Jikayaki

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.

Microsoft will most definitely try to round up the pursuit for the gamers choice over the 3 next gen consoles, especially pushing themselves further ahead of PS3. This I am sure of; they want to capitalise on the success of Live, and be able to force Kinect into the mainstream. They will also take some PS3 gamers away from their pedestals, and finally settle a score. I don't' think they will care about costs too much, they will keep throwing money at 720 or whatever till it works, pulling gamers into their consumer base, and will most likely make it an awfully powerful machine and with great potential...somehow. I reckon they are watching Nintendo closely here, and would expect there to be a clash at some point. It would be interesting to say the least! Nintendo will hopefully stand to the mark! They haven't competed properly in years. GO NINTENDO!



XBox fan-boys can go ahead and state that the Wii U will have nothing on it, and I know it has been spoken of before that next gen won't be so 'next gen' when it comes to recently-produced hardware, but Microsoft can work very very hard if they want to. Don't quite understand the unintended contrast stated here. But, sounds to me Jikayaki, that you're suggesting ARM will make the 'loop' more powerful for sure, but will be closer to the Wii U's potential in hardware more so than we understand. Don't know how you've come to suggest all of the above, but i'd be interested in reading a link? Would be good to check out new XBox rumours, if there is any. Might be similar to the way Wii U supposedly had information 'leaked' all those months ago, before E3

All I'm saying is even with ARM architecture its rather easy for Xbox Loop to out perform the Wii U. It certainly isn't a certainty. If the Next Xbox is ARM based its also possible that in some ways the Wii U using more conventional hardware would have some advantages. ARM architecture however would be in Nintendo's favor if it is in the next Xbox. Development for ARM is focused toward mobile devices I doubt creating a chip equivalent to modern desktop chips would be a wise investment to the point that more conventional hardware would cost less.

We already know that the 3DS changed to some degree to better match the wishes of third party devs and a lot of the focus on the Wii U's design is maintaining third party support. After the lack luster start to the 3DS it wouldn't surprise me if devs aren't able to push more with Nintendo regarding the Wii U in comparison. That said Nintendo has some very capable hardware designers. Going on leaks and rumors I do believe it won't suffer from many of the issues that plagued the Wii regarding the core audience and third party developers, at least for the first three years. Then if you add in some of the speculation from IBM's quad channel memory controllers to possibly a system on chip or system in package silicon designs Wii U may end up more impressive than the high end rumors while still using parts equal to rumored PC counterparts. A lot depends on what Microsoft and Sony do next gen, but a lot points to both potentially utilizing a more modest jump in comparison to last gen.

I'd rather see someone at Nintendo finally bring the gameplay of Donkey Kong Country into the third dimension. I enjoyed Donkey Kong 64, but I wouldn't call it the ideal transition from a side scrolling platformer to a third person platformer. I'm relatively positive this would be good challenge for Retro and if done right it could easily give Nintendo a third heavy hitter. The tp's idea itself wouldn't be bad as a downloadable game for the Wii U or a full game for the 3DS.

Although I know that (unless something HUGE happened in the industry) Nintendo will never fork over the Metroid license to Crytek...

The prospect makes me tingly inside.

The best thing that could happen for the Metroid franchise is simply for Nintendo to beef-up Retro and hand the franchise back to them. It was the most popular it has ever been in the 3D gens in their hands and its doubtful that anyone else would be able to engage the current fanbase to a higher degree. First I'd rather Retro handle another IP perhaps a full blown Donkey Kong not merely a retro side scroller, but no doubt no one would better revive the Metroid franchise than Retro. Crytek themselves are a poor choice for Metroid anyway. Metroid is so much more than merely a third or first person shooter. Crytek's specialties don't really apply to the creation of a game like Metroid.

This is very exciting news but why do i feel so skeptical about the wii u?? Maybe crytek could be making the next metroid game?? That would be insane!!!!

I highly doubt Nintendo would hand one of its franchises over to a western developer that they themselves don't own. The second coming is more likely to happen tomorrow than Crytek ever producing a metroid game.

We still don't know the final specification of the Wii U. Nintendo don't make a loss on consoles and the Wii U console itself is quite small only marginally bigger than the Wii. I've read comments from developers that have sounded at times its less powerful, the same power or more powerful than 360/PS3.

For example the GPU will more than likely be bottom of the range similar to Xbox 360 and may be underclocked to prevent overheating in the Wii U case but the fact it will be using slightly later technology and have more high speed video memory will give it advantages. One comment I've read is it can use higher resolution textures.

Until we get a final specification we won't really know the power of the console. Remember the Wii was launched well after the original Xbox and yet was far less powerful.

Nintendo were happy to use PS3/360 graphics to showcase the Wii U at E3. You would think if the console was as powerful as modern PCs they would have used PC graphics to showcase Wii U graphics. I think we need to put our realistic hats on.

I do believe Skyrim will be fantastic on Wii U though and as its got to come later to the format it will probably come with many of the bugs already fixed. Bethedsa games always seem to have major issues and require patches. I just hope the patches the Wii U version will need don't fill up the Wii U's flash memory.

Nothing supposedly from developers have placed Wii U at or below current HD consoles. For the most part developers aren't willing to talk about graphical horse power and more than likely Nintendo has told them to say nothing regarding this issue. How the console relates in power to the other HD consoles has been practically a no comment issue. Practically all developers have said is that it is an HD console and that its architecture fits their current business model. Currently by piecing together information regarding current Dev Kits that's leaked it seems because of a heating issue they had to be down clocked because under too large a load the kits crashed. Otherwise the GPU for instance is supposedly from multiple rumors within the range of a Radeon HD 4850. We'll have a better idea of the consoles actual abilities sometime this month once the new Dev Kits get into the hands of developers willing to leak info.

The Wii wasn't far less powerful than the Xbox. In fact it was noticeably more powerful than the Xbox. The only capability Wii lacked was programmable shaders a feature Nintendo at the time really didn't like.

Nintendo apparently used PS3 and Xbox 360 footage because Wii U footage available to them from 3d party developers wasn't noticeably better than the PS3 and Xbox 360 footage. This was Nintendo trying to prevent the issue that occurred to Microsoft when showing early Xbox 360 footage that lead to the belief that Xbox 360 wasn't noticeably more powerful than Xbox. Many of the rumors regarding the GPU should allow Wii U to play any modern PC game at high. Perhaps it would of been smart to showcase some of the latest PC games as an example of what the console is capable of, but it is obvious that their focus was the controller.

I'm sure it could but it would have to be with low settings, lol.



I was impressed with the background but something about the bird just seemed off...idk what it is.

Anyways, that was a tech demo, not representative of graphics during actual gameplay.

Remember the Quantic Dream's tech demo for the PS3 that had everyone's jaws dropping to the floor? Well it took Quantic Dreams 4 years to actually to be able to make a game with those visuals (Heavy Rain) and even then it wasn't on par with that original tech demo...and to even get close to it, the entire game had to be done in QT events.

Other than Heavy Rain, no game has even come close to what they showed off in that Tech Demo for the PS3 and we're well into the systems life cycle...if games were going to be able to do it, they'd have done it already.

It's entirely possible (if not likely) that it'll be the same for the Wii U with it's tech demo's.

Not that it would be a bad thing, it's still a MAJOR step up from the original Wii and short of people who made the massive mistake of actually buying into all the b/s pre-reveal hype no one expected a modern day graphical powerhouse from Nintendo.



I'm not against Nintendo, I love me some Zelda, Mario, DK and Kirby. I'm against people who try to irrationally overrate products or features of products.

You have to look at Nintendo's attitude regarding tech demos and general tech specs. Really the reason Nintendo stopped releasing technical specs regarding its systems is what happened with GameCube. Sony and Microsoft give the media fluffed specs regarding their consoles, which simply wasn't possible in a full game setting. Nintendo on the other hand were more honest and openly discussed the capabilities of the GameCube and the whole situation soured on them. This isn't Sony or Microsoft where consistently you can expect them to show case a tech demo simply not possible on the hardware in a game. Nintendo's tech demos for certain franchises for instance often end up not quite as impressive as the finished product and it wouldn't be like Nintendo to show case a demo that didn't represent what the console is truly capable of pulling off.

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.