Nintendo message Wii owners about the Wii U; "it's an entirely new system."

[emigre]

It's not, actually.
You must be confusing me with your mother.

 

[deshayzilla]

Maybe they will release a gamecube preview disc about the Wii U being out, to all current gamecube owners. That will certainly drive sales up .

 

[heartgold]

Source?

http://gamingeverything.com/39023/nintendo-wii-u-gpu-more-pronounced-than-cpu-but-cpu-not-weak/

 

[Foxi4]

I'm actually quite stunned by how little television advertising there has been for the Wii U. The DS, Wii and 3DS were all over the TV, but the Wii U is curiously absent. Whilst that may be in direct relation to games worth advertising it does seem odd that they think a message like this will work. It's probably fair to say that if you don't know about the Wii U then your Wii is sitting unused in a corner or you're 5.

Well, for TV ads you need footage and for footage you need games.

Oh...

http://gamingeverything.com/39023/nintendo-wii-u-gpu-more-pronounced-than-cpu-but-cpu-not-weak/

Oh gee, Nintendo representatives saying that a Nintendo console isn't weak, showing no figures or comparisons whatsoever and admitting that their development teams are completely unprepared for Next Generation development since they've only just begun hiring specialists.

Good, good.

 

[Maxternal]

http://gamingeverything.com/39023/nintendo-wii-u-gpu-more-pronounced-than-cpu-but-cpu-not-weak/

I liked the part in there where Miyamoto commented that they had to hire new people who knew how to use shaders. Nintendo was just TOO used to programming for old tech ... but they were really good at it, too.

 

[Qtis]

No surprise here.. The console isn't doing well and selling well below what Nintendo has expected.

As for the confusion around the console, Nintendo is much to blame here. The Wii has a ton of accessories named Wii XXX (WiiFit, Wii Remote, Wii Remote Plus, Wii Wheel, Wii Zapper, need I continue?). Considering something like the balance board is bigger than the WiiU controller, but still a peripheral for the original Wii, naming a new console Wii U can easily lead to the previous example's way of thinking.

ps. I actually wonder how many Wii owners actually received that message. Don't see that many people online with them anymore, especially with quite a few games being local multiplayer/party games on top of the optional online.

 

[Subtle Demise]

So far all the advertisement effort (this and couple Wii U ads showing families playing party games) are all targeting casual gamers.

Seems to me like Nintendo gave up on hardcore audience.

Games are casual just in the nature of their name. Hardcore and gaming should never exist in the same sentence. What defines a "HARDCORE" game anyway? FPS with lots of blood and gore with a bunch of 5 year old kids on shitty headsets yelling at each other through their noses?

 

[Maxternal]

You know, I STILL haven't got the message. I'll have to turn standby connection on and let it sit a while and see what happens.

... Maybe Nintendo doesn't want ME to buy a Wii U

 

[heartgold]

Oh gee, Nintendo representatives saying that a Nintendo console isn't weak, showing no figures or comparisons whatsoever and admitting that their development teams are completely unprepared for Next Generation development since they've only just begun hiring specialists.

Good, good.

U troll. Wii U is uber powerful than U know.

 

[Foxi4]

U troll. Wii U is uber powerful than U know.

I'm sure U know what U're talking about.

 

[heartgold]

I'm sure U know what U're talking about.

U will be here for Wii, won't you? XD

Seriousness, Wii U is somewhat between current gen and next gen so not bad for graphics if built from ground up using the Wii U tech. It will be great for Nintendo fans as they will get their pretty 1st party games. I'm not seeing third parties supporting this properly once next gen gets rolling. No easy porting down, engine issues, etc. Not to mention bad sales and unpopular.

 

[Foxi4]

Seriousness, Wii U is somewhat between current gen and next gen so not bad for graphics if built from ground up using the Wii U tech. It will be great for Nintendo fans as they will get their pretty 1st party games. I'm not seeing third parties supporting this properly once next gen gets rolling. No easy porting down, engine issues, etc. Not to mention bad sales and unpopular.

That's a bit of an overly-dramatic viewpoint, I see the WiiU getting support... for the first 3-4 years, then it'll start falling behind in terms of technology, but that's still ahead of us. We have to consider the fact that many multiplatform titles are withheld for now because there are no other Next Gens to develop for - I honestly believe that the WiiU will start getting games once the PS4 and the 720 are released since then developers will have three outlets. Technically they have three now, but they can't exactly spread their wings considering the limitations of the PS3 and the XBox 360 - they're literally holding the WiiU back a little.

 

[Rydian]

That's an interesting way of looking at it... though with the Wii being PPC and an older CPU at that, Idunno' if too many companies will be keen on porting to it from the everything-else-x86 continent. I don't want to see Wii U ports with features cut like the Wii.

 

[heartgold]

That's a bit of an overly-dramatic viewpoint, I see the WiiU getting support... for the first 3-4 years, then it'll start falling behind in terms of technology, but that's still ahead of us. We have to consider the fact that many multiplatform titles are withheld for now because there are no other Next Gens to develop for - I honestly believe that the WiiU will start getting games once the PS4 and the 720 are released since then developers will have three outlets. Technically they have three now, but they can't exactly spread their wings considering the limitations of the PS3 and the XBox 360 - they're literally holding the WiiU back a little.

I don't know, even if it has dev support behind I can't see the sales improving to the masses so that impacts support and I haven't even included the inferior specs. You have true two next gen consoles from Sony and Microsoft with a huge install base willing to jump the gun to the next graphical leap, while the Wii U isn't going to attract those gamers. Wii's core audience was family and casual. Now that demographics isn't there anymore.

Did you see killzone on the PS4, that's miles ahead of what Wii U can do. You will end up with far watered down ports for Wii U, making a day and night difference for consumers to see the superior version and devs might not bother if they know games aren't going to sell very well. We are seeing some devs ignoring the Wii U, i feel matters are about to worsen. All in all IMO third party support will be very poor.

 

[Foxi4]

That's an interesting way of looking at it... though with the Wii being PPC and an older CPU at that, Idunno' if too many companies will be keen on porting to it from the everything-else-x86 continent. I don't want to see Wii U ports with features cut like the Wii.

Price they pay for being different - they've been sticking to the same design since Gamecube times. Then again, they couldn't exactly predict that the entire industry will suddenly switch - heck, I didn't expect that turn of events either, I found it very unlikely after reading the initial rumours.

Did you see killzone on the PS4, that's miles ahead of what Wii U can do.

That's the thing - we haven't really seen the WiiU going full-blast yet. That Killzone engine is a Next Generation one, so far we've seen only Current Generation engines working on the WiiU like with CoD BLOPS2, but that doesn't mean it can't pull off more - it only means that nobody's ever attempted pushing it. Case and point, Mario Galaxy on the Wii. For all intents and purposes, that game shouldn't have been "that pretty" on this hardware but it was.

 

[Maxternal]

Well, going from one processor type to another, while it changes some things if you're doing technical stuff like dealing with microcode optimization or if you're playing dirty little tricks where you have to worry about the processor's endianess (which you really shouldn't do anyhow.) all you have to do is run it through a different compiler. The real trick when going from one platform to another, even ones that share the same processor, how to access the peripherals like the GPU, controllers, drives, network, etc and that has more to do with the change in SDK that does with the change in OS than it does with the change in hardware.

It's a lot less work porting Linux software from one hardware to another completely different one than it is to port from Windows to Linux on the exact same computer. The hardware has little to do when your dealing with high level source code. The libraries and OS take care of that. It's swapping libs or changing OS that sucks.

 

[Rydian]

Well, going from one processor type to another, while it changes some things if you're doing technical stuff like dealing with microcode optimization or if you're playing dirty little tricks where you have to worry about the processor's endianess (which you really shouldn't do anyhow.) all you have to do is run it through a different compiler.

Assuming that both CPUs in question support the same things...
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/841446
Take that for example. Firefox needs the SSE2 instruction set now. Older CPUs do not have this, so Firefox will not work on them even though they may be 100% legit Intel/AMD CPUs and run XP and everything on a Dell or whatever.

 

[heartgold]

That's the thing - we haven't really seen the WiiU going full-blast yet. That Killzone engine is a Next Generation one, so far we've seen only Current Generation engines working on the WiiU like with CoD BLOPS2, but that doesn't mean it can't pull off more - it only means that nobody's ever attempted pushing it. Case and point, Mario Galaxy on the Wii. For all intents and purposes, that game shouldn't have been "that pretty" on this hardware but it was.

Then the question arises what has Nintendo been doing? They have let the Wii dry up for years without any software, so they have been sitting on their arse's, not planned a next gen engine for their HD console and they're late to the party. It should have been showcased when the revealed Wii U at E3. That tech demo of Zelda was based on Twilight princess assets made in quick time. Very lazy or carefree company.

 

[Rydian]

Ehhh, Nintendo's not really in the engine department itself. Some groups will re-use their older engines for new ones, but generally Nintendo's stuff is pretty custom.

 

[Maxternal]

Assuming that both CPUs in question support the same things...
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/841446
Take that for example. Firefox needs the SSE2 instruction set now. Older CPUs do not have this, so Firefox will not work on them even though they may be 100% legit Intel/AMD CPUs and run XP and everything on a Dell or whatever.

True, I guess in my perception that would fall under the my concept of "microcode optimizations", though (assuming I'm understanding the term, of course.) I'm now also kinda curious how that's implemented in code. I know some things can be emulated away by the compiler if you set the right options. I remember a DOS compiler I used to use that had the option to compile for 8088, 80186 or 80286 with or without the floating point co-processor and it would emulate floating point if you told it not to expect the co-processor ... but that's still all within the same x86 architecture anyhow.

It was interesting to me reading your link there that the guy still ended up being able to run 5.0 even though his processor didn't have SSE2. I wonder how that worked.

Either way, I guess gaming more than likely DOES usually need a lot of optimization unless porting to a machine that's vastly superior so I guess x86 CAN be a more important detail than I first thought.