money-hat with 3rd parties for exclusives. They rely on their first party.

The reason is the exact same reason behind your statement that Cafe's touchscreen will lead to games the other consoles won't have. The AAA titles on the 360 and PS3 can't be on the Wii, the system simply doesn't have the power to support them. So who's to say the same won't happen again? With Cafe being barely above this generations most powerful console it would be easy for Microsoft and Sony to create consoles much more powerful than Cafe for a 2014 launch. If it happens we could once again see the power differential force developers into a position where games on the consoles from Microsoft and Sony could not be done on Cafe.

It won't happen again because, like I said before, Nintendo is using a familiar architecture and there won't be an HD gap nor a huge power gap between the consoles like this gen.

Games on 360 and PS3 CAN be put on Wii. It's just that it requires ALOT of scaling down and rebuilding  from the ground-up. That's just too much of a hassle for third parties and not worth the investment.

And even the touchscreen may not make as much of a difference as your stating, it COULD but there is no guarantee. How many quality titles were exclusive to the Wii because of the motion control innovation? Did it ensure the PS3 and 360 couldn't get some of the biggest games of the generation? In fact the exact opposite occured, 3rd party developers focused on developing AAA titles that took advantage of the raw power of the 360 and PS3 instead of focusing on titles that took advantage of the innovation of the Wii.

The motion controls did make a difference. That's why Wii is highest selling console this gen and why the others brought out their own motion hardware.

Nintendo didn't make motion controls to get 3rd parties. They made it to get the new audience.

Kinect was indeed a "me too" product because if it wasn't for the Wii Microsoft would have never developed and released it.

And I don't know where you got the idea that Move didn't sell well from because Move was a MASSIVE success for Sony, they couldn't even keep up with demand for the first 5 months after release and has sold over 8 million units so far, certainly behind Kinect which has sold over 10 million but still not bad for a product that "offered nothing new" (when in fact it was the first and STILL the only product in console gaming to offer true 1:1 motion capture).

Kinect was not as much of a 'me too' product as Move was. Move was too similar to Wii-mote while Kinect differentiated itself.

Kinect also moved hardware for MS, and a good number of software. Move didn't do much of that for PS3.

You know, I guess the only way we can know whether it's a good idea or not is to give it a shot. Reputation's been enabled.