I would be all over a full 3d version of a link to the past, but with OOT and star fox its now time to focus on new things again.

This is where I'm at, too... I have genuine love for the classics, and playing them again really takes me back. But there has been a LOT of remaking lately, and precious little progress into new realms. If a company relies too much on repackaging and re-selling to me games that they've already sold me before, eventually it starts to feel less like a service for the fans and more like a lazy way to make a buck, or even (and I flinch to say this) a lack of good ideas.

Nintendo is actually worrying me... I feel that they might be in the place that Disney got to be in, when Walt got old, endlessly combing over the old man's old ideas, looking for a note or a scrap of paper to turn into a full-length feature. I don't think Miyamoto is there... but I think that everyone could use a Pixar-like infusion of fresh genius - someone with really NEW ideas for a new generation, and an organic vision of future gaming that syncs with where the market's at.

Personally, I think that the 3DS is the perfect delivery vehicle for N64 re-releases (OoT has me stoked)... but if they were to completely refurbish the game (more akin to what MS is doing for the Halo:CE anniversary), I could see an HD version blowing me away. Even more exciting to me, in many ways, would be a re-imagining of the tale, like what Eurocom did with the recent Goldeneye for Wii.

Honestly (and I know this will be unpopular) I think Nintendo needs to cool it with the Zelda franchise for a while (other than these kind of remakes)... I like Zelda as a kind of epoch franchise, giving me a new tale for a new era. I would hate to see it become a serial, faerie sitcom... I think the same thing about Metroid, for now. I say, give me (or rather, give Retro) a new Star Fox... it's been ages for that franchise, and it would be in a great position to milk that HD goodness.

And there's really no good way to make a platformer more mature...

I think this ^ is obvious, and I totally get your point. I know that "hardcore" is a term that tends to provoke flames, but there is SOMETHING to the pervasiveness of the view that Nintendo is not hard core - meaning, at least to some extent, that the perception is that Nintendo is not listening to those that consider themselves to be dedicated, intense gamers.

Certainly, you can play (almost) any game obsessively... I think the real question is, what does the demographic that buys the most games and logs the most hours WANT to play, and is Nintendo making that kind of game?

Every time I pick up a Nintendo title, I LOVE my experience. But sometimes I don't WANT to play those games... it's just a shift of aesthetic taste and thematic preference, really, but nonetheless, I am the kind of consumer that will drop $100 a month on games and online connectivity. I want a company to make games that I want to play... not just games that they want to make.

I'm glad someone brought up this topic!  I am personally a big "trophy hound" on Xbox... but I'm also clear-headed enough to admit that this seriously contradicts my stated love of immersion in story and love of gaming for gaming's sake.  The two loves are kind of parallel, but I find myself enjoying both pursuits almost equally.

I think that Nintendo should include an achievement system (even if it only tracks progress in the background, or only for online play), and I like the idea of using upgradeable medals with associated coin values.  Achievements serve a social networking function, if nothing else, and they provide a fun incentive for replaying the game far past its standard life (in this case... the more outlandish the requirements for the achievement, the better).  Playing games is fun, regardless of any "rewards" doled out for playing.  But everyone likes a little swag to pin on for bragging purposes, even if you're only bragging to yourself.  It's like tally marks on an airplane cockpit, or button-collecting at Disneyland...

When nintendo says "specs dont matter, enjoy the game" its a turn off for many hard core gamers, because we know what good specs do and thats what we want. (Its because the knowledge hard core gamers have, from pc mostly... its not just a fetish to see good specs.. because hard core gamers, know very well, what does what.. inside the machine )  

lol... yeah, as a loyal apologist for Nintendo since the NES days (where is your hedgehog now, you smug, smug SEGA kids from my childhood!!!) I have had ample opportunity to appreciate the irony of my posture toward the company.  On the one hand, it feels somewhat awkward being told by a company what you want ("no Mikey, you want to play with this now... that thing that you think you want really doesn't matter at all")... but on the other hand, the people have crafted some of the most compelling, enjoyable, and beloved IPs of all time, and there's something to their idea that the experience is built of far more than visual complexity.

I do agree with you when you say that their attitude will not win back the so-called "hardcore" gamer (and I like your distinction between hardcore and enthusiast... it is quite a useful distinction).  The people that they lost are not the mindless trend-followers that they are so often painted to be (as much as I would love to indulge in the vindication afforded by that caricature) - they are consumers, with money, who know what they want, and they will spend money on what they want.  They are interested in a certain aesthetic, and a certain kind of horizon of wonder that is afforded by cutting-edge technology, and I don't really think that they will be persuaded that what they actually want is solid play mechanics within a fresh and robust approach to interactivity in games... no matter how compelling the experience might really turn out to be.

lol... flc, you crack me up.

On the topic-side of things... I guess consoles are kind of in a tight spot right now with where to shoot, spec-wise.  They just CAN'T make something on par with high-end PCs, because consumers won't pay that much for a console, and they can't cheap out on the specs because people have seen games running on high-end PCs and tend to expect similar experiences...

On the other hand, the functional gap really is not that big right now.  Yes, Crysis 2 really does look astounding on a gaming PC with all the settings cranked to 11... but the difference between that and the Xbox360 version of the game is still not as big as the difference between, say, Black Ops on Xbox360 and Black Ops on Wii.  Whatever Microsoft and Sony manage to squeeze out for their next generation, it will certainly not represent a challenge for 3rd party ports to the WiiU.  The real question, as has been said, is whether or not the lost fanbase even cares about Nintendo any more...

Well, Nintendo and Google already do work together (on the ES operating system, at least), so it's not so farfetched a rumor as it might seem... still, it's my understanding that the controller itself only streams content (not generates it), so I don't think that the "tablet" itself will run an OS.

I would personally love to see Nintendo team up with a marketplace like Android to provide media content... that would mean a lot more content with a lot less burden on Nintendo!

Burger Time: U - "This Time, It's Personal"

Is it certain that WiiU will not play DVDs or BluRay? I am one of those crazy people that do kinda care about this, if only because I like to keep the number of devices I have to keep connected down to a minimum.

wow, this would be an interesting turn, indeed... I'm not inclined to believe it, as most of the "interviews" with "developers" that have been "leaked" (I put all of this in scare quotes in an attempt to acknowledge what everyone is constantly pointing out about the lack of any real method of confirmation) have referred to DirectX10 support only... but it would sure be nice.

i have a hard time seeing Nintendo spring for a powerful gpu... i just do. the solid, quality, efficient ones are too expensive, and the alternatives are all too risky, inefficient, etc. As you pointed out, Nintendo's hardware has been nothing if not reliable.

@stewox
not sure about the exact impetus for this explanation... but everyone who's confused about the issue should definitely read your post in its entirety.

@gameboysoadance
er... like nollog said, not exactly. an api is only a part of a dev kit (it's not an engine) - really, just a library or set of specifications that allow software compontents to communicate with one another. Unreal Engine (or CryEngine for that matter) uses the DirectX API for its PC version... what stewox is pointing out is that it's up to the 3rd parties to optimize their software for the WiiU, rather than Nintendo's job to "optimize" its hardware for 3rd party engines (whatever that would mean).

mostly to comfort others, that tessellation is not a microsoft protected thing... it is free for all, and wii U, will use that. As many people think that this feature appeared in direct x 10-11, so it belongs to MS.. Its not true.. (direct x made use of it..) Nintendo can update their api's and use it also.. simple as that.

ah... yes, good point. i guess people do seem to think that tessellation was invented with DX11, lol (as if breaking polygons into smaller pieces was anything new)... and I definitely agree that Nintendo developers will be able to make use of some of these advanced processes (after all, many devs admitted that they could have pushed the wii a lot farther if they wanted too, even with the gpu's "fixed" pipeline, by emulating shaders using the wii processor's existing tools). out of curiosity, do you personally think that the gpu Nintendo chooses will be a capable piece of hardware, able to support the kind of demanding processes that make cutting-edge graphics really "pop" these days?

Consoles don't rely on APIs - developers can suck out all the features and performance the hardware has, regardless of API features. But advanced machine code programming is very hard - only a few developers have the knowledge, skills and programming resources to fully ulitise the power - these are companies like ID Software, EPIC, Crytek ...etc ; Crytek doesn't have that much of a good skills for console games obviously in design/creativity - crysis 2 disaster.

So the capabilities of the console would appear more than actually when comparing raw hardware, to the equivalent performance on PC benchmarking since becase of all the driver, API , OS overhead 40% of the performance is lost.

Good point to bring up. Companies like High Voltage were able to squeeze a lot more out of the Wii's hardware because they were designing their engine from the ground up to be optimized for the Wii's exact hardware... knowing the precise CPU they were working with, they were able to tweak the code pretty specifically, even down to the level of writing some catered code in assembly language (I don't think anyone actually "writes" in machine language, do they?). They were able to imitate several of the effects that PCs produce with shaders, by using the baked-in hardware features that the Wii's GPU did have. Still, there are physical limitations imposed by "fixed" pipelines and built-in operations on the GPU... even The Conduit, while pretty "for the Wii", was nothing close to a comparable PS/360 title in terms of graphical performance.

Also, it is worth noting that, while it is technically possible to avoid using APIs at all in programming for a console like the Wii, the dev kits provided by Nintendo include APIs similar to OpenGL for graphics (which many low-end devs will use) and, as you said, very few developers producing cross-platform games are going to go through the immense effort of bypassing APIs (or even have the technical muscle to do so) when they code for the WiiU. It's just not efficient!

Here's hoping that we get some intrepid devs on the platform, who are able to squeeze every last ounce out of that GPU...

Is ID Tech5 that good? I've looked up some screenshots of Rage and while it looks quite amazing for a current gen game (dat clouds! http://media.teamxbo.../1250708202.jpg and some nice rocks/shadows http://www.pcgamesha...90325093927.jpg ) I don't think it could compare with what UE 4 is likely to be. UE 3.5 impressed me more than IDT5.

I have to kind of agree that Rage doesn't look that good on a purely aesthetic level, but I might have to just blame the art resources for that.  stewox (and may others on these forums) are most likely admiring the engine on the level of programming and software development, I suppose... and of course the effects made possible using the engine itself are rather astounding.

thanks for sharing the Carmack video, stewox... hadn't seen that, or had forgotten about it.  I wonder, though, how may 3rd party developers are really going to bother developing "assembly-level" code specific to the WiiU hardware in order to fully utilize its power (or even write custom shaders to take advantage of the GPU's specific architecture)... it seems like even big studios have tended to balk at the process and give a "the-platform-doesn't-have-those-features" shrug.  and i get it... they're running a business and have to think about costs involved.  But in all honesty, do you believe that we will see a lot of developers focus on the WiiU in this way?

Wasnt direct X for Microsoft only?

well, technically DirectX is just a set of APIs that allow software to communicate with hardware... but yes, it was developed specifically by Microsoft for Microsoft, and is proprietary. To my knowledge, Xbox/360 is the only console to actually use a version of DirectX. Sony and Nintendo have their own libraries, optimised specifically to suite their graphics cards (and OS). When people (well, me at least) talk about a console "supporting DirectX11", they are probably talking about the set of features supported by that version of Direct3D (the graphics API in the DirectX suite)... things like tesselation, multithread rendering, and some advanced blending modes.

Some of these features are really revolutionary, but they depend upon the GPU being able to receive certain kinds of programmable instructions...

I just hope that Nintendo's GPU is better than what we're being told!

tessellation is not a software feature, its a hardware feature, existed from 3xxx or 2xxx series amd cards (cant remember which nvidia series tessellation was a feature), they just used it very recently, its not because of direct x.. So basically Wii U is the first console that will use tessellation.

ok, yes... i was once again not being specific. while "tessellation" has been around for a very long time, it is MUCH more effective in the latest batch of high-end GPUs, which allow displacement mapping to work seemlessly with streamlined, instantly-scaleable tessellation processes when over a billion triangles are being rendered at any given second - the parallel units (and engine rasters) allowing for a much more dynamic programmable pipeline...

... and, while the tessellation itself is handled by hardware, it seems pretty misleading to me to say that APIs like Direct3D have NOTHING to do with its effective implementation (but that may not have been your point)...

Yeah, the terms "casual" and "hardcore" are very ambiguous. While I affirm the posters above who define "hardcore" as people who play games often or buy a lot of games, I think a helpful distinction in software would be between games that are complex (or "deep") experiences with a LOT to do, a lot to learn, and a lot to master, and games that are intentionally created as simple (or "shallow", but not in a pejorative sense) experiences (i.e. easy to understand, easy to play, not overwhelming in terms of scope).

The hardcore gamers that are not just whining incoherently are usually asking for DEEP experiences - for games that are difficult to master and have a lot to discover (by this definition, even Pokemon could count, and I think it does, but Monster Hunter is a better example). Lots of hardcore gamers also happen to want their games violent and gritty (for personal taste reasons), but I don't think this deserves to be included in the category as part of the definition. I love me some Resident Evil... but I've logged FAR more hours into Pokemon.

I think that Nintendo has already proven that they will have great support for casual gamers. There are the Mii apps (Chase Mii and Battle Mii) demoed at E3, as well as the inevitable WiiSportsU, Mario Party U, etc. I hear your worries, OP, but I think you can rest assured that Nintendo will not ignore you. They have a lot of new fans who want to play casually, with friends and family or just for some quick entertainment in the evening, and they will not ignore that fan base!

yeah, i'm going to have to go ahead and agree with the $300 estimate... if only because (sadly) I believe the rumors about Nintendo hitting the bargain bin on their GPU to keep costs down.

I would GLADLY pay $400-$450 for the WiiU if it featured some solid, forward-thinking hardware specs (not mind-blowingly powerful, which is really outside of a console's reach at a reasonable price, but with enough oomph to output native 1080p while running all the bells and whistles of developers' recently-teased game engine updates).

But hey, that really isn't how Ninty operates (nor what has made them special to me, for that matter). I'll always feel a little embarassed by the specs, and I'll always feel ultimately satisfied by the truly engaging experiences that the company offers me. I DON'T think that Iwata-and-co. will get greedy after the 3DS price debaucle, so I'm confident that we will get a somewhat annoyingly (though not painfully) underpowered system at a reasonable price.

You always get your Nintendo fans who are hoping for amazing performance from new Nintendo consoles and on the face of it, its realistic to expect the wii U to be more powerful than 360/PS3 because of the wii U being much later but both of those consoles were brought to market making a huge loss and financially neither have been successful...
Personally I think the new Xbox and PS4/Orbis won't be as ambitious as many are hoping for either. So we may find that despite the wii U not being as powerful as we hoped it still won't be that far behind Orbis and PS4 which may end up being only 2-5x as powerful as the earlier generations.  The xbox 360 is at least 10x as powerful as the original xbox overall and I don't think we are going to get that difference this time around. I think its all about launching at a competitive price point. I personally think this is the sane thing to do. I went through about 7 faulty 360s as I was an early adopter and it was a complete farce. My 60GB PS2 compatible PS3 has never gone wrong but many have reported problems. This time around it seems like consoles will use mature technology that will hopefully be robust and reliable which I'm quite happy about.

Also lets not forget the wii U will have advantages not directly understood on analysis of the specification to do with modern manufacturing processes. If the gpu, gpu memory, cpu, cpu cache and a few other functions are all integrated onto one large i.c. then the wii U will have incredibly low latency and huge memory bandwidth which will enable the console to be pushed beyond what you expect for the hardware and even just fitting 768M or 1GB of memory gives it clear advantages over 360 and PS3. Also the wii U has a high density optical drive which the 360 hasn't.

this is just a perfectly-phrased analysis... thanks for this

man, i have just never been a fan of software keyboards (because of the lack of physical feedback). I have a USB keyboard that I use with my Wii, and I'll use it for the WiiU too, if they let me!

Sparrow and dementis make really good points that deserve attention... The hardware worries are a real red herring, and nintendo is really putting their energy where it matters (ai is a great place to focus the extra processing power, IMO)...

The reason I asked is because I've never really seen a problem with AIs being unintelligent. Then again, I've never really played an FPS where I presume those things would be important.

Yeah, but not just FPS (though that would be good... anyone ever played Crysis?).  If you've played an RPG/Adventure like Fable III on the Xbox, you know that any time there are more than a few NPCs on screen, there are severe framerate issues and even some inexcusable rubber-banding.  Fable III doesn't look all that awesome in terms of HD graphics... but the NPC AI in an environment like an RPG town, where each character is reacting to a number of variables regarding your character, his reputation, his current clothing and equipment, his actions, the actions of others, their own jobs and relationships to one another, etc., can get VERY demanding on a processor!

Im pretty sure hes talking about increasing the intelligence of AI.

Mostly this, but the former as well (more characters on screen).  Currently, the complexity of AI routines are severely hampered by available processing power.  This doesn't much matter in a game like Zelda, which seems to focus on duels rather than big battles with crowds... but I could see it doing great things for a franchise like Pikmin, where enemies (and player-directed AIs) are required to coordinate with/react to one another.  Big AI breakthroughs are a while down the line... but improved NPC coordination/interaction is an improvement we could see right away with a little more processing oomph in the hands of developers.

Sony/Nintendo IP trading system..yep.that's what we need. Nintendo gets to build a LBP, GOW and Resistance..Sony gets to build a Mario, Zelda and Kirby....

My brain almost crashed trying to contemplate this idea... it'll never, ever happen, but it's a fun thought experiment. I don't know that the relevant studios would exactly know what to do with the genres, though...

For example, imagine a Zelda where you can travel between different times.

Man, the number of good possibilities like this is just staggering... X-ray glasses for Bond, Thermal Scopes for FPS, time or dimensional warp sight for supernatural/sci-fi games and thrillers (like that new Amy game, where the same space keeps shifting between the real world and the parallel hell dimension)... one doesn't know where to begin.

Of course, like others have said, it REALLY all depends on the games that developers actually make. Ideas are great, but until they put some sort of wonder-developer's-kit into each of our hands and tell us to go to town making our own games, we needs some solid 3rd party interest and some green lights from major publishers.

Also, I agree that the system itself is not perfect. It would generate a LOT of confidence from the market to see some announcements made about price point, about hard-and-fast hardware specs, etc. It would also restore a lot of confidence from the die-hard fan base to see Nintendo listen to some of the criticisms about the controller (i.e. lack of analog triggers), even if they seem petty to some. A few loud and happy fanatics go a LONG way in today's guerrilla marketing scene (at least if Nintendo genuinely cares about the so-called "hardcore" market).

Man these threads are really starting to chafe me.... Alex and Aaron (above) know what they're talking about, so people need to read their posts and be DONE with the nonsense talk about non-facts and pseudo-figures like the "10% of its potential" and the "50% more powerful" statisto-babble. People are really running with those figures in completely nonsensical directions and it is not contributing to REAL conversation about the system's ability!