Idea for Sony and Microsoft to have WiiU-esque controller

[MrHide-Patten]

I think MS and Sony could make a WiiU style controller for themselves putting Nintendo in an even worse position than their in just now with WiiU sales.

Don't know where I saw it, but somebody made crack at Sony about the PSMove and using the Vita in the same way you'd use the Wii-U screen. It would certainly start making them sell if the Vita sell more if it interacts with the PS4 in nifty ways.

But in all honesty I don't think Sony needs a big clunky controller with a huge screen that drains the battery in roughly a couple of hours. I don't really think input measures is what's stopping innovation or new and interesing ideas.

 

[GoaThief]

Already coming. Sony has Vita/Smart phone support, even the PS3 is getting in on the action with Beyond Two Souls being completely playable from start to finish via iOS/android devices. MS has Smart glass too.

No need for a whole new controller. Definite plus, doesn't make Nintendo seem that cost effective in comparison and no doubt will have a negative effect on the console's image.

I'm confused?... The Wii U is still the cheapest console of the three. And the gamepad is the controller for the system.
This isn't counting the fact that the Wiimote is also compatible with the system.

Since most people who are aware of the Wii U knows it has a gamepad, it can actually damage Sony and Microsoft's reputation because it will be seen as yet another copy cat attempt at doing what Nintendo does. Especially when multiple games on the Wii U can be played and completed purely on the Gamepad if the user so chooses.

It's cheaper, but not significantly so given that it's barely 1/5th of the power of the PS4. So where does that extra cost come from? A tablet or smartphone like device which most people interested in consoles already own or have access to. Why pay more for something you already own and is probably better with capacitive touch instead of cheap resistive, etc.

As for the silly copying argument, if anything Nintendo copied Sony as they were certainly first to the console second screen party. I think we're all above that kind of petty point scoring though, right?

 

[Dragonbums]

Already coming. Sony has Vita/Smart phone support, even the PS3 is getting in on the action with Beyond Two Souls being completely playable from start to finish via iOS/android devices. MS has Smart glass too.

No need for a whole new controller. Definite plus, doesn't make Nintendo seem that cost effective in comparison and no doubt will have a negative effect on the console's image.

I'm confused?... The Wii U is still the cheapest console of the three. And the gamepad is the controller for the system.
This isn't counting the fact that the Wiimote is also compatible with the system.

Since most people who are aware of the Wii U knows it has a gamepad, it can actually damage Sony and Microsoft's reputation because it will be seen as yet another copy cat attempt at doing what Nintendo does. Especially when multiple games on the Wii U can be played and completed purely on the Gamepad if the user so chooses.

It's cheaper, but not significantly so given that it's barely 1/5th of the power of the PS4. So where does that extra cost come from? A tablet or smartphone like device which most people interested in consoles already own or have access to. Why pay more for something you already own and is probably better with capacitive touch instead of cheap resistive, etc.

As for the silly copying argument, if anything Nintendo copied Sony as they were certainly first to the console second screen party. I think we're all above that kind of petty point scoring though, right?

The gamepad isn't a tablet. Otherwise Nintendo would be calling it such.
It seems that the moment something has a touch screen it's assumed to be a tablet. It's not. It is what it's called.
A gamepad. That's it. It's entire concept is not that different from the Nintendo DS. It's practically a giant DS system.

Cheap also does not equate bad quality either. Nobody knows how much the Wii U can do because nobody ever bothered to actually use the thing to it's full potential. Everyone except Nintendo. I'm not even talking about the Gamepad here. I'm talking about the Wii U's full graphical capabilities.
You say that it's won't be as strong as the PS4/Xbox One, but compared to the previous consoles it's a huge leap in graphical capabilities. And seeing as how development costs are getting higher and higher by the second, how many devs this generation will even have the budget sans Ubisoft, EA, and Activision, to even utilize all that power inside those consoles?
Enough studios went bankrupt as it is this generation making games on the HD twins.

Secondly, how much power do you think is actually dedicated to the games itself. PS4 and Xbone are similarily chocked full with third party apps that need to be maintained in the background. Does nobody take that into account?

Nintendo played the high powered beefed up console game. It was called the Gamecube, and not a single dev gave it the time of day. Even the Xbox beat it by 2 million copies. Not withstanding the PS2 because that was practically the Wii of that generation.
Oddly enough, despite being third place in that console generation they still made a profit off the system.
The PS3 is considered a great console, yet it sunk Sony in a $5billion dollar deficit. All that power really wasn't worth it for them was it?
One could also ask why does the PS4 and Xbox One cost that much also. If they are both using PC architecture, than explain why it costs so much to make? Especially when you have PC folks on here claiming that they can make a computer much more powerful than both consoles for half the price? So what exactly are they using to make their consoles cost over $300.00?

 

[Vivi22]

The problem with the idea of Microsoft and Sony having Wii U style controllers is that it's based on the assumption that the Wii U controller is something people should want. Slapping a touch screen you can't see without taking your eyes off of the screen is just bad. And that the best use anyone's found for it yet is replacing the pause menu is pathetic.

 

[GoaThief]

Already coming. Sony has Vita/Smart phone support, even the PS3 is getting in on the action with Beyond Two Souls being completely playable from start to finish via iOS/android devices. MS has Smart glass too.

No need for a whole new controller. Definite plus, doesn't make Nintendo seem that cost effective in comparison and no doubt will have a negative effect on the console's image.

I'm confused?... The Wii U is still the cheapest console of the three. And the gamepad is the controller for the system.
This isn't counting the fact that the Wiimote is also compatible with the system.

Since most people who are aware of the Wii U knows it has a gamepad, it can actually damage Sony and Microsoft's reputation because it will be seen as yet another copy cat attempt at doing what Nintendo does. Especially when multiple games on the Wii U can be played and completed purely on the Gamepad if the user so chooses.

It's cheaper, but not significantly so given that it's barely 1/5th of the power of the PS4. So where does that extra cost come from? A tablet or smartphone like device which most people interested in consoles already own or have access to. Why pay more for something you already own and is probably better with capacitive touch instead of cheap resistive, etc.

As for the silly copying argument, if anything Nintendo copied Sony as they were certainly first to the console second screen party. I think we're all above that kind of petty point scoring though, right?

The gamepad isn't a tablet. Otherwise Nintendo would be calling it such.
It seems that the moment something has a touch screen it's assumed to be a tablet. It's not. It is what it's called.
A gamepad. That's it. It's entire concept is not that different from the Nintendo DS. It's practically a giant DS system.

Cheap also does not equate bad quality either. Nobody knows how much the Wii U can do because nobody ever bothered to actually use the thing to it's full potential. Everyone except Nintendo. I'm not even talking about the Gamepad here. I'm talking about the Wii U's full graphical capabilities.
You say that it's won't be as strong as the PS4/Xbox One, but compared to the previous consoles it's a huge leap in graphical capabilities. And seeing as how development costs are getting higher and higher by the second, how many devs this generation will even have the budget sans Ubisoft, EA, and Activision, to even utilize all that power inside those consoles?
Enough studios went bankrupt as it is this generation making games on the HD twins.

Secondly, how much power do you think is actually dedicated to the games itself. PS4 and Xbone are similarily chocked full with third party apps that need to be maintained in the background. Does nobody take that into account?

Nintendo played the high powered beefed up console game. It was called the Gamecube, and not a single dev gave it the time of day. Even the Xbox beat it by 2 million copies. Not withstanding the PS2 because that was practically the Wii of that generation.
Oddly enough, despite being third place in that console generation they still made a profit off the system.
The PS3 is considered a great console, yet it sunk Sony in a $5billion dollar deficit. All that power really wasn't worth it for them was it?
One could also ask why does the PS4 and Xbox One cost that much also. If they are both using PC architecture, than explain why it costs so much to make? Especially when you have PC folks on here claiming that they can make a computer much more powerful than both consoles for half the price? So what exactly are they using to make their consoles cost over $300.00?

As a day one Wii U owner I would certainly class the controller as more of a low quality tablet with less flexibility than a separate controller+tablet/phone combination. The Wii U is also patently not a huge graphical/technological leap over the 360/PS3, it's more on a par especially compared to the Xbone, PS4 and PC.

I can't believe you're seriously asking why the new consoles from Sony and MS are costing what they do, have you not read any spec sheets? They offer pretty damn good price for performance, PS4 in particular. Yes, extreme high end PC graphic cards crush the GPUs but you're essentially getting a gaming optimised mid/high specced rig for a few hundred, plus things like 8gb of DDR5 which for all purposes walks all over a Windows machine with 8gb DDR3 + a few dedicated DDR5 in a discrete card.

The Wii U has what, 1gb of slow ass RAM available for games? Again, it is much more equivalent to soon to be previous generation consoles - there's arguably underpowered like the Xbone (PS2 in your example) and there's the hopelessly outclassed. You're not fooling anyone except maybe yourself if you think the Wii U has anything amazing left up its sleeve and is suddenly going to surprise the world on the technical front.

As for development costs, a large reason why it's so expensive for companies to make pretty games for current consoles is purely due to optimisations and technical trickery to circumvent hardware shortcomings. When new generation arrives costs will actually go down for the average development house at first as the expensive and time consuming scaling back process is vastly shortened. Assets are already initially made in high quality, it's not like anything is going to change on that and similar fronts for some time yet.

Thinking about it, you reminded me of a banned poster from a while back who also made references to "HD twins" and claimed the WiiU was good on the performance front. I made a reply with sources regarding that;

/snip

To be brutally honest if there's any bias on this site it's from the OP. I don't have the time to go through every single specification but let's do a quick comparison with the PS and it's real performance statistics rather than the ones the OP claimed with no sources:

Custom Jaguar APU chip which breaks down into;
CPU = 8 core x84 (est. 1.6ghz)
GPU = 18 compute units, resulting in 1.84 Tflops of processing power)
RAM = 8gb GDDR5 @ 5500Mhz (leaving a total system memory speed of 176gb/second)
HDD = 500gb
(1) [http://www.anandtech.com/show/6972/xbox-one-hardware-compared-to-playstation-4/2](2) [http://www.scei.co.jp/corporate/release/130221a_e.html](3) [http://uk.ign.com/articles/2013/06/11/e3-2013-playstation-4-hard-drive-is-removable-upgradable]

Wii U on the other hand has a IBM manufactured MMC;

CPU = Tri-core PowerPC @ 1.2ghz
GPU = AMD Radeon "Latte", 352 Gflops
RAM = 2gb DDR3 @ 1600Mhz (12.8b/second system speed)
HDD = 8gb or 32gb
(1) [http://www.anandtech.com/show/6465/nintendo-wii-u-teardown](2) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wii_U](3) [http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/xbox-one-vs-playstation-4-vs-wii-u-can-one-6C10023337]

As you can see the Wii U is hopelessly outclassed by the PS4, with things like the RAM speed being 1375% quicker on the PS4 with it's GPU coming in at 552% of the Wii U's to boot. We won't mention things like the hard drive being only 1.6% the size of the PS4's either.

 

[Dragonbums]

-snip-

Honestly, I've gone so many arguments with specs, and how much that even means to the average consumer that I'm quite done with this.

It will literally be the same song and dance till the end of time.

This very reasoning of "less specs mean lesser games" is exactly why the game industry is where it's at today. Where a game can sell 5 million and still can't cover the costs of development.

1GB of RAM isn't stellar, but you leave out other specs of the Wii U for the sake of saying it's on par.
Sorry, but I highly doubt the Wii U is on par with the Xbox 360 and PS4. That's stupid. It is much better than both of the consoles and the few developers that actually used to have said so themselves.

I will continue to repeat what I've said before. Nobody sans Nintendo and whatever other dev takes the time to learn the Wii U will ever know it's true potential.
Numbers don't mean anything. It's what you do with it that counts.

I seriously do not have the time to emphasize this for the umptenth time this year, because at the end of the day devs just want easy work and they will continue to complain about being limited until consoles eventually become PC's and do half the work for them. I seriously don't care anymore.

 

[jpoon]

There's zero chance that Sony would do this, they have the Vita and doing so would fracture the sales they get from it. If anything they'll just find more reasons to get a Vita in peoples hands, not redesign another brand new controller.

Microsoft could do something like this but i have zero faith in those dbags these days.

 

[GoaThief]

.

1GB of RAM isn't stellar, but you leave out other specs of the Wii U for the sake of saying it's on par.
Sorry, but I highly doubt the Wii U is on par with the Xbox 360 and PS4. That's stupid.

No, it's not stupid at all and I don't know why you highly doubt anything when the facts are freely available. It's like you're in some kind of denial? The PS3's GPU is 400 Gflops, slightly more powerful than the Wii U 1 [http://n4g.com/news/1178794/playstation-4-gpu-is-4-5x-more-powerful-than-ps3-gpu#c-7292192].

The Wii U is technically very much in the same ballpark as the 360 and PS3, it's like you are attempting to argue up is down and vice versa. That's how far behind Nintendo are right now.

Numbers don't mean anything. It's what you do with it that counts.

I seriously do not have the time to emphasize this for the umptenth time this year, because at the end of the day devs just want easy work and they will continue to complain about being limited until consoles eventually become PC's and do half the work for them. I seriously don't care anymore.

Numbers mean a hell of a lot when there's such a large difference. It's not all about graphics which are important too, but things like scale, amount of content, routines, etc.

Are you a developer by the way? I'd say with almost complete certainty that you aren't going by that last paragraph. I won't say any more about that aside from it being utter tosh.

 

[Dragonbums]

.

1GB of RAM isn't stellar, but you leave out other specs of the Wii U for the sake of saying it's on par.
Sorry, but I highly doubt the Wii U is on par with the Xbox 360 and PS4. That's stupid.

No, it's not stupid at all and I don't know why you highly doubt anything when the facts are freely available. It's like you're in some kind of denial? The PS3's GPU is 400 Gflops, slightly more powerful than the Wii U 1 [http://n4g.com/news/1178794/playstation-4-gpu-is-4-5x-more-powerful-than-ps3-gpu#c-7292192].

The Wii U is technically very much in the same ballpark as the 360 and PS3, it's like you are attempting to argue up is down and vice versa. That's how far behind Nintendo are right now.

Numbers don't mean anything. It's what you do with it that counts.

I seriously do not have the time to emphasize this for the umptenth time this year, because at the end of the day devs just want easy work and they will continue to complain about being limited until consoles eventually become PC's and do half the work for them. I seriously don't care anymore.

Numbers mean a hell of a lot when there's such a large difference. It's not all about graphics which are important too, but things like scale, amount of content, routines, etc.

Are you a developer by the way? I'd say with almost complete certainty that you aren't going by that last paragraph. I won't say any more about that aside from it being utter tosh.

You as well are not a developers so you can't also state how limited you are if you were to hypothetically develop for the Wii U.
Devs have written off the machine based on a number list, and not on actually using the thing. Which as a dev I would love to get my hands all dirty into all the machines in the market.

I'm not going to go over again how the Wii U is not in the same league as the PS360 I have seen multiple links on this very site stating otherwise, and I don't know why people keep perpetuating this myth for the sake of saying Wii U sucks ass.
So again, I don't care anymore.
At least I know that the few devs worth their title of developers on the Wii U will actually use the machine to it's full potential than giving something first glance and ignoring it for the rest of this generation.

 

[RicoADF]

Already coming. Sony has Vita/Smart phone support, even the PS3 is getting in on the action with Beyond Two Souls being completely playable from start to finish via iOS/android devices. MS has Smart glass too.

No need for a whole new controller. Definite plus, doesn't make Nintendo seem that cost effective in comparison and no doubt will have a negative effect on the console's image.

I'm confused?... The Wii U is still the cheapest console of the three. And the gamepad is the controller for the system.
This isn't counting the fact that the Wiimote is also compatible with the system.

Since most people who are aware of the Wii U knows it has a gamepad, it can actually damage Sony and Microsoft's reputation because it will be seen as yet another copy cat attempt at doing what Nintendo does. Especially when multiple games on the Wii U can be played and completed purely on the Gamepad if the user so chooses.

Sony was doing the WiiU controller with the PSP/PS3 well before WiiU existed. Its only now with PS4 that support will be required and pushed more.

 

[GoaThief]

You as well are not a developers so you can't also state how limited you are if you were to hypothetically develop for the Wii U.

You actually know nothing of my professional background, I'll just say that I'm not a programmer but I have been involved in the game development process over the years and currently in the midst of learning assembly language and C++ with an eye on scratching a creative itch that's been bugging me for some time.

Devs have written off the machine based on a number list, and not on actually using the thing. Which as a dev I would love to get my hands all dirty into all the machines in the market.

I'm not going to go over again how the Wii U is not in the same league as the PS360 I have seen multiple links on this very site stating otherwise, and I don't know why people keep perpetuating this myth for the sake of saying Wii U sucks ass.
So again, I don't care anymore.
At least I know that the few devs worth their title of developers on the Wii U will actually use the machine to it's full potential than giving something first glance and ignoring it for the rest of this generation.

That "number list" you pooh pooh is very important, no amount of fantasy is going to change that and it's bearing on what can be achieved on the Wii U. I've presented hard facts that clearly show that the hardware is definitely in a similar class to soon to be previous generation consoles, you've done nothing but figuratively put your fingers in your ears and go, "Lalala, not listening". It's not just even the fact that the Wii U is massively underpowered, things like it's small install base and poor attachment rate for anything non-Ninteno staple which all make sense for developers to just ignore the console and focus elsewhere.

Myself and others aren't being unfair when we say it's not powerful, it's not hate, it's just a simple truth. There isn't some conspiracy or plain laziness on the industry's part either, the Wii U just isn't a very good option at all for all parties in the current climate. Hell, I really like the few titles I have on mine but I could never recommend it as a first choice console unless the person was a die hard Nintendo fan. There are very good reasons why it's failing, despite the original Wii setting things up nicely.