Devs Say Wii U Weaker Than Current Consoles

H

HardOCP News

[H] News
Joined
Dec 31, 1969
Messages
0
Developers claiming the Wii U is weaker than current-gen consoles isn't a surprise. What would actually come as a surprise is if developers said it was a generation ahead in terms of power.

Another developer at a major company confirmed this point of view. "Yeah, that's true. It doesn't produce graphics as well as the PS3 or the 360," said the source. "There aren't as many shaders, it's not as capable. Sure, some things are better, mostly as a result of it being a more modern design. But overall the Wii U just can't quite keep up."
Click to expand...
 
Weird, I thought we kept hearing it was going to be like 4x faster than current gen.
 
If that's true, it's disappointing. I wasn't expecting Nintendo to go all out in power, but it shouldn't take much to surpass the ps3 and 360. By PC gaming standards, the ps3 and 360 are very weak.
 
Definitely was expecting more from Nintendo after this many years of design.

I agree that when you compare the current gen console (current really meaning circa 2009) hardware to current (current) PC gaming hardware, it's incredibly the disparity in power and capabilities.
 
Major mistake on Nintendo's part. They needed something at least as powerful as the PS3/Xbox to allow easy portability to capture 3rd party titles. The Wii U is a bad step backward in innovation and hopefully not power, too.
 
How exactly is that possible? I mean, the hardware in the 360 and PS3 are circa 2004-2005 technology. I just can't fathom how Nintendo could release something weaker in 2012. Didn't they say it was using a 4000-series based GPU?
 
Bleh!

While some, and perhaps rightfully so, argue that the Wii is more than the graphics due to the interface the Kinect pretty much nullified that argument for future games. It's a neat concept but give me a damn controller and let me play without getting tired from moving around, if I wanted exercise I wouldn't be playing video games. Wii U won't even give you X360 graphics? Yikes man, yikes.
 
They sold more than the others with much weaker hardware than the others and was the first time in forever that nintendo made a top selling console. If you look at the audience they mainly cater to, this makes sense. People hardly bought the Wii for it's amazing graphics, so any more would probably be overkill.
 
DeathPrincess said:
They sold more than the others with much weaker hardware than the others and was the first time in forever that nintendo made a top selling console. If you look at the audience they mainly cater to, this makes sense. People hardly bought the Wii for it's amazing graphics, so any more would probably be overkill.
Click to expand...

How many Wiis are still flying off the shelves, though? Kinda seems like the Wii craze ended quite some time ago. Nintendo needs to step up their game.
 
MavericK96 said:
How many Wiis are still flying off the shelves, though? Kinda seems like the Wii craze ended quite some time ago. Nintendo needs to step up their game.
Click to expand...

The Wii hit the saturation point and lacks good games.
 
I really can't belive it would be slower then a xbox 360 or PS3. That sucks. I was hopping it would push XBOX and PS to get there new systems out sooner.
 
DeathPrincess said:
They sold more than the others with much weaker hardware than the others and was the first time in forever that nintendo made a top selling console. If you look at the audience they mainly cater to, this makes sense. People hardly bought the Wii for it's amazing graphics, so any more would probably be overkill.
Click to expand...

They sold more for 1 reason only. The price.
They have already stated the the Wii U will be priced at much higher than the Wii was when it launched.
If it comes in at 300+ it will not sell like the Wii did at under 200.

Nintendo is making a HUGE mistake in my eyes. This new console is going to be their flagship product for the next half decade at least. Starting behind the previous generation is a poor decision in my mind. Developers will be forced to make completely separate titles for the Wii U, instead of being able to port to all platforms because the graphics will just be too far behind. This will likely cause devs to choose not to work with Wii U as much as they might otherwise. Committing resources to 1 console, vs the same resources to PC and both competing consoles is much more cost effective.

If I owned Nintendo stock, I'd be unloading it as soon as possible.
 
I cannot think about the Wii U without being reminded of Kung Pow: Enter the Fist

WEEOOOWEEOOOWEEOOO
 
S[H]ady;1038570398 said:
Committing resources to 1 console, vs the same resources to PC and both competing consoles is much more cost effective.
Click to expand...

This should say "is not as cost effective"
 
Nintendo has always been notoriously conservative with its hardware when it came to their home consoles.

I'm pretty sure that, because of that, the Wii turned a profit on its console from day number one. It cost them 160 bucks to produce a unit in 2006. And due to continued improvements in the manufacturing process it was down to like 80 bucks by the following year. And the Wii originally cost 250 bucks, a price they were able to hit because they didn't go all out on the hardware.

Sony and Microsoft have lost their pants on the hardware for years and years. I paid 600 bucks for my PS3 in 2006 (when the PS3 cost 840 bucks to produce) and although it was awfully nice to have Blu-Ray in the house so early on both Sony and I paid for it. As for Microsoft, they had to pay I believe it was $715 bucks each 360 unit and it was nowhere near that expensive at the store at release.

The hardware was awfully nice, and let developers make some really nice games for a very long time... but it was also ridiculously expensive for all parties involved. Only Nintendo came out ahead.
 
Jalidi said:
Nintendo has always been notoriously conservative with its hardware when it came to their home consoles.
Click to expand...

Yes, that's why the N64 was a powerhouse, with its MIPS CPU and SGI-designed GPU totally destroying the competition graphics-wise. Only reason why its graphics didn't get more press was due to the limited room for textures on the cartridges. The GC was no slouch either, using 1T-SRAM to get an extra speedboost, easily competing with the original XBox.

The Wii U is supposedly using an HD46xxx-based GPU and current PPC CPU. To get both on a level on par or only slightly better than the 2004/5-era GPU and CPU in the current Sony and MSFT consoles you'd need to do some serious underclocking.

The Cell CPU is still very hard to program for and unsuitable for branching code like AI and physics. Its pre-HD2000 CPU is a joke compared to even a budget HD4xxx-series GPU.

The Xbox 360's GPU is on the same level as the PS3's, and its CPU is a tri-core, 3.2 GHz PPC-based CPU without Out of Order processing, meaning that it's less efficient than an OoO CPU. It'd get crushed by a modern PPC CPU, such as those based on the POWER 7 architecture, which is OoO.

Anyway, I do not put any faith in these rumours.
 
And who exactly is shocked? Nintendo has never been about power.
 
Given the specs we already know about the Wii U, I find it to be physically impossible that it's weaker than the current-gen of consoles.
 
Nintendo for the last 3 generations has had someone else drop ready to go hardware on their lap, N64, GameCube and Wii are all more or less hardware designed by someone else.

They haven't built a console from the ground up sense the SNES excluding their portable systems. From the n64 on all of Nintendo's consoles have had weird quirks to them, N64 Rambus memory and SGI based render tech, Gamecube funny use of 1T srams mixed with dram, Wii has the wiimote motion control the cubes odd memory config.

It is one thing to be conservative with the overall capability but sometimes its just cutting your nose off to spite your face. The N64's 8bit Rambus memory interface, tiny tiny texture cache(4k) and lack of CDROM severely hurt that console, The Gamecubes funny mini discs and uninspired GPU severely hurt that console, And the Wii is little more then a Higher clocked gamecube with sometimes inspired sometimes uninspired control interface.
 
Elledan said:
Yes, that's why the N64 was a powerhouse, with its MIPS CPU and SGI-designed GPU totally destroying the competition graphics-wise. Only reason why its graphics didn't get more press was due to the limited room for textures on the cartridges. The GC was no slouch either, using 1T-SRAM to get an extra speedboost, easily competing with the original XBox.

The Wii U is supposedly using an HD46xxx-based GPU and current PPC CPU. To get both on a level on par or only slightly better than the 2004/5-era GPU and CPU in the current Sony and MSFT consoles you'd need to do some serious underclocking.

The Cell CPU is still very hard to program for and unsuitable for branching code like AI and physics. Its pre-HD2000 CPU is a joke compared to even a budget HD4xxx-series GPU.

The Xbox 360's GPU is on the same level as the PS3's, and its CPU is a tri-core, 3.2 GHz PPC-based CPU without Out of Order processing, meaning that it's less efficient than an OoO CPU. It'd get crushed by a modern PPC CPU, such as those based on the POWER 7 architecture, which is OoO.

Anyway, I do not put any faith in these rumours.
Click to expand...
My thoughts exactly
 
this really doesnt make sense to me. how can a 7800gt based gpu be more powerful then a hd 4890? or a x1800 be faster then a hd 4890?

i think the problem is no one knows how to get the most out of the hardware.
 
tricky0502 said:
this really doesnt make sense to me. how can a 7800gt based gpu be more powerful then a hd 4890? or a x1800 be faster then a hd 4890?

i think the problem is no one knows how to get the most out of the hardware.
Click to expand...

My guess is it's more along the lines of a 4650 in terms of power.
 
Decko87 said:
My guess is it's more along the lines of a 4650 in terms of power.
Click to expand...
A 4650 is still more powerful than an X1800XT especially when combined with the faster CPU, and you figure that you are coding at a much lower level than through the DirectX API.
 
sleepeeg3 said:
Major mistake on Nintendo's part. They needed something at least as powerful as the PS3/Xbox to allow easy portability to capture 3rd party titles. The Wii U is a bad step backward in innovation and hopefully not power, too.
Click to expand...

How is it a step back in innovation? I Think the other next gen consoles will be the bad step in innovation.
 
So Nintendo kicks the asses of MS and Sony in console sales for a good long while, and this is how they thank their customers for their next iteration? Fucking sad. Might as well buy whatever rights may be still in existence to the Atari 7600, mass produce it, then throw it in Wii U retail packaging.

Wow, no different than drilling a hole in the bottom of your own ship while it's out to sea.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.
 
Elledan said:
Yes, that's why the N64 was a powerhouse, with its MIPS CPU and SGI-designed GPU totally destroying the competition graphics-wise. Only reason why its graphics didn't get more press was due to the limited room for textures on the cartridges. The GC was no slouch either, using 1T-SRAM to get an extra speedboost, easily competing with the original XBox.

The Wii U is supposedly using an HD46xxx-based GPU and current PPC CPU. To get both on a level on par or only slightly better than the 2004/5-era GPU and CPU in the current Sony and MSFT consoles you'd need to do some serious underclocking.

The Cell CPU is still very hard to program for and unsuitable for branching code like AI and physics. Its pre-HD2000 CPU is a joke compared to even a budget HD4xxx-series GPU.

The Xbox 360's GPU is on the same level as the PS3's, and its CPU is a tri-core, 3.2 GHz PPC-based CPU without Out of Order processing, meaning that it's less efficient than an OoO CPU. It'd get crushed by a modern PPC CPU, such as those based on the POWER 7 architecture, which is OoO.

Anyway, I do not put any faith in these rumours.
Click to expand...

Agreed. The specs just don't match what's being said. It's more likely an issue with the software not being optimized for the hardware than anything. We'll just have to wait and see when it comes out.
 
MavericK96 said:
Weird, I thought we kept hearing it was going to be like 4x faster than current gen.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I'm not sure who and for what reason started this rumor, up to this point it was already acknowledged that the Wii U will be slightly more powerful than the PS3.

Wii U is going to have an IBM POWER7 based cpu.

Wii U's gpu is custom and R700 based, radeon 4850 level of performance is expected.

So yeah, the Wii U looks vastly underpowered compared to next gen consoles, but it's definitely more powerful than the x360 and ps3.
 
Good time to get into pc gaming. Same graphics power now as you would get in 2013/2014 with next gen consoles and you won't miss used games because us pc gamers have pretty much never had them. :p
 
http://hothardware.com/News/AMD-Radeon-GPU-Powers-Nintendos-New-Wii-U/

what happend to it using the cheep old ass R770 based CPU

EVEN the cheep old ass GPU pwns the even cheeper old ass xbox 360 and ps3 gpu

Nintendo disabling shaders on the chip makes no SENSE.

more like they have not included the extra shader code in there Dev kits yet because they have not yet gone out of prototype phase I have never seen nintendo put out a final dev kit and spec rules until after the console has shipped.

put it bluntly the ps3 ram specs changed when they decided after the console launched that the ps3 os will not take up as much RAM anymore and thus they changed the rules of the dev kit.

Microsoft does the same.

it will be the same for the wii U the drivers and OS are updatable they are not static anymore they move at a new pace in this day and age. even in the old days you did not havea dev kit that let you use the full power of the machine at launch.
 
In other words the dev is probabley clueless and is one of the devs that make cheep stuff like

imaginepartybabyz.jpg


and dont know nintendo is not done with the machine or dev kits or he is an dumb ass from the bottom of the company and nintendo would not care enough about there studio to inform them of any changes.
 
We already knew that Nintendo was keen on keeping costs down, and so even if they did pass PS3/360 in power, it wouldn't have been by much. But, still, in 2012, the PS3 is such an easy target. Nintendo could have had a moment of glory, "The most powerful console on the market", even if it were still crap compared to a cheap, modern gaming PC.
 
This is the first rumor that the Wii U is less powerful than current gen. So far everything out there says it has more power than the current consoles. If the rumored specs are true then there is no reality in that article.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top