Official Wii U Discussion Thread

We'll just have to see where they go with this.

Not long ago, I'd been thinking about the possibility of Nintendo needing to cut the life of the Wii U short if it ended up not really ever taking off. I'm beginning to wonder if they have a backup plan in place if it actually comes to that now. But I'm more worried about the fact that I'm not certain even Nintendo knows what it plans to do anymore. It never could have predicted the Wii U wouldn't take off like this, so all sorts of ideas must be being thrown around right now. As much as I want to see a high-end Nintendo console again, even with a brand new name and marketing, you still have to wonder if it would still work out for them. Nintendo's made a living off of lower specs the last couple of gens, and trying to pump out something much more on the lines of the PS4 might have the opposite effect of what they hope.

But you never know; Wii U may end up staying consistently steady in a year's time, with enough support to keep it going, and the extra hardware may be some sort of dedicated tablet or phone or something.

I personally think the Wii U is far from dead. Look at the 3DS and PS3. They had slow starts but picked up within a year or so.

There's good stuff coming to Wii U. Tonight I explained/showed a friend Panorama View. Google Street U. He was pretty amazed by it.

I seriously need to make a Nintendo Optimism thread because all this doom and gloom is ridiculous frankly. Let's summarize some things:

• WiiU almost has as many games as Vita already
  
• WiiU did far better than 3DS, PS3 or 360 in their launch windows. People just think it's done awfully because it couldn't match the Wii's success and because Nintendo had to lower their estimates; that's not the best sign, but almost every company in the industry has had to lower estimates for various reasons lately
  
• the WiiU is underperforming and has a quiet first year but it's anything but a failure, especially taking into considering how quiet PS3 was for its first two years
  
• I'm like 80% certain that every major console manufacturer in the modern industry has contingency plans for when a backbone console falls flat, so Nintendo definitely have other ideas already even if they don't need them.
  

Hopefully those last two comments aren't in reply to me, because I think you've taken me the wrong way if so. I certainly don't think anyone can be calling a brand new console "dead" or a "failure" at this stage. Not even a year on. Or even two years on given the repertoire Nintendo has at its disposal. I've mentioned many times it can keep its own platforms afloat with its own software. I definitely think it wouldn't be until at least 3 years into the Wii U's life before they bring out a high-end competing console, if they do, if that's what they're considering. I don't think anyone in their right mind can say Wii U is dead until we see how it has and is performing at least 2 years or more down the line, where Nintendo will have had a great number of solid titles out. But for some reason, having a bit of worry for the future seems to be taken as if I'm slamming Nintendo and being "doom and gloom." Frankly, I'm worried for the future of video games as a whole, nevermind Nintendo. And yet that seems less ridiculous than worrying about the future of Nintendo for some reason.

( Edited 04.02.2013 23:38 by Azuardo )

^ It wasn't aimed at you so much as the apparent tone of things and the forum as of late (though you did remind me that probably all console devs have contingency plans), there's a lot of "Nintendo are doomed" going around, but then again when isn't there. Personally I'm also more worried for high-end game developers than I am for Nintendo; look at THQ, Junction Point, SEGA and now Superbot. Make AAA games on high-end hardware? Better hope it's a success or you're as good as out of business. Games are becoming too expensive to develop.

But there are more positive aspects to gaming too such as Nintendo's new attitude, indie gaming, PSPlus as a wonderful opposition to XBL and etc.

Sounds like it was taken the wrong way then, as I didn't disagree with any of what you said, and was merely only thinking of the 'what if' scenario. Nintendo coming out with this new hardware talk immediately makes you wonder if it's part of a possible Wii U backup for 3 years down the line. If there's anything to be critical about of Nintendo lately it's with good reason - 50Hz stuff, marketing etc. But perhaps it rubs people the wrong way. Maybe the less outspoken I am the less I'll get taken the wrong way.

I don't disagree - one or two expensive games flop and it's usually the end for any dev. Nintendo's got it right with indies this gen, though - Wii U could really be the leading platform for indie games. Don't need to get me to talk about PS+ - far and away the best service of any console, ever.

Azuardo said:
If there's anything to be critical about of Nintendo lately it's with good reason - 50Hz stuff, marketing etc. But perhaps it rubs people the wrong way. Maybe the less outspoken I am the less I'll get taken the wrong way.

i.e. the whole "Nintendo doom and gloom" and "WiiU won't have games once PS4/NextBox are out because their power differences will be even bigger", or even the notion that Nintendo are awful for not making their systems total powerhouses anymore. Sure with the Wii it was a hindrance, it prevented huge games from gracing the system without considerable work, but the WiiU discs are 25GB and HD, there's not really any limitation on what Nintendo can do now, bar cutting-edge visuals.

Sure it's a bit saddening that WiiU's third party support is a bit lacking, but Nintendo aren't exactly going to crash and burn.
(this isn't aimed at anyone either.. just a bit motivational. I love the WiiU and I'd like to believe it has a bright future.)

Is anyone on these forums really saying stuff like that, though? I haven't seen anyone saying Wii U will get no games and they'll crash and burn around here. Just seems like you're expressing this on the wrong forum. Unless you just wanted to get it off your chest to like-minded individuals on here.

It's a general vibe I get and it feels like C3ers sometimes don't really have the highest of hopes for the system either, so I was hoping to raise Nintendo morale a little as I'm sure there are others here who are also a little tired of the various negativities around the web.

Owning a WiiU myself, it's got a solid OS and some really cool features and I'm sure it'll only get better as months go by. I feel good about it.

( Edited 05.02.2013 01:14 by SuperLink )

lol suppose I understand wanting to make people feel good about it, but if some people don't feel confident in it, then that's how they feel. We all have different expectations and desires for our consoles. To be honest, the people not feeling good about it on C3, I would argue, are more in the minority, but those who do probably tend to speak up less and will award you with about 20 stars for your last few posts ;p But I think because of our small forum and really low activity, the less optimistic posts possibly show up more, making it look like C3 as a whole is unhappy. I wouldn't put myself in the camp of being absolutely satisfied with it, cus that'd be a lie, but it don't mean I won't pick it up later on when the price and games are right. Even if it isn't everything I want from a console, I know I'll end up satisfied. And I think I can speak for everybody on this site when I say they want to see Nintendo do well and truly doesn't believe the Wii U will die.

Personally I feel there is far too much negativity in all gaming forums, even this one to a lesser extent. There's a feeling that most longtime gamers are becoming more entitled and elitist in regards to what they want from developers (and yeah I confess to being in that category myself at times) without bothering to try and understand the business decisions and possible use of logic other than what we're told; Neogaf in particular is overflowing with trolls and idiots and I'm glad to say I won't be wasting time there anymore. 

I feel about the same as SuperLink and Phoenom and the general vibe I'm getting from many websites and not just C3 is making me less and less interested in posting. We had a really great Nintendo Direct not long ago and instead of discussing the actual awesome announcements, the attention quickly shifted almost completely to VC prices and 50hz for Europe or other concerns about the Wii U that are repeated over and over again, like third party support or hardware capabilities. I want to have fun talking about games and seeing the same old and tired arguments everywhere is just getting really boring and I rather just actually play games and have a good time instead.

It's not just negativity from users of these websites, as well. There's a tonne of generic and stale articles being written on them, always with a similar title of "Why {Insert console here} Will Fail" and "What Nintendo Needs to do to Make Wii U Successful". etc. They're not interesting at all and have been done countless times, making them boring to read (even if they're well written).

Everyone used to be full of optimism with gaming and it was really fun. Now it's dried up and it's all doom and gloom. It's as if people want consoles to fail or they just don't care about gaming anymore. Where's the spark gone? There's some fantastic games coming out and at times, I wonder why people don't seem to be excited for them. Rayman Legends, hello? (a GOTY contender, seriously) LEGO City Undercover looks hilarious and a lot of fun, too. Maybe gamers have become spoilt for choice with so many platforms available and so many games.

I don't really know anymore, all I know is I'll just be enjoying my games, whilst everyone else can waste there time typing up huge posts that won't change a thing and just make the forums be a negative place to be around.

Superlink, Phenom and SirLink make very good points and echo my thoughts.

Also, everyone who actually has a Wii U (that I know) is enjoying it and they think it's a great console that has a lot of potenial. It's those who don't own one who are usually being negative about it or have very little optimisim about the system and its future.

( Edited 05.02.2013 12:04 by Marzy )

The Wii U is far from dead, great first party software alone will keep it propped up over the coming years, in addition to a plethora of indie games, looking at the reception it's received from the community thus far. However, In place of blatant shovelware, low quality mobile projects pose a danger down the line. We're already starting to see junk on 3DS and I expect the ratio will increase significantly on Wii U, given how easy Nintendo has made things. 

The problem I see with Wii U, is it not being able to fulfill the aim of accommodating the very best third party content, and directly appeasing the gamers Nintendo claimed would be catered for with this console. I think the risks involved for some developers, are just too high this time around, Wii U doesn't have the astronomical audience numbers to command consideration for certain projects. On the technical side, it's weak CPU-GPU combo simply won't be able to handle the heavy physics rich games that are coming, games that track thousands of AI models in real-time and show the sort of graphics effects we see commonly in films today - like it or not, that's where videogames are heading with certainty.

Severely reduced versions, if you get lucky, will have a very negative impact among gamers, it will only compound opinions about Nintendo and the Wii U brand.

Nintendo made a catch up console, seemingly believing all they needed to push was HD graphics and decent memory caching ability to allow for the better looking games with bigger richer gameworlds, but the industry has moved on significantly. Nintendo are so behind on all fronts, they recently admitted they have a deficiency in knowledge of shader tech many devs are well accustomed to, hence why they are looking to others to support games they should be making themselves. And even those that are helping are Japanese, and just as deficient in the cutting edge realm. Eg: "X", not one of those creatures moved in a realistic manner, no procedural morphing or soft-body physics on display, you can bet your arse the best games made in the West will. Despite it's artistic beauty, it doesn't look like a next gen game. You'll see what those look like next month at GDC.

Original content is the key for Wii U's success, problem is such projects are costly and fraught with risk, multiplatform projects are less so. I cannot see many developers putting extra development resources into Wii U projects, because that's exactly what it will take to get the best out of Wii U. Reducing spec and fracturing development teams, while concerns about the audience for such games are present, is beyond risky.

If PS4 & Durango sell in droves, the developers will be prompted into thinking they can survive alone with those two, without the distraction of Wii U and the problems it poses. They survived well enough last gen.

( Edited 05.02.2013 11:59 by Linkyshinks )

I guess it wasn't just me Even if it's not on C3, there's a negative vibe around the WiiU on a lot of the internet even with big sites sticking up for it, as far as I know Destructoid loves the WiiU but then you see the comments and oop. But hey it's to be expected with a new system y'know? Especially one with questionable marketing, I have faith that given time, the WiiU will comfortably sit within gaming history and offer plenty of great games to us all. It's better for Nintendo to make these realisations now, only 2 months after launch, than in a years' time.

And I guess when articles are written about "why [insert console] will fail", it's because they're bored of writing articles about "why the Sonic franchise should die" (seriously how long have we been getting articles like that? Hmmmm.)

I'll admit I'm actively against the 50Hz stuff, but that's because I believe that thanks to Miiverse there's actually potential for change. I love Virtual Console and I love the new features on it, but it's not really fair to be stuck with 50Hz when they cause considerable slowdown to many games (play any MegaMan or Sonic in 60Hz and 50Hz and it's easy to see why)

But I definitely don't think Nintendo is going anywhere, even though some around the net think that Iwata will resign, Nintendo will become a third party or something, they've stuck through harsher waters and I'm sure they'll thrive even now.

@LS: This is what I mean, there's so much negativity in that post! The GPU/CPU aren't weak and the difference in power will make WiiU far easier and cheaper to develop for, it'll get all the experimental and actually interesting titles of the gen because PS4 and NextBox are going to be so expensive to develop for that only "play it safe" games destined for sales will be made for it. Otherwise more and more companies will go the way of THQ.

( Edited 05.02.2013 12:02 by SuperLink )

So... let's get some excitment in here! Rayman Legends is out in less than a month. Anyone pre-ordered yet? I pre-ordered from Zavvi the otherday because they had a great deal on it. I really can't wait, Rayman Origins was one of the best 2D platformers I have ever played and after playing the demo of Legends this looks to be just as good, if not better. The music stages are really quite special, I can't wait to play the one that was shown at E3 last year, I absolutly love that music.

It's a myth perpetuated by Nintendo fans... Developing may cost slightly more initially, but not enough to cause any major concern. They will be developing for two platforms with technical parity, using modern game engines with "drag and drop" features that speed things up significantly. Once designers are trained to be efficient costs will drop.

Costs will never drop when you have to create another separate team and then go through constant testing procedures for older architecture, and then there's the GamePad streaming, which reduces CPU by half... what happens in games where two are deemed to be required?

Marzy said:
So... let's get some excitment in here! Rayman Legends is out in less than a month. Anyone pre-ordered yet? I pre-ordered from Zavvi the otherday because they had a great deal on it.

Linkyshinks said:
It's a myth perpetuated by Nintendo fans... Developing may cost slightly more initially, but not enough to cause any major concern.

They push all their resources into developing and sometimes pushing an AAA game, the revenue doesn't make even or the game bombs, and as a result Free Radical, THQ, Junction Point and almost SEGA have gone out of business as well as many many others in the past few years.

4K development is going to be far more expensive than even now, as a result you're going to see more "playing it safe" casual games (i.e. CoD) than ever before. Why do you think all the games with interesting mechanics have been pushed back so much, cancelled, or made into download only or indie games instead? That's also why the Kinect never got any truly interesting games, the wrong demographic was buying it and if a developer risked all that money in pushing a AAA game on that tech, they would drop off the face of the earth.

Nintendo is very smart to be approaching expensive technology in moderation to make it accessible to both the consumer and the developer.

So I totally feel singled out there, even though I honestly feel I've not been all that harsh and my complaints are well within reason as a long time and hard-paying customer of Nintendo. To be implying it's ridiculous to complain about the 50Hz or VC charges is absurd, and for me, personally, they took much attention away from what was otherwise obviously a great ND. Perhaps people are blind to the positive comments posted when I become more vocal about the bad ideas. I feel strongly about the 50Hz scenario as someone that has had to put up with that through my life as a Nintendo gamer and I'm not going to apologise for standing my ground on that. You have to be vocal if you want change, but it doesn't mean I in any way thought the rest of the ND was bad. In a year's time, it's possible I could own a Wii U with the announcements they've made because of that ND.

But if people feel there's a lack of positivity then get posting. Otherwise, don't get offended or annoyed when people post their thoughts on what they feel is wrong with Nintendo or its consoles, or whether it'll compete with other consoles. It's just matters of opinion, and if you don't agree, no need to feel like people are being critical for the sake of being critical. Linkyshinks has constantly been showing his support for games like Bayonetta 2 and Wonderful 101 on Wii U, but that goes under appreciated and he gets attacked for expressing his feelings on what he feels are the downsides of Nintendo. Doesn't mean he hasn't been positive or supportive of the console in other posts. I can be critical and disappointed in Nintendo, but only because I've been a Nintendo gamer since I was able to walk. I am vocal because I care, just like everyone else. Perhaps more than anything, I'm worried about Nintendo. I have every right to feel that way just as everyone else has a right to feel absolutely satisfied. But it's still just matters of opinion and it really shouldn't need to come down to arguing and singling people out.

@SL

Why do you seemingly correlate 4K with extra development cost? It's a display resolution, that's all.

It doesn't require any more intensive work on the part designers, when they design assets for those displays.

Wii U Graphical Power Revealed

Digital Foundry
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/df-hardware-wii-u-graphics-power-finally-revealed

"The final GPU is indeed a close match to the 4650/4670, albeit with a deficit in the number of texture-mapping units and a lower clock speed - 550MHz. AMD's RV770 hardware is well documented so with these numbers we can now, categorically, finally rule out any next-gen pretensions for the Wii U - the GCN hardware in Durango and Orbis is in a completely different league.

However, the 16 TMUs at 550MHz and texture cache improvements found in RV770 do elevate the capabilities of this hardware beyond the Xenos GPU in the Xbox 360 - 1.5 times the raw shader power sounds about right. 1080p resolution is around 2.5x that of 720p, so bearing in mind the inclusion of just eight ROPs, it's highly unlikely that we'll be seeing any complex 3D titles running at 1080p.All of which may lead some to wonder quite why many of the Wii U ports disappoint - especially Black Ops 2, which appears to have been derived from the Xbox 360 version, running more slowly even at the same 880x720 sub-hd resolution. The answer comes from a mixture of known and unknown variables.The obvious suspect would be the Wii U's 1.2GHz CPU, a tri-core piece of hardware re-architected from the Wii's Broadway chip, in turn a tweaked, overclocked version of the GameCube's Gekko processor. In many of our Wii U Face-Offs we've seen substantial performance dips on CPU-specific tasks. However, there still plenty of unknowns to factor in too - specifically the bandwidth levels from the main RAM and the exact nature of the GPU's interface to its 32MB of onboard eDRAM. While the general capabilities of the Wii U hardware are now beyond doubt, discussion will continue about how the principal processing elements and the memory are interfaced together, and Nintendo's platform-exclusive titles should give us some indication of what this core is capable of when developers are targeting it directly....While there's still room for plenty of debate about the Wii U hardware, the core fundamentals are now in place and effectively we have something approaching a full spec. It took an extraordinary effort to get this far and you may be wondering quite why it took a reverse engineering specialist using ultra-magnification photography to get this information, when we already know the equivalent data for Durango and Orbis. The answer is fairly straightforward - leaks tend to derive from development kit and SDK documentation and, as we understand it, this crucial information simply wasn't available in Nintendo's papers, with developers essentially left to their own devices to figure out the performance level of the hardware."

( Edited 05.02.2013 13:15 by Linkyshinks )

No one's singlin' you out Az (well I'm certainly not), I don't get that vibe. I know you've been vocal with your disappointments in this thread but I definitely have too, I'm extremely vocal about the 50Hz thing. I'm still advocating more positivity too, that's because of other threads, news posts, and especially other websites, not just because of recent posts on this thread I assure. You're not even being that negative about it all compared to other C3ers

@LS:
I use 4K synonymously with PS4/NextBox since it's a handy short term rather than saying "the Gen8 consoles which are more powerful than the WiiU", similarly to how people used HD to differentiate PS360 from Wii in Gen7 even though it was obviously far more than just resolution.

It's the same this time right? Obviously there's got to be far more work going into polygons, lighting, shading, textures, everything. Not just resolution. It's going to be expensive as hell.

( Edited 05.02.2013 13:17 by SuperLink )

@Superlink The offer is still up. You can use the code provided and it takes 10% off, making it £29.68

http://www.zavvi.com/games-wii-u/rayman-legends-wii-u/10616873.html


( Edited 05.02.2013 13:11 by Marzy )

Marzy said:
@Superlink The offer is still up. You can use the code provided and it takes 10% off, making it £29.68

http://www.zavvi.com/games-wii-u/rayman-legends-wii-u/10616873.html

I've certainly got that vibe. It's almost as if anyone posting a critical comment about Nintendo is breaking the law. Can't work out if people take me the wrong way or simply don't understand why I complain about the things I do. Again, doesn't mean I don't bloody love the things Nintendo does, else why the hell am I here? But when I feel the things I complain about are well within reason, and when I do still post positive thoughts where they are due, but have people coming in and saying they all agree with each other except me, well I can't work out if that's people taking me the wrong way, not understanding, or something personal.

SuperLink said:
No one's singlin' you out Az (well I'm certainly not), I don't get that vibe. I know you've been vocal with your disappointments in this thread but I definitely have too, I'm extremely vocal about the 50Hz thing. I'm still advocating more positivity too, that's because of other threads, news posts, and especially other websites, not just because of recent posts on this thread I assure. You're not even being that negative about it all compared to other C3ers

@LS:
I use 4K synonymously with PS4/NextBox since it's a handy short term rather than saying "the Gen8 consoles which are more powerful than the WiiU", similarly to how people used HD to differentiate PS360 from Wii in Gen7 even though it was obviously far more than just resolution.

It's the same this time right? Obviously there's got to be far more work going into polygons, lighting, shading, textures, everything. Not just resolution. It's going to be expensive as hell. I don't need a Digital Foundry copypasta to tell me the WiiU isn't as powerful as PS4/NextBox, that much is obvious and I wasn't contesting that at all.

Ha, that's not directed at you, it's a new article which finally sheds light on what Nintendo's been hiding, and more importantly, why.

"1080p resolution is around 2.5x that of 720p, so bearing in mind the inclusion of just eight ROPs, it's highly unlikely that we'll be seeing any complex 3D titles running at 1080p"