Third Party on Lack of Nintendo Support, Wii U CPU

By Jorge Ba-oh 11.01.2014 23

Third Party on Lack of Nintendo Support, Wii U CPU on Nintendo gaming news, videos and discussion

A report from an anonymous third party Wii U developer have unearthed problems faced developing for Nintendo's home console.

The latest Digital Foundry feature published this week outlined problems with communication, documentation and issues about the Nintendo Wii U's CPU capabilities. The developer had contacted Nintendo about concerns that the Wii U's CPU/processing capability seemed slower than the Xbox 360 in terms of raw power, however Nintendo felt that "other CPU features would improve the performance".

Despite this, project went ahead and studios reported potential issues to Nintendo, including compilation times, "link step" and a clunky debugger that Nintendo had provided. Despite getting there eventually, time was lost through slow processing and compiling code. Communication between Western developers and Nintendo of Japan was also an issue, with responses taking "around a week" to respond due to the need to translate messages back and forth.

Image for Third Party on Lack of Nintendo Support, Wii U CPU


That said, "some code could see substantial improvements that did mitigate the lower clocks", with developers feeling that the GPU was improved but still "leagues away" from the PS4 and Xbox One.

Online was another area that caused problems between the studio and Nintendo was the lack of documentation and support when it came to online play and Miiverse integration. "Simple things like sending a friends request to another user were not supported in the OS, so you had to boot a separate program on the console manually, via a debug menu".

Upon release the game was well-received, but sales "were less than impressive". It's "unlikely that we would ever release another Wii U title".

What do you think of this developer's claims on the Wii U hardware and lack of Nintendo support?

Comment on this article

You can comment as a guest or join the Cubed3 community below: Sign Up for Free Account Login

Preview PostPreview Post Your Name:
Validate your comment
  Enter the letters in the image to validate your comment.
Submit Post

Comments

Hynaman is offline. Hynaman 11.01.2014#1

O.k so who can make a prediction of who this company is and the game?

When in doubt....Whip it out!
 
jb is offline. jb 12.01.2014#2

Hynaman said:
O.k so who can make a prediction of who this company is and the game?

Hmm - presumably a launch one so maybe ZombiU would be my best bet, if true, of possibly Mass Effect 3?

Cubed3 Admin/Founder & Designer
 
Mush is offline. Mush 12.01.2014#3

These so-called "developers" are anonymous for a reason. Either they aren't a legitimate developer or they are just out to create some more bad press for the Wii U. Developers have openly stated that the Wii U is powerful than some may think, these same developers also have games released on the system and do not hide their identity.

Instead of listening to anonymous sources, we should acknowledge what other developers have said - Developers who have actually developed games for the Wii U and have worked with Nintendo.

 
, is offline. , 12.01.2014#4

Exactly, and we here should also all acknowledge that nobody knows anything about Nintendo hardware and internal game business contacts, so we might just as well be talking about the means to contact deceased people via spirit world communicators, and we have the same chance to be correct about any of this. But that's less fun so lets not. Smilie

 
Canyarion is offline. Canyarion 12.01.2014#5

Hynaman said:
O.k so who can make a prediction of who this company is and the game?
On NintendoEverything.com I've read speculation that it's the developer of Darksiders II. It would make extra sense because THQ went bankrupt, so the developer is probably not too afraid of getting punished for telling this.

 
Mush is offline. Mush 12.01.2014#6

Canyarion said:
Hynaman said:
O.k so who can make a prediction of who this company is and the game?
On NintendoEverything.com I've read speculation that it's the developer of Darksiders II. It would make extra sense because THQ went bankrupt, so the developer is probably not too afraid of getting punished for telling this.
Because THQ totally went bankrupt due to poor sales of Darksiders II on Wii U...

In all seriousness though, if it was the DSII developers, they should look at THQ's other games before they say something like this about the Wii U. I'm doubtful that it's them, though.

 
, is offline. , 12.01.2014#7

Instead of listening to anonymous sources, we should acknowledge what other developers have said - Developers who have actually developed games for the Wii U and have worked with Nintendo.

Do this please.

 
J4K is offline. J4K 12.01.2014#8

These so-called "developers" are anonymous for a reason.

Yes they're anonymous for a reason. It's called non-disclosure agreements. If they weren't anonymous they would be opening themselves up to lawsuits. Not to mention unnecessary bad blood with Nintendo.

You always have to be careful with anonymous information. Always. But reports coming from the tech-arm of Eurogamer are more reliable than most, and this report actually makes a lot of sense. Digital Foundry is a reputable press outlet, let's not automatically assume they haven't done due diligence here just because the report is unfavorable for Nintendo.

 
WP-Final is offline. WP-Final 12.01.2014#9

All 3 big companies go through this. The majority say the hardware is great and they get good support but the odd developer seems to always have issues. Can't please everyone sadly.

 
vgebler (guest) 12.01.2014#10

Mush said:
These so-called "developers" are anonymous for a reason. Either they aren't a legitimate developer or they are just out to create some more bad press for the Wii U.

Not necessarily. Developers typically need to sign non-disclosure agreements that would put them in trouble if they were found sharing this kind of information, no matter how true that information was.

Sonic_13 is offline. Sonic_13 13.01.2014#11

vgebler (guest) said:
Mush said:
These so-called "developers" are anonymous for a reason. Either they aren't a legitimate developer or they are just out to create some more bad press for the Wii U.

Not necessarily. Developers typically need to sign non-disclosure agreements that would put them in trouble if they were found sharing this kind of information, no matter how true that information was.

Many people have spoken about development on Wii U and 99% are known. Then we have these "anonymous" developers that pop up every once in a while to trash the system.


( Edited 13.01.2014 02:24 by Sonic_13 )

 
vgebler (guest) 13.01.2014#12

Sonic_13 said:
vgebler (guest) said:
Mush said:
These so-called "developers" are anonymous for a reason. Either they aren't a legitimate developer or they are just out to create some more bad press for the Wii U.

Not necessarily. Developers typically need to sign non-disclosure agreements that would put them in trouble if they were found sharing this kind of information, no matter how true that information was.

Many people have spoken about development on Wii U and 99% are known. Then we have these "anonymous" developers that pop up every once in a while to trash the system.

Understandable, since you are not going to get into trouble with Nintendo (or your employer) for saying all nice things about Nintendo (or your employer).  It might even be broadly cleared by Nintendo PR.  For negative or controversial stuff, it's a completely different story, and sources would want to be anonymous.

JoshSL is offline. JoshSL 13.01.2014#13

https://twitter.com/PG_kamiya/statuses/422750626368339968

Considering how notoriously unequivocally candid this guy is and considering his undeniable industry experience, I reckon we can take his word for it over some "anonymous" developer we know nothing (talent, past, scope, dev team sizes, etc) about.

Kamiya has never been silent over his criticisms of Nintendo systems, I doubt he'd start now.

( Edited 13.01.2014 19:05 by SuperLink )

Twitter | C3 Writer/Moderator | Backloggery
 
J4K is offline. J4K 13.01.2014#14

SuperLink said:
https://twitter.com/PG_kamiya/statuses/422750626368339968

Considering how notoriously unequivocally candid this guy is and considering his undeniable industry experience, I reckon we can take his word for it over some "anonymous" developer we know nothing (talent, past, scope, dev team sizes, etc) about.

Kamiya has never been silent over his criticisms of Nintendo systems, I doubt he'd start now.

Starting now could have something to do with Platinum being tied to the hip with Nintendo right now. What's he gonna say? 

A lot of the complaints in this article stem from Nintendo support as well, something a Japanese company would have less trouble with than a Western company trying to get English responses to technical questions.

Guys, complaints about the Wii U CPU aren't anonymous smear jobs. They're the reality facing the Wii U multiplatform situation every day. Every time you see another port that somehow performs slower than it's 360/PS3 counterpart, you're seeing the evidence of a Wii U CPU that a) isn't fast enough or b) Nintendo got a little too cute trying to make the CPU different or c) all of the above.

 
JoshSL is offline. JoshSL 14.01.2014#15

Jacob4000 said:

Starting now could have something to do with Platinum being tied to the hip with Nintendo right now. What's he gonna say? 

A lot of the complaints in this article stem from Nintendo support as well, something a Japanese company would have less trouble with than a Western company trying to get English responses to technical questions.


Kamiya has been vocally critical of various Wii U features like Virtual Console and Wii U buttons over the last year. He also complained regularly and conspicuously about how little Nintendo were doing to promote W101 in early 2013. Believe me, as someone who follows him on Twitter he has absolutely zero qualms with criticising collaborators, any interview with him or question aimed at him makes that obvious.

The west/Japan gap is a genuine concern and I believe it's real regardless of how experienced/trustworthy this source is, but I don't believe Iwata becoming based in US as well as Japan is a coincidence. If Nintendo has any hope of appealing to indies (which they do, indies love Nintendo and I don't think that would be possible if regional relaying was still an issue) they will have solved this issue already. This supports my idea that this criticism comes from an early dev kit (its common knowledge that the final dev kits went out way too late- right before launch). Many devs that released a Wii U launch title haven't supported it since so that makes the most sense.

Devs also vocally criticised the ps3, gc and original xbox a lot for being different to what they were used to and being difficult to develop for, didn't stop devs getting used to it. Most sources who've actually worked on the Wii U describe it comfortably, even the guys who ported Crysis 3 to it and were clearly not attached to Nintendo as the project didn't even go ahead.

People are quick to point fingers at the Wii U architecture but any dev with experience will get used to it, seemingly it's far less of an issue here than it has been on platforms like PS3, GC and Saturn in the past. Its real problems lie elsewhere. Also keep in mind that third parties have no obligation to outright /praise/ dev they work on, but the Wii U has gotten genuine praise from multiple devs like the NFS devs and stuff.

Honestly I understand the Wii U criticism, it's not in the best place in the market, but I think it at least deserves credit where credit is due. If one anonymous report is enough to tarnish a system or its developers, you may as well hate every system there is because I guarantee you every system with a buzz has gotten reports of this nature. Compared with some of the most successful systems ever made, the Wii U is a smooth dev experience by many accounts, I seriously don't think it can be blamed for third party support. Nintendo do and always have had comms issues when it comes to third parties but I'd like to think they're improving alongside indie comms.

EDIT: And another experienced dev speaks up: https://twitter.com/MikeDodgerStout/statuses/422826491181690880

EDIT2: Actually, here's a super good article that talks about everything I mentioned and more; http://www.destructoid.com/wii-u-development-drama-nintendo-s-box-is-a-nintendo-box-268933.phtml

The original article even acknowledges that this was a pre-release development problem which may or may not have had a butterfly effect despite the devkit being smooth to work with now, so I was right about that.

( Edited 14.01.2014 20:23 by SuperLink )

Twitter | C3 Writer/Moderator | Backloggery
 
J4K is offline. J4K 15.01.2014#16

EDIT: And another experienced dev speaks up:https://twitter.com/MikeDodgerStout/statuses/422826491181690880EDIT2: Actually, here's a super good article that talks about everything I mentioned and more; http://www.destructoid.com/wii-u-development-drama-nintendo-s-box-is-a-nintendo-box-268933.phtmlThe original article even acknowledges that this was a pre-release development problem which may or may not have had a butterfly effect despite the devkit being smooth to work with now, so I was right about that.

Neither of those links really go into any technical detail (especially the Destructoid one which just reads like "hey guyyyys...stopppp it"). 

I'm starting to think the dichotomy on performance is the option b) I laid out: Nintendo got too cute trying to make the CPU different. If you're making an exclusive game ground up for the Wii U, then yeah you can deal with the fact that it does things differently and tailor your game accordingly. If you're trying to port an existing PS360 AAA game though, then it gets in your way that Nintendo didn't do things a bit more conventionally.

I dunno the answer -- all I see is time after time Wii U ports come up woefully short on the performance end and not from a lack of effort on behalf of exasperated developers. So all these people making exclusive titles with a lot of support from Nintendo don't really change the narrative; they just add a certain nuance that makes the answer more muddled.

Devs also vocally criticised the ps3, gc and original xbox a lot for being different to what they were used to and being difficult to develop for, didn't stop devs getting used to it.

PS3 ports still often fall short of the 360 version. Even after nearly ten years. It's generally only PS3 exclusives that actually surpass what can be seen on 360.

Again, that's the problem you face when you get too cute with your system architecture. Maybe we're seeing that problem here. Which is unfortunate -- why would Nintendo do this? To save a few watts so that they could make the box smaller and cuter? Makes me question their priorities if this is indeed the case. Part of going with a more conventional architecture is making ports easier; yet all these PS360 ports (with a few exceptions) can't equal the frame rates of decade old hardware.

So yeah, maybe the answer's not simple. But something here doesn't add up.

( Edited 15.01.2014 02:57 by Jacob4000 )

 
JoshSL is offline. JoshSL 15.01.2014#17

Jacob4000 said:
I'm starting to think the dichotomy on performance is the option b) I laid out: Nintendo got too cute trying to make the CPU different. If you're making an exclusive game ground up for the Wii U, then yeah you can deal with the fact that it does things differently and tailor your game accordingly. If you're trying to port an existing PS360 AAA game though, then it gets in your way that Nintendo didn't do things a bit more conventionally.

I dunno the answer -- all I see is time after time Wii U ports come up woefully short on the performance end and not from a lack of effort on behalf of exasperated developers. So all these people making exclusive titles with a lot of support from Nintendo don't really change the narrative; they just add a certain nuance that makes the answer more muddled.


I ain't talkin about exclusives though, sure I mentioned Kamiya but he's beyond experienced enough, and that Skylanders guy isn't making any exclusives nor were the NFS guys or the Crysis 3 guys. Wii U ports versus ports on systems which devs have been working familiarly with for over 6 years? That's not exactly surprising. What is surprising is when a port of a game manages to be better than a PS3 port less than a year after release, a fraction of the time devs had to get used to the PS3 (AC4).

Look at early Wii U games and then more recent Wii U games, the Wii U version of AC4 performs as one of the best amongst PS3/360/PC/Wii U. This is because unlike a lot of the Wii U's launch titles which were quick port jobs on outdated devkits, AC4 and other recent games had proper port treatments. The Wii U isn't difficult to dev for and by far the vast vast majority of devs are saying that, if it was nearly as difficult to dev for as the PS3 or GC was it wouldn't be a secret. And..

PS3 ports still often fall short of the 360 version. Even after nearly ten years. It's generally only PS3 exclusives that actually surpass what can be seen on 360.

Again, that's the problem you face when you get too cute with your system architecture. Maybe we're seeing that problem here. Which is unfortunate -- why would Nintendo do this? To save a few watts so that they could make the box smaller and cuter? Makes me question their priorities if this is indeed the case. Part of going with a more conventional architecture is making ports easier; yet all these PS360 ports (with a few exceptions) can't equal the frame rates of decade old hardware.

So yeah, maybe the answer's not simple. But something here doesn't add up.


And again it's not caused the PS3 to be a complete bomb overall nor has it outright stopped third party support despite being unquestionably harder to dev for than the Wii U.

I'm not sure why you're so convinced that the Wii U is a tough nut to dev for after all this time, it's common knowledge that it was in its early devkit periods but it's not now and there's no shortage of evidence to back that up. Even if you just skimmed the Destructoid article, there are tons of links in it to other articles that supply it with context from actual developers. PS3 games trailed behind 360 games for years, even after devs had a chance to get used to the system. Devs have actually gotten the chance to get used to the Wii U now (I mean obviously things won't instantly perform as good as the 360 when they've been used to the 360 avidly for 6+ years already?) and when there are more third party multiplats (which doesn't seem likely any time soon lmao), we'll begin to see that things are a lot more smooth than they were at launch. Deus Ex, too, runs smooth as heck, and originally the Wii U version of Batman Origins was the smoothest and least glitchy version, as well as the Wii U version of Need for Speed being the most impressive. This is less than a year after Wii U release and more importantly less than a year after the final dev kits went out, and I don't think getting used to development and having smoother ports than PS3 and occasionally 360 in under a year compared to their 6+ is something to shake a stick at. The WIi U is more powerful but not that much more powerful. It being new doesn't make it immune to lag n such when we still get PC games that lag on top settings. What we should instead look for is how quickly a dev can get used to working with it, because every new tech needs getting used to no matter which dev you are.

Everything adds up, the bad ports were done around launch when many devs hadn't had time to use the new easy dev kits, since then devs who have worked on it have nothing but praise for the system, even the Eurogamer article mentions that this anonymous dev was talking about pre-release Wii U work. There's nothing about it that doesn't add up, so I'm not sure why you're so adamant to cling to the notion that Nintendo are being "cute" with development architecture when literally all the evidence from actual professionals working on the thing suggest it's a surprisingly smooth experience.

If you want to know why third party support is bad you don't have to blame development, because regardless of how difficult a machine is to develop for, porting is expensive and releasing a game on a system where it won't sell is dumb, it's really not much worse than that and the Vita is having the exact same problem despite being a beaut from an ergonomic and development aspect. It's honestly a shame that these systems have such poor third party support because if third parties were into it we'd unquestionably see that the console manufacturers have actually tried to make them smooth development experiences.

The Wii U is fine to develop for, its problems are far bigger than that.

( Edited 15.01.2014 11:04 by SuperLink )

Twitter | C3 Writer/Moderator | Backloggery
 
, is offline. , 15.01.2014#18

To summarize this discussion so far:

Jacob4000 is mostly basing his argument around feelings, grounded in an original story and this highly questionable source which confirms his bias, disregarding the arguments SuperLink brings to the table, who cites multiple sources and evidence in the form of known developer citations to back up his claims.

 
J4K is offline. J4K 15.01.2014#19

Look at early Wii U games and then more recent Wii U games, the Wii U version of AC4 performs as one of the best amongst PS3/360/PC/Wii U. This is because unlike a lot of the Wii U's launch titles which were quick port jobs on outdated devkits, AC4 and other recent games had proper port treatments. The Wii U isn't difficult to dev for and by far the vast vast majority of devs are saying that, if it was nearly as difficult to dev for as the PS3 or GC was it wouldn't be a secret. And..

The Wii U version of AC4 consistently runs at a lower framerate than its PS360 version. Sometimes double digit frames lower. It's actually apparent even when playing the game that it just doesn't feel quite right. So I think you're quite off in characterizing AC4 as a Wii U success story. Improved from AC3? Yes, but still not besting last generation hardware.

Call of Duty: Ghosts too runs at a slower framerate than it's PS360 version. I think those would be the two most recent high profile multi-platform ports.

You mention the Crysis guys, and honestly I really really really wish they would release Crysis 3 footage from Wii U. That would answer a lot of questions for me. They say they got it running -- great, at the same framerate? What about resolution? How's the enemy count, physics? Did they have to make sacrifices? What kinds?

They got it running sure, but what does that mean? I want to know, because more than anyone in the industry the Crysis guys know their shit.

 if it was nearly as difficult to dev for as the PS3 or GC was it wouldn't be a secret. And..

Where are you getting this the GC was hard to develop for thing? It really wasn't. It was far better than the PS2, in fact. The only thing that made GC "hard" was when the hardware was recycled for Wii and people had moved on from fixed function pipelines to shaders.

I also never said it was as hard to develop for as the PS3. But I'm wondering if it does some quirky things like the PS3 that make the CPU a bit too different for it's own good when trying to get ports developed with other systems in mind to run.

Honestly I understand the Wii U criticism, it's not in the best place in the market, but I think it at least deserves credit where credit is due. If one anonymous report is enough to tarnish a system or its developers, you may as well hate every system there is because I guarantee you every system with a buzz has gotten reports of this nature.

One anonymous report? The Wii U has been fighting this CPU business it's whole life, backed up by ports that can't hit their targets. 

If you want to know why third party support is bad you don't have to blame development, because regardless of how difficult a machine is to develop for, porting is expensive and releasing a game on a system where it won't sell is dumb, it's really not much worse than that and the Vita is having the exact same problem despite being a beaut from an ergonomic and development aspect. It's honestly a shame that these systems have such poor third party support because if third parties were into it we'd unquestionably see that the console manufacturers have actually tried to make them smooth development experiences.

I'm not blaming the Wii U hardware for bad third party support. Not sure where you're getting that. Bad third-party support comes from the fact that Nintendo doesn't know how to manage it's relationship and the fact that three people in the world own a Wii U.

Jacob4000 is mostly basing his argument around feelings, grounded in an original story and this highly questionable source which confirms his bias, disregarding the arguments SuperLink brings to the table, who cites multiple sources and evidence in the form of known developer citations to back up his claims.

Well we can go a bit more in depth and talk about why the CPU has been pegged as the problem verses the GPU, but I think the last time you and I tried to have a discussion that moved beyond surface level details you said you were bored and wanted to go play games.

Now you just want to be passive aggressive, I suppose. 



( Edited 15.01.2014 15:32 by Jacob4000 )

 
, is offline. , 15.01.2014#20

You want to have a discussion about technical details, and why certain differences in console components are the reason for failure. You do not work in the games industry, like anyone here doesnt.
You know nothing of actually developing games or building consoles or managing developer relationships or selling games, yet you try to convince others why Nintendo isnt doing as well as some hoped.

So yes, like in that other post where you loved to preach the business gospel Im not intrigued by the truths you think you possess. Its indeed boring to engage in discussion with you, made extra worse by your condensating tone ie disrespect. You think your an athourity and thats how you talk to others; and that is yes, passive agressive. Sorry for hurting your feelings, but thats why I dont like to reply to your books.

 
J4K is offline. J4K 15.01.2014#21

, said:
You want to have a discussion about technical details, and why certain differences in console components are the reason for failure. You do not work in the games industry, like anyone here doesnt.


So yes, like in that other post where you loved to preach the business gospel Im not intrigued by the truths you think you possess. Its indeed boring to engage in discussion with you, made extra worse by your condensating tone ie disrespect. You think your an athourity and thats how you talk to others; and that is yes, passive agressive. Sorry for hurting your feelings, but thats why I dont like to reply to your books.

Oh no I don't pretend to be an absolute authority on any of this, but I'm an engineer so this is the stuff I enjoy reading about and studying and then discussing. But I do consider myself educated enough to talk on the issue.

If you'd like to dicuss politics, I'm up for that too. Similarly, I'm not an expert there, but I do what I can to make myself educated on the issues. Similar kind of deal.

You don't have to take anything I say as gospel -- you're quite welcome to think I'm a quack and wander off.

You know nothing of actually developing games or building consoles or managing developer relationships or selling games, yet you try to convince others why Nintendo isnt doing as well as some hoped.

Like anyone else here, I can only speculate. But we spend most of our time talking about how folks who are "trained professionals" like Michael Pachter don't know what the piss they're talking about. 

But I also don't consider myself an idiot, and I think it's pretty obvious to see Nintendo's failings with third parties. You're right to say I'm not an expert, but then this is fun stuff to talk about and speculate on. I've been following this industry for more than a decade (and a member here for nearly that long!), this is the stuff that's my  passion.

So yeah, you can reject my argument based on the fact that I'm not an expert. But then where do we go with this discussion? You don't answer the points I make. You just dismiss me entirely because I'm not lead technology officer at DICE. And that doesn't seem fair. You seem more interested in assassinating my credibility verses discussing points.

And there's really not a whole lot I can do with that. I can debate with SuperLink and others, because they'll address what I say with their own viewpoints, backed up with developer opinions etc. Just attacking me seems instead of addressing my points seems like a cop out.

As for my feelings, I've been here too long to let an internet debate hurt them, so don't sweat it. Smilie

( Edited 15.01.2014 17:02 by Jacob4000 )

 
JoshSL is offline. JoshSL 15.01.2014#22

As far as I know the Wii U version of AC4 runs better than the PS3 version which doesn't even display rain properly. And once again, these devs have been working regularly on PS3 and 360 for over half a decade versus about a year with Wii U, of course the Wii U isn't gonna match it yet even if it was the easiest system to work with around that power level. Don't forget that Ghosts was ported by a completely different dev and probably had to be done quickly after the core version was completed.

Jacob4000 said:

You mention the Crysis guys, and honestly I really really really wish they would release Crysis 3 footage from Wii U. That would answer a lot of questions for me. They say they got it running -- great, at the same framerate? What about resolution? How's the enemy count, physics? Did they have to make sacrifices? What kinds?

They got it running sure, but what does that mean? I want to know, because more than anyone in the industry the Crysis guys know their shit.


As far as I know it ran smoothly, the developers spoke positively and excitedly about it and honestly did not have to mention it at all if they didn't want to, they were under no NDA about whether they had to or couldn't. Also I wouldn't say more than anyone in the industry.


Where are you getting this the GC was hard to develop for thing? It really wasn't. It was far better than the PS2, in fact. The only thing that made GC "hard" was when the hardware was recycled for Wii and people had moved on from fixed function pipelines to shaders.

GC was pretty difficult to dev for as explained in detail in this article http://www.dromble.com/2014/01/07/dolphin-tale-story-of-gamecube/ which is huge but basically the small discs made it hard to do things with it that the other systems could do.

As far as I know, the Wii U doesn't bottleneck at all unlike the PS3.

One anonymous report? The Wii U has been fighting this CPU business it's whole life, backed up by ports that can't hit their targets.

It hasn't rly tho, it was fighting that CPU business around 2012 and early 2013, there's barely been a peep from all that jazz for the last half a year at least and this is because improved dev kits went out and now almost every developer who is currently working on or has worked on the Wii U recently has positive things to say about its development environment. Even that anonymous report was talking about pre-launch, the article even acknowledges that things have improved since then and indies can get games running on the Wii U within days, it's really not hard to dev for and I'm not sure what anyone can say at this point to change your mind. The weird CPU/GPU ratio isn't anything truly alien to most experiences developers either.

Like I dunno man I'm not sure how many current examples of devs praising the system's ease of access you need before even remotely beginning to think that maybe it's true now and that once a bad dev kit doesn't mean always a bad dev kit. Game dev cycles take years, rushed ports to a system not many people care about isn't gonna result in being more quality than the ones they're used to developing for, that's logic. If the Wii U ever gets any kind of regular third party support I guarantee we'll begin to see more ports that are made with the system's capabilities taken into account.

Twitter | C3 Writer/Moderator | Backloggery
 
J4K is offline. J4K 15.01.2014#23

GC was pretty difficult to dev for as explained in detail in this article http://www.dromble.com/2014/01/07/dolphin-tale-story-of-gamecube/ which is huge but basically the small discs made it hard to do things with it that the other systems could do.

I've read that article before -- it's a great one. If I recall though, it talks quite a bit about how the GameCube was a direct product of Nintendo doing everything they could to make the GameCube easier for developers because of the debacle that was the N64. The GameCube as a system was much smoother than developing for the PS2 which had a somewhat stranger setup with some weird bottlenecks.

The discs being small limits what you can do in terms of data fit onto the disc (it would be really challenging to fit a GTA style game on a single disc for instance) but it doesn't really change the complexity of the actual programming for the hardware. Just how much data you can fit on there.

For instance, if you double the size of a GameCube disc, your programming doesn't get half as hard. The two are in most ways unrelated.

I'll edit in the rest of my response to what you're saying later! Don't have time right now. Just wanted to throw that in really quick.

( Edited 15.01.2014 19:18 by Jacob4000 )

 

Subscribe to this topic Subscribe to this topic

If you are a registered member and logged in, you can also subscribe to topics by email.
Sign up today for blogs, games collections, reader reviews and much more
Site Feed
Who's Online?
Azuardo, jb

There are 2 members online at the moment.