The on par stuff is seriously pathetic. Pretty much every developer said the Wii U is more powerful than current gen.
In addition, IBM and AMD's press releases also confirmed the system is of newer design.
But it is "on par" in a way. It remains to be seen how much of an improvement it is over current gen Hd (we know it will be, but there really aren't any games shown yet that look to be pushing the wii u at all)
That said it doesn't seem to be a huge jump either, at least not like what the next PS/Xbox are appearing to be
Wii u's main difference though is in its architecture, I agree
That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that I don't think that a dev will say that we can only down port this next gen game to WiiU but not to PS360 because they are not powerful enough.
It has less to do with power, more to do with features. For example raw power wise it seems to sit closer to Ps3 and 360 than the Xbox 720 and ps4 (given what little we do know I should stress) but architecture wise it is likely "on par" with those other next gen systems. It's just that right now, engines don't make use of it
I've noticed you have this opinion, and it seems only time will convince you otherwise. I know you're excited about the wii u (other newer posters may not know that about you) but you do have this very erroneous belief about the wii u being "akin" to the ps3 and 360 - there is much reason to believe it has more in common with the next Xbox and ps than the current ones.
Yes, it is weaker than they will be. But it's not all about power. Architecture/ capability will determine much if not most of the portability potential
Why not? Bethesda is already doing that for games downported from 360 to Ps3 due to (relative) small ram differences. The difference between Wii U and 360 in at least RAM is massive.
Is funny how downporting from 2-4GB to 1.5-2GB is impossible, but From 1.5 to .5? A piece of Cake!
The ram difference with 360 and Wii U, for now, is 2x. This is massive yes but compared to the "Xbox 720", it's nothing. I am not sure where you have these numbers from, but if the next Xbox ends up with 8gb of ram, with 6 available for games, it will have 6x what the wii u has; 12x what the 360 has. To give you an idea, that is about the same difference as the Wii to Wii U
(just in a very coarse, raw "layman" way to compare)
I'm just saying because I don't want people to over estimate the wii u tech wise an underestimate the next Xbox tech wise...they will be farther apart than you think (but closer at the same time...I dunno if that makes sense)
Wii U's capabilities will be noticeably better than PS360, but noticeably worse than PS4/720. That's the way I see it. Of course, based on almost nothing factual.
I think this is what those who have an eye for graphics can certainly expect
Then again, we'll start to know the best answers to these postulations on everyone (myself inclu) in several years time
Also isn't/wasn't iwata a genius level programmer? The things he accomplished are pretty outstanding (atleast to me). I mean, this is the same guy that
-ported Pokemon Red/Blue's battle code to the Nintendo 64 for pokemon stadium without having most of the documents that detailed it in ONE WEEK
-Disassembled the programs for his Commodore PET computer by writing down the memory dumps By HAND
-Personally compressed Pokémon Gold and Silver well enough so that there was enough room left on the cartridge for the Johto AND kanto regions to be in the game (The original Pokemon Red/Blue filled the cartridge)
-programmed all of Earthbound from scratch, a feat that nobody thought could be done at the time because the game had a complex coding which was in itself a huge scripting language
Honestly if iwata thinks next gen won't be a monumental leap i will believe him
Iwata really has a feel for the industry, that's for sure. He understands things I think, on a deeper level.
He is right about what he's saying, and Nintendo has very different priorities than what all of us would LIKE to see from them. It just shows how, ironically, out of touch with reality WE all really are, rather than Nintendo
(the irony is we project that on Nintendo but we don't truly understand how they reach the decisions they make)