It was developed mostly on Wii so even if they did upscale graphics how would they make larger worlds or many different Pikmin then previously intended? If they add a new Pikmin then originally planned then they have to reimagine everything to put those pikmin to use in puzzles & combat. The maps won't that huge or they once again have to start from scratch. If they did a complete HD makeover with all the extra stuff then it would take a few more years. So don't expect a Pikmin game that would blow you away. At least the graphics will look nice

This is Nintendo we're talking about. Many of Nintendo's developers especially Shigeru Miyamoto will throw out a game and start over if ideas and concepts added don't mesh with work already done. It wouldn't surprise me if development changed greatly after the decision to move the title from the Wii to the Wii U was decided. Pikmin 3 itself likely switched consoles during development when ideas and concepts the devs wanted to try couldn't be done on the Wii. Its not entirely impossible that because of the switch to Wii U that not only will there be more Pikmin on screen than was possible with Wii, but improved graphics and new concepts than were originally done for the title before switching platforms.

Hard drive's seems to be the best choice. One, it's very reliable. Two, you can transfer data between one hard drive, to another.
I think Nintendo should go for the hard drive this time around, if they use an SD card, I will be highly upset.

I think they should make two models, in both $300 and $350 form. (Or $350 and $400 form, whichever.)

The $300 form will have no Hard Drive (however, you can purchase one at a later time if you should want to) and will use external memory to save.
The $350 form will have a Hard Drive (The amount of gigs is TBD) and can also use external memory to save, and you can transfer data from the Hard Drive to the external memory card.

Just my two cents on it anyway.

The reason that Nintendo isn't using an internal hard drive is that they simply aren't reliable enough as well as the extra costs that an internal hard drive adds to a system. Hard drives add more moving parts than Nintendo is comfortable with increasing the likely hood that something breaks. This is primarily why Nintendo likes solid state memory. You will never see a Nintendo console with an internal hard drive. The wide variety of options open currently from SD cards to external hard drives is more than enough storage. For the average consumer 8GBs is more than enough for those who need more at least there will be options to supply that.

Individuals shouldn't worry too much about how Wii U will compare to Xbox 720 or PS4. If these consoles launch a year after Wii U technical issues would keep them from jumping anymore than fifty percent more powerful than Wii U if indeed the console is about equivalent to a Radeon HD 4850. Even if these consoles launch nearly two years after Wii U it would still be impossible to place Wii U in the same situation as the Wii.

You can't say for sure. Even if no leaked real photo's have ever come up for past console releases, there's nothing saying that this one can't be real either. This is the first time a Nintendo console has been leaked to this extent, is it not?


Everything involving pre-release leaks and rumors can be compared to Schrödinger's cat. Just as the cat is both alive and dead, these rumors are both true and false. Until the box is opened, figuratively and literally, we can't tell.

Besides, current rumors and previous examples show that at least the first two rumors are likely... The similar build to the 360 and Spotpass, respectively.

A poster at Neogaf examined those photos and determined it was fake from the way Nintendo is printed in the image. Plus according to IGN you has broke a considerable amount of info on the device its the size of the original Xbox and looks like a updated Super Nintendo.

Actually, I'm thinking along the lines of... Well... What do you usually do when you go to a gaming Cafe? That's right, play online games. (At least, that's what I heard.)

That means that it will have awesome online features...

Plus...

If that box photo is real...



People, we're looking at an MMO console.

Its fake don't ever trust so called leaked photos. They are always fake.

Well, Microsoft plans on using this rendering technique in their upcoming exclusives. In fact, this tech demo was derived from Peter Molyneux's Kinect project, Milo and Kate.

Then its likely that you won't see a whole lot done with this at least not on Xbox 360. They may be able to utilize this technique to a certain degree in real world situations, but something else has to take a hit to utilize it to any real effect. At this point developers don't have much left over processing power to throw into this rendering technique regarding Xbox 360 hardware.

Speaking of tessellation, I just heard that the Xbox 360 will employ a rendering technique called "mega meshes" that will supposedly take advantage of the tessellation unit that I never knew the console had.

Here's a tech demo.

I'm not sure if this is anything to really be excited about. AMD's in hardware tessellation unit in the Radeon HD 4XXX series of GPU's wasn't very efficient. To do anything meaningful with the tessellation unit in the 4XXX series you practically needed the raw computing power of Radeon HD 4850x2 or 4870x2 both of which are practically a full generational leap from Xbox 360's Xeon. I don't see how a tessellation unit on the Xbox 360's Xeon would be any different. Notice how lifeless majority of that tech demo was for instance. This may be too taxing on the hardware for the Xbox 360 to utilize this in any meaningful way in games.

Something to look into the version of this demo used during the conference isn't the full version of the demo and the demo itself is far more impressive if you can find a good quality video. Something missing in this version for instance is the hawk or falcon part of the demo, which shows in real time the seasons changing and the falcon interacting with the environment( pulling a leaf from a tree, rain dripping of the falcon, and the falcon playing in the snow). This demo is actually very impressive once you stop to think about it even in comparison with some of the latest PC games like Witcher 2. You can't play this using current home consoles, and according to Reggie this demo was based off an earlier developer kit, thus doesn't represent the full capabilities of the console. I have higher hopes for Wii U graphically than I did originally. The CPU is likely based on info from IBM based on Power 7 architecture. This means in layman's terms there is a chance that the CPU at least is a full generational leap a head of Xbox 360, so it wouldn't make sense for the GPU to lag behind. It still won't be capable of graphics to the level of that recent EPIC demo, but neither will any next gen consoles.

Hey, Jikayaki, what did you think of the Zelda tech demo?

It was impressive in its own right. The highlights of HD Experience Zelda Tech demo was the lighting, shadow, particle effects, and resolution of the animations. It looked impressive from the beginning so I really haven't given it much of a second look, but compared to the Japanese Garden Tech demo there wasn't as much going on. I'd safely say that like the Japanese Garden Tech demo the effects done in the Zelda demo was beyond anything you can do with current consoles short of the PC right now. I'm interested in seeing how Zelda Wii U ends up looking like as historically Zelda tech demos are always worse than the final product.

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.

Can't see much truth in those.

Surely if there is any truth to these rumours then it's 768Mb(96MB) and not 768MB. However I don't even see that as been true as one thing that we do know is that the chip and eDram will be made using IBM's 45nm node, not 32nm which is where I believe that the 1Gb of eDram becomes possible.

Also from what we have heard about the overall Wii U performance then a quad-core 3Ghz CPU seems overkill. Bear in mind the Xbox triple core isn't comparable to an Out of Order chip. A proper dual-core coming in about ~2.5Ghz would surely be more than enough to feed what will most likely be a custom Redwood core(400SP).

Actually using IBM's edram the maximum amount of edram that can be embedded per core is 32 MBs. That means embedding a total of 96 MBs to 128 MBs is completely possible at the 45nm process. A dual-core wouldn't be enough. For one thing I have no idea where you came up with the idea that the Wii U uses a custom 400SP GPU. All the leaks and rumors point to something more around 640SP to 800SP. A custom gpu around the capability of a 4770 or 4850 is highly likely.

It says right in the article that these are for the March 2011 devkits. The real Wii U will likely be much more powerful.

If this rumor is true this is extraordinary actually. 768 MB of embedded dram is outrageous, much less this also states that another version is experimenting on 1 GB of embedded dram. This is actually not a bad thing if this would happen you can do a lot more with 768 MB to 1 GB of embedded dram than the 1-1.5 GB of rumored and speculated ddr3/gddr3/gddr5. This would greatly increase the performance of the rumored R700 GPU and the CPU considerably. This also sounds like complete unicorn tongue. 768 MBs of embedded dram would be extremely expensive much less if the other version of 1 GB would end up being the final amount.

Edit:

Coming from Neogaf if this rumor is true the site who give the information may of gotten their terms wrong. Instead of 768 MB it could be 768 Mb, which would be 96 MBs of edram, which is more realistic though still expensive. There would still have to be main memory of some lesser ram.

the ps3 looked 50% better on paper then the xbox 360 but it wasnt just remember that ppl

Don't get overly carried away with the silliness of this info's source say that the Wii U is 50% more powerful, because that is completely impossible given their own rumored specs. Alpha dev kits are created with of the shelf parts for the most part, so the only 40 nm 4000s series card is the 4770, which is four times more powerful than the Xbox 360, and a more modern quad core would completely outperform the Xbox 360.

The Wii U likely runs four to five times as hot as the Wii without being any more than 42% larger in volume. The design of the Wii U simply has to accommodate design choices that keep this thing from melting or breaking while in use.

http://gamrreview.vg...ble-3rd-hd-ver/

Really? And that's just an HD port.



That's what I was saying, sort of.

An HD port is an entirely different beast than creating a new entry within the franchise for an HD console. There isn't anywhere near the cost involved with your average port than creating a game from scratch for more capable hardware. I hold to my statement Monster Hunter Wii U is very unlikely unless Nintendo foots the bill, or Wii U creates a larger market internally for console franchises. Capcom isn't going to just create a Monster Hunter game for Wii U for **** and giggles. Capcom is a company and like any company needs a financial reason above all to go forward with a project. There simply isn't any reason financially for Capcom to create a Monster Hunter game for the Wii U.

My point was that Monster Hunter sells great no matter what. Also Nintendo has said they're willing to invest in third-party exclusives for the 3DS and Wii U some I'm sure they'd give a moneyhat for Monster Hunter on Wii U. In fact I bet that's how they got Monster Hunter 4.

I don't rule out Nintendo potentially footing the bill for a Monster Hunter for the Wii U. My point is merely that Capcom doesn't have an incentive to create an entry within the franchise on the Wii U otherwise really unless Wii U proves to drastically increase the size of the console market in Japan. For what it would cost to develop a single Wii U title they could likely create several entries and spin offs for the handheld market, which ultimately would prove more profitable. Then footing the bill for a proper Monster Hunter for the Wii U would be considerably more expensive than footing the bill for the 3DS. Financially Nintendo may not see the point for footing the bill for such an expensive purchase especially when majority of the console market is the west where majority of their troubles are likely to occur.

Because there's no reason why they can't make Monster Hunter for both handhelds and home consoles so they might as well cover both markets even if the handheld one is bigger.

The point is that not only is the market for handhelds larger, but the market for console games within Japan isn't large enough to warrant development on next gen HD hardware. There isn't a financial reason for Capcom to develop a game within the franchise for the Wii U. The Wii U has to enlarge the console market in Japan, the monster hunter series is going to need to find a western audience, or Nintendo needs to foot the bill otherwise Monster Hunter Wii U is very unlikely.

Monster Hunter going to the Wii U depends greatly with how good the Wii U sells in Japan. So much of the Monster Hunter's market is Japanese, which is why when the Japanese market moving toward handhelds instead of consoles the series moved to being a handheld focused franchise. Wii got a version of Monster Hunter partly because of its sells compared to PS3 and it represented far less of an investment for Capcom. The Wii U's presence in the Japanese Market is going to have to be significant for this franchise to ever see a console launch.

My other point was that Monster Hunter isn't the kind of game that needs the hardware to have good sales for it to sell well because Japanese gamers will buy the hardware for it. Also Nintendo said they're willing to invest in third party exclusives for the 3DS and Wii U so I'm sure they'd give a moneyhat to Capcom for Monster Hunter on Wii U. In fact I reckon they paid for Monster Hunter 4 to be exclusive to the 3DS as well.

Still why would Capcom create a Monster Hunter game for Wii U when they could simply make sequels for the Monster Hunter franchise and spin-off titles for 3DS and Vita. Handhelds are increasingly the preferred gaming devices for the Japanese market, where in their console market selling over 200,000 copies is extraordinary. Major Western franchises would crash at current dev costs within a similar sized market. The audience for Monster Hunter is completely complacent with a handheld experience. In other words there is no driving force for Capcom to develop a Monster Hunter game outside handhelds within its current market. The Wii U has to place itself as a major force in Japan like no console has done in recent memory or Nintendo has to foot the bill. Otherwise Monster Hunter for Wii U doesn't make financial sense for Capcom.

Not now since the price and constant flow of great games but earlier on they were pretty poor with even the PSP topping it. And my point was that Monster Hunter Tri came to the Wii because PS3 development costs were too high not because the Wii had higher sales. Monster Hunter fans will come to any console if it has Monster Hunter so even on a console with terrible sales Monster Hunter would still sell immensely well. That's Monster Hunter is so important companies like Nintendo and Sony because it gives consoles a massive boost in Japan.

I'm not sure I'm explaining myself completely. HD console development costs being a factor in why Wii got a Monster Hunter isn't something I have argued against. There simply so much more to why Capcom didn't create a Monster Hunter for the PS3 at the time than simply the high developer costs of HD development. It has to do with the market within Japan where Monster Hunter contains majority of its audience. The investment wasn't worth it compared to the market that existed for HD consoles within Japan at that time or now for that matter. Wii had a larger market, it wasn't too difficult to share resources from the PSP, and it represented a lower investment. The Japanese market is far too small today for extensive development on a franchise unless it has some significance in the West.

Not really the 3DS is getting to Monster Hunters despite poor sales. Wii got Monster Hunter solely for cheaper development costs not because of sales. I'm pretty sure it will, Monster Hunter's on PS2, PSP, Wii, 3DS, PS3 and even the Xbox 360 so I think are chances are pretty good. Heck Capcom said they were going to put it on the Nintendo DS but it wasn't powerful enough so they went for PSP.

The 3DS sales haven't been poor. Currently the handheld looks to out pace the first year sales of DS. The thing is regularly the top selling hardware in Japan since the price drop. Nintendo simply didn't push hard enough with the 3DS to maintain momentum at its previous price, but the DS suffered similar handling. Monster Hunter is a Japanese focused franchise. This is why I stated that the only way Wii U would get a Monster Hunter release is if the Wii U sells well in Japan. So much of the Japanese market is handhelds thus why this franchise with most of its focus in Japan has for the most part stuck with handhelds this gen. Monster Hunter for the 3DS is a natural fit for the Japanese Market. Monster Hunter for Wii U not so much. We'll have to see if the new controller helps the console create a market significant enough to warrant Capcom making a Monster Hunter game for the console.

Monster Hunter originally went to the Wii because of the franchise's Japanese market focus. There simply wasn't enough of an audience for the franchise to warrant HD developing costs because primarily the Japanese console market is too small to warrant that sort of investment. Wii U is going to have to over come that issue if Monster Hunter is ever going to grace its library. The touchscreen controller may very well help the console in that regard.

I was just going by the official press release.

Those sort of things are often full of PR. I'm merely speculating on the reasons that Wii got a Monster Hunter and how that compares to the possibility that Wii U will get a Monster Hunter release based both on official statements and common sense. The Wii U has to create a larger audience within Japan for Japanese console games or the Monster Hunter games for the 3DS have to create a reasonable audience within the west if they are going to be localized. Otherwise a Monster Hunter for the Wii U isn't really guaranteed. Outside this Nintendo would have to money hat to Capcom for a console version.

Nintendo it seems at least don't appear to be considering the idea of focusing on 3D in the Wii's successor. Some other visual or control based hook will likely be added to give the Wii's successor the same sort of viral appeal Nintendo is trying to give the 3DS with its glasses-less 3D screen. The only idea I can think of that they could add that would give a similar experience as 3D without depending on consumers buying an expensive new TV is through head tracking VR displays through the same sort of camera technology already used in the DS, 3DS, and Wii remote. The problem is that it would be a very personal experience as only one individual at a time could benefit from the effect.

correct they have stated that they will not invest heavily on the ps4 as they did on the ps3 but please stop saying sony isnt finacially stable because thats just incorrect.

nintendo could have sold twice as many wii's and im pretty sure they still wouldnt even come close to sony's revenue

dont be a fanboy as its pretty likely the ps4 will be stronger

Don't be a fool. The PS3 lost Sony so much money they lost all profit they've have had within the console market. Worse many of their other departments aren't doing overly while on their own for a few years. Nintendo is a much bigger company than many realize. They've made profit off of the Wii since the beginning likewise with the DS. Nintendo hardware has made Nintendo billions of dollars while Sony has lost billions and only recently to my knowledge began making a profit. The razor edge model is dead at least to the extremes of the PS3. The Vita is Sony's future attitude toward hardware going forward. Low R&D using mature technology while taking advantage of developments in hardware. Really I wouldn't be surprised with Sony taking a lower cost direction with PS4 depending on the result of the Vita.

From everything we've heard in my opinion this is what I see Nintendo's online service basically being. First there would be some basic infrastructure and a Wii U account (it could still use friend codes or something equivalent to tell you the truth). Then each publisher would have individual services such as Origin or Steam. Hopefully this is all set up where you don't have to use multiple accounts for different games, but that is a possibility.