Gaming Ubisoft: Watch Dogs on Wii U visually "between next & current gen", closer to current-gen

[Wisenheimer]

lol. That person has zero knowledge on Wii U. Wii U is no way stronger than X1/PS4.

There is no way Sony can use Cell for PS4. IBM discontinued R&D on Cell, making it pretty much a dead platform. Also, x86 is so much easier to program than PowerPC used by Wii U. Meaning it is much easier to make x86 runs efficient than PowerPC.

Back two generations ago, I don't recall gamecube games (which used power PC architecture), on the whole, looking any worse than Xbox games (which used x86).

If you look at the actual chips in the XBone and PS4, they are not exactly ones that are optimized for gaming performance. They are optimized for running lots of background tasks, which may be beneficial to Microsoft marketing the console as a home theater PC stand-in. It is difficult to code video games to make use of anything more than a quad core processor efficiently, and most major ports probably will not even try. What really will give the two newer consoles a leg up are their superior GPUs. In a couple of years though, an entry level gaming GPU will blow both of them away.

 

[Wisenheimer]

No offence, but I think its obvious many people here don't have technical know-how in terms of how a processor and GPU work with RAM.

Devs cannot build a WiiU game the same way you would say a PC version or an xbone or PS4 version. As a developer, you sort of have to pick which system you are truly focusing on, and then make fast ports to the rest (or conversely have a separate team build the game multiple times for each platform). Because the ps4 and xbone are very smilar in how they operate from an architecture standpoint, they will pool resources into it.

For the WiiU though, the way you design a game has to be different. If you try to load everything into the processor and just use RAM on the side to dump sprites and the GPU just for certain graphic rendering is poor practice. You will find going forward that all games made by nintendo will be gorgeous because they will optimize their build to get the most out of the system. It isn't even close to the xbox 360 or ps3 (and people who have made comparisons seriously don't understand computer architecture).

If we just look at the PS4 and wiiU processor you are only look at about a 30% increase in power. An in fact, this number is inflated because anyone who understands how gaming works knows that having 8 cores isn't technically that much better than 4. Games are built around 3 or 4 cores, they don't really have a use for going more than that (heck only games like crysis 3 use more than 2 cores). It requires complex programming and isn't always worth the effort. The PS4 and the xbone need more cores because of how much multi tasking they do, and this is why they also have much more RAM. They will be heavily multitasking so they will use the extra cores. But the WiiU wasn't designed the same way, it is meant to primarily be only a gaming device so it doesn't need more than 3 cores really.

The area where the PS4 really shines though (compared to Xbone and WiiU) is in its GPU. We are looking at maybe 5 times the teraflops over the WiiU. What realistically this will mean is a heavy use of physics in PS4 games. However, much like the issue with WiiU, how many devs will actually use it? So I expect, much like with the WiiU, only Sony will really capitalize on their GPU by using their own studios to build around it. AAA titles that are not exclusives will probably just build around the lowest common denominator (ie xbone).

I don't think people need to worry. Games on the WiiU will look phenomenal. If you really want the best graphics, go PC obviously. Consoles are really for couch-gaming and exclusives.

Without actual numbers, it is silly to say that the PS4 processor is only 30% faster. The fact is, a lot of companies, such as Sony, Microsoft, and Apple switched away from Power PC processors for good reasons. The chips Nintendo's competition is using certainly do not seem to be on the fast end of the spectrum, but if AMD designs them anything like Intel, the 5 cores can be used to increase the thermal overhead and boost the clock speed of games running in single-threaded modes.

 

[Deleted_171835]

I like how people are going "It's just a bad port!" despite the fact it's running on clearly inferior hardware than the next gen and PC versions.

It's okay your $300 inferior hardware will have it's day.

Really this should be considered a victory for Wii U owners, he did say it would at least be better than current-gen. Much better than what we've been getting so far.

 

[the_randomizer]

>Thinking console power has anything to do with the ultimate victor, rather than a variety of other concurrent factors
>Having to rely on a precedent fallacy
>Non-green green text outside of 4chan

It's a lel-mon party!

Mention of 4Chan: 10 points taken from Gryffindor to be given to Slytherin. For shame.

Consoles focusing on raw power never won a single generation. The games have to be good too you know.

 

[trumpet-205]

Back two generations ago, I don't recall gamecube games (which used power PC architecture), on the whole, looking any worse than Xbox games (which used x86).

Game developers never unleashed full potential of Xbox. By the time Xbox went into the market majority developers were lured away by PS2. Unlike Gamecube Microsoft did not push system's potential to the max. Nintendo's first party game really pushed Gamecube (and subsequently Wii) ability to the max.

Gamecube did surprisingly well considering it used Mini-DVD.

 

[elunesgrace]

Without actual numbers, it is silly to say that the PS4 processor is only 30% faster. The fact is, a lot of companies, such as Sony, Microsoft, and Apple switched away from Power PC processors for good reasons. The chips Nintendo's competition is using certainly do not seem to be on the fast end of the spectrum, but if AMD designs them anything like Intel, the 5 cores can be used to increase the thermal overhead and boost the clock speed of games running in single-threaded modes.

We already have a good idea what the processor is running.

The WiiU is running a tri-core at 1.24ghz. The PS4 is running a jaguar 2 4-core @ 1.6ghz. Since they are separating the 4 core Jaguar sets I think its pretty obvious one 4-core set is for gaming and the other is for multitasking with the OS. Hence really its a tri-core WiiU vs a quadcore PS4.

Apple switched away from PowerPC because of reasons of heating and consumption per watt. Neither of these are issues in consoles (you don't need battery life, and at 1.6ghz heating is almost a nonissue especially with the ventilation this gen has).

The big advantage for PS4 remains in the GPU department. They will probably try some physics as they loaded really powerful RAM into their configuration.

 

[elunesgrace]

By the way to drive the point even further home, the OS and audio on the WiiU run on a separate ARM processor. Definitely the WiiU OS is no where near as powerful as what we will see in the other consoles. But that's mostly because Nintendo focused more on the gaming itself and not the whole entertainment ecosystem that PS4 and Xbone want.

 

[Wisenheimer]

We already have a good idea what the processor is running.

The WiiU is running a tri-core at 1.24ghz. The PS4 is running a jaguar 2 4-core @ 1.6ghz. Since they are separating the 4 core Jaguar sets I think its pretty obvious one 4-core set is for gaming and the other is for multitasking with the OS. Hence really its a tri-core WiiU vs a quadcore PS4.

Apple switched away from PowerPC because of reasons of heating and consumption per watt. Neither of these are issues in consoles (you don't need battery life, and at 1.6ghz heating is almost a nonissue especially with the ventilation this gen has).

The big advantage for PS4 remains in the GPU department. They will probably try some physics as they loaded really powerful RAM into their configuration.

I have skimmed the specs before and I do not really buy that they have been confirmed. The jaguar, for instance, is a fab design used in everything from low power tablets to high end Opteron server processors and I do not believe the details of the chips have been released publicly by either AMD, Sony, or Microsoft.

The same is true for the Wii U. To the best of my knowledge, only the architecture of the chip is confirmed. Neither Nintendo nor Motorola have confirmed the specs. To the best of my knowledge, the measurement of the Wii U's CPU is based on the reports of individual enthusiasts and has not officially been confirmed.

In order to compare the two, you really need to run different benchmarks on both processors under different conditions with a full understanding of the architecture and how it is supposed to be used. Without doing that, the comparison is little more than rumor and educated guesses.

 

[Guild McCommunist]

Just like the Vita will have it's day, right?

Except the Vita is $200 superior hardware, not $300 inferior hardware.

 

[ShadowSoldier]

Except the Vita is $200 superior hardware, not $300 inferior hardware.

And that's clearly totally changing the outcome isn't it?

 

[JoostinOnline]

Except the Vita is $200 superior hardware, not $300 inferior hardware.

Well more like $250 if you count the Zelda bundle. But as has been stated many times earlier, the Wii U doesn't need nearly as much resources because it's OS is so simple. It's barely got anything running between the game (or whatever title is running) and the IOS. Now that's not something to really brag about, but it explains why the games are so much better on it (when resources are shifted to accommodate the weird hardware of course) than on the PS360, and why PS4/X1 launch titles don't look that much better, if the gameplay videos (not pre-rendered videos) are anything to judge by.

Really, look at what the OS is. The highest amount of resources it uses is an internet browser that allows one active tab. That's something the 3DS can do. Pretty much everything is dedicated to the running title.

 

[the_randomizer]

Except the Vita is $200 superior hardware, not $300 inferior hardware.

No one's debating that the Vita has good hardware, it's a very powerful handheld device, but the Vita has no gaemz People just want an excuse to hate the Wii U solely based on its hardware not catering to their every need and for being a Nintendo console


*Goes back to playing Need For Speed Most Wanted and pre-ordering Assassin's Creed IV*

 

[Wisenheimer]

No one's debating that the Vita has good hardware, it's a very powerful handheld device, but the Vita has no gaemz People just want an excuse to hate the Wii U solely based on its hardware not catering to their every need and for being a Nintendo console


*Goes back to playing Need For Speed Most Wanted and pre-ordering Assassin's Creed IV*

I never understood why Sony does not offer a Vita phone. The $250 version is already 95% there.