Goodtwin

Not a very impressive reveal, not terrible but not great either.  It almost looks like this console is being positioned to sell through DirectTV or something more so than in retail stores.  Its not going to be cheap.  With comparable specs to the PS4 and having Kinect thrown it, this is a $500+ product.  Maybe a $200 up front cost if they do indeed partner with a TV provider.  It should be interesting to see just how they are planning to sell this thing.  All I know is that at retail, trying to sell a $500+ gaming console is a tough sell once you get past the hardcore fans. 

The biggest tool Nintendo has is the ability to cut royalty fees for third parties.  Third parties typically pay $15 per $60 game sold to the console manufacture, Nintendo could either give them a discount or waive the fee altogether.  This can nearly double the profit per copy sold, and when the development is limited to one console the development cost are less.  Its also possible that Nintendo is just flat out funding the development of these games, and will end up being the publisher for them. 

because they don't want to waste further money on a console that isn't shifting enough copies for them to make a viable profit?

 

 

Now, I love Nintendo, but this is a disaster for them. In the UK, EA was last years (and the year before that!) biggest game retailer and developer. Nintendo are attempting to change their image from a kiddies console to a viable console to compete against the PS4 and the new Xbox. Not having the support of EA is, quite literally, going to destroy any chance the U has of competing with the other consoles (although Nintendo already missed that ship anyway). I don't play any of EA's long-running game series and I don't plan to, but this is going to cause irreparable damage to the U and Nintendo and because of EA's influence (as the biggest developer of video games in Europe), it is going to make other developers wary about developing on the U. 

The only reason I tend to downplay the significance of EA is because of the facts, and the facts say that EA's games on Nintendo consoles are rarely in the top 25 best selling games on Nintendo consoles.  They only accounted for about 8 titles in the best selling 100 Wii games, and about 17 of the best selling Gamecube games.  Ubisoft has had far more success on Nintendo consoles over the past two generations, and even though EA is bigger than Ubisoft, they dont pull the same weight on Nintendo consoles.  Would the Wii U be better off with EA than without?  Yea, of course, but the majority of gamers that would have purcahsed a Wii U will still purcahse one regardless of EA's support. 

I dont dissagree with everything they said, but for how negative the article was, you would think that Nintendo was a failing company.  Nintendo does drag its feet in various areas, but at the end of the day people buy consoles to play games on, and if there are great games that you can only find on Nintendo consoles, then everything else is really just a bonus. 

 Have you noticed that everything related with EA and Nintendo is someway like a way to Finish the Wii U? And i've noticed that western developers are doing the same. Can EA accomplish it's goal? I mean, maybe it's a strong line to say this, but with rumours and/or news like this :http://wiiudaily.com...elopment-rumor/  i just can think that they are just want to screw Nintendo badly.

You cant go from an "unprecedented partnership" to practically no support, and not have some salty feelings with one another.  EA is pissed at Nintendo for not taking Origin, and with lackluster sales of their launch Wii U games, they now have thier excuse to eliminate support.  Not releasing games on the Wii U that you are releasing on the 360 and PS3 means that the power of the Wii U is not a factor.  They can make all the back handed comments they want, but if their game can run the 360 and PS3, it can run on the Wii U. 

EA probably does think that they can sink the Wii U, and would most likely take a lot of satisfaction in the Wii U fading away now that they arent support the console.  Will it happen?  I doubt it, the lack of support from EA would be devastating for the Xbox or Playstation, because their titles are very popular on those platforms.  EA titles just dont make up a huge chunk of software sales on Nintendo platforms like they do on the competitions platform.  Nintendo and EA both have big ego's, and they both feel they are more important than the other.  The fact is they would both be better off doing business together, but the relationship has been soured, and I doubt its going to be mended any time soon.

Utterly childish response as expected. Neogaf experts have a range of theories about wii u performance but they generally sit in a realistic area. When I said the wii u gpu was around 350 gflops many on neogaf were saying lower than that. It is a figure that is approximately in the middle of expectations based on the evidence available.

 

Try to see it from the other side. For people who like realism its getting plainly ridiculous for people to write nonsense about the wii u being powerful when its struggling to match the 360 and PS3 most of the time. Has anyone considered that these articles might actually be true and the developers aren't conspiring against Nintendo but simply can't run their modern game engines on a console with low cpu resources. That's really what these articles are about. Some people warp reality to suit their own desired beliefs, others just prefer to deal with the real world.

The problem seems to be consistently coming from EA though.  While I agree with you that the Wii U isnt a powerhouse in disguise, its also not the weakling that many would like to paint it out to be.  People have talked about theoretical performance on the 360 and PS3, and how they have never come close to reaching those numbers in game.  I think that the Wii U will end up being far more capable of coming close to its theoretical performance peak.  Think of it this way, an I7 CPU is a powerful CPU, but take that same CPU and remove the cache, how powerful is it now?  Thats an exageration of the PS3 and 360 hardware architecure, the compenents were powerful but there were multiple bottlenecks in the system. 

The CPU argument has become a joke as soon as Sony revieled that they were using a Jag CPU.  Yes, its eight cores, but those cores arent powerhouses.  At the most, the PS4 might be 2-3 times more capable than the tri core cpu powering the Wii U. 

The Wii U doesnt use off the shelf compenents, so that the design is very much propriety and will take a very specific approach to getting the most out of it.  We have a few more weeks before we will get to see what EAD and Retro have been doing.  I expect these games to really showcase what the hardware can do.  We will likely never no any more than we already do about the hardware specs, so its up to the developers to really show us just where the hardware really stands, and an exclusive from Retro is likely to do just that. 

I think most people gave up on trying to directly compare the Wii U gpu to an off the shelf product.  The fact is, Criterion made mention that they were having trouble getting the "GPU" to run at an acceptable framerate.  Not the CPU, not the memory, but the GPU.  If this were an off the shelf HD4*** or HD5550 GPU, getting things running well would not have been a mystery.  The updated information and tools allowed them to go from having trouble getting a 360/PS3 level game running at an acceptable framerate, to being able to make an upgraded port with a more stable framerate.  This all happened over a period of about 3 months.  Its obvious that the GPU is using some unconventional tech. 

We are a month away from Retro Studios making these guys look rediculous.  The Cry Engine 3 runs well on the Wii U, Unreal 3 runs well on the Wii U, and if EA was actually going to support the Wii U, they would make the optimizations to the engine for Wii U. 

You dont hear Nintendo bashing EA, because they are professionals.  EA is full of a bunch of crybabies.  If there was one publisher that I would be willing to give up for the rest of my life, it would be EA.  I cant wait to be playing NFL 2k14 next year on Wii U.  Now that the EA NFL monopoly is coming to an end, we should actually see some progress in football games. 

Its does cheapen the value of the product a bit, but thats Nintendo's fault for releasing a Beta version of their console.  Seriously, its like Nintendo just wanted to get the Wii U on shelves for 2012 knowing very well that they didnt have all their ducks in a row yet.  The very casual gamers rarely buy a console at launch, and yet Nintendo's first party offering were two very casual games.  With retailers sticking with these low prices though, its going to be hard for Nintendo to maintain its current suggested retail price over in the UK.  Even if Nintendo decides to not drop the price here in the US, they may be forced by retailers to drop the price in the UK.  

On a good note, it does seem like Nintendo is prepping for a big push starting this summer.  They will have their 2nd big OS update, and will also have Pikmin ready for release in Auguest.  This is when I expect marketing to ramp back up for the Wii U.  Having a high profile release every month starting in Auguest through the end of the year along with a strong marketing push should pull the Wii U out of its current slump.  It would be hard to avoid success when releasing Baynonetta in September, 3D Mario game in October, a Zelda game in November, and a Mario Kart game in December.

The bottom line is Nintendo really wasnt prepared for a strong launch, and instead of trying to bandaid things over the past few months, they have decided to regroup and get ready for a big push in the second half of 2013.   

I wasnt a huge fan of the Splinter Cell games, but if the final product is very polished, then I will definately consider this one.  It looks like it makes good use of the gamepad, and after playing a more stealth game in Goldeneye, I am warming up to that style of play. 

I was watching a youtube video of IGN playing Resident Evil Revelations on PS3.  And guess what, the game has some performance issues.  A 3DS game ported to PS3 has some performance issues.  Thing about that for a minute.  Obviously the PS3 is far more powerful than the 3DS, and yes they did do some upgrades to the graphics but its still a 3DS game at its core, and it has some framerate issues on PS3.  This just goes to show that a highly optimized game for one console can actually hinder performance on another console.  So the fact that Wii U runs most multi plats better than PS3 on day one with lackluster dev tools, its very likely that we should see some significant improvements over the following 18 months.  Even when the guys broke down the GPU photo, the amount of the GPU they were able to figure out accounted for about the same amount of area that they couldnt figure out.  Nintendo is always about efficiency, and because they are a closed system, they can use custom hardware to handle task that typically would have to be done on the convenstional hardware. 

I heard that the force power down feature from the Wii was included in the Wii U update.  Foexample, if a game freezes, you can hold down the power button for a while and the console shuts down.  Anyone know if this is true?

BREAKING NEWS: The Wii U uses chipsets, wires, circuit boards, plastic and cooling fans............................................

Breaking news, you just wasted your time making a not good post when you could have easily ignored the topic if you werent interested in the discussion.  Good job.

I own a Deluxe Wii U and I've stuck with it and I'm keeping it at this point, but I question when all those great games will be here.  2 years?  The console seriously may not survive that long.  People don't give a crap about promises anymore and nobody is buying this thing.  I know all the game that are "coming", but Rayman Legends was coming (still is at some point).  Games are either being canceled or being announced as "not coming" to Wii U it seems every week.  Like I said, I won't be ditching the Wii U at this point, but I can easily see myself just waiting until every game I want for it drops to $10 or $15 (or $25 for first party titles) and just spend my money and credit on PS4. 

Nah, a lot of Nintendo's first party titles will release this year.  I am expecting either a Mario Kart or Smash to be ready for the end of the year, and probably a 3D mario game as well.  Then of course Zelda WW is confirmed to be released later this year, and Bayonetta will be ready as well.  This is the problem with Nintendo, they hold off on showing anything until e3.  Do you remember when Mario Galaxy was shown?  About four months before release.  Its crazy how close  to the chest Nintendo plays the game.  I dont blame people for being unenthused right now, but I have a feeling that will all change in two months at e3.  Anyone who owns a Wii U or is thinking about buying a Wii U owes it to themselves to pay close attention to what is shown at e3, it could be spectacular. 

Nobody thinks the Wii U is as powerful as the PS4, there some people that think the difference will be pretty modest, and those that think it will be pretty large, but everyone agrees that the PS4 is more powerful. 

The Wii U is its own thing, and fanboy gamers like to put to much importance on processing power.  Tablets are becoming far more popular than desktop and laptop computers, yet they are far less powerful.  If the majority of people really cared so much about cutting edge tech, they wouldnt be into tablets. 

To all the Sony and Microsoft fanboys that bash Nintendo for having less powerful tech, would any of them buy a Nintendo console over the Sony or Microsoft console had Nintendo had the same specs?  The majority are going to pick thier console of choice anyway, and the specs are simply for bragging rights, just like sales were so important to Sony gamers back in the PS2 days.  PS2 is the best, look how it outsells the Gamecube and Xbox.  As soon as Wii was spanking the PS3 in sales, sales suddenly took a back seat to performance.  The Wii U will sell based on its software and gamepad innovation, specs are just just something that makes insecure fanboys feel better about their console that they were going to buy anyway.  

All of us here know that if you truly want the best graphics tech then you need to be gaming on a PC.  Consoles are never cutting edge tech, and this generations is no different.