Official Wii U Discussion Thread

Linkyshinks said:

 

Pretty interesting. Didn't watch the whole thing and it could be YouTube throwing me off, but it looks like the colors are more vibrant on Xbox but the lighting and textures are smoother on Wii U. Otherwise, no real discernible difference (at least in the first third of the video haha).

And again, could be the video itself, but something about the Xbox that has always annoyed me is how everything is extremely shiny, looking almost like plastic. It looks like the Wii U has toned that down a lot (still there, but very less noticeable).

( Edited 20.11.2012 23:52 by justonesp00lturn )

Half-Life 3 confirmed as WiiU exclusive.

Harhar I kid.
Anyway, there isn't much of a good place on C3 to advertise this but the creators of Sonic AllStars Transformed have set up a challenge to the fan community: if 1000 or more people can mutually agree on ~3 characters they'd like to see as DLC, it will be considered for the game!

Therefore, I ask of you fair C3
http://forums.sega.com/showthread.php?427121-S0L-s-Challenge-The-Campaign-for-SEGA-characters-to-become-DLC
I know you all love Shenmue so please vote for Ryo Hazuki! Somehow he didn't make it into the sequel. Also if you know anyone else interested in the game, please let them know of this! It's a fan effort so it's definitely a bit embarrassing in places but I think it's worth trying.
I voted Ryo of course, as well as Opa-Opa, Ristar, Vectorman, Welkin, Selvaria, and Miku.

More on topic:
I know WiiU has its fair share of blunders already, most noticeably the Miiverse placeholders and the fact it can still run Wii homebrew in some form (which is crazy!) But overall it sounds like it's been quite solid, I'm not hearing of any mass console failures or anything.
Sounds like a good launch for the piece of kit, hopefully it'll have the games to go with it soon.

There's always the Sonikku thread. But yeah, Ryo's in third place, I think? So hopefully he'll get in. Do they keep upping the required number of votes for Miku or something? It was 1000 and she passed it, then 1500. Now she has to get 2000?

I like that Ryo has a strong following, though. Shows people still bloody care.

Azuardo said:
There's always the Sonikku thread.

But yeah, Ryo's in third place, I think? So hopefully he'll get in. Do they keep upping the required number of votes for Miku or something? It was 1000 and she passed it, then 1500. Now she has to get 2000?

I like that Ryo has a strong following, though. Shows people still bloody care.

Trueee.

I actually don't give a shit which console Shenmue 3 comes out on anymore. I just want it. Thankfully, the Yazkua series has been a great alternative, with Y5 looking and sounding sweet as. But it does seem odd they continue to run with Yakuza and ignore Shenmue. Kiryu is getting bugger all votes for the above DLC, but Ryo's battering him.

( Edited 20.11.2012 17:47 by Azuardo )

Went to Gamestop today to pick up my copy of Adventure Time for 3DS (which is cool so far, it's heavily inspired by Zelda II which is a favorite of mine). There was a UPS truck outside when we got there, so I asked the guy if they were getting Wii Us and he said no, but he would put me on a waiting list.

I played Rayman on the store's Wii U and it was pretty cool. My first time using a Wii U, though it seemed oddly familiar, I guess with all of the pictures and such. Only complaint so far was I have to stretch a bit to push the shoulder bumpers, I can only easily reach the bottoms of the buttons but depending on how accurate they are this probably isn't an issue.

We got home and an hour later Gamestop called and asked us if we wanted to pick up a Wii U, but at the same time my mom got an email from Toys R Us saying they shipped our Wii U yesterday. Pretty cool either way, and looks like Reggie wasn't lying when he said stores are going to be stocked a lot better than they were with the Wii.

Dice LD

Didn't we know this 2 months ago? They cut back on CPU and overcompensated with GPU. I'm sure developers will learn to work with it, resulting in gorgeous games.

I mean, Pikmin 3 had 100 Pikmin and multiple enemies on screen...

Canyarion said:
Didn't we know this 2 months ago? They cut back on CPU and overcompensated with GPU. I'm sure developers will learn to work with it, resulting in gorgeous games.

I mean, Pikmin 3 had 100 Pikmin and multiple enemies on screen...

The Gamecube had 100 Pikmin and multiple enemies on screen to show off that CPU's prowess, nothing about Pikmin 3 is really showing off so far.
And that's ok, it's Pikmin so it'll be great anyway, but I was half expecting a maximum of 200 or 300 Pikmin or something.

If Nintendo wanted to have 200 or 300 Pikmin on screen, they'd manage to do that. But it's the gameplay that counts... and 200 Pikmin hardly sounds better than 100.

Canyarion said:
If Nintendo wanted to have 200 or 300 Pikmin on screen, they'd manage to do that. But it's the gameplay that counts... and 200 Pikmin hardly sounds better than 100.

But yeah if each Pikmin and enemy is relatively high poly, it should show that the CPU is at least somewhat solid, or that there are workarounds to get the most out of it.
Well, let's hope at least that Nintendo haven't just dug themselves into a hole. They do that sometimes (and still make the most money regardless).

( Edited 21.11.2012 21:14 by SuperLink )

SuperLink said:

Canyarion said:
If Nintendo wanted to have 200 or 300 Pikmin on screen, they'd manage to do that. But it's the gameplay that counts... and 200 Pikmin hardly sounds better than 100.

I think that's also a good point.

But yeah if each Pikmin and enemy is relatively high poly, it should show that the CPU is at least somewhat solid, or that there are workarounds to get the most out of it.
Well, let's hope at least that Nintendo haven't just dug themselves into a hole. They do that sometimes (and still make the most money regardless).

There's probably not a lot of people that know this, but the Wii U's GPU isn't just a normal GPU, it uses a GPGPU, which means General Purpose Graphics Processing Unit. In English, this means that the Wii U's graphic chip can perform tasks which are usually handled by the CPU. This is relatively new technology and it is the first time this tech has been used in a games console. If any developers are complaining about the lack of CPU on the Wii U.. they clearly aren't trying hard enough to get their game working on the system.

As with all consoles, developers will learn how to use the hardware to it's full potential in a couple of years time. I can assure you that games coming out next year will be a lot more than just simple ports. If developers aren't lazy when it comes to trying out new things with the Wii U's GPU, we can expect to see some really great things.

People complaining about the Wii U's components - such as the RAM and CPU - clearly haven't allowed themselves enough time with the Wii U's devkit. This is one of the main reasons certain developers are saying the Wii U is a great system and others are saying it's not up to par. They're just so used to 360/PS3 that they are stuck in the mindset that they can just simply port games with no problems at all. New consoles always come with new rules, though.

( Edited 21.11.2012 21:31 by Mush )

Yeah, one of the Tekken devs said something along the lines of you just have to spend a little time figuring out how to allocate the memory and resources and such and then you're good to go.

Got my Wii U today. First impressions: It's like console DS, which is what I expected it to be. Graphics are good, the lighting looks great, I haven't seen it drop below 60 fps once. Loading time leaves something to be desired, takes upwards of ten seconds to go between main menu and back.

The infamous system update took just shy of an hour for me. Playing a game or app for the first time tends to require an update, which so far takes 5-10 minutes.

Internet browser is pretty fast. Loads pages about as quickly as my iPod Touch 5th Gen does, which the 3DS can't even do.

Only downside so far is I tried to play Nintendo Land with my siblings, and we couldn't play the Metroid games. Those ones require motionplus (we only have one and there were three of us playing).

Edit: Oh, and the Gamepad's camera is very good in low light. I have never, ever been able to take decent pictures in my house, it's so dark, but that thing's camera makes it look like broad daylight even when the lights are off. Not great resolution of course, but it doesn't need to be. Low-light performance has blown me away.

( Edited 22.11.2012 01:55 by justonesp00lturn )