The Abominable Snowman
Member
Production costs are manipulated by a wide spectrum of things. Very little to do with graphic fidelity. No game dev is coding tools up from the ground when they develop games anymore.
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Rumor: Wii U final specs
- Thread starter EatChildren
- Start date
Production costs are manipulated by a wide spectrum of things. Very little to do with graphic fidelity. No game dev is coding tools up from the ground when they develop games anymore.
Uhm yes it has very much to do with graphical fidelity, but it's not about the tech, it's about the content. More detailed assets take more resources to produce. There's an army of 3D artists working on modern AAA games.
Yes, that's why I said it's not mutually exclusive. And as Beril says, it does dip into the overall resource pool. This is where management, budget constraints and priorities play the biggest factor.
I just imagine Xenoblade in true Dolphin 1080p glory opposed to FPS - Hidden Rail shooter 2013.
The Abominable Snowman
Member
Modern AAA games, yeah, because consumers expect much, much more out of games now. That doesn't fit the mold for every game, though.
Smoothice65
Member
Soooo can anyone give a estimated when the REALLLL SPECSS of the Wii U is being revealed ? There have been a couple of teardownss but how long does it normally take to read the specss off all the components ??
The speculationsss is taking way to lonnggg.
The speculationsss is taking way to lonnggg.
Well of course. Making a current gen game with slightly better IQ doesn't cost more money on a more powerful platform. It would cost slightly less since you don't have to focus as much on optimization to make it run decently. But with more powerful platforms the big franchises trying to impress people with their realistic graphics will be spending even more money competing with each other, and mid tier franchises won't be able to keep up. Smaller and/or games with more stylised graphics won't be affected as much.
snowdog1971
Banned
Because using GDDR5 would:
A) Be expensive
B) Involve having a ridiculous 32 chips on your motherboard at current densities. The 720 will end up being the size of a small house lol
I personally can't see them going for more than 6GB at the most, and even then you're talking about 12 chips of DDR3.
You've also got to consider the retail price of the PS4 and 720. Going by rumours we're looking at 2-4GB of RAM in the PS4 with a GPU pushing 1.8TFLOPS and 6-8GB of RAM in the 720 with a GPU pushing 1.2TFLOPS (last I heard, I haven't looked at this thread for a while). Can you really see either one of those consoles retailing for less than 400 dollars/pounds..?
It's going to be interesting to see what Sony and Microsoft come up with but they must know that having their consoles retailing for under 400 notes is the only way the consoles won't go the same way as the Dodo and the Vita.
Isn't 200MB per frame what the WiiU does? maybe a bit less in a real life situation, but still. With double the speed, double the bus you're already at 800MB per frame. and let's face it most games will be 30 fps next gen too, so that's actually 1.6GB per frame. Not sure how large part of the total memory is usually accessed each frame, but I can't imagine it being a very big part for most games.
Il Piccolo Fiammiferaio
Member
I want Iwata fired too.
He nearly destroyed the nintyfan in me with that thing people call Wii.
why should I play videogames waving an uncomfortable remote rod which also needed adds on to be more effective on a system that in 2012 was on par with a PS2?
and while my friends were playing skyrim, I had to deal with Crysis: the day of the disaster.
what a killer application.
DON'T WORRY, IT'S POWER 7 SIMILAR TO WHAT POWERS THE WATSON SUPERCOMPUTER
Except much much shittier.
Thanks. I was looking at the Giant Bomb stream now and the colors did seem washed out. Could be partly due to the stream, but one of our programmers also suggested it might have something to do with the gamma settings (Brightness in the menus) that we have adjusted for Wii U. It's probably slightly higher as default than on the other consoles and could attribute to the image looking different. The game looks absolutely amazing on our end with the correct settings.
We're going to double check and then do a comparison video of this whole thing soon, so that's going to settle it for good. Stay tuned.
I can't even tell if this is a joke post or not. Damnit GAF!
Il Piccolo Fiammiferaio
Member
of course it's not.
I am still very disappointed about the Wii as a gamer.
maybe they sell a lot of units among soccer moms, middle age people, etc., but I'm not talking about leading the hw market.
Gamer @ Heart
Member
Ugh. Just ugh.
I think one thing that's for sure is Reggie is completely full of shit and has 0 input or knowledge about the hardware Nintendo uses for their systems. He's dreaming if he thinks Wii U is powerful enough to get big third party games that are technically comparable to what MS and Sony get.
Whoa. Somebody just broke.
How long does this pants pissing phase last? Wasn't around for the post Wii launch period, so I don't know.
JoshuaJSlone
Member
Six years.
I agree Reggie is full of shit (Always is), but why won't they get big third party games? Assuming that publishers see a positive return then they'll just drop the image quality, resolution etc.
It all comes down to whether it will be onerous or not fit Wii U into their development workflows and the faith publishers have in an install base to pursue this and ultimately profits.
Caesar III
Member
See: Wii
Smurfman256
Member
The thing is, devs want to be able to bring over their product as quickly and painlessly as possible. If the platform provides too much challenge to work around, they aren't going to do it becasue it would cost alot and be too hard to bring in a profit. The more brute-force a console has, the easier it is to port over games to it (to a certain extent. See the PS3)
No that using the faster DDR3-1866 at 30fps you are at 400 MB per frame and double the bus you are at 800MB per frame at 30FPS.
As you see having 8GB of DDR3 is pointless in a console if you go so as slow as the wiiu with DDR3.
This comes form this thread.
http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=62108
bigtroyjon
Member
Old news from last week.
Smurfman256
Member
Aw well. I doubt that most people even have 5GHz wifi routers in there house, anyway.
When all is said and done, I predict WiiU will be on paper about 1.6 to 1.8 times more powerful than the Wii. Wii was 1.5 times more powerful than the Gamecube. I think WiiU is Nintendo's normal generational jump with a few enhancements (extra CPU cores, and the GPGPU) to support one or two gamepads.
http://www.mercurynews.com/top-stories/ci_22013695
thought that bit was interesting. goes to show that it's a similar situation to the gamecube selling for a small loss.
did anyone do a teardown to see how much the raw parts costs and how that compares to what reggie is saying here?
thought that bit was interesting. goes to show that it's a similar situation to the gamecube selling for a small loss.
did anyone do a teardown to see how much the raw parts costs and how that compares to what reggie is saying here?
Apophis2036
Banned
That bird and the Zelda HD demo were created using the very first devkits, in a very short time and they were very impressive at the time.
Think of a Zelda built using the final devkits which were several 100% more powerful than those ones, with a big development studio, big budget and 2-3 years...
Yeah it's going to be just as impressive if not more so than anything on PS4 / 720 imo.
These quick, cheap launch ports rushed out for Xmas are a conclusion of developers trying to shoe horn PS360 code into the WiiU's vastly different architecture.
How people believe it can't handle things like Batman AC even tho it has a 2011 modern feature set GPU, which is at least a third more powerful than RSX / Xenos, 20MB's more eDRAM, a separate Audio Chip and 4 times the amount of Ram as the current gen astounds me...
Apophis2036
Banned
I have 100% faith that Nintendo know what they are doing more than a bunch of people bitching on a gaming forum.
If they feel the slower CPU, combined with the slow but larger pool of system Ram, eDRAM and the GPU is good enough then i think they will be fine.
Imagine Mario Galaxy or Skyward Sword were in HD with some AA, don't you think those games compare to Gears, Uncharted, God of War ect because i think they would and that was with a 10 - 15x power gap between Wii and PS360.
Same goes for WiiU / PS4 / 720, artstyle + level design mastery > realistic graphics and explozionz !!1!, at least imo and the gap is more likely to be no more than 4x this time around, not 10 or 15x.
They are actually quite different in one respect - feature set. The Wii U maybe less powerful than the Orbis/Durango but the Wii was less powerful and used a completely different architecture that was not compatible with most HD engines and the way they worked.
This means there is less of a barrier to entry than the Wii. Doesn't mean publishers will jump on board (I think EA will have a generation long hissy fit for other reasons) but it also doesn't mean it's the same situation as the Wii.
I'm quite curious to see what CPU ends up being inside the WiiU. If it really is that much crap, i might have to reconsider my stance on the launch ports. I mean, if the Metro guy was right, games like ACIII, ME3 etc... actually ran rather well for a CPU that is so bad it convinced him it couldn't run his game unlike PS360.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Not even close to "vastly different", more like very similar.
Just forget the vastly slower RAM and slow CPU did we?
shinra-bansho
Member
Depends on if they are referring to a first or third party game. Margins on first party are substantially higher for nintendo.
Apophis2036
Banned
The Metro guy got an 'early look' at the very first dev kit.
Yes the CPU will be clocked a lot slower than 3.2Ghz but as many people have said before it's because it's a GPGPU based system which means the GPU is doing some of the calculations usually handled by the CPU, combine that with the dedicated Audio Chip and there was no need for the CPU to be running as fast and as hot as Cell / Xenon.
We still don't know the official clock speed of the CPU or the clock speed of the GPU or how many GFLOPs it can push, people are going crazy saying things like 'a repeat of the Wii' just because the 2GB's of system Ram isn't as fast as they thought it would be...
People need to chill and wait for the full spec before being so quick to condemn the system.
Even if the GPU is 350GFLOPs which i really doubt, its still 100GFLOPs more than the PS360's GPU, has modern features and is 2011 architecture instead of 2004.
Add the extra eDRAM, audio chip and extra system Ram which could well expand to 1.5GB's for games in it's second year and it really is not all doom and gloom.
I was being somewhat sarcastic. He makes it sound like WiiU would have a hard time running xbox (og) games. Yet while the launch ports indeed had their issues, i doubt they couldn't be resolved by the second wave of software.
Thunder Monkey
Banned
Vastly different is a step too far, but I'm not sure how you can reconcile very similar with the slower RAM and CPU.
Obviously if the latter is true (it is) there is a different focus in core system design. Leading to different restrictions and design imperatives to achieve parity.
Apophis2036
Banned
Very mature lol...
WiiU uses a GPGPU setup according to Mr Iwata, most of the PS360 games are very CPU intensive, so throwing PS360 code into it without enough time to tweak and optimize the code was always going to lead to issues with launch ports.
I've mentioned the slower Ram, but 'slow CPU', didn't realise they had released official specs or tare down specs of the CPU, care to provide a link or are you going off the Metro developers comments about the very first devkit from 2011 ?.
Osiris
I permanently banned my 6 year old daughter from using the PS4 for mistakenly sending grief reports as it's too hard to watch or talk to her
Where did you get the fact that it was only the first dev kit from 2011 they were talking about?
They said "Early Look", that was all, they could have been talking about an early look at the final hardware for all you know, unless you have something backing that up?
And they are not the only ones saying that the CPU compares poorly to the PS360's processors.
Apophis2036
Banned
Since Metro was first announced at E3 2011 it's a pretty safe bet his team were shown one of, if not the very first devkit of 'Project Cafe'.
Im not saying the CPU will be fast, i expect it to be around the 1.6 - 2Ghz range but i have already explained why it doesn't need to be 3.2Ghz.
I really doubt we will see much faster CPU's in PS4 / 720 but hey everything and i do mean EVERYTHING about PS4 / 720 is pure speculation at this point, they could follow Nintendo and build a 2x power leap casual focused console with a Kinect 2 / Move 2 and bundled Tablet controller for all we know
.snowdog1971
Banned
Regarding the 'slow' DDR3 it should be noted that not a single developer has mentioned any sort of issues with the RAM - quite the opposite in fact. Ancel has praised the Wii U for having almost unlimited memory and one of the Shin'en developers has praised the low latency of the RAM.
Nintendo always build balanced systems, their engineers are the best in the business. We already know that the GPU has a feature in place that reduces textures, who knows what else they've got going on under the hood. Could be an evolution of fixed functions, could be some cloak and dagger stuff going on with the RAM and eDRAM and possibly swapspace (that's still my theory and I'm still sticking to it until someone comes up with a better explanation for a 4.2GB OS footprint!).
But one thing we know for certain - 2 named developers have praised the memory of the Wii U and not a single one has complained about it. Not even anonymously!!!
Nintendo always build balanced systems, their engineers are the best in the business. We already know that the GPU has a feature in place that reduces textures, who knows what else they've got going on under the hood. Could be an evolution of fixed functions, could be some cloak and dagger stuff going on with the RAM and eDRAM and possibly swapspace (that's still my theory and I'm still sticking to it until someone comes up with a better explanation for a 4.2GB OS footprint!).
But one thing we know for certain - 2 named developers have praised the memory of the Wii U and not a single one has complained about it. Not even anonymously!!!
Well something I've learned from Nintendo fans is that if a comment is positive, then we should pay close attention to what that developer is saying. If something is negative, then clearly there is an ulterior motive.
shinra-bansho
Member
Eurogamer's unnamed sources did comment on the slow RAM actually iirc.
Thunder Monkey
Banned
For some reason I have a boner right now.