Well for a fan site it's looking like only a few people are happy with the WiiU, i really don't get it as everything iv'e played on it is very good and even ports from 360 are a notch above(Dark siders/Black ops/Sonic).
Not sure exactly how mega awesome people think the new PS4 games will be but at the end of the day they are still stuck to a TV screen and will be until some sort of projection idea removes TV's from homes altogether.
Last of all with graphics in mind,has anyone played Team Fortress two on pc? really good for a laugh game but with last gen graphics, so it's clearly rubbish compared to Crysis 3.....
Add me on Miiverse !! I'm from England but the world is a lot smaller online!
As a wii u owner I'm more than happy to be proved wrong but the evidence is compelling. Yes wii u games will improve for sure but within the limitations of what the wii u is capable of. Wii u entered the market with powerpc development software and libraries in a mature state and the cpu is an enhanced gamecube/wii cpu anyway so is well known.
One of the main assets of the wii u design is its extremely easy to develop for. 360, PS3 and wii u all share a similar cpu architecture.
The video below is Need for Speed Most Wanted Xbox 360 launch title. So if anything it came out earlier comparitively than the wii u version of the later Need for Speed Most wanted which was post launch. This comparison also favours the wii u in that NFS most wanted on the wii u is probably the first title that is superior on wii u for a full 3D game. So I'm taking a highly rated wii u game and comparing it to a less signficant 360 title. So this game would have been developed through hardware revisions of the 360 before it was actually launched. Clearly visually its not as good as the wii u game but its not bad but it is significantly superior to the games on the previous generation of consoles. Currently about 80% of wii u games are inferior to their 360 and PS3 versions so at this point the wii u isn't even holding its own overall. I'm not saying the wii u isn't a great console but on a technical level it simply will not compare to ps4 and xbox 720. If you take gpu gflops, the xbox 360 is about 230, the wii u 350 approx (in the range of 300-400 anyway) but the ps4 is 1,800gflops. The ps4 doesn't even represent cutting edge either, its a costed down design that represents mid-level performance of today.
As a wii u owner I'm more than happy to be proved wrong but the evidence is compelling. Yes wii u games will improve for sure but within the limitations of what the wii u is capable of. Wii u entered the market with powerpc development software and libraries in a mature state and the cpu is an enhanced gamecube/wii cpu anyway so is well known.
One of the main assets of the wii u design is its extremely easy to develop for. 360, PS3 and wii u all share a similar cpu architecture.
The video below is Need for Speed Most Wanted Xbox 360 launch title. So if anything it came out earlier comparitively than the wii u version of the later Need for Speed Most wanted which was post launch. This comparison also favours the wii u in that NFS most wanted on the wii u is probably the first title that is superior on wii u for a full 3D game. So I'm taking a highly rated wii u game and comparing it to a less signficant 360 title. So this game would have been developed through hardware revisions of the 360 before it was actually launched. Clearly visually its not as good as the wii u game but its not bad but it is significantly superior to the games on the previous generation of consoles. Currently about 80% of wii u games are inferior to their 360 and PS3 versions so at this point the wii u isn't even holding its own overall. I'm not saying the wii u isn't a great console but on a technical level it simply will not compare to ps4 and xbox 720. If you take gpu gflops, the xbox 360 is about 230, the wii u 350 approx (in the range of 300-400 anyway) but the ps4 is 1,800gflops. The ps4 doesn't even represent cutting edge either, its a costed down design that represents mid-level performance of today.
You're being overzealous with the detraction of what the console is capable of, and you are putting too much focus on one spec, which is only part of the story. We've gone through why Wii U basically spanks the pants off the PS3 and the 360. Hell the CPU in the WiiU is more powerful than both of them and that was their strong point and the Wii U's weak point. They were heavily reliant on CPU SIMD performance, and used the CPU for basically all of the floating point operations, AI, physics, arbitrary game code, etc.
The Wii U is running need for speed the same way the 360 would run it, primarily on the CPU, relying on CPU SIMD engines to get the heavy lifting done, and it pulled better framerates, while the textures, LOD, and lighting were given a bump as well. 3 months is no where near enough time to reengineer a game engine to use the features available in the Wii U.
FLOPS only tell a part of the story, but since you mentioned it, the 360 was able to pull 200ish GFLOPS between the CPU and GPU, total system performance. From what we know about the GPU in the Wii U, just based on the SIMD engines, none of the additional logic that is there specifically to pull functions off the SIMD engines to allow more flexibility when using the programmable shaders, the Wii U GPU smokes the 360 entirely, without even considering the FLOPS that the CPU can handle.
There are also fillrates, MT/s, and a whole host of other specs that are completely indeterminable from what we've seen of the Wii U CPU that are each as important as raw FLOPS.
No one is going to call the Wii U a beast console, but it is significantly more powerful than all of the last generation systems. Please put the argument to rest, it gets older every time you bring it up due to both ignorance and the unwillingness to listen to anyone who makes a cogent argument contrary to whatever point you want to make.
The console is not a great deal less powerful overall than what we will see from both the XBOX successor and the PS4. They are more powerful, but not so much more powerful as to create a gap in capability, although there will be a gap in overall performance when you are dealing with larger environments, it won't be enough to change the gaming experience. If you feel there will be, you are more than welcome to purchase another console based on the specs listed.
Wii U entered the market with very immature tools for the platform, the CPU architecture is similar in some ways, but a hybrid between Power7 and PPC750 is much different (MUCH different) than the Power4 based PPE that is in both the PS3 and the 360. Not only that, but the architecture is worlds apart, the PS360 being CPU centric, relying heavily on CPU SIMD, and the other being GPU centric, relying on programmable and fixed function shaders and dedicated GPU logic.
You really don't seem to understand that SMP was never available in the PPC 750 series, SIMD was terrible, and it was never produced below 90nm or clocked higher than 900MHz. This has all of those things, and has a modern PowerISA, and has more aggressive OOOE, and has shorter pipeline stages. Its the performance per clock of the PPC750 but with better SIMD and issued in triplicate and has access to more cache, at a higher clock. PPE had to be clocked super high to make up for the long pipeline and the lack of OOOE. Just the clock difference can throw developers for a loop, because of the super tight tolerances their code has to run with.
The thing that sh1ts me is they know well in excess of a year in advance when the console will launch, so they obviously know at least another year before that the specs and details of the console, so that gives them minimum of 2 years to create games before it hits market, in that time we should have had a zelda launch title, more than one Mario and possibly a metroid or similar.
They should have not made the bet they did, you are correct.
As a wii u owner I'm more than happy to be proved wrong but the evidence is compelling. Yes wii u games will improve for sure but within the limitations of what the wii u is capable of. Wii u entered the market with powerpc development software and libraries in a mature state and the cpu is an enhanced gamecube/wii cpu anyway so is well known.
One of the main assets of the wii u design is its extremely easy to develop for. 360, PS3 and wii u all share a similar cpu architecture.
The video below is Need for Speed Most Wanted Xbox 360 launch title. So if anything it came out earlier comparitively than the wii u version of the later Need for Speed Most wanted which was post launch. This comparison also favours the wii u in that NFS most wanted on the wii u is probably the first title that is superior on wii u for a full 3D game. So I'm taking a highly rated wii u game and comparing it to a less signficant 360 title. So this game would have been developed through hardware revisions of the 360 before it was actually launched. Clearly visually its not as good as the wii u game but its not bad but it is significantly superior to the games on the previous generation of consoles. Currently about 80% of wii u games are inferior to their 360 and PS3 versions so at this point the wii u isn't even holding its own overall. I'm not saying the wii u isn't a great console but on a technical level it simply will not compare to ps4 and xbox 720. If you take gpu gflops, the xbox 360 is about 230, the wii u 350 approx (in the range of 300-400 anyway) but the ps4 is 1,800gflops. The ps4 doesn't even represent cutting edge either, its a costed down design that represents mid-level performance of today.
I'll just wait and see. You clearly aren't ever going to agree until Nintendo shows us what the Wii U can do.
And I don't understand why you say the Wii U has an enhanced GCN processor. I mean, I somewhat understand, it's all based off the same architecture. But calling Expresso (Wii U CPU) an enhanced version of the GCN processor is like calling an i5 Intel processor just an enhanced version of the Pentium processor. I mean, technically it is. But it's so much more than that though.
EVERYTHING we know about the processor tells us it's significantly better then what's in the GCN and Wii. Higher speed. More bandwidth. Multi core. More edram. In fact it has more in common with POWER7 then it does the GCN processor.
And remember, the GCN architecture wasn't able to be clocked highly than 1Ghz. According to the info we have, and your own info, the Wii U is clocked at 1.2Ghz.
So no, it's not just an enhanced GCN CPU. It's on its own league.
When the wii was launched the current gen was ps2, xbox and gamecube and it was in power terms between the gamecube and original xbox.
Now its less clear, the wii u has more memory and a better gpu but weaker cpu and no hard drive. It does however have a pretty amazing gamepad.
I think when you have developers stating its underpowered its clearly underpowered considering they have full access to the hardware. Consumers aren't allowed such inside information but its not difficult to work out the wii u hardware is weak.
wii was launched against the xbox360. gamecube had weaker raw power than 360 but was able to pump out better quality (from gamecube hitting closer to theretical max and xbox having bottlenecks bring its down). the wii released with a terrable GPU, but a decent CPU, weaker than 360 but still capable of keeping up. as for wiiU, ninty went with the gamecube approch of a weaker system designed well enough to hit well above its weight, this is likly to work well vs the xbox 720, but not reach the PS4, unless it has bottlenecks and other similar issues like PS2.
They should have not made the bet they did, you are correct.
I'll just wait and see. You clearly aren't ever going to agree until Nintendo shows us what the Wii U can do.
And I don't understand why you say the Wii U has an enhanced GCN processor. I mean, I somewhat understand, it's all based off the same architecture. But calling Expresso (Wii U CPU) an enhanced version of the GCN processor is like calling an i5 Intel processor just an enhanced version of the Pentium processor. I mean, technically it is. But it's so much more than that though.
EVERYTHING we know about the processor tells us it's significantly better then what's in the GCN and Wii. Higher speed. More bandwidth. Multi core. More edram. In fact it has more in common with POWER7 then it does the GCN processor.
And remember, the GCN architecture wasn't able to be clocked highly than 1Ghz. According to the info we have, and your own info, the Wii U is clocked at 1.2Ghz.
So no, it's not just an enhanced GCN CPU. It's on its own league.
He repeats the same garbage every time he posts. "Enhanced GCN processor" without knowing what the GCN processor was or why the comparison makes absolutely zero sense, despite the fact that a few of us point out repeatedly just how different they are.
HA very true. Handhelds for Nintendo are a different story. Nintendo does a lot of revisions with their handhelds, something unique to them.
I wonder why they don't do that with the home consoles. It would be cool if every year or so they have a new design or color or something to help sell new consoles.
I'd say it's because they're handheld. People usually think a long time before buying a home console, which is not exactly the case with handhelds I think, but I dunno. That's why they can afford to create many spinoffs.
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Exactly what I meant. I know what they were talking about. I was just clarifying stuff.
But i don't know for the Wii. Yes, it was in an odd position, but the gameplay, which you didn't consider, was enough to make it a new console. Not only that, but also Internet implementation (although quite poor) and the channel system. So I don't think the Wii was THAT close to the GameCube overall.
He repeats the same garbage every time he posts. "Enhanced GCN processor" without knowing what the GCN processor was or why the comparison makes absolutely zero sense, despite the fact that a few of us point out repeatedly just how different they are.
I'm afraid when we are proven right, he won't believe it. :'(
When the wii was launched the current gen was ps2, xbox and gamecube and it was in power terms between the gamecube and original xbox.
Now its less clear, the wii u has more memory and a better gpu but weaker cpu and no hard drive. It does however have a pretty amazing gamepad.
I think when you have developers stating its underpowered its clearly underpowered considering they have full access to the hardware. Consumers aren't allowed such inside information but its not difficult to work out the wii u hardware is weak.
The wii was more powerful than the xbox.
The wii had a more powerful cpu than the xbox, superior physics to the xbox, the wii had more and faster ram, the wii supported more texture layers than the xbox (16 vs 6), The wii smoked the xbox in poly performance.
The only thing the wii didnt have was a modern shader library, because nintendo thought for some wierd reason that gx was still good enough.
As a wii u owner I'm more than happy to be proved wrong but the evidence is compelling. Yes wii u games will improve for sure but within the limitations of what the wii u is capable of. Wii u entered the market with powerpc development software and libraries in a mature state and the cpu is an enhanced gamecube/wii cpu anyway so is well known.
Except you are assuming that little needed to be changed between Wii and Wii U development when you couldn't be further from the truth. In reality its been well reported that the Wii U development kit was a complete and utter mess until right before launch.
Criterion themselves said that they had a huge advantage in porting (new) Need for Speed Most Wanted so late, as launch Wii U games were developed on an extremely incomplete development kit. Heck, the Wii U OS itself was a shambles at launch and its only with the latest update that things are starting to come together. What other console has reached v 3.0 of the OS this early in its life? It suggests that a LOT of work had to be done AFTER launch.
As others have said, the Wii was still based along fixed function GPUs and doing all the grunt work in the CPU, an in-order CPU (which I believe the PS360 also are) which requires coding for the quirks of that kind of CPU. The Wii U is pretty much the complete opposite, a fully programmable GPU designed to offset things from the CPU that can be done more efficiently on a GPU, and its an out-of-order CPU which means a completely different programming style to get the most out of it. As we have said before, it has more in common with PS4 than PS360.
So not only did the development kit need a lot of work, how the games are written by the developers needs to be different to get the most out of the Wii U.
Sheffield 3DS | Steam & XBOX: Alex Atkin UK | PSN & WiiU: AlexAtkinUK
Except you are assuming that little needed to be changed between Wii and Wii U development when you couldn't be further from the truth. In reality its been well reported that the Wii U development kit was a complete and utter mess until right before launch.
Criterion themselves said that they had a huge advantage in porting (new) Need for Speed Most Wanted so late, as launch Wii U games were developed on an extremely incomplete development kit. Heck, the Wii U OS itself was a shambles at launch and its only with the latest update that things are starting to come together. What other console has reached v 3.0 of the OS this early in its life? It suggests that a LOT of work had to be done AFTER launch.
As others have said, the Wii was still based along fixed function GPUs and doing all the grunt work in the CPU, an in-order CPU (which I believe the PS360 also are) which requires coding for the quirks of that kind of CPU. The Wii U is pretty much the complete opposite, a fully programmable GPU designed to offset things from the CPU that can be done more efficiently on a GPU, and its an out-of-order CPU which means a completely different programming style to get the most out of it. As we have said before, it has more in common with PS4 than PS360.
So not only did the development kit need a lot of work, how the games are written by the developers needs to be different to get the most out of the Wii U.
I completely agree with every point made. Sadly, however, I am sure we won't see the end of this debate.
We know that but that isn't was the mass majority believes. Even developers are saying true next gen systems making Wii U seem irrelavent. The only people that are saying great things about this console now are Indies and pro nintendo developers like shinen multimedia. No one else is giving us any belief that they belief in the console. Even Ubisoft how has been the most supportive is being very vague in their comments about the console.
agreed. Me and a select group of my friends might have one definition of a word, but if the rest of the world says differently, it doesn't matter what all the dictionaries or websites in the world say, they won't agree with us. We have to at least acknowledge that the majority of people out there don't think of the term next gen in the same way. I've said it before, but when non Nintendo fans say next gen, they are referring to "new" consoles that will significantly take gaming to the next level. AND YES, graphics is a big part of that. Let's be honest, the gamepad, while awesome and adding new functionality is not considered groundbreaking or innovative by the majority of developers. If anything, they consider it a barrier to making games on the Wii U. Besides, all I ever hear suggested for the gamepad is using it as a map or an inventory screen. Really? That's all we can come up with? Off tv play? ipad and iphone have universal games already.
Except you are assuming that little needed to be changed between Wii and Wii U development when you couldn't be further from the truth. In reality its been well reported that the Wii U development kit was a complete and utter mess until right before launch.
Criterion themselves said that they had a huge advantage in porting (new) Need for Speed Most Wanted so late, as launch Wii U games were developed on an extremely incomplete development kit. Heck, the Wii U OS itself was a shambles at launch and its only with the latest update that things are starting to come together. What other console has reached v 3.0 of the OS this early in its life? It suggests that a LOT of work had to be done AFTER launch.
As others have said, the Wii was still based along fixed function GPUs and doing all the grunt work in the CPU, an in-order CPU (which I believe the PS360 also are) which requires coding for the quirks of that kind of CPU. The Wii U is pretty much the complete opposite, a fully programmable GPU designed to offset things from the CPU that can be done more efficiently on a GPU, and its an out-of-order CPU which means a completely different programming style to get the most out of it. As we have said before, it has more in common with PS4 than PS360.
So not only did the development kit need a lot of work, how the games are written by the developers needs to be different to get the most out of the Wii U.
News flash Nintendo.... Gamers want to SEE it! The talk is getting very old from all the supporters. E3 is going to show the world what Wii U is capable of. So we will see if its a misunderstanding after all.
This, its time to put up or shut up Nintendo. I dont really care if the Wii U is underpowered compared to the PS4/720, but dont lead people on to thinking its more than it is. The Wii U's selling point should be the innovation the gampad brings, but why we still have this cloud of mystery surrounding the Wii U's graphical prowess 6 months after release is just crazy. Iwata should have simply released a 20 second clip of their best looking game right now, and showed that to the press. A short video could change perception over night.
This, its time to put up or shut up Nintendo. I dont really care if the Wii U is underpowered compared to the PS4/720, but dont lead people on to thinking its more than it is. The Wii U's selling point should be the innovation the gampad brings, but why we still have this cloud of mystery surrounding the Wii U's graphical prowess 6 months after release is just crazy. Iwata should have simply released a 20 second clip of their best looking game right now, and showed that to the press. A short video could change perception over night.
exactly i could care less but the back and forth since we have known about this console is unlike anything ive ever seen. either release the damn specs, or talk openly about the design of the console tech, or show a modern engine running on the console.
exactly i could care less but the back and forth since we have known about this console is unlike anything ive ever seen. either release the damn specs, or talk openly about the design of the console tech, or show a modern engine running on the console.
Well, one of those things Nintendo has done. They openly talked and shown off the tech inside the Wii U.
The third hopefully we'll see at E3. Which is about the time I expected to see that.
