Nintendo Wii U

[Exophase]

Well Jourdy, I guess we have different opinions on what sounds "stupid." Hence why I said they're like that "to me."

 

[DavidBowman]

I still have my Virtual Boy. Of course, I bought it at close-out prices and not when it was newly released. Wario Land on the VB remains one of my favorite platformers.


I have to give Nintendo credit for trying new things at least.

 

[Nintendo]

Some Details On the Wii U’s Graphics Chip

Some specific details on the graphics chip powering the upcoming Wii U console have been reportedly obtained by Japanese site Game Impress Watch, who say that while it's running on "old" hardware, it still packs more of a punch than its current competition.


While the exact name and nature of the Wii U's GPU are under wraps, according to AMD insiders the site reports that the chip at the heart of it is similar to the R770 unit found on existing, "outdated" cards from around, say, 2009.


It'll also support Direct X 10.1, and interestingly considering the "two screens maybe" line being trotted out at E3, is capable of beaming up to four standard definition streams of the console's content.


While the GPU may be "old", and the Direct X not capable of going (literally) all the way to 11, remember that the Xbox 360's hardware is even older, and for the most part it can't go past Direct X 9.

http://kotaku.com/5812014/some-details-on-the-wii-us-graphics-chip


Not surprised that it's old tech, but interesting nonetheless.

 

[elwing]

It don't seem as innovative as prior consols, it just seems to be a big blend of "GC+gba as controller", "DS" and "WII" all cramed together.


but it don't look bad otherwise

 

[john4p]

So this is what we found after staring at some hi-res photos and manually counting individual pixels – by our estimation, the screen on the Wii U tablet is about 870 pixels wide. However, that doesn’t jive with any standard screen resolutions and it certainly doesn’t match any LCDs commonly in production. 854, though… now that’s a winner. 854 x 480 (WVGA) is a very common widescreen resolution, and it’s within 2% of our not-scientific-enough measurement. Unless Nintendo changes things for the final units, we’re confident the Nintendo U tablet resolution is WVGA.

480 pixels high is great - so we can play Resident Evil (the Wii port of the GC-version), RE0 and RE4 on the tablet controller without the gfx being scaled at all.

 

[Nintendo]

Yeah, that's great and all, but Wii U's graphics is lacking punch. I wish Ninty had of taken a risk (inevitably launching a $1000 console next year) by putting the best graphics card of today into Wii U. The problem is Nintendo always want to make a profit on hardware sales, whereas SONY and M$ don't bother in the beginning.

 

[elwing]

Yeah, that's great and all, but Wii U's graphics is lacking punch. I wish Ninty had of taken a risk (inevitably launching a $1000 console next year) by putting the best graphics card of today into Wii U. The problem is Nintendo always want to make a profit on hardware sales, whereas SONY and M$ don't bother in the beginning.

Sorry, but it's not only profit on hardware it is also lower retail price... quite a huge advantage in my opinion

 

[darfgarf]

Yeah, that's great and all, but Wii U's graphics is lacking punch. I wish Ninty had of taken a risk (inevitably launching a $1000 console next year) by putting the best graphics card of today into Wii U. The problem is Nintendo always want to make a profit on hardware sales, whereas SONY and M$ don't bother in the beginning.

a top of the range card is only about £500 these days, and that's for the utterly ridiculous ones


seeing as the 6800s can pump out 5760x1080 on maximum detail (crysis) for just over £100 they could've done a lot better for not much more cost, no doubt when the next-next-gen consoles come out they'll trample all over old ninty, they always seem to be 5 years out in the release cycle from everyone else

 

[Nintendo]

@ elwing


Purely going by what gfrancisdev has said...Nintendo don't have an excuse for their week outing. <_<

 

[darfgarf]

@ elwing


Purely going by what gfrancisdev has said...Nintendo don't have an excuse for their week outing. <_<

then again lower price is a huge advantage, and with that setup they could produce something shinier than the 360 can (that thing is a total relic in terms of how powerful the hardware is).


problem is if you want to sell lots of games you actually need some decent games to sell, instead of the usual nintendo remakes, really isn't anything new here unless you count a touchscreen in an oversized controller

 

[meandu229]

Im with ninty on this, I dont believe that the extra cost in making their gfx better would be worth it, lower costs will drive more people to buy the system which in turn will increase the software bought, nintendo has always been about the gameplay and innovation which is what they excel at, if they come back to the table with another sub £200 console ill be happy and buy it straight off,


I am concerned about the price of their controllers though they look expensive, it was bad enough with £30 for wimote and then £15 for nunchuck

 

[Nintendo]

Ok, guys...really, what I don't understand is...Nintendo 3DS = 4 or 5 year old tech and yet it is at virtually the same price point as SONY PS Vita???


Is the portable console market different in that respect?


Look, I have no doubt that by the time PS4 hits (late 2013 or late 2014?) Wii U would have dropped in price considerably, but lets look at the portable console market in perspective anyway.

 

[meandu229]

As good as the ps vita is I would have a 3ds anyday with or without the 3d, (which is a gimmick really)


Ps vita has just taken games meant for console and got it to a handheld where as ds games tend to be made for handheld, such that general when I play my ds I dont want to be playing for 4 hours straight to get past a boss in a RPG I want to be playing 20mins on bus or 5 mins waiting for something,


The tech in the vita is insane but these things arent priced by hardware alone supply and demand dicates most and sony not quite same price point 3ds 179.99 vita 229.99+ (£)

 

[Exophase]

Yeah, that's great and all, but Wii U's graphics is lacking punch. I wish Ninty had of taken a risk (inevitably launching a $1000 console next year) by putting the best graphics card of today into Wii U. The problem is Nintendo always want to make a profit on hardware sales, whereas SONY and M$ don't bother in the beginning.

$1000 wouldn't sell at all. The industry backlash against Nintendo would be pretty intense. Releasing PS3 at $600 had a very negative impact on Sony..


Even if a company wanted to sell current high end PC GPU hardware at a loss in a console they couldn't do it in a popular form factor. These high end monstrosities consume 300W. You don't want a 400+W console because it means it'll need to be large (for air flow), loud (for fan cooling), and have a large and expensive power supply, that you probably wouldn't want to try as a brick outside the box. 200W was already pushing the limits of the mechanical design of this generation's consoles.

Ok, guys...really, what I don't understand is...Nintendo 3DS = 4 or 5 year old tech and yet it is at virtually the same price point as SONY PS Vita???
Is the portable console market different in that respect?

It is pretty obvious that Sony is selling at a big loss and Nintendo at a margin, because they can (or Nintendo thought they can). But 3DS isn't all 4-5 year old tech. The parallax barrier screen, for instance, is new and probably expensive.

 

[WizardStan]

Nintendo 3DS = 4 or 5 year old tech and yet it is at virtually the same price point as SONY PS Vita???


Is the portable console market different in that respect?

No, it's basically the exact same. The 3DS is less powerful than Vita, but as usual, Nintendo is selling it for a slight profit while Sony will be selling at a slight loss and reclaim the losses in software licenses.


If the 3DS were sold at $200 and the Vita sold at $300, would that make more sense to you?

As good as the ps vita is I would have a 3ds anyday with or without the 3d, (which is a gimmick really)

When the DS first came out, a second touch screen was just a gimmick as well, and look how that ended up. Don't dismiss something because it hasn't found its potential yet.

 

[GiraffeeDreams]

Most of the DS or 3DS games I have are not short games, just like the Vita won't only have 50 hour long console games, things like LittleBigPlanet or WipEout 2048 are just as accessible as Mario or PilotWings for 5 minute romps, likewise Ocarina of Time and MGS3 are not going to be bus journey games.


Bit of an unfair comparison really.

 

[Exophase]

The one thing that gives me hope in Nintendo's weird sounding gimmicks is that they're a game software company first: this is where they started in the game industry and their console design has always been driven by their experience in game development. So when they announce a new feature for their upcoming console or handheld you can be assured that they came to it because they decided it works well for real game concepts they have in development.


But this doesn't necessarily translate to a lot of good utilization for third parties. It can even alienate them.

 

[Jumpman]

The one thing that gives me hope in Nintendo's weird sounding gimmicks is that they're a game software company first: this is where they started in the game industry and their console design has always been driven by their experience in game development. So when they announce a new feature for their upcoming console or handheld you can be assured that they came to it because they decided it works well for real game concepts they have in development.


But this doesn't necessarily translate to a lot of good utilization for third parties. It can even alienate them.

Well said. This just about sums up Nintendo's entire video game history. They always inovate, but until they show what can be done, most 3rd parties sit around and scatch their heads. Also, many still have a bad taste after releasing good hardcore games for Wii that met with very poor sells.


I figure if Nintendo just releases the same games that they always do(Mario Kart, Zelda, Mario, Metroid, ect.)in HD, I'm sure the WiiU will do OK! Anything else is just icing on the cake.


Chris

 

[Nintendo]

Seeing as Wii U still supports component (I think?) via the normal AV port, I'm wondering if Wii games will be playable via HDMI?

 

[Nintendo]

https://www.youtube.com/embed/oo15iruRD9I?feature=oembed