Wii U horsepower

[artemicion]

My concern for my Wii U is a lack of games long-term. We've just about beaten New Super Mario Bros. U, and Super Luigi U seems to be an almost-identical game with levels half the size. So I imagine that the two games will have run their course after about 3-4 weeks of ownership. Mario Kart 8 will probably be the next purchase, with Tropical Freeze also an option. Those two will likely be summer purchases, and last through the fall, if not the end of the year.

After that, it's Super Smash Bros. However, not sure how long it would last, we'll see. The problem is probably after that game, really. We don't have an announced Mario Party. Fire Emblem is similarly unannounced. Pokemon has one mediocre release I won't bother with. As someone who isn't into Zelda or Metroid, I kinda wonder what good the Wii U will be to me after about the halfway point in 2015. By then, my brother-in-law should have a One, and I'll question if the Wii U will ever get touched more than on the rare occasion afterwards.

When you're not big on replaying a campaign, the combined lack of online play and the lack of third-party support makes the Wii U a tricky investment. But, then again, it cost me about $150 for the console and 2 controllers, so not much to really complain about.

I have the same attitude toward the XB1 and PS4. There's nothing on either release calendar that is a Day 1 purchase for me. I'm not even sure I'd buy Watch Dogs in the bargain bin at $15.

Wii U isn't much better, though it at least has Super Smash Bros, which will be a Day 1 purchase for me. MK8 was also a Day 1 purchase, though it was helped by the Toys R Us 40% off second game deal + Club Nintendo free game.

Strangely enough, the Wii U has gotten the most action the past month or so, with MK8 this past week, the Super Metroid Club Nintendo give-a-way before that, and the Super Mario World give-a-way before that. I also bought Donkey Kong Tropic Freeze with MK8 and Call of Duty: Ghosts for Wii U because it was $18 on clearance at Toys R Us. Toys R Us also had Assassin's Creed 4 for $18 on Wii U clearance as well, but I'm not a huge fan of the series so I passed.

 

[bteeter]

See, I have to disagree here.

On my gaming PC, "Medium" is about 85% as good as "ultra" IMHO.

PS4/XB1 can output "ultra"

Wii U could likely do "medium"

You can definitely notice ultra, but medium is good enough to get the effect.

As a WiiU and PS4 owner, I'd say that is pretty accurate. WiiU is generally more capable than Xbox 360 / PS3, but not on the same level as PS4/XBone.

It is not like the games look bad on it - its just that the PS4/XBone can do more. For instance, more background effects, more textures, bigger scenes, etc. The WiiU has plenty of horsepower - it just needs the games to make its market grow.

 

[Lil Frier]

Hasn't stopped activision either - Call of Duty: Advance Warfighter coming to WiiU.

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/is-call-of-duty-advanced-warfare-coming-to-wii-u/1100-6420020/

Considering the last two made it to the WiiU, this is highly likely.

FWIW, I have gotten several news feeds on the high probability of the announcement of the next Zelda game at E3, and several new 3P games. I dont really know much about them. One was based on that TV show Falling Skies. Another was a Sonic franchise game.

I love Falling Skies, but it would make a terrible game. A lot of the entertainment in that show is just the background stories and the traveling, so I don't know how they'd make a reasonably-good game off of that show.

 

[Lil Frier]

I have the same attitude toward the XB1 and PS4. There's nothing on either release calendar that is a Day 1 purchase for me. I'm not even sure I'd buy Watch Dogs in the bargain bin at $15.

Wii U isn't much better, though it at least has Super Smash Bros, which will be a Day 1 purchase for me. MK8 was also a Day 1 purchase, though it was helped by the Toys R Us 40% off second game deal + Club Nintendo free game.

Strangely enough, the Wii U has gotten the most action the past month or so, with MK8 this past week, the Super Metroid Club Nintendo give-a-way before that, and the Super Mario World give-a-way before that. I also bought Donkey Kong Tropic Freeze with MK8 and Call of Duty: Ghosts for Wii U because it was $18 on clearance at Toys R Us. Toys R Us also had Assassin's Creed 4 for $18 on Wii U clearance as well, but I'm not a huge fan of the series so I passed.

I would have to disagree with a lot of that. There is nothing that's a Day-One purchase for me on the Wii U. I'll probably get Tropical Freeze or Mario Kartonce we finish New Super Mario Bros. U, but it'll wait otherwise. However, I got Watch Dogs on release day (definitely worth more than $15), and there are quite a few other One games I'll consider as release-day purchases (Sunset Overdrive, Forza Horizon 2, Halo collection, Dying Light, The Division).

I decided to just keep my Wii U at my sister's because I knew that if it was here, I'd just play the One instead. Leaving it at my sister's means when I go over there, we can play the games together. However, as a single-player experience, I'd never touch the Wii U. I don't care for much of the single-player stuff on there, with Fire Emblem being the only exception I can think of.

 

[cmdrdredd]

If we get a new Zelda, metroid, or mario 64/galaxy style mario game I will rebuy a wiiu.

Not before then. The online play is not great and I have almost nobody interested in co-op stuff at all. None of the announced games interest me yet and we haven't seen anything about X yet so I can't even look forward to it at this point.

 

[mmntech]

If we get a new Zelda, metroid, or mario 64/galaxy style mario game I will rebuy a wiiu.

Not before then. The online play is not great and I have almost nobody interested in co-op stuff at all. None of the announced games interest me yet and we haven't seen anything about X yet so I can't even look forward to it at this point.

Pretty much my feeling towards it. I went from being against buying a Wii U, to on the fence now that the games are improving. Though I'm looking for some good single player games I can't get elsewhere. Zelda would be a big one. They really need to push out a new Metroid or Star Fox as well. I was never a huge fan of Mario games.

 

[Fulle]

The Wii U hardware is terrible.

In particular, the CPU is TINY. It has roughly 1/3rd the transistor budget as the Xbox360 CPU, AND runs at lower clockspeed. I hope the individulas responsible for that decision were fired, because it's cost Nintendo severely.

The GPU is less than half the size of the Xbox One GPU, and is running at 30% less clockspeed.... and the system only has 1GB of DDR3 RAM available to games.

The only saving grace to the specifications, is that the NEC proprietary eDRAM is pretty fast, and helps the Wii U achieve good overall memory bandwidth. Although, only 32MB of the stuff makes it very hard for devs to hit a 1080p target resolution, since that's just not large enough. Which is why many of Nintendo's own 1st party titles are 720p. The GPU is also fairly decent from a feature standpoint, and supports GPGPU, which should help devs program around the horrible horrible horrrrible CPU bottleneck.

The Wii U's hardware is terrible, and Nintendo is suffering in sales because of it, and they deserve to be.

Frankly, I'm sick of having to pay "Nintendo hardware tax" to be able to play a handful of their exclusives. Their terrible hardware isn't good for anything else, and it's annoying to have to purchase it.

 

[futurefields]

Although, only 32MB of the stuff makes it very hard for devs to hit a 1080p target resolution, since that's just not large enough. Which is why many of Nintendo's own 1st party titles are 720p. The GPU is also fairly decent from a feature standpoint, and supports GPGPU, which should help devs program around the horrible horrible horrrrible CPU bottleneck.

I don't think anybody expects Wii U games to hit 1080p unless they are very graphically basic. The system has plenty of horsepower for 720p but the cpu is a joke, but so is the cpu side of the XB1 and PS4 APU's.

 

[Fulle]

I don't think anybody expects Wii U games to hit 1080p unless they are very graphically basic. The system has plenty of horsepower for 720p but the cpu is a joke, but so is the cpu side of the XB1 and PS4 APU's.

The Wii U released in 2012, at a time when the average consumer in their target market was using a 1080p resolution display.

While the little "Jaguar" cores in the Xbox One and PS4 aren't powerful compared to some desktop processors, they're still offering much more performance than the Xbox 360 and PS3's CPUs. Jaguar cores are X86 and offer excellent performance per watt. Devs might be able to pull out 5-10 times the CPU performance of last gen systems, out of the PS4 and Xbox One.

While the Wii U has a CPU that's 1/3rd the transistor count vs an Xbox360 CPU, and still uses obsolete PowerPC architecture.

We can try to downplay the hardware realities, but the Wii U was not a machine that should have been released in 2012. The specs were nowhere close to appropriate for what the system was intended to do.

 

[bteeter]

The Wii U released in 2012, at a time when the average consumer in their target market was using a 1080p resolution display.

While the little "Jaguar" cores in the Xbox One and PS4 aren't powerful compared to some desktop processors, they're still offering much more performance than the Xbox 360 and PS3's CPUs. Jaguar cores are X86 and offer excellent performance per watt. Devs might be able to pull out 5-10 times the CPU performance of last gen systems, out of the PS4 and Xbox One.

While the Wii U has a CPU that's 1/3rd the transistor count vs an Xbox360 CPU, and still uses obsolete PowerPC architecture.

We can try to downplay the hardware realities, but the Wii U was not a machine that should have been released in 2012. The specs were nowhere close to appropriate for what the system was intended to do.

Sure, it could have been faster, had more RAM, etc. But you miss a lot of the reasons that they built it as they did.

First, its easy to make it backward compatible. Nintendo values this, and their customers do, so they made it work that way by maintaining a similar architecture. XBone and PS4 just dropped the previous generation.

Second, since when does raw power indicate whether a console is or is not successful? The Wii was the weakest of the last gen consoles and there were plenty of good games out for it. The DS was no where hear the PSP and it was way more successful with a slew of great titles. The PS2 was not the fastest console of its generation, etc. Raw power does not mean better.

Third, cost. The WiiU is already substantially cheaper than the other consoles. Cost is a significant concern for a lot of buyers and saving $150 on the initial buy in is a lot, especially since you can leverage all of your old Wii games and controllers. Not so with the others. I have a PS4 and its ridiculous that I had to buy another PS4 controller at $60 when its basically exactly the same as my PS3 controller, just made to be not compatible.

So, as you can see there are a lot of good reasons for them to choose the architecture they did. Had they not picked the worst name _ever_ for a console, and actually marketed the thing _at all_ in the first year, the marketplace would be different right now. They would be in a stronger position and not having to play catchup right now.

 

[Fulle]

@bteeter

The Wii may have sold well, because it became a mainstream curiosity, but attach rate on software wasn't that good, and was terrible for third party developers. Third party devs were losing patience already with Nintendo, when they were in the process of designing the Wii U.

And what did they decide to do? They put out a machine that requires a huge amount of investment to even port last gen games to. In exchange for what?

Wii game backward compatibility and low power consumption?

As a result the Wii U version is often the worst version of several multiplatform games, and publishers are all but writing off developing for the system.

The market isn't the same as it was when the PS2 was the market leader. Nintendo didn't adapt to keep good with 3rd party developers, because they foolishly believed that their support was a given, and they didn't need to take 3rd party needs into consideration. They're paying for that mistake now.

Your point on controllers is interesting. Do you realize how much of a pain it would be to be a developer for the Wii U, taking in account that players may have the Gamepad, a Wii U Pro controller, Wiimote, maybe with a nunchuck, or maybe have a classic controller. It sounds like an absolute nightmare to me. Hell, Nintendo hasn't even figured out how to make the Gamepad work properly with Wii games that use the Classic Controller....

I agree that "Wii U" is a terrible name and the console has been poorly marketed. I've had several people come to my home and think the Wii U was the Wii U Gamepad! The same people have no confusion over what an Xbox One or a PS4 is.

 

[Narse]

Horsepower or not the Wii U is leaps and bounds my most used console. The Xbox One and PS4 have very little to give me that I can't do on my PC. Now that Kinect and the XBO Controller can be used on the PC I have little to no reason to have them. I think the horsepower is just fine. Mario Kart 8 looks fantastic and seems to run plenty fast. It's not all about how much power you have it's what you do with it.

 

[zerocool84]

Horsepower or not the Wii U is leaps and bounds my most used console. The Xbox One and PS4 have very little to give me that I can't do on my PC. Now that Kinect and the XBO Controller can be used on the PC I have little to no reason to have them. I think the horsepower is just fine. Mario Kart 8 looks fantastic and seems to run plenty fast. It's not all about how much power you have it's what you do with it.

And unfortunately they aren't doing enough with it so there ya go.

 

[Narse]

So there ya go? Lol ok. I love it and will continue to enjoy it with my family. No idea what your post even means.

 

[zerocool84]

So there ya go? Lol ok. I love it and will continue to enjoy it with my family. No idea what your post even means.

Sales show they aren't doing enough with it. Everyone should want the system they love to sell a lot. That means it will get more games and longer life.

 

[desura]

The funny thing about increased horsepower in games is that like all things, it is subject to diminishing returns. Seriously, like the next time you game on a computer, try telling the difference between "medium" and "ultra". There is a difference, but it frankly doesn't matter. Medium is good enough.

The important thing about the Wii U is that it supports DX11-esque features.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Horsepower or not the Wii U is leaps and bounds my most used console. The Xbox One and PS4 have very little to give me that I can't do on my PC. Now that Kinect and the XBO Controller can be used on the PC I have little to no reason to have them. I think the horsepower is just fine. Mario Kart 8 looks fantastic and seems to run plenty fast. It's not all about how much power you have it's what you do with it.

Have fun playing Halo, Sunset Overdrive, Forza Horizon 2, Killer instinct, Destiny...oh wait. You can't...none of them are on PC or WiiU.

 

[TheAdvocate]

Sales show they aren't doing enough with it. Everyone should want the system they love to sell a lot. That means it will get more games and longer life.

Hate hate hate.

Forbes disagrees with you.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2014/06/03/mario-kart-8-sales-point-to-wii-u-revival/

I read somewhere that Japan sales spiked, and UK sales of hardware were up 666%. Nintendo hadnt sold there at all, so thats encouraging.

BTW, in addition to COD: Advanced Warfighter, and the almost certain annoucement of the next Zelda title (already in dev), at E3, Watch Dogs, which had been in doubt, is now confirmed for the Wii U. Super Smash Bros playable demo at Best Buy next week. Add in Bayonetta 2, and Monoliths X...

I am not worried about viability or sales.


If I was going to play any if the appealing titles on xbone or ps4, i'd just play them on pc. But honestly, I barely even turn my pc on anymore. If i am going to game, i play the wiiU with my kids. I love mariokart8... its fantastic.

And i also love the low power draw and heat of the wii u, along with the very strong dual band wifi, which makes it a solid roku replacement.

It has its faults, but its a vastly underrated machine. The hate is just ridiculous.

 

[zerocool84]

A huge spike in sales is great but that's because sales were so low before so that's to be expected when a huge release like this comes out. The problem is that they need to sustain those sales which they have not shown to do yet.

Citing Watch Dogs as an example of getting good third party support is not something to be happy about, coming out months later than even 8 year old consoles is not something to be happy about if you only own a WiiU and nothing else and no one is going to choose a WiiU over the other consoles to play Call of Duty either because of how horrible the online is.

The fact of the matter is that the biggest selling franchises nowadays are multiplatform titles, Nintendo is doing nothing to make sure these releases are on par to even 8 year old consoles.

 

[Dumac]

Have fun playing Halo, Sunset Overdrive, Forza Horizon 2, Killer instinct, Destiny...oh wait. You can't...none of them are on PC or WiiU.

I wouldn't buy any of htose games even if I had an Xbone.

A huge spike in sales is great but that's because sales were so low before so that's to be expected when a huge release like this comes out. The problem is that they need to sustain those sales which they have not shown to do yet.

Exactly. People shouting for joy over the 600% or whatever increased sales due to Mario Kart 8 need a reality check. Sure, sales jumped from 2k to 12k, but that still isn't that big and who knows how long the increase will be sustained.

If there is a jump in sales for only 1 month, then that doesn't really do Nintendo much good.

The fact of the matter is that the biggest selling franchises nowadays are multiplatform titles, Nintendo is doing nothing to make sure these releases are on par to even 8 year old consoles.

While that is bad for Nintendo as it makes the Wii U hard to justify as a primary console, it doesn't matter to me since I would play all of those games on PC anyway.

All this Wii U doom and gloom is completely spot-on and I'm sure Nintendo is shaking in their boots about it, but it honestly doesn't effect me. I bought the Wii U for first party exclusives, and I have been nothing but satisfied with them. And since we are talking about hardware, they are all much better looking than anything I played on 360 or PS3.

 

[cmdrdredd]

I wouldn't buy any of htose games even if I had an Xbone.
.

Good cause I wasn't talking to you but I'm glad you missed the point. Lots of people say crap about the ps4 or xb1 offering nothing over a PC but refuse to acknowledge that there are dozens of games that never see a PC release ever.

Since we are on the subject, I am sick and tired of every Nintendo game looking like it was designed for a 10 year old. I really cannot stand that about their first party titles recently. I really want to see a metroid game in a darker tone, Zelda too.

 

[Dumac]

Good cause I wasn't talking to you but I'm glad you missed the point. Lots of people say crap about the ps4 or xb1 offering nothing over a PC but refuse to acknowledge that there are dozens of games that never see a PC release ever.

I wasn't aware forum conversations were 1-to-1 only.

Sure, the ps4 and xbone have games that aren't on PC, but I don't care for any of them. The xbone can get 30 forzas - I still won't care. I fail to see how that misses your point.

Since we are on the subject, I am sick and tired of every Nintendo game looking like it was designed for a 10 year old. I really cannot stand that about their first party titles recently. I really want to see a metroid game in a darker tone, Zelda too.

And I am sick and tired of people thinking dark and edgy aesthetics are somehow more mature. To me, it is targeting a teen demographic who is on a mission to prove how cool and mature they are, which I find relatively immature. There is a difference between an immature design (i.e. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tMO7lCLXGk) and an all-ages design. Not every game has to be grimdark.

I think a rated M Zelda or Metroid would be a huge mistake, completely losing the great aspects of those games.

 

[cmdrdredd]

And I am sick and tired of people thinking dark and edgy aesthetics are somehow more mature. To me, it is targeting a teen demographic who is on a mission to prove how cool and mature they are, which I find relatively immature. There is a difference between an immature design (i.e. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tMO7lCLXGk) and an all-ages design. Not every game has to be grimdark.

I think a rated M Zelda or Metroid would be a huge mistake, completely losing the great aspects of those games.

I never said M rated. I said darker. Ever play Super Metroid, Metroid Prime? There was nothing cute and fuzzy about it. I want that back from Nintendo. Even earlier Zeldas had a darker tone than we have seen recently from them. Skyward Sword was an ok game on the surface but lacked in the story telling IMO because the evil never gave me a sense of dread. Link Between Worlds was closer because of the dark world. Ocarina of Time was great to me because the world changed and things were grim with the whole landscape being altered with more dangerous monsters lurking in areas that once were safe.

If you think I want Nintendo to give Mario a shotgun and blood splatters you couldn't be more wrong.