The Official Wii U launch thread

[Doppel]

What is the availability of the consoles like now? I am flying to the USA on business and am considering bringing one back (we have a VPN, we look like we are in the USA) for my kids. They like the Wii a lot.

Michael

Go to walmart.com and you can check local availability. I've seen the black and white both all over the place honestly.

 

[p_monks33]

Target has quite a few in stock every time I go there. Living in Oklahoma we don't typically see shortages others do though.

 

[gorcorps]

What is the availability of the consoles like now? I am flying to the USA on business and am considering bringing one back (we have a VPN, we look like we are in the USA) for my kids. They like the Wii a lot.

Michael

They're everywhere I've seen. I'm pretty confident you could find one in any walmart, target, best buy, or gamestop so look out for any of those when you get there.

 

[SandEagle]

picked one up at walmart. having buyer's remorse i just spent close to $500 to play Mario in HD. FML. Nintendo better not disapoint this time around.

 

[Doppel]

picked one up at walmart. having buyer's remorse i just spent close to $500 to play Mario in HD. FML. Nintendo better not disapoint this time around.

FWIW I see a few of these systems on CL now. And I don't mean new, but for example "played for two sessions, like new". Another said he bought one but decided he wanted a 360 instead.

I have no idea if this kind of buyer's remorse has happened after other systems (buy it then try and CL it right away because just not into it), but it is strange.

 

[gorcorps]

FWIW I see a few of these systems on CL now. And I don't mean new, but for example "played for two sessions, like new". Another said he bought one but decided he wanted a 360 instead.

I have no idea if this kind of buyer's remorse has happened after other systems (buy it then try and CL it right away because just not into it), but it is strange.

happens with everything all the time, you just have to be looking for them

Right now I'm trying to get a "like new" galaxy s3 that's supposedly a week old, but they decided they want a note 2 now instead.

 

[Aikouka]

picked one up at walmart. having buyer's remorse i just spent close to $500 to play Mario in HD. FML. Nintendo better not disapoint this time around.

I was looking at one in Target earlier tonight, and I'd also like to play Mario, but that's a tough pill to swallow. So, I thought, "let's take a peek at the upcoming games!" I loaded up a Wikipedia entry on my phone, and, "Hmm a bunch of multi-platform games, some unannounced Zelda game, and that's it...."

Yeah, I didn't buy it. If it was $350 with Mario, I would probably get it. I have no interest in Nintendo Land.

 

[Doppel]

I was looking at one in Target earlier tonight, and I'd also like to play Mario, but that's a tough pill to swallow. So, I thought, "let's take a peek at the upcoming games!" I loaded up a Wikipedia entry on my phone, and, "Hmm a bunch of multi-platform games, some unannounced Zelda game, and that's it...."

Yeah, I didn't buy it. If it was $350 with Mario, I would probably get it. I have no interest in Nintendo Land.

I perused electronic gaming magazine on Friday and this issue there is a list of 2013 upcoming games and basically all of the big ones were either 360 or ps3 or both, it was only near the end with the less interesting games taht the wii u even came into the picture.

 

[p_monks33]

Just got ZombieU last night, its pretty darn intense. I haven't played anything like this before, I can't see why it got such low marks. The games graphics look like a knockoff of the Frostbite 2 engine. Screen splatters and dirty lens effects. Its actually a pretty good looking game, the only gripe I have it it could use a little more AA.

 

[dagamer34]

I saw plenty of units of both types at a Best Buy just yesterday. Picked up a deluxe model. Totally skipped the Wii, but am only picking up Pikmin 2. 480p on my 60" HDTV makes my eyes bleed. But man, 1080p Mario looks AMAZING.

It's a shame that Nintendo wasn't forward leaning enough in 2006 to ask developers to stick higher resolution textures on the disc and make a "HD" mode to be enabled with a future console like the Wii U. Playing Wii games in the Dolphin emulator with the internal rendering resolution cranked up even with the simplistic models would probably be good enough for everyone but the hardcore gamers.

Actually, now that I think about it, hardcore gamers are probably more angry at Nintendo for the lack of HD even in 2006 than their obvious wooing of the casual gaming crowd.

 

[zerocool84]

Just got ZombieU last night, its pretty darn intense. I haven't played anything like this before, I can't see why it got such low marks. The games graphics look like a knockoff of the Frostbite 2 engine. Screen splatters and dirty lens effects. Its actually a pretty good looking game, the only gripe I have it it could use a little more AA.

Most of the reviews said that there's not much depth to the game that's why.

I saw plenty of units of both types at a Best Buy just yesterday. Picked up a deluxe model. Totally skipped the Wii, but am only picking up Pikmin 2. 480p on my 60" HDTV makes my eyes bleed. But man, 1080p Mario looks AMAZING.

It's a shame that Nintendo wasn't forward leaning enough in 2006 to ask developers to stick higher resolution textures on the disc and make a "HD" mode to be enabled with a future console like the Wii U. Playing Wii games in the Dolphin emulator with the internal rendering resolution cranked up even with the simplistic models would probably be good enough for everyone but the hardcore gamers.

Actually, now that I think about it, hardcore gamers are probably more angry at Nintendo for the lack of HD even in 2006 than their obvious wooing of the casual gaming crowd.

Put in higher rez textures for a non-existent future console? I'm sorry but how does that make any sense whatsoever?

 

[dagamer34]

Most of the reviews said that there's not much depth to the game that's why.

Put in higher rez textures for a non-existent future console? I'm sorry but how does that make any sense whatsoever?

I guess in a world of HD re-releases, it makes no sense at all... =/

Now that Nintendo has fully embraced digital distribution though, if making an HD version doesn't cost too much, I don't see any reason why they shouldn't make enhanced versions available.

 

[reallyscrued]

Most of the reviews said that there's not much depth to the game that's why.







Put in higher rez textures for a non-existent future console? I'm sorry but how does that make any sense whatsoever?

You've got it backwards; it'd rather be very easy to make the internal renderer of the Wii-U play Wii games rendered at higher res. The original programming on the Wii disc would be agnostic to how it is interpreted when rendered. I agree with dagamer, its a shame they didn't do it because the detail is there, you just won't see most of it at 480p.

2,000th post.

Here's some examples of the assets they put into Wii games, fruitlessly:

 

[Dumac]

You've got it backwards; it'd rather be very easy to make the internal renderer of the Wii-U play Wii games rendered at higher res. The original programming on the Wii disc would be agnostic to how it is interpreted when rendered. I agree with dagamer, its a shame they didn't do it because the detail is there, you just won't see most of it at 480p.

2,000th post.

Here's some examples of the assets they put into Wii games, fruitlessly:

Damn! Maybe I could have enjoyed that game more if it wasn't blurry mess. The right side looks beautiful when put directly next to the left.

 

[purbeast0]

You've got it backwards; it'd rather be very easy to make the internal renderer of the Wii-U play Wii games rendered at higher res. The original programming on the Wii disc would be agnostic to how it is interpreted when rendered. I agree with dagamer, its a shame they didn't do it because the detail is there, you just won't see most of it at 480p.

2,000th post.

Here's some examples of the assets they put into Wii games, fruitlessly:

that is a big ass football!

 

[Mitsurux]

Went to a few different locations last night, Target, Toys R us, Best buy.. and WiiU's were readily available at all of them... something to note is that there were ALOT more White (basic) sets than Black (Deluxe) sets avaiable....

 

[Carmen813]

Nintendo Land is actually a ton of fun in both single and multiplayer. My wife and I love playing it.

Till she loses and I get ze couch.

 

[riva2model64]

Does anyone else think that the recently released specs on the Wii U are kind of weird?

I'm no expert, but the specs floating on the net say that the Wii U has a triple-core 1.24 Ghz PowerPC-750 based processor, 2 GB of DDR3 with a bandwidth of 12.8 GB/s, and 550 MHz GPU based on Radeon 4000 or 5000 series.

If this is the case, isn't the CPU a bit underpowered? The Xbox 360 has a triple-core PowerPC processor at 3.2 GHz. I'm not sure about the architectural changes, but let's say the one in the Wii U is about half as fast as the 360 CPU.

Is not the memory bandwidth a little low as well? Atleast comparing to the Xbox360 (22.4 GB/s), it's about half as fast.

Contrary to the above, the video hardware in the Wii U way outclasses the GPU found in the Xbox360 in raw power. Comparing the 360 GPU (240 Gflops/s) to the HD 4770 (960 Gflops/s) would make the GPU in the Wii U AT LEAST 4 times faster than the 360 GPU.

I know the Wii U wasn't meant to be all about graphics, but if you're gonna give it a beefy GPU, why not give it a CPU and the memory performance to match?

 

[mmntech]

If this is the case, isn't the CPU a bit underpowered? The Xbox 360 has a triple-core PowerPC processor at 3.2 GHz. I'm not sure about the architectural changes, but let's say the one in the Wii U is about half as fast as the 360 CPU.

It's not an apples to apples comparison. The Espresso is largely based on the PPC G3 with bigger caches and multicore support. Though there's speculation that POWER 7 architecture may be involved. The Xenon is based on the Cell Broadband Engine. It uses three of its general computing cores instead.

On the GPU side, the added performance doesn't really matter if the CPU is bottlenecking it.

Based on real world performance I've seen in videos, the Wii U is indeed slower than the 360 and PS3. Seems to take an awfully long time to load apps and switch back to the home screen.

It's a moot point anyway. Nintendo hasn't claimed the fastest system since the SNES. So they're quite happy being on par with the current gen and focusing on new forms of gameplay instead. What really matters is how Sony and Microsoft will respond to it, which we should find out at CES next month.

 

[reallyscrued]

Awesome that for once, demand meets supply and scalpers are put out of commission.

Due to the fact that the system is still available everywhere, scalpers are selling on eBay at a loss.

Sweet justice. People buying 4 at a time to 'make a killing on eBay and Craigslist' aren't too pleased.

Quit buying stuff you have no intention of using, morons. Go invest in the stock market instead, at least there you're encouraged to screw people.

 

[tipoo]

The CPU does seem to be the odd man out from what developers have said. And while "PowerPC-750 based" (nostalgic side note, I think my iMac G3 was based on that) could mean something more like how the Core 2 Duo is technically Pentium 3 based, he did also say it doesn't have as many SIMD units as the Xenon either. Combine the low clock, low SIMD units, and small die size, I think no one expects this to be significantly more powerful than Xenon or Cell, even with a 6 year newer architecture. Even Intel couldn't go 3x smaller and 3x lower clocked on the same fabrication process from 2006 to now and have significantly higher performance.

Nintendo faithful like to bring up the GPGPU like it will fix all that, but not all problems can run well on a GPU, the bulk of game code will still remain on the CPU. The GPU could do physics and texture decompression etc, but an older mid range chip like that probably can't do too much else without taking a huge hit to 3D performance.


Does it matter? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe games won't require much more CPU power for a long time, and the modern-ish GPU will be its saving grace. Maybe 1GB RAM for games will be plenty for the bulk of its lifecycle. Only time and loose lipped developers can tell.

 

[Aikouka]

Seems to take an awfully long time to load apps and switch back to the home screen.

Just keep in mind that your load problems could be a number of other things such as a poorly designed software architecture, inadequate storage medium, or inefficient software.

 

[BD2003]

Just keep in mind that your load problems could be a number of other things such as a poorly designed software architecture, inadequate storage medium, or inefficient software.

Yeah, there's no excuse for it. My iPad can run a responsive, good looking interface with 1/10th the resources. This is just poor programming, plain and simple.

 

[reallyscrued]

Yeah, there's no excuse for it. My iPad can run a responsive, good looking interface with 1/10th the resources. This is just poor programming, plain and simple.

Agreed. iPads and iPhones are largely written for in Objective-C, where garbage collection and unused memory is unloaded every instance when something is through using the resource. (Or something to that effect; I've got a friend who develops for Apple devices.)

I don't know what language the Wii U is programmed in but if its not at least as snappy as the Wii was, it's a downgrade. They should have looked into clever programming techniques like Apple did.

 

[tipoo]

Agreed with all of the above, the shitty speed is almost certainly the OS/software. I guess it could be slow NAND too, but as mentioned tablets and smartphones probably use even slower NAND and are more responsive. Taking 25 seconds, each and every time I go to the settings screen, is just ridiculous on a new 2012 console. I thought the 3 seconds the 360 took to respond to the xbox button press were annoying, but this makes that seem instantaneous.