WiiU not much more powerful than PSVita, according do Nicalis Founder

[ChaosBoi]

Can't say I care too much about console power at this rate. I mean, after getting into PC gaming, PS4 and XB1 just seem so inferior in comparison. At least with the Wii U, you get something a little different, however gimmicky it may be. I'd rather have a console that experiments with different things than a powerful console that tries to be like the PC.

 

[VMM]

Can't say I care too much about console power at this rate. I mean, after getting into PC gaming, PS4 and XB1 just seem so inferior in comparison. At least with the Wii U, you get something a little different, however gimmicky it may be. I'd rather have a console that experiments with different things than a powerful console that tries to be like the PC.

A console should offer to devs the best environment to create games, a more powerful machine means more than just graphics,
it means bigger and more diverse maps, better AI, capacity to render more objects at the screen at once.

If power meant nothing to consoles, we'd still be playing NES

 

[Wisenheimer]

This is just plain troll-bait and not technically accurate at all. It is hard to find data on the raw power of the Vita GPU, but most sources seem to put it at around 7 Gflops, which is around the speed of the Gamecube's GPU. That's pretty impressive for the day, but is really low-power compared to the Wii U GPU (~350Gflops+) or even the latest chips used in the highest end tablets and phones.

The Vita's ARM CPU is pretty basic. It is what you would find in high end phones during the Vita's launch window. The Wii U has two arm cores and three PPC cores, which together should give it a huge CPU power advantage over the Vita.

Overall, the Wii U probably has about a third the computing power of the Xbox1 and about a fifth the computing power of the PS4. The Vita has a lot of computing power for a mobile device from its day, but it is not even on the same order of magnitude. Best estimate would be to say you're holding gamecube level power in your hand. That's actually pretty impressive.

 

[Sakitoshi]

That coming from the guys that struggled to port Cave Story to WiiWare, yeah.

This is just plain troll-bait and not technically accurate at all. It is hard to find data on the raw power of the Vita GPU, but most sources seem to put it at around 7 Gflops, which is around the speed of the Gamecube's GPU. That's pretty impressive for the day, but is really low-power compared to the Wii U GPU (~350Gflops+) or even the latest chips used in the highest end tablets and phones.

The Vita's ARM CPU is pretty basic. It is what you would find in high end phones during the Vita's launch window. The Wii U has two arm cores and three PPC cores, which together should give it a huge CPU power advantage over the Vita.

Overall, the Wii U probably has about a third the computing power of the Xbox1 and about a fifth the computing power of the PS4. The Vita has a lot of computing power for a mobile device from its day, but it is not even on the same order of magnitude. Best estimate would be to say you're holding gamecube level power in your hand. That's actually pretty impressive.

To say truth the 3DS is the portable Gamecube/Wii in terms of what it can do. Numbers mean nothing if there is a difference in architecture.
The Vita is more like a Playstation 2.5 much like the PSP was a Playstation 1.5. The Vita can do almost the same things a PS3 can do but at a smaller scale, hell it even can run Borderlands 2 and many ports of PS3 games that look identical.

 

[Duo8]

That coming from the guys that struggled to port Cave Story to WiiWare, yeah.


To say truth the 3DS is the portable Gamecube/Wii in terms of what it can do. Numbers mean nothing if there is a difference in architecture.
The Vita is more like a Playstation 2.5 much like the PSP was a Playstation 1.5. The Vita can do almost the same things a PS3 can do but at a smaller scale, hell it even can run Borderlands 2 and many ports of PS3 games that look identical.

BL2 port is a bad example lol

 

[ChaosBoi]

A console should offer to devs the best environment to create games, a more powerful machine means more than just graphics,
it means bigger and more diverse maps, better AI, capacity to render more objects at the screen at once.

If power meant nothing to consoles, we'd still be playing NES

While I agree that you should develop on a more powerful hardware if you want more possibilities for your games, we're now at a point where you should just develop for PC instead if you're going to complain about a hardware lacking in power.

The problem I have with consoles this generation is that they aren't that much different than the last other than the hardware just being more powerful, and past generations have proven that more power isn't necessary to produce good games.

 

[DinohScene]

Seeing Vita and Wii U are doing badly...

I have little hopes in ever seeing a port of that game on those.

 

[Centrix]

From what I understood, the whole debate on where there Wii U sat in terms of muscle was squashed ages ago, that it sat in the middle somewhere between last gen and current gen, I mean lets face it the Wii U has put out its fair share of graphic intensive games that can easily stack up to the PS4 and Xbox One on most accounts!

 

[Wisenheimer]

That coming from the guys that struggled to port Cave Story to WiiWare, yeah.


To say truth the 3DS is the portable Gamecube/Wii in terms of what it can do. Numbers mean nothing if there is a difference in architecture.
The Vita is more like a Playstation 2.5 much like the PSP was a Playstation 1.5. The Vita can do almost the same things a PS3 can do but at a smaller scale, hell it even can run Borderlands 2 and many ports of PS3 games that look identical.

In a fair comparison, measurements like FLOPS are a very good way to measure GPU performance across architectures. I mean, you could port Borderlands to the Wii. That does not mean a Wii or PS3 is in the same league as a octo-core i7 with GTX 980 SLI, which can also run Borderlands.

 

[loco365]

Nintendo and Sony should partner up and make a console, i bet it'd sell A LOT

We would have had the Super Nintendo CD if it weren't for Nintendo talking to Phillips.

 

[DiscostewSM]

We would have had the Super Nintendo CD if it weren't for Nintendo talking to Phillips.

And we probably wouldn't have Nintendo now if that had gone through. Sony may not have been around either, considering it seemed like an attempt to do what Sega did.

 

[Sakitoshi]

In a fair comparison, measurements like FLOPS are a very good way to measure GPU performance across architectures. I mean, you could port Borderlands to the Wii. That does not mean a Wii or PS3 is in the same league as a octo-core i7 with GTX 980 SLI, which can also run Borderlands.

there you go. charts with GFlops
http://kyokojap.myweb.hinet.net/gpu_gflops/

The GFlops means little today as is only a mean to gauge the brute force of a processor without taking in account the optimizations and shortcuts that you can take to make your code work better in certain hardware configuration.

And no, Borderlands can't run on Wii as the Wii is incapable of run Unreal Engine 3.

 

[Wisenheimer]

there you go. charts with GFlops
http://kyokojap.myweb.hinet.net/gpu_gflops/

The GFlops means little today as is only a mean to gauge the brute force of a processor without taking in account the optimizations and shortcuts that you can take to make your code work better in certain hardware configuration.

And no, Borderlands can't run on Wii as the Wii is incapable of run Unreal Engine 3.

The chart does not provide sources for its table and the Vita GPU FLOPS rating is not in line with other reports, so I am extremely skeptical.

The Wii is incapable of running the unreal engine because it was never ported. The Vita is capable of running the Unreal engine because it was ported. That is a business decision and irrelevant.

Optomization has bupkis to do with how powerful the hardware is, which is what my comment was about.

 

[Sakitoshi]

The chart does not provide sources for its table and the Vita GPU FLOPS rating is not in line with other reports, so I am extremely skeptical.

The Wii is incapable of running the unreal engine because it was never ported. The Vita is capable of running the Unreal engine because it was ported. That is a business decision and irrelevant.

Optomization has bupkis to do with how powerful the hardware is, which is what my comment was about.

I'm pretty sure that the reason the unreal engine isn't on Wii is because isn't powerful enough to run it. Or else could see engines like Unity ported to NES and SNES.

Programing tricks are actually the result of the contrary of what you state. For example the Nintendo DS can't render to both screens at the same time, what developers did? Render one frame up then the next frame down, that way they could do 3D on both screens. If the NDS where powerful enough to render to both screens at the same time there would be no use for said trick.

 

[Duo8]

I'm pretty sure that the reason the unreal engine isn't on Wii is because isn't powerful enough to run it. Or else could see engines like Unity ported to NES and SNES.

Programing tricks are actually the result of the contrary of what you state. For example the Nintendo DS can't render to both screens at the same time, what developers did? Render one frame up then the next frame down, that way they could do 3D on both screens. If the NDS where powerful enough to render to both screens at the same time there would be no use for said trick.

Wii used a fixed pipeline GPU (or something), which probably made porting UE3 pointless if not impossible.

FLOPS isn't everything, the technology in the GPU matters as well.

 

[Deleted member 333767]

As a software developer, this guy should have known that comparing mobile gaming to console gaming is like comparing.... well, you know the rest. Probably just a troll statement.

And besides, despite how powerful the PS Vita is, so much of the systems resources are probably consumed by it's draconian-like security, there's no way it could juggle the Wii-Us workload with the gamepads and peripherals etc.

 

[ComeTurismO]

With how the progress is going with the Wii U and Vita, I only view the systems useless today.

 

[Wisenheimer]

With how the progress is going with the Wii U and Vita, I only view the systems useless today.

Nintendo is fully committed to the Wii U, at least until the next generation is on the shelves, which means you are going to see a lot of impressive exclusives being released on it for at least another year. Right now, Sony seems to be treating the Vita the same way that Microsoft treats Vista. You'll get security patches, but don't expect any new Sony-published AAA games.

When it became clear the Wii U was struggling, Nintendo doubled-down. It didn't pay off, but it let consumers know that they're not buying a brick, either now or in the future. When the Vita started struggling, Sony pulled out and eventually put it on life support.

 

[Tigran]

All I gotta say in Wii U's defense on the "On par with Vita" comment... Xenoblade Chronicles X

 

[duffmmann]

Yeah, probably true, but so what? People that get lost in specs and horsepower often are blind to the actual gameplay experiences available on the platform. And the fact of the matter is, there are plenty of fantastic titles at this point to justify the purchase of a Wii U. As I don't follow the Vita, I'm not sure if the same is true on that front or not, but heck, look at the 3DS, it's the least powerful platform of this generation, but it has a large and impressive library of exclusive and highly acclaimed titles. And rightfully so, because those titles are fun, and at the end of the day, every day, this is what is most important to me for video game platforms: are the games any fun? Concerns over graphics and power fall further down that list.