Shin'en - Wii U has enough power for years to come

[Ray Lewis]

I love how people are saying that it's weaker than last gen

Anyone else wonder if Nintendo will try for higher specs to address all markets? What if PS4 had Nintendo exclusives this cycle? Wii U is a decent system though.

 

[Dork]

Wii U threads start with people making jokes about it, then it ends with people getting seriously asspained over them.

This always happens.

 

[Ray Lewis]

Wii U thread. I guarantee if start with people making jokes about it, then it ends with people getting seriously asspained over them.

This always happens.

The key is if enough Wii U sales occur. Profit potential;-) I guarantee that like the 3ds, if Wii U goes on a role in sales, you will see a reason to explore dev for this system. Also, over time, those that will dev may show more tools for other devs. Systems never start at peak potential. The longgggg write up made a lot of sense. Cool one dev sees ways to grow within Wii U hardware. Big companies look at earning potential--not potential for a system to become profitable if they dev for a system;-).

 

[Gahars]

I love how people are saying that it's weaker than last gen

...But nobody's saying that, at least nobody in this discussion. It may be weaker/more difficult to work with in certain respects, hence stuff like the apparent troubles with porting over the Frostbite engine, but that's something else entirely.

You're laughing at a strawman of your own invention here.

 

[the_randomizer]

...But nobody's saying that, at least nobody in this discussion. It may be weaker/more difficult to work with in certain respects, hence stuff like the apparent troubles with porting over the Frostbite engine, but that's something else entirely.

You're laughing at a strawman of your own invention here.

Perhaps I am without realizing it, but I was just referring to the mentality of people on other forums. I guess you could say that the people I'm referring to are ignorant

People in other discussions on other forums are focusing on the hardware as the sole determining factor in a console's success.

 

[ShadowSoldier]

...But nobody's saying that, at least nobody in this discussion. It may be weaker/more difficult to work with in certain respects, hence stuff like the apparent troubles with porting over the Frostbite engine, but that's something else entirely.

You're laughing at a strawman of your own invention here.

But at the same time, that's just laziness of people not wanting to figure it out. I mean, for the first couple years in the PS3's life cycle, every developer was talking about how much of a bitch it was to develop with the Cell processor. Hell, even Hideki Kamiya openly criticized it. But people got used to it, and some of the best games was made for it.

The WiiU is no different. Just take the time to understand it and its weaknesses and put that GPU to work.

 

[DiscostewSM]

But at the same time, that's just laziness of people not wanting to figure it out. I mean, for the first couple years in the PS3's life cycle, every developer was talking about how much of a bitch it was to develop with the Cell processor. Hell, even Hideki Kamiya openly criticized it. But people got used to it, and some of the best games was made for it.

The WiiU is no different. Just take the time to understand it and it's weaknesses and put that GPU to work.

Unfortunately, that scenario is a bit different than this one, on the account that at the time, it was relatively the most powerful console on the market with it staying that way for years to come. They traded time, which they had for that generation, for learning the hardware. With the Wii U, it is the most powerful console on the market right now, but by the end of this year, it won't be. Devs would rather push it to the side, arguing that it is weak without really giving it a test run, in favor of more powerful hardware that, technically speaking, would allow them to be a bit lazy, but still put out some power-driven games.

 

[Sterling]

Unfortunately, that scenario is a bit different than this one, on the account that at the time, it was relatively the most powerful console on the market with it staying that way for years to come. They traded time, which they had for that generation, for learning the hardware. With the Wii U, it is the most powerful console on the market right now, but by the end of this year, it won't be. Devs would rather push it to the side, arguing that it is weak without really giving it a test run, in favor of more powerful hardware that, technically speaking, would allow them to be a bit lazy, but still put out some power-driven games.

Yeah, I can see Nintendo relying on first party support to drive sales. That's the reason I buy Nintendo consoles in the first place. However, with all this talk about the Wii U being hard to code for, but with only marginal gains, I think third party support is going to be incredibly sparse this generation. It makes me kind of sad to be honest.

 

[Hielkenator]

Looking at what shi'nen did on the Wii, I have high hopes.
The games they did on Wii ( Wiiware ) are also very very impressive on a graphical standpoint.

 

[DiscostewSM]

Yeah, I can see Nintendo relying on first party support to drive sales. That's the reason I buy Nintendo consoles in the first place. However, with all this talk about the Wii U being hard to code for, but with only marginal gains, I think third party support is going to be incredibly sparse this generation. It makes me kind of sad to be honest.

Unless I'm mistaken, the ones that seem to say the Wii U is difficult to program for are the ones that really didn't attempt to work with the Wii. The Wii U, while having many new things, does extend much of what the Wii started with, so it only seems natural that those that attempted and continued to work with the Wii are not having such a hard time with the Wii U, including Shin'en.

 

[shakirmoledina]

According to the extra credit's video, wii u is for aesthetics over graphics. to me that is more important. I don't want tessellation but I want vibrancy.

 

[FAST6191]

for the first couple years in the PS3's life cycle, every developer was talking about how much of a bitch it was to develop with the Cell processor.

The WiiU is no different. Just take the time to understand it and its weaknesses and put that GPU to work.

I will have to see about the former. I could envision a scenario where Sony paid some high end programmers to sort out nice to use libraries/code fragments/frameworks and given it was the SDK just as much as the processor that got people bitching and the PS360 ultimately became a thing (nominally the PS3 probably could have done a bit more) I do not see it as all that unlikely.

The Wii U would also be different to that scenario -- suspect PS3 higher precision float capabilities aside (one of the other criticisms) it was as powerful/perhaps slightly more than the competition. For all that I said in my last post the Wii U is in anything but that situation. Similarly multicore/multithreaded coding is hard (and if as noted Nintendo do not have the niceties afforded by more modern multicore architectures it could trouble what ease is afforded by them), GPU coding is harder (I have not even got a worthwhile GPU H264 video encoder and they have had years to do it) and game environments are not all that conducive to either of them (crunch my massive data set already in a database -- fair enough, crunch data where the player can suddenly decide to run looking at the sky back to the start of the level, spin round shooting bullets in time to she's coming round the mountain and then fall off a cliff wearing night vision goggles during the day -- not so easy to predict/account for ahead of time)

 

[xist]

Unless I'm mistaken, the ones that seem to say the Wii U is difficult to program for are the ones that really didn't attempt to work with the Wii. The Wii U, while having many new things, does extend much of what the Wii started with, so it only seems natural that those that attempted and continued to work with the Wii are not having such a hard time with the Wii U, including Shin'en.

But consider where we are in hardware time-lines. With the PS4 and One just around the corner work will be under-way for those platforms, so it's only logical that a company with it's fortunes invested in Nintendo's success is going to be better versed in it's functionality. Everybody else is arms deep in other systems too. Until the Wii U is accessible to all, or popular enough to warrant the time to become familiar with it, the alternatives with much more familiar architecture are likely to attract the most attention.

 

[Taleweaver]

Am I the only one who thinks that Shin'en isn't the best spokesmen about the hardware, exactly because of what they've pulled off on the wii*?


I've played Jett Rocket and FAST, and it's downright amazing at what they can squeeze from the wii. To me, however, that means they're good at optimizing performance and keeping wasted resources to a minimum. I can but assume that they worked on Nano assault neo with that same ideology. I can believe that when they just tested their prototypes/alpha versions/whatever, they didn't encounter a single issue. Nor after adding all the visual stuff they could throw at the thing. The whole issue, however, is that they are used to using subpar technology. I can perfectly believe that they aren't going to run into technical limitations with the wiiu anytime soon...but their style of game isn't exactly putting it to test. I mean...I don't want to compare shin'en to a tetris-making company, but if one of the latter companies claims that they'll have no shortage for resources whatsoever to develop their game...then it really isn't saying that much.


*perhaps I should say "am I the only one actually discussing the topic instead of hardware bragging?", but let's not go there.

 

[Foxi4]

I love how people are saying that it's weaker than last gen

Nobody in their right mind says that. What people are saying is that the difference isn't massive in the grand scheme of things - you have to consider other Next Gen systems in such comparisons.

What I'm saying here is that there is a specs jump from the PS3/360, yes... but with the PS4/XBox One in mind, it's not as big of a jump as one might expect from a Next Generation system.

 

[the_randomizer]

Nobody in their right mind says that. What people are saying is that the difference isn't massive in the grand scheme of things - you have to consider other Next Gen systems in such comparisons.

What I'm saying here is that there is a specs jump from the PS3/360, yes... but with the PS4/XBox One in mind, it's not as big of a jump as one might expect from a Next Generation system.

Just summing up what people on the internet in general are saying, not necessarily this forum or topic per se, but I definitely should have clarified that better. My bad But you are right, the gap won't be as astonishing as it was when the Wii was pitted against the other two.

 

[Parasite X]

Finally some good news about WiiU instead of negativity now if we could get more games similar to DS/3DS games but made for WiiU instead I would truly be happy.

You're not dealing with a normal Super Saiyan, you're dealing with a Super Saiyan God.

 

[ShadowSoldier]

Finally some good news about WiiU instead of negativity now if we could get more games similar to DS/3DS games but made for WiiU instead I would truly be happy.

Honestly, this is my theory on what Nintendo is going to do.

Give us a whole slew of amazing 3DS games. Then they're going to give us a whole slew of amazing WiiU games, then slowly give us both, albeit more spaced out.