43 replies to this topic

[MorbidGod]

You can talk about frame rates, resolution, chip speed all you want- but I think you need a VERY trained and experienced eye to tell the difference. I'll bet 90 percent of gamers might not be able to distinguish.

Between NFS: Most Wanted ?

[DexterousGecko]

Are they?
When did they lose me?
Am I not CORE enough because I don't spend €65 for a yearly First Person Shooter?

I think you're wrong.
Nintendo don't need to under-power their system to sell more copies of their own games.
Did funky Barn require high specs? No. And it didn't outsell Mario.

i'll put it bluntly how most people see it. Nintendo is still catering to kids and families.

 

edit for the literalists: most meaning a large percentage of gamers above the age of 18. (the age of supposed adulthood)

Edited by DexterousGecko, 22 May 2013 - 05:05 PM.

[Nollog]

i'll put it bluntly how most people see it. Nintendo is still catering to kids and families.
 
edit for the literalists: most meaning a large percentage of gamers above the age of 18. (the age of supposed adulthood)

Kids wanting to act like grown-ups, with very fragile self-esteem you mean.

[Socalmuscle]

Nintendo did not purposely allow devs to only a certain amount of power.

 

The developers were unfamiliar with the new architecture for one.  That is a huge hurdle by itself.  Developers familiar with the old PPC architectures of 360 and PS3 are in a whole new world with Power 7 derived fundamentals.

 

Second, the tons of custom hardware in the MCM, especially the GPU, left developers unable to tap into the vast resources that the Wii U affords in terms of processing power.  Nintendo was not able to provide the "keys" to that treasure room until recently.

 

Third, without a thorough understanding of how to make use of the ram setup, that could have posed an issue there for any demanding games.  And that may be why we have seen zero demanding games yet.

 

Note, both the PS4 and One have similar design fundamentals to the Wii U.  It's the new game and everyone is playing it.

 

The difference is that Sony and MS have had more resources to pour into their development and have had tools ready earlier in development.

 

Nintendo didn't withold power from developers, it simply wasn't done crafting the "key" to the treasure room.

 

There is power awaiting developers now.

 

After seeing the size of the One console considering it's paltry maximum power draw (not much more than Wii U), it amazes me all the more how talented the engineers at Nintendo are to get all that power into such a tiny setup.

Edited by Socalmuscle, 22 May 2013 - 05:16 PM.

[Alex Atkin UK]

After seeing the size of the One console considering it's paltry maximum power draw (not much more than Wii U), it amazes me all the more how talented the engineers at Nintendo are to get all that power into such a tiny setup.

 

I'm pretty sure we don't know the Xbox Ones power draw, they mentioned the maximum the APU uses, a big difference.  That doesn't include the Bluray drive, RAM, USB ports, HDD, Kinect, etc.

 

On the other hand we know the Wii U uses next to nothing when FULLY LOADED.  Not that any of that really tells us anything.

[ThePopiPenguin]

Actually, a lot of gamers here are aware of framerates, clock speed, latency and all that. Mostly 'cause everyone plays PC in my country. I can safely say that with this, the percentage of gamers in the world who are at least knowledgeable in this field is about 30% unless you count the casuals which in that case; drops to said 10%.

[Rockodoodle]

Aware- yes, but could they actually see the difference in a controlled setting?  I am guessing very few could actually do it with any consistency.

 

 

Actually, a lot of gamers here are aware of framerates, clock speed, latency and all that. Mostly 'cause everyone plays PC in my country. I can safely say that with this, the percentage of gamers in the world who are at least knowledgeable in this field is about 30% unless you count the casuals which in that case; drops to said 10%.

[DexterousGecko]

Kids wanting to act like grown-ups, with very fragile self-esteem you mean.

all fanboys have fragile self-esteem by definition. It's not a Nintendo or Microsoft/Sony exclusive.

[ThePopiPenguin]

Aware- yes, but could they actually see the difference in a controlled setting?  I am guessing very few could actually do it with any consistency.

Agreed. Although a handful of us here can discern the differences since the biggest gaming population here is the MOBA crowd. 

[Alex Atkin UK]

The problem I see is that people seem to look at things as black/white, that better graphics are either very important or not important at all. Of course its not that simple.

 

How a game FEELS is most important, and you don't necessarily need photo realism for that, you need the game world to behave realistically and this is where GPGPU comes in (and unified memory is useful too so the CPU and GPU can work on the same data more easily).  This is one reason Nintendo/Rare games were so popular, because there were lots of little things going on in the game world that were unrelated to game play at all but make it feel alive.  Silly little things like flowers moving with the beat of the music, a very clever thing to do when wind simulation was not practical to tie it into something else instead that you CAN do.

 

Of course that only works with a specific game types, which is why the developers are going on about dynamic hair, weather, water, wind, etc, all the elements needed to make games based on real life feel more alive.  There are a LOT of people who dismiss those kind of improvements because they either feel they aren't important for them (a lot of Call of Duty fans seem to be in this category based on recent events), or just don't realise that when they are complaining that games don't "feel" real enough, its those things we are missing.  Once people actually experience these improvements they might not necessarily notice they are there, but they WILL notice going back to older hardware where they aren't.  The problem is convincing people to shell out money on an expensive new console for improvements that aren't easy to see on the surface.

 

This is where Watch Dogs should be a good example.  It will likely look very similar on all platforms, but the game world should "feel" different, more dynamic and real, on PS4/XB1 and how close the Wii U version compares will be telling.

Edited by Alex Atkin UK, 22 May 2013 - 09:40 PM.

[Keviin]

I'd be surprised if the Wii U runs PS4 Watchdogs. Not saying it's underpowered, but the Wii U is NOT powerful.

Having a debate with you is impossible. Even if Nintendo shows you graphics that blow everything out of the water (that won't happen) you won't believe it.

And I'm sorry, Need of Speed Most Wanted is a vast improvement over the current generation. Or old whatever you want to call it.

http://www.examiner....better-graphics

Here is a link. Supporting my assessment.

The difference is obvious, nice comparison.

[Skywalkman-GB]

This console is only not underpowered for the likes of Mario and Zelda. 

[Socalmuscle]

I'm pretty sure we don't know the Xbox Ones power draw, they mentioned the maximum the APU uses, a big difference. That doesn't include the Bluray drive, RAM, USB ports, HDD, Kinect, etc.

On the other hand we know the Wii U uses next to nothing when FULLY LOADED. Not that any of that really tells us anything.

Ntflix or nsmbu is hardly "fully loaded."
That simply shows that even video snes and apps don't tax the system. But that will change when demanding games are being played.

The new Xbox is gigantic. Looks like desktop pc. Doubt they spent the engineering time Nintendo did in term of consolidation, layout, and maximizing thermal envelope and power efficiency (something the wii u CPU power management has in droves over x86).

And the design looks like it would be cool 5 years ago.

Factoring in kinect doesn't even make sense since its separate from the console (though artificially integrated) and wouldn't be an apples to apples comparo. We aren't factoring in the gamepad screen on wii u, so we don't need to factor in kinect.

Basically showing the fallacy of those who mistook the wii u engineering triumph in power efficiency as a sign of weakness.

This console is only not underpowered for the likes of Mario and Zelda.

And apparently ea racing games for the forgetful ones among us...

[AndyG]

Remember those early third party ports such as Mass Effect 3 and AC3 were most likely not using the final dev kits when production began. Even if they were it would still take time to understand the WiiU's new architecture, remember the PS3 at launch, what a mess it was for developers.

 

Take a look at both the PS3 and 360 launch titles (mostly PS3), while there is a minor improvement in graphics, some of the textures look kinda muddy and some of the game models look very...simple. People are impatient and want to judge from what they see from the start, your not likely to see anything thats going to wow you straight off the bat, BE PATIENT.

[Alex Atkin UK]

Ntflix or nsmbu is hardly "fully loaded."
That simply shows that even video snes and apps don't tax the system. But that will change when demanding games are being played.

The new Xbox is gigantic. Looks like desktop pc. Doubt they spent the engineering time Nintendo did in term of consolidation, layout, and maximizing thermal envelope and power efficiency (something the wii u CPU power management has in droves over x86).

And the design looks like it would be cool 5 years ago.

Factoring in kinect doesn't even make sense since its separate from the console (though artificially integrated) and wouldn't be an apples to apples comparo. We aren't factoring in the gamepad screen on wii u, so we don't need to factor in kinect.

Basically showing the fallacy of those who mistook the wii u engineering triumph in power efficiency as a sign of weakness.


And apparently ea racing games for the forgetful ones among us...

 

Personally I have checked power consumption playing Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed and Lego City Undercover, those games shouldn't really be light on the system although perhaps not as optimised as they could be.  However as the power consumption on the Wii U doesn't really change between apps, games, menu, that implies that unlike the PS4/XB1 its not power gated or clock scaling. I recon the Wii U runs flat out all the time because its so low power to start with its not worth wasting space adding silicon for advanced power management.

 

I was including Kinect because it still gets its power from the main system and is mandatory, so I don't think we will be able to record power consumption without it plugged in.  Also when working out the Wii U maximum power consumption we have to consider the maximum the Wii U PSU can output and include all USB ports being fully loaded, so it kinda makes sense in that respect.

 

You are right, there is no way the PS4/XB1 is custom made like the Wii U, its only a slightly customised AMD APU, the Wii U is 100% custom not based on any off the shelf configuration.  However there are still limits to how much you can do with a given power draw.

Edited by Alex Atkin UK, 23 May 2013 - 02:41 AM.

[Nollog]

all fanboys have fragile self-esteem by definition. It's not a Nintendo or Microsoft/Sony exclusive.

What fangirls?
Weren't we talking about Nintendo's perception being kid-friendly and how that scares away HARDCORE GAMERS GORE AND BLOOD FPS HARDCORE (12 year olds playing cod)?

I'd be surprised if the Wii U runs PS4 Watchdogs.

Of course it won't. Only the PS4 can run PS4 games.
Do you mean the same visual fidelity and loading speeds etc. ?
I'd say you'll be surprised. It'll be pretty close imo.

Edited by Nollog, 23 May 2013 - 03:36 AM.

[MorbidGod]

What fangirls?
Weren't we talking about Nintendo's perception being kid-friendly and how that scares away HARDCORE GAMERS GORE AND BLOOD FPS HARDCORE (12 year olds playing cod)?

Of course it won't. Only the PS4 can run PS4 games.
Do you mean the same visual fidelity and loading speeds etc. ?
I'd say you'll be surprised. It'll be pretty close imo.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who actually believes Ubisoft when they said all next gen watchdogs will look similar.

[Alex Atkin UK]

I'm glad I'm not the only one who actually believes Ubisoft when they said all next gen watchdogs will look similar.

 

Similar on the surface maybe, but they also claimed to be adding a lot of polish to the PS4 version so it might "feel" different.

 

If they look too similar then its merely the limitations of porting to so many different consoles, they SHOULD look different.  Then again, people seem to underestimate how having more objects on and screen and a greater drawing distance makes a game feel and often play much better.

[Socalmuscle]

Personally I have checked power consumption playing Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed and Lego City Undercover, those games shouldn't really be light on the system although perhaps not as optimised as they could be.  However as the power consumption on the Wii U doesn't really change between apps, games, menu, that implies that unlike the PS4/XB1 its not power gated or clock scaling. I recon the Wii U runs flat out all the time because its so low power to start with its not worth wasting space adding silicon for advanced power management.

 

I was including Kinect because it still gets its power from the main system and is mandatory, so I don't think we will be able to record power consumption without it plugged in.  Also when working out the Wii U maximum power consumption we have to consider the maximum the Wii U PSU can output and include all USB ports being fully loaded, so it kinda makes sense in that respect.

 

You are right, there is no way the PS4/XB1 is custom made like the Wii U, its only a slightly customised AMD APU, the Wii U is 100% custom not based on any off the shelf configuration.  However there are still limits to how much you can do with a given power draw.

 

NONE of those games come close to taxing the Wii U hardware. None.

 

And the reason power consumption doesn't change is because only certain resources are tapped.

 

And no... the Wii U doesn't run flat out all the time.

 

There are highly advanced power management features in the CPU.

 

You include Kinect because you want to. In reality, you know it has nothing to do with system performance or required power draw for CPU, GPU, RAM, etc.

 

And the maximum power rating is what I was talking about from the beginning.

 

the Xbox One uses a little more power and it needs it due to more cores and more ram.  But in reality, it's more an indication of power management inefficiency than anything. 

 

Again, the whole idea that Wii U's currently measured power consumption is an indicator of graphical and computational performance is simply wrong.

Edited by Socalmuscle, 23 May 2013 - 09:04 AM.

[routerbad]

Similar on the surface maybe, but they also claimed to be adding a lot of polish to the PS4 version so it might "feel" different.

 

If they look too similar then its merely the limitations of porting to so many different consoles, they SHOULD look different.  Then again, people seem to underestimate how having more objects on and screen and a greater drawing distance makes a game feel and often play much better.

That was paid sony advertisement.  Sony paid them to do a dev diary to talk up the PS4 version, and any business that walks away from free money is stupid.

 

They won't be porting anything, Wii U version is being built side by side, by a different team.  It will look extremely close, and the "polish" they are adding won't change the visuals or the gameplay, they said that all next gen versions look the same, they will play differently on each console, however.

NONE of those games come close to taxing the Wii U hardware. None.

Sonic All Stars was another ported game that was ported on early hardware, and is only using two cores.  Most if not all of the ports so far are locked to two cores because they didn't have enough knowledge about the system to optimize it correctly.  They did say that the issues were resolved and that they are able to use all three cores now, but those games still do not.