Alex Atkin UK

Doesn't that make sense though, wii u has the strongest gpu, xbox 360 second and the ps3 last. Fighter games need low cpu resources and this seems a logical game to perform well on wii u. This follows the pattern most impartial people have predicted for wii u.



32MB is video memory and is dwarfed by the 1GB of system memory which will be fully utilised with modern games. The 32MB is really just a frame buffer and texture cache, a more generous one than 360 (10MB) but  still most of the data is stored in the main 1GB of memory.

All evidence points to the wii u cpu being very weak especially when you factor in the more modern gpu of the wii u actually performs some tasks that the 360 and PS3 require their cpu's to do. The wii u cpu is directly wii code compatible somehow, that means wii software sees a cpu identical to the original wii. That means even if the processor has extended instructions the bulk of it will be identical including how it handles memory etc and the memory bus to external memory. When Nintendo decided the wii u would be compatible with the wii a huge number of performance compromises had to be made to achieve that.

The fact is the wii u is struggling to outperform current gen consoles and is meant to be a very easy console to develop for. No one is doubting the wii u gpu is superior in many ways so something else is severely throttling the performance of the wii u.

It's only code compatible in Wii mode, when two cores are locked and the cache is shrunk.  

WiiU is GPU centric, but nevertheless the CPU is stronger than cell and xenon.  Your argument doesn't hold water, saying its weaker because the GPU is stronger is not accurate, it doesn't work that way.  

All Nintendo and IBM had to do was ensure that one core was code compatible with Wii, not a difficult task for a company specializing in custom CPU applications.

No where is WiiU struggling to outperform current gen consoles, switching an engine from relying on high clocked, in order, long piped CPUs to one with lower clocks, shorter pipelines, and out of order execution but higher IPC cannot happen without rewriting all of the game engine code, and six months or less is not enough time to do it.

The claims you're making have been repeatedly and easily buried.  

As for the cache, you do realize that the services that are bandwidth sensitive are all very small.  The frame buffer is immensely important despite being ridiculously tiny, 32MB  is more than enough to also hold some commonly accessed texture data.  Of course the rest is going to be held in main memory or streamed from disc, but the bandwidth is high enough to handle that.

To add, Nintendo are the kings of tessellation, and decent Tess allows for dynamic textures that don't get stored in RAM.

Fighters are typically more CPU intensive and regardless it would have been designed for each specific console to utilize the power available.  Injustice on PS3 and 360 is running primarily on CPU, all games designed for those platforms do.

Its does cheapen the value of the product a bit, but thats Nintendo's fault for releasing a Beta version of their console.  Seriously, its like Nintendo just wanted to get the Wii U on shelves for 2012 knowing very well that they didnt have all their ducks in a row yet.  The very casual gamers rarely buy a console at launch, and yet Nintendo's first party offering were two very casual games.  With retailers sticking with these low prices though, its going to be hard for Nintendo to maintain its current suggested retail price over in the UK.  Even if Nintendo decides to not drop the price here in the US, they may be forced by retailers to drop the price in the UK.  

 

On a good note, it does seem like Nintendo is prepping for a big push starting this summer.  They will have their 2nd big OS update, and will also have Pikmin ready for release in Auguest.  This is when I expect marketing to ramp back up for the Wii U.  Having a high profile release every month starting in Auguest through the end of the year along with a strong marketing push should pull the Wii U out of its current slump.  It would be hard to avoid success when releasing Baynonetta in September, 3D Mario game in October, a Zelda game in November, and a Mario Kart game in December.

 

The bottom line is Nintendo really wasnt prepared for a strong launch, and instead of trying to bandaid things over the past few months, they have decided to regroup and get ready for a big push in the second half of 2013.   

I cant believe it either. I should of waited but like an idiot fanboy, I just ran and bought it because of the Nintendo logo.

 

I could of saved £150 which is a lot to me.

 

I relate to that but i'm not really a Nintendo fan, i bought it for the following-

 

Next gen tech.

Game pad being a great idea.

Lego city and other promised 3rd party support.

 

Purchased late jan at full price and really do think the Wiiu is a great bit of kit but this price drop really is a big kick in the teeth.

Not too bad actually, 1000000 times better than my 360 though, God that thing sounded like my lawnmower was doing naughty things to a jet engine.

The Wii U is less underpowered than the Wii was for its time.

...I'm not hating on the Wii U but I can pretty much say that it's not going to be anywhere near as powerful as the next consoles from Sony and Microsoft, and that's fine as power
isn't the reason I bought a Wii U.

The fact that people are getting so defensive over people stating the fact that no Wii U game has shown the console to be a huge leap into next-gen performance wise is confusing me, did you buy the Wii U, a console with a controller which has a touch screen on it for $300 expecting it to be some huge graphical leap?

I bought a Wii U for the controller and the exclusives, any third party support is just a bonus to me.

Although I do have a bit of respect for what Miyamoto has accomplished in his career, I feel as if the only way for Nintendo to truly get anywhere in the current gaming world is to force him into early retirement. Miyamoto is no different than those who still use AOL dial-up to access the internet. The rest of the world is passing by while he is stuck in a time warp.

 

He still lives in a fantasy world where it's 1992 and Nintendo is still at the top of the gaming pyramid. He still thinks that Nintendo can release a game where a plumber smashes blocks with his head and jumps on turtles and that everything will be ok. Who needs third party support when you own the rights to Mario, Zelda, and Metroid?

 

I must say I cannot fault the guy for wanting to live in the past, as the present and near future do not look good for Nintendo.

 

Can someone please explain to me how holding an awkward game controller with a standard definition screen, poor battery life and no mult point touch is supposed to be groundbreaking and cool? I really don't get it.

 

I know Miyamoto is more on the gaming side of things, but jesus... how can you not see from 10 miles away that it's a horrible gimmick? The whole tablet fad is just that... a fad that will pass... and why Nintendo wanted to offer such a poor one as it's console seller still makes me wince.

You miss the point, he is a game designer, and a very good one.  The regional headquarters of Nintendo are responsible for third party support and business deals with outside entities, his sole focus, is the same as it has been for decades, to make games that offer great experiences and sell, and he has never failed to deliver.  He isn't the CEO of the company, he is just a game designer.  He is the reason Nintendo games are still higher quality experiences than most if not all third party attempts.

I hope not the vast majority of mobile games are crap consoles give a richer experience all round.

Im in the same boat dude.  I am going to play the crap out of the Wii U no matter what, but at the same time I always like to have a few games that really showcase what the hardware can do.  When I saw Zelda WW was getting remastered I nearly had to change my shorts.  The WW art style held up very well throughout the years, and now it looks like its going to be absolutely gorgeous.  I just always remind myself that the Mario Galaxy team has about 20 times the processing power that they had when creating Galaxy, so its hard to imagine anything less than perfection.  Nintendo is going to have some gorgeous games at E3. 

Epic kinda sorts has a point about the sense it makes putting UE4 in wii u.


But only in the exact same way it doesn't make sense putting ue4 on ps4.

Ue4 is hardly an upgrade over ue3 except in a couple of areas which ultimately boil down to lighting and particles.

It was basically an engine company asking themselves what the next big thing was. They thought it was lighting and particles. In a sense, that's true.
But they way ue4 does it requires tons more power than your think for the minimal ultimate difference it makes.

The ps4 for example, while running ue4, has most of the ue4 specifics turned off. There are some working benefits over ue3, that's ptob why they aren't using 3 only. In the ps4 ue4 demo, the lighting difference is staggering in terms of how much it loses versus pc (ie: the appearance of distance, ambient particles in the air, etc. playing with how the lighting is rendered).
The ps4 version appears to have that completely turned off. Even the particle effects seem to be purely scripted, and much less dynamic. Even some reflections on the textures are gone on ps4. It actually loses quite a bit.

But the geometry and textures are similar. So it ends up looking trchnically (not speaking of art direction) not even as good as The Samaritan, which focused heavily on textures and geometry combined with precise, less dynamic, but very well chosen lighting.

Without those specific ue4 benefits, ue4 looks like... Ue3.

So Epic has a point.

But they are being hypocritical because that point very much applies to ps4 as well.

The unreal engine may actually be one of the technically lesser engines of this generation. But everyone is familiar with it.

Being that PC gaming looks poised for resurgence, it makes sense that developers will want ue4. That way they don't have to completely revamp their game to work on any of the consoles. They can simply rework features that can't be done the way epic envisioned with ue4 originally.

Ue4 on ps4 faces the same hurdles the wii u does. With one exception.

Mark rein likes Sony. But not so much Nintendo.

Seriously. That's all there is to it.

They make ue4 for x86. Ue4 for arm. Ue4 for the whacked out x86 stepchild the ps4 uses. But no Power? That's ridiculous.

Ue4 technically would run the same demo the ps4 did. (even though there were glimpses of frame rate issues in the ps4 version...)

But rein doesn't "like" Nintendo. Period. Never has.

And it seems that he's losing the tale t around him that actually made epic the monster it is now.

There's a saying about pride going before a fall. And given the rash and unprofessional nature on display last week, I'd say epic is cracking at the foundation.

It seems like every piece of bad news is treated like it alone will bring down Nintendo. The 360 survived the ring of death, how much worse can it get than a massive fail rate.

 

It seem to me that these constant panic are based of a few misconceptions.

 

a) The next gen console race has begun.

 

Nintendo will be competing on the same basis

 

c) Nintendo will collapse if Wii U doesn't sell massive amount in the first twelve months.

 

The reality is that Microsoft haven't even announced their console and the PS4 isn't due till Xmas and even after that it'll take time for them develop next gen games. Nintendo have a huge headstart to settle in, build an installed base, lower manufacturing costs, develop the OS, build a software library and of course learn who to best utilise the hardware. 

 

That said it won't be competing in exactly the same way just like with the Wii it'll find it's own niche. In twelve month time if it still isn't selling well, well they still have the successful 3DS and plenty of Yen in the bank to bail them out!

Uncharted isn't boring at all and professional reviewers agree with that. Uncharted 2 is often mentioned as one of the best games of all time.

I don't care what the reviewers said obviously. Cover shoot cover shoot cover shoot with virtually no enemy variation(and way too many enemies) is not fun at all. Solving easy "puzzles" that give you the answer right off is not fun. What else is there? Climbing walls? Looking for shiny things on the ground? The only fun part was the end of the game where everything changed. I haven't played uncharted 2 or 3 and I don't plan to since the first one was so awful and according to fans/reviews the third one is even worse. If Uncharted 2 doesn't completely overhaul the first game there's no way I'll ever take the notion of it being one of the best games of all time(or even a good game in general) seriously.

 

Now to be fair I haven't looked at reviews of Uncharted 2 and the first Uncharted did have good graphics, lovable but regular characters, and average story. Horrible gameplay though.

Cyanotic, on 29 Mar 2013 - 08:25, said:Saying Nintendo "only has 3 franchises" wasn't even my initial argument. I just quoted the other guy who was going on a rant saying that "hardcore" gamers only play games that are copied and pasted year after year, such as COD.
And I said that every Nintendo fan must be hardcore, because that's all Nintendo has ever done.
You can read into that anyway you want.



Its pretty obvious what happened was that the issue at hand got dragged into an insult inanimate companies/products war rather than an intelligent argument.

Its why I didnt persue it.

Its funny, I remember being in near the exact same situation at this point in time in the 3ds's life.

Nintendos going to be fine. It will have an extremely different library of games, obviously, but fine.

You know, if nintendo ever shows all the games they have been hiding for WAY too long.

Who wants 3 consoles with the exact same game library anyways?

Did you even see all of the other peoples replies to your first tech demo related posts? The point is that the final product can be much less impressive than the flashy tech demo. This happens most with Sony.

I don't remember, but I thought the 720p idea (of a non-demanding demo on alpha hardware no less) was simply due to screenshots that they had been given, being set at a certain resolution.

 

Perhaps it was 720p or perhaps it was 1080p.  I don't know.

 

But WHAT IS HILARIOUS is that Sony specifically mentions PS4 GAMES will NOT render at 4k resolution, but it will upscale MOVIES and playback native 4K MOVIES.

 

NOT GAMES!!!!!!!!

 

YET, when sony sounds out press screen shots of their games, guess what resolution they are... 4K... LOL

 

Case in point - http://blogs-images..../KZ4_Chase1.jpg

 

All of the game images sent to Forbes, etc. from sony are in that fake resolution.

 

That image is in 4K resolution as defined by Wikipedia as Ultra High Definition Television at 3840 x 2160 resolution.

 

not only is sony oblivious to how obviously fake that makes their press screenshots, it seems no one is reporting it either.

 

Not only was their presentation filled with target renders and who knows what (I hope to Heaven the PS4 is capable of more than what they showed...), but then they go and ADD pixels to their screenshots so that the non-discriminating public can post them in forums saying "look at how much better these are..." and it isn't even representative of the actual tech demo or target render.

 

Classic Sony.

I love my Wii U and 3DS to bits, and I'm considering getting a PS4, to be fair it looks awesome, I skipped Wii and PS3 cos I just plain and simple lost something down the line probably my enthusiasum, and I stayed an Xbox Drone, but something about Wii U just exited me, and Nintendo dragged me back with it, I wasn't exactly kicking and screaming though lol. PS4 seems to be renewing my faith in Sony for the first time since the best console ever PS2, I can honestly say this generation is exciting me and I can't wait for the future