Wii U to be quickly outdated?

[TK421]

]
I also agree with the many people who say that Nintendo has their fingers in too many pies. They are trying to appeal to every audience, and therefore aren't investing very much into any specific audience. I can't speak for the casual gamers or children, but this will alienate most of the hardcore gamers, just like the Wii did.

So what? That worked before, it could work again. The "hardcore" (God I hate that word) market is very small in comparison to the "casual" market, and some of them are so biased and close-minded that they refuse to see anything made by Nintendo as anything other than "kiddy" so probably won't buy it anyway. If you're talking about the self-proclaimed "hardcore" who as far as I can see are the only ones who use that word, then a lot of them are just immature morons who'll stick to their preferred console no matter what shit they put out.

I was actually looking for a better word than "hardcore" myself, but nothing came to mind. All I meant were those who aren't really interested in games like Angry Birds, Wii Sports, and the like, but rather prefer games such as Minecraft, Cod, Battlefield, God of War, etc.

 

[TK421]

Bottom line: In my opinion, as long as M$ and Sony don't royally screw us, or come out with obscenely overpriced systems, the WiiU will be left in the dust because of lack of the casual gamer support they had last round, and the fact that they are again alienating the hardcore.

I'm not saying you are wrong but remember this.

Everyone said due to the tech in the Vita and the second analogue, the 3DS would be trounced by it. That has yet to take place.

That is precisely why I added the section about overpriced systems. I think the Vita could easily take over, if it wasn't so morbidly expensive.

 

[dragongit]

I'd like to point out for the record. Yes, technically the PC is capable of being more powerful then any of these consoles combined, even in the next generation. 2 $500 graphic cards and a thousand dollar CPU will leave anything Sony and Microsoft can make in the dust.

Sorry going to stop you right there. I got a GTX 550Ti for $130 and a AMD PhenomII 965 for $150, that's $280 to outclass a PS3 or 360 easy. My monitor is more expensive, and I can still run most games at full settings. including many new releases from November. This is not addressed specifically to you, I'm just tired of people saying you need a $4000 gaming rig to play games on PC. You don't, about $1200, some ingenuity and knowledge on how to put a computer together will get you pretty far.

I'd like to stop you right there, I bought an AMD A8-3850 APU for £100 and it can match consoles in game quality. It could run DIRT 3 for example better than consoles.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.319159-Integrated-gfx-now-better-than-consoles-Why-arent-people-screaming-for-a-new-generation-to-start?page=1

You both are missing my point. I was trying to point out, that buying what is concidered top of the line in today's market, can and will likely beat out whatever the PS4 or Xbox3 come up with with minimal effort.

 

[Grygor]

Your source don't contradict mine, it corroborates it. 768MB of RAM is not significant.

PC games are taking advantage of 16GB of system RAM and the graphics are really showing, with resolution and frame-rate. Any next gen system can't merely be a little better, they must be 5-10x better and surpass the best of PC gaming at that time.

Never are they actually quoted saying: "WiiU is far ahead of the current generation." But rather:

"(WiiU is) one of the best-looking versions"

PC is one of the versions of the game they are making.

Can you show me 5 games that use 16GB of RAM?

Unless you somehow bog a game down with an ungodly amount of mods or run it off a RAM disk then I would fail to find any. The most any game has used for me was just over 3GB with X3: Terran Conflict.

Also, no console is going to match PC gaming, ever and you would be foolish to ever expect it to. Is your complaint that a £200-£300 console cannot match up to a £500+ PC?

OK, somewhat of an exaggeration as they don't really "need" 16GB but they'll use it if you've got it. Yeah, mainly with mods and extra stuff running in the background like FRAPS (gotta get that Youtube Money).

But PC gaming is definitely using way more than 512MB of RAM typical on consoles or the 768MB that WiiU most likely has. Typically 4-8GB of RAM and NO ONE is suggesting WiiU is having that for production models.

When the Xbox 360 came out it in fact DID match and slightly exceed the best PC systems you could get at the time, but that was WAY back in 2005 and only for about a brief period, by 2007 the midrange 8800GT had already left 360 in it's dust but everything points to WiiU not even beating midrange PC hardware from almost 5 years ago.

It's also worth mentioning the historical RAM scaling trend - typically, console RAM grows by a factor of 16 from one generation to the next.

Continuing the trend suggests that the next XBox and Playstation should have in the neighborhood of 8 GB of RAM, which is certainly feasible from a cost standpoint. And while current games certainly don't use nearly that amount of memory, future games certainly will.

 

[MiriaJiyuu]

I'd like to point out for the record. Yes, technically the PC is capable of being more powerful then any of these consoles combined, even in the next generation. 2 $500 graphic cards and a thousand dollar CPU will leave anything Sony and Microsoft can make in the dust.

Sorry going to stop you right there. I got a GTX 550Ti for $130 and a AMD PhenomII 965 for $150, that's $280 to outclass a PS3 or 360 easy. My monitor is more expensive, and I can still run most games at full settings. including many new releases from November. This is not addressed specifically to you, I'm just tired of people saying you need a $4000 gaming rig to play games on PC. You don't, about $1200, some ingenuity and knowledge on how to put a computer together will get you pretty far.

I'd like to stop you right there, I bought an AMD A8-3850 APU for £100 and it can match consoles in game quality. It could run DIRT 3 for example better than consoles.

My point was more that you don't need to spend $2000 on a CPU and GPU in order to match current consoles. We just made the same point.

 

[Treblaine]

RAM isn't that simple. It's far subtler. The point is developers know how to pack Xbox 360's RAM very well. And new architecture due to unfamiliarity you need two doubling to be as good out the gate, so 2GB of unfamiliar architecture is as good as 512MB of memory you know. Remember the PS3 is on-paper better than the Xbox 360 but take a gander at John Carmack's keynotes on developing for the Xbox 360 how it has such advantages in limited specifications.

There is no evidence of a Radeon 4800. Leaks very likely to be from actual developers using the dev-kit version of WiiU point to a lower power integrated CPU-GPU chip of power and capability almost identical to the Xbox 360. That also makes sense from minimising manufacturing costs.

Nope. It says MAX resolution of 1080p, that is THE SAME as Xbox 360 as a few games can hit 1080p native. Max resolution is not the same as typical native resolution. You can hit up to 1080p with simple polygon shapes or very low framerate, but for good framerate with good graphical detail it has to be dialled down to 720p which is what the leaked WiiU specs state. For example my OLD graphics card from 2007 could max resolution at 2560x1600 but could only really play most games on high settings and with good framerate at 1080p native. I know graphics technology, I have selected components to build and upgrade several of my own PCs for almost a decade now, I know what these tech-specs actually mean.

I think it IS safe to jump to conclusions that it is bad when only a few months from launch and even at E3 they refuse to reveal the specs. They did for the Wii. Every console manufacturer does this at the E3 before their system's launch. Nintendo has no excuse to be so secretive with the public they intend to sell this system to. WE DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT WE ARE SAVING TO BUY!!!

Apart from the CPU, the PS3 on paper is worse than the xbox. The xbox has a better GPU, a smaller OS footprint and no split RAM. That all works in it's favour. That, and being much easier to develop for. Saying it's new so they aren't used to it isn't a valid point in my mind. The developers will obviously learn how to use the WiiU and this unfamiliarity will cease to be a factor.

About the CPU, again we don't know the generation. Clock speed and core count isn't that important as other things like IPC which is usually better on a newer generation chip.

Your own link says that it will use a R7XX chip which is the HD4800 series which is leaps and bounds ahead of the xbox, just like I said. Read your own link please.

and the AMD r7xx series of graphics processors.

Max 1080P, or 720P with 4X MSAA. That's a shit load more than the xbox which usually runs at sub-720P with FXAA or some other blurry alternative. I've built my own PCs too and did all the works like installing coolers and overclocking my GPU and CPU, don't assume you know more. The 4800 cards could run 1080P games without many issues especially with the optimisation that comes with console games.

I think you can't jump to conclusions as you clearly cannot read your own links.

EDIT You also provided no examples and ignored that part of my post.
EDIT2 Ah, you did now

"The developers will obviously learn how to use the WiiU and this unfamiliarity will cease to be a factor."

And how long will that take? Long enough for a TRUE next generation of consoles from Microsoft or Sony? In the mean time WiiU will struggle from unfamilairity without the benefit of being hugely more powerful like the Xbox 360 was over the original Xbox or the PS2 was over the PS1.

Um, Assassin's Creed 2 for XBox 360 is very typical Xbox 360 game and runs 720p with 2xMSAA. The CoD series may be sub-720p but they run at 60 frames per second which is unusual for the industry. Anyway, Xbox 360 runs Rage with id-tech 4 engine at 720p 4xMSAA and 60-frames per second. 720p is actually very typical for Xbox 360 games, including the following games:
-Dirt 3
-Prince of Persia
-Batman: Arkham City
-Dead Space 2
-Battlefield 3
-Crysis 2

And so on.

Yes, I understand that R700 series includes the 4800 graphics card, but if you hear galloping hooves do you think Horses or Zebra? I think concluding an HD 4800 from such low maximum performance is like hearing zebras when visiting the horse-races. R700 series also includes the very economical and low end HD 4300 and multiple sources point to this being a CPU-GPU single chip design which makes sense if Nintendo have who braincells to rub together when it comes to saving on manufacturing costs. Microsoft does that now and has done that for many years now.

I think it's wishful thinking to conclude HD 4800 graphical prowess from the idea of it being "AMD R7xxx" series which deliberatley hides if it is a high end R770 or very low end R710.

HD 4800 can support resolutions up to 8192 x 8192

WiiU stated capable of Max resolution only up to 1920x1080

HD 4300 can support resolutions up to 1920x1200

That suggests low end graphics card, comparable to Xbox 360 in performance.

And there is still the whole issue of Nintendo's secretiveness. If they have such superior specifications to the Xbox 360, why didn't the mention that in their E3 conference? You know, the last E3 before their new console gets launched?!?

 

[ReservoirAngel]

I spent way too much time last E3 arguing with peole who rushed to judge the WiiU as an immediate failure, so I'm not going to really get into it again.

Basically, I don't think it's going to flop. I'm already sold on the thing and if I can afford one when it comes out (which admittedly doesn't look likely) I'll be getting it immediately.

 

[Treblaine]

OK, somewhat of an exaggeration as they don't really "need" 16GB but they'll use it if you've got it. Yeah, mainly with mods and extra stuff running in the background like FRAPS (gotta get that Youtube Money).

But PC gaming is definitely using way more than 512MB of RAM typical on consoles or the 768MB that WiiU most likely has. Typically 4-8GB of RAM and NO ONE is suggesting WiiU is having that for production models.

When the Xbox 360 came out it in fact DID match and slightly exceed the best PC systems you could get at the time, but that was WAY back in 2005 and only for about a brief period, by 2007 the midrange 8800GT had already left 360 in it's dust but everything points to WiiU not even beating midrange PC hardware from almost 5 years ago.

Your link says the WiiU has 1.5GB of RAM available, not 768MB. And like your post shows, console games are well optimised and won't have to deal with shit like mods, fraps or bloated OSs like Windows. I mean, my PC right now is idling at 2.26GB of RAM used with firefox, itunes and steam open. A new console will use nowhere near that and updates will reduce the figure, freeing more RAM for games.

The xbox did match it you are right but as you said, it was for a very short time and shitty cooling led to the consoles melting from the heat the system put out. As far as I know, the Wii had a tiny fail rate in comparison to the 33% (or was it 50%) fail rate for the xbox at its worst.

Hmm, well the dev kits regularly have many many multiples more RAM than the retail console, I believe Xbox 360 devkits have 4GB of RAM yet 512MB (half a Gig) on production consoles. The source said LESS than half.

Firefox and itunes consume a large amount of system memory as they actually DO a lot. That is not an example of a computer "idling". FRAPS is not an inefficiency, it's going a useful job recording your gameplay as a video capturing every 2nd frame.

My point what that the Xbox 360 aimed high, to beat the best of the best (PC gaming) of it's day and WiiU clearly is NOT. PS3 also aimed high and for some of its specs it did beat the best of PC gaming but it clearly got delayed much longer than they wanted and it's hardware performance couldn't be realised. But WiiU doesn't even seem to have performance to realise, it's aiming for a "me too" with Xbox 360 only way too late to the party. There are almost 140 million Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 consoles out there already and they have LEARNED how to manage online networks like online.

Who would get the next Call of Duty game for WiiU if it was just as expensive as on PS3/360, used the same controls and encouraged use with a HDTV, yet may have virtually no one to play with online... Wii version of CoD did not sell well but at least it was cheap and had a novel control interface.

It's also worrying that Nintendo is jumping on the Zombie bandwagon way too late with ZombieU. It's as if they finally opened their suggestion box and are working their way from the bottom of the pile. Zombies are played out. They were an interesting niche in gaming to compensate for difficulties with enemy AI how it was easier to DELIBERATELY make them single minded and simplistic with no self-preservation nor co-operation. But we've had enough of that.

 

[Treblaine]

It's also worth mentioning the historical RAM scaling trend - typically, console RAM grows by a factor of 16 from one generation to the next.

Continuing the trend suggests that the next XBox and Playstation should have in the neighborhood of 8 GB of RAM, which is certainly feasible from a cost standpoint. And while current games certainly don't use nearly that amount of memory, future games certainly will.

Yet nothing suggest the WiiU is anywhere close to that. I just hope everyone realises the WiiU is not a next gen console. It will be extremely vulnerable to the mere announcement of a TRUE next gen console from either Sony, Microsoft or possibly some third party like Apple (unlikely but not impossible in a post-Jobs world).

Hell, they'll struggle with pricing. Microsoft and Sony have to warchest to give HUGE discounts on their consoles to coincide with WiiU's launch and if it has even similar capability and then 360 is there with such a catalogue Nintendo may get dreamcasted (i.e. what Sony did to Dreamcast with PS2).

 

[Treblaine]

Your source don't contradict mine, it corroborates it. 768MB of RAM is not significant.

PC games are taking advantage of 16GB of system RAM and the graphics are really showing, with resolution and frame-rate. Any next gen system can't merely be a little better, they must be 5-10x better and surpass the best of PC gaming at that time.

Never are they actually quoted saying: "WiiU is far ahead of the current generation." But rather:

"(WiiU is) one of the best-looking versions"

PC is one of the versions of the game they are making.

HA!

You expect Sony and Microsoft to be able to release $300 consoles that offer 10x the graphics power of current consoles, and outperform $2000 gaming-rig PCs... in this economic climate?

You may not have noticed, but there's a bit of an economic downturn around the world, right now. Sony tried releasing a $600 console before the world economic crisis, and it still nearly sank them. They're not going to try that again when consumer spending power is low and heading lower.

No... expect a next Gen console to be around $400 and be around 10x the power of the current gen. As was the case with the Xbox to Xbox 360 and the PS2 to PS3.

Except that we've not yet reached the need or even the ability for graphics to be 10x the power of current consoles.

And the 360 was not 10x more powerful than the Xbox. The original Xbox was a gaming beast that could output at 720p and push more polygons than any other console at the time. Games like Conker: Live and Reloaded, and Chaos Theory still look impressive to this day. There is certainly no game out now with ten times the graphics power of either of those games. You're simply picking hyperbolic numbers in order to sound grand and dramatic.

An economic downturn does NOT mean you can get away with selling a current gen console (which is what WiiU seems to be) as if it was a next-gen console. Do we really need another consoles of VERY similar capability as PS3 and 360 this late in this cycle? This shouldn't be compared to the Dreamcast as Dreamcast WAS MUCH MORE powerful than the PS1. This is more like he Atari Jaguar that tried to pretend it was a 32bit console to compete with the Playstation. It wasn't.

Sigh

Except that, once again, the Wii U's tech specs from what we've seen and what is rumoured put the console significantly ahead of either the 360 or the PS3. Neither the Cell nor the Xenon processor can compete with an IBM Power7 processor. Neither the PS3 nor the 360's GPU are as modern as a Radeon HD4000 series, especially the 4800 strongly believed to be inside the Wii U.

Which means that the Wii U is a step up from current consoles. Meaning, yes, it is a next-gen system.

And how on earth do you expect Microsoft and Sony to produce a new console each with the power you're talking about, without making each console cost a small fortune? Neither company is going to go down the PS3 sell-at-loss model again. They lost too much money, and Nintendo gained too much money from the Wii's day 1 profitability, for that to be a feasible model again. If the consoles are going to cost between $300-400 to buy, then the components are going to cost less than that for the companies to buy. Meaning they're not going to be putting $400 GPU units in there.

"Except that we've not yet reached the need or even the ability for graphics to be 10x the power of current consoles."

Then why would anyone buy a WiiU? If they baulk at them being 10x better why would they care about 1.5x better?

You may be of the opinion that Xbox 360 graphics are enough. Well I have been gaming on PC and seeing how far things can go, with the latest rendering technology and I'd say 360 has a lot of room for improvement. Particularly in both high resolution, AND high framerate AND highly detailed worlds, 360 at the moment can offer one of those three but not all at once. Games like Hard Reset are truly unique on PC with the settings maxed.

360 is more or less an order of magnitude powerful than PS2, certainly an order of magnitude more capable with all the other features that came with that new generation.

Look, my PC has EIGHT cores of x86 architecture, not that Power-PC architecture. 8GB of high speed DDR3 RAM, and a GPU that 2 years ago was classified as a super-computer. THAT is next-gen.

Being "a step forward" is not enough to make it next gen. The Original Xbox was "a step forward" from the PS2, but it WAS NOT a generation ahead of the PS2. I don't fink you understand even the concept of the term "generation", what separates one generation from another is not being marginally better but FUNDAMENTALLY better.

Uh, yeah, a much more powerful console will cost much more than the $200 that current gen console are selling for today. What is so surprising about this? Yes, YOU personally may not be able to afford this, likely you couldn't afford the Xbox 360 when it launched for $400 in 2005. And it would be $500 today with inflation. Deal with it. People bought the PS3 back in 2007 when it was $500-600.

"Neither company is going to go down the PS3 sell-at-loss model again."

Except Sony JUST did that with the PSV and Nintendo admitted they were FORCED to do that with the 3DS price cut. The Sell-at-a-loss model IS the console model. The $200 Xbox 360 is sold at a loss, right NOW! But they make it back selling games and subscription services and content deals.

 

[Grygor]

It's also worth mentioning the historical RAM scaling trend - typically, console RAM grows by a factor of 16 from one generation to the next.

Continuing the trend suggests that the next XBox and Playstation should have in the neighborhood of 8 GB of RAM, which is certainly feasible from a cost standpoint. And while current games certainly don't use nearly that amount of memory, future games certainly will.

Yet nothing suggest the WiiU is anywhere close to that. I just hope everyone realises the WiiU is not a next gen console. It will be extremely vulnerable to the mere announcement of a TRUE next gen console from either Sony, Microsoft or possibly some third party like Apple (unlikely but not impossible in a post-Jobs world).

Hell, they'll struggle with pricing. Microsoft and Sony have to warchest to give HUGE discounts on their consoles to coincide with WiiU's launch and if it has even similar capability and then 360 is there with such a catalogue Nintendo may get dreamcasted (i.e. what Sony did to Dreamcast with PS2).

Well yeah, that's why I didn't mention the Wii U in that post. I find it quite believable for the Wii U to only have 1.5 GB of RAM.

Which means that the Wii U will fall behind it's next-gen compatriots well before Nintendo's next console comes out in 2018.

 

[M-E-D The Poet]

I've been keeping track of much of E3s coverage this year, as much as I can find at least. Honestly on that subject it's been a rather lack luster year with only a few promising titles.

Watching the Wii U and seeing what it's capable of, I begin to wonder how long it'll be relevant if Sony and Microsoft's technology completely outdates Nintendo's. Right now from news reports it's "on par" or even slightly better then the current generation. I wouldn't doubt that either, concidering the Wii U's hardware isn't 6+ years old. With Sony and Microsoft still developing their next gen, and the Unreal 4 engine in the works, will Wii U have a place with third party developers for long? Or will it simply become the family oriented, gimicy system that the Wii turned out to be.

Granted, the Wii thrived on the Casual audience for years topping the system sales charts. It might have an initial push being the first out the door Granted.Though it feels as soon as the other two compeditors get their new systems out there, third party developers will drop support for the WiiU save for a few gimicy games they produce from time to time.

the original wii ran on previous generation specs too so......

what's the big idea?

 

[144_v1legacy]

With the DS, and especially the Wii, the Balance Board, every time Nintendo presented a console, the "hardcore" looked at it and exclaimed, "Nintendo is out of its fucking mind. I have absolutely no idea why anyone wold want something like that."

And yet, Nintendo ended up printing money from their creations. I was skeptical each time as well. Now I've deecided that no one here has any idea and that these statements are generally groundless. We'll see if Nintendo pulls another miracle. I've learned that gamer forum-posters have no idea how the market at large will respond, myself included.