Tempcast 61: That's the Thing That I Do

[Terminator02]

Runtime: 1:12:13​

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Explicit​

Terminator02, iFish, and monkat are reunited once again so that monkat can filth up the podcast and iFish can talk about what he does.

Topics:
2:04 Nexus 7
6:03 Paper Mario: Sticker Star
7:14 Pokémon Black/White 2
13:02 Adventure Time: Hey Ice King! Why’d You Steal Our Garbage?!
20:45 The Walking Dead Ep. 5
29:45 Ingress by Google
37:50 Nintendo: don’t expect a 99-cent Mario game
46:30 Wii U slow RAM speed, weak CPU, game porting issues
56:01 Nintendo Fails Online
1:00:13 Wii U running homebrew
1:02:31 Mirror’s Edge 2 in Production

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Music: Pterodactyls by Solarbear


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[iFish]

It's what I do best.

 

[Eerpow]

The ram speed isn't slow, it's four chips not only one. Multiply the number by four, Shinen for example was very impressed by the RAM speed.
The only complaint devs have about the Wii U is that the CPU clock speed is low since they're trying to port CPU intensive games to a modern GPU focused architecture.

 

[ProtoKun7]

I'll listen to it despite monkat.

 

[Terminator02]

The ram speed isn't slow, it's four chips not only one. Multiply the number by four, Shinen for example was very impressed by the RAM speed.
The only complaint devs have about the Wii U is that the CPU clock speed is low since they're trying to port CPU intensive games to a modern GPU focused architecture.

You may be right on the RAM, I didn't look into it that much. Thanks for the correction. However, the CPU being slower still strikes me as being cheap on Nintendo's part. While more and more of the computation is being offloaded onto the GPU, I don't see why they can't include a CPU that's comparable to the bleeding edge of 2005. If they really wanted the system to be easy to port to (after all of their talk about getting 3rd party support), they should have at least matched last generation's CPU power.

I'll listen to it despite monkat.

Aww, thanks.

 

[Eerpow]

You may be right on the RAM, I didn't look into it that much. Thanks for the correction. However, the CPU being slower still strikes me as being cheap on Nintendo's part. While more and more of the computation is being offloaded onto the GPU, I don't see why they can't include a CPU that's comparable to the bleeding edge of 2005. If they really wanted the system to be easy to port to (after all of their talk about getting 3rd party support), they should have at least matched last generation's CPU power.

Yeah it's cheap, it's a gamble really and I think they're expecting a little too much from 3rd parties, 3rd parties aren't willing to put work in their ports mainly because they still don't know how the Wii U sales and market currently looks like, optimizing a PS360 game is very rewarding so not enough sales is the reason why 3rd parties to cheap out.
imo the launch lineup is pretty weak so they should bring out or at least announce new games asap in order to keep up sales.

Slow clock speeds for physics calculations and that sort of stuff is pretty much confirmed, and the reason it is this way is because of heat, console size and power consumption, another thing is that that's how games are handled on PC. Nothing is said about overall CPU efficiency and Nintendo claimed in a Japanese N Direct thing that the GPGPU, which specializes in that sort of problematic processing, will solve them. Let's see how it turns out once the system will get its first real exclusives, right now there aren't any except for games like NSMB :/ Another thing is that Iwata claimed on an interview that all games available maybe reach half of what the system is capable of outputting visually so he seems optimistic at least.

But yeah things tend to get blown out of proportion, one of the devs behind metro said that they would have to rewrite huge chunks of code for the game to work efficiently. Let's see how they play their cards maybe we'll end up with another Wii or at least a PS2 compared to its generation of game systems, weakest of the bunch but definitely not missing out on any multi platform games because of it. I'm just tired of all rumors about the next gen systems, Xbox being a kinect centric machine, Wii U another Wii etc. Personally I just want another PS2GCXBOX era :3

 

[ProtoKun7]

"Sweet Dreams" by Eurythmics was the song in question.

Some of them want to abuse you
Some of them want to be abused.

 

[reaper527]

Let's see how they play their cards maybe we'll end up with another Wii or at least a PS2 compared to its generation of game systems, weakest of the bunch but definitely not missing out on any multi platform games because of it.

worth mentioning, the ps2 didn't miss out on multiplatform titles because the games were made for the ps2 and then ported out. the ps2 had a huge install base when the competition launched, cementing its place as a viable console. at the end of the day, the wii-u is going to be a completely different beast though, as the hardware specs on it are likely to be a much larger gap between its competition than any other console in history.

 

[exangel]

The Nexus 7 is nice but it's missing a couple things that it didn't even cross my mind ASUS would skimp on. The big one for me is that there's no vibration, so there's no haptic feedback which seriously annoys me because even $50 prepaid android phones have this. Nevertheless the price for performance is awesome, though I went with the 32GB myself (and I'm glad, because the Sony Music Unlimited app doesn't work with Jellybean yet, and I am not re-subscribing to Spotify. So I have room for my ~23 GB music collection, and all of my games.) The other thing is that it doesn't have Gorilla Glass, but mine's got a screen protector and I'll use a cover with it when I take it with me anywhere. Gorilla Glass is more of a necessity with cell phones IMO, since they tend to get more use and people are less likely to treat them with kid gloves.

FWIW, if anyone in the US is looking to avoid sales tax, I got mine from Newegg.

 

[Eerpow]

worth mentioning, the ps2 didn't miss out on multiplatform titles because the games were made for the ps2 and then ported out. the ps2 had a huge install base when the competition launched, cementing its place as a viable console. at the end of the day, the wii-u is going to be a completely different beast though, as the hardware specs on it are likely to be a much larger gap between its competition than any other console in history.

I said that the PS2 got all the 3rd party attention despite being the weakest, and yes that was due to the early install base, the support for DVD's etc.

Than any other console in history? The Wii was that, it's impossible for it to happen again. Believe me that the Wii U won't be much weaker than the upcoming systems. The other next gen machines won't be PC quality, they won't cost $599 or even $450 the Wii U is already a lot more capable than current machines, the specs we currently know outperforms PS360 by far. There has been lot's of BS topics recently but if you take a look at those topics you'll realize what it actually means. Just look at the most recent one here on GBAtemp concerning the CPU clock, it tells us nothing about how the hardware will perform, do your research, if not we have a lot of knowledgeable members here, read what they have to say.
It costs $350 and sells with a small loss even, if it had hardware comparable to PS360 it wouldn't reach that price point unless they covered it in gold. Expensive controller? No the system doesn't even include a harddrive with that price. The CPU is weak but the GPU, RAM and everything else haven't gotten a single complaint from developers, the other way around actually, developers are praising the GPUs capabilities. What we need to know before we can judge the Wii U is how good the GPGPU functionality is, until then we don't know if a weaker CPU is either a disadvantage or even an advantage.

I think it will be weaker then the competition yes, but it will not be left out once other consoles are released due to that they all will have similar modern architecture. Games on consoles nowadays are so heavily optimized so you can't just effortlessly port them without having to lower the taxing on the CPU, making games slightly less visually impressive.

Iwata said that he think that the Wii was a failure when it comes to specs and online, he does not want to repeat those same mistakes, he also believes that the Wii U's competition is what Sony and Microsoft will release not the systems that are already out. Reading what Nintendo of Japan has to say about their current strategies is a lot more interesting than reading NoA's, NoA doesn't know shit really, Reggie is just a clueless spokesman as always.

I really hope we get a more interesting generation of consoles this time around, I mean I just play most games on PC nowadays. As much as people will hate me for saying this but I think next gen needs more exclusives.

 

[ProtoKun7]

The Nexus 7 is nice but it's missing a couple things that it didn't even cross my mind ASUS would skimp on. The big one for me is that there's no vibration, so there's no haptic feedback which seriously annoys me because even $50 prepaid android phones have this. Nevertheless the price for performance is awesome, though I went with the 32GB myself (and I'm glad, because the Sony Music Unlimited app doesn't work with Jellybean yet, and I am not re-subscribing to Spotify. So I have room for my ~23 GB music collection, and all of my games.) The other thing is that it doesn't have Gorilla Glass, but mine's got a screen protector and I'll use a cover with it when I take it with me anywhere. Gorilla Glass is more of a necessity with cell phones IMO, since they tend to get more use and people are less likely to treat them with kid gloves.

FWIW, if anyone in the US is looking to avoid sales tax, I got mine from Newegg.

Tablets don't tend to have haptic feedback as it is; I'm not aware of any that do (not to say there are none).