Nintendo: Project Cafe - Wii U

[Ivo]

I read some comments (mostly on the E3 thread) that Sony could easily emulate most of what is done with the Wii U controller by using the PSP Vita in conjunction with the PS3 (or PS4).
In that mindset, is there anything stopping Nintendo from letting players use a 3DS as a 2nd "Wii U" controller as well? The differences are the screen size and no 2nd analog. I think the 3DS does not have bluetooth though...

I agree those suggesting the touch screen is not going to make the controller hyper-expensive (but it will be more expensive than controllers without a huge touch screen, of course).

I'm excited with the possibilities of the new controller, although much of what one can do on it can be done on tablets such as the iPad or on a 3DS (in terms of controlling, I mean) - just that now there is a separate steady screen other than the touchscreen (but the 3DS already had a separate screen as well).

I remember being very excited with the possibilities of the Wii controller and in the end the game devs didn't really come through (the precision was a bit lacking, granted) - although there are some neat uses in games and some very impressive hacks on the PC side using Wii motes and sensor bars.

Ivo.

[Niode]

I read some comments (mostly on the E3 thread) that Sony could easily emulate most of what is done with the Wii U controller by using the PSP Vita in conjunction with the PS3 (or PS4).
In that mindset, is there anything stopping Nintendo from letting players use a 3DS as a 2nd "Wii U" controller as well? The differences are the screen size and no 2nd analog. I think the 3DS does not have bluetooth though...

I agree those suggesting the touch screen is not going to make the controller hyper-expensive (but it will be more expensive than controllers without a huge touch screen, of course).

I'm excited with the possibilities of the new controller, although much of what one can do on it can be done on tablets such as the iPad or on a 3DS (in terms of controlling, I mean) - just that now there is a separate steady screen other than the touchscreen (but the 3DS already had a separate screen as well).

I remember being very excited with the possibilities of the Wii controller and in the end the game devs didn't really come through (the precision was a bit lacking, granted) - although there are some neat uses in games and some very impressive hacks on the PC side using Wii motes and sensor bars.

Ivo.

The motion plus is pretty much what Nintendo promised from day 1 for the Wii. It's just a shame not many games implemented it thanks to poor market saturation for the device. Even now after the Wii has been shipping with it packaged in for a couple of years we still aren't seeing the games using it. A shame.

Regarding the people saying the same thing can be done with Vita and PS3. Not even the greatest programmers on earth can get 1080p out of the PS3 unless it's something relatively simplistic graphics wise (IE Wipeout). The Wii U has 1GB of video ram AND 512MB of system ram. More than enough for 1080p. This system will look amazing graphics wise, it's got a massive chunk of ram to throw at the problem.

This is one of the reasons why PS3 games on the whole look worse than 360 games because of the 360's 32MB EDRAM, an entire frame buffer at 720p will fit in there with room to spare for a little AA. The PS3 simply does not have that luxury. When you consider you have an entire 1GB RAM dedicated to video on the Wii-U you can understand that we're looking at at least 2 to 3 times better graphics than the current gen consoles. Obviously this is all down to the developer but when you consider that Super Mario Galaxy 2 looks EASILY like a 360 or PS3 title on severely underpowered hardware, I'm sure Nintendo will make everybody else look like rank amateurs.

[fastbilly1]

Niode where did you get those specs? I havent seen an official spec sheet yet.

As for the price of the controller. If it is just a dummy head, like it seems to be, the price could easily be under $100 for the controller. I have been eying 8 inch screens for a project I have been working on for some time and I can buy two of them for about $110. A touch screen version would push it up to about $200 but remember I am only buying two - Nintendo is buying millions.

[dsheinem]

Can we stop talking about this console as "next-gen" now?

Nintendo Used 360, PS3 & PC Game Footage In Its Wii U Demo Reel

I don't think the system will surpass the 360/PS3 by much, if at all, in terms of graphics, processing, etc. Maybe that doesn't matter to most of the Nintendo faithful, but it means that there isn't going to be an abundance of games for the WiiU that I can't play on one of those other systems (except Nintendo titles, of course). It also means that when the new MS or Sony console comes out a year or two after the WiiU, the WiiU will be obsolete from a hardware perspective. If Nintendo is trying to reach the MS/Sony audience, I don't think they will do so.

I only need to look at my rarely-played Wii to suspect that the same thing will happen with the WiiU...

It's still next gen as far as I'm concerned, just like the wii was as far as I'm concerned. Next gen doesn't have anything to do with power to me, it just means it's part of the next set of consoles. Which it is.

Ok, while you are technically correct, previous generations all had hardware which was comparable and ports that could be played across multiple systems. The GCN/DC/PS2/XBX were all the same gen, as was the N64/Saturn/PS1 as was the SNES/PCE/GEN and so on.

The Wii was basically a GCN+motion controls and never really felt like a current gen system since it wasn't getting ports that were anywhere near the quality of the PS3/360 versions. Nor was it in HD, as were the others from that gen. Now that Nintendo has a system with HD and graphics similar to 360/PS3 I feel that they have "caught up" to current gen. The games they announced were games that are coming to 360/PS3. As soon as the 720/PS4 comes out, the Wii U will start getting inferior ports once again (if it gets ports at all).

Look, it has worked for Nintendo thus far and I don't deny that a large portion of gamers don't care about hardware specs. But a significant portion of the "core" gamers that Nintendo is trying to court with some of these third party games will leave the system as soon as the next generation of systems from its competitors come out. In the meantime, there doesn't really seem to be much reason for them to adopt a Wii U based on what we know about its hardware capabilities. It's hard for me to see the Wii U as anything but playing catch up in terms of hardware. They are adding a novelty controller to make it look more appealing. Why else do you think that's what they were emphasizing at the conference?

[ZenErik]

I wasnt aware of PS3 games looking worse than 360. I remember your statements being true near the beginning of the PS3s cycle. It's now quite the opposite from what I hear. Often higher res textures and better lighting on the PS3. And less choppy. But my words mean little as I am not speaking from personal experience.

There's no reason for the Wii-U to not look better than the PS3 and 360. It will be arriving 5 to 6 years after those consoles.

[dsheinem]

There's no reason for the Wii-U to not look better than the PS3 and 360. It will be arriving 5 to 6 years after those consoles.

If it looks significantly better, wouldn't they have made that an emphasis point of the E3 presentation?

[fastbilly1]

There's no reason for the Wii-U to not look better than the PS3 and 360. It will be arriving 5 to 6 years after those consoles.

If it looks significantly better, wouldn't they have made that an emphasis point of the E3 presentation?

Or that their launch titles will look as good as current gen blockbusters and that their future titles will look better once everyone gets use to the hardware. Says the random guy to the person who writes the transition blog.

[dsheinem]

There's no reason for the Wii-U to not look better than the PS3 and 360. It will be arriving 5 to 6 years after those consoles.

If it looks significantly better, wouldn't they have made that an emphasis point of the E3 presentation?

Or that their launch titles will look as good as current gen blockbusters and that their future titles will look better once everyone gets use to the hardware. Says the random guy to the person who writes the transition blog.

Oddly, both the Wii and the Wii U seem like transitions between hardware/graphics generations.

Maybe Wii U games will look great by the end of their lifecycle, maybe not - it depends in large part on whether third party developers stick around. I can't recall any of the late Wii titles blowing me away in terms of graphics compared to an earlier game like, say, Metroid Prime 3.

[isiolia]

I wasnt aware of PS3 games looking worse than 360. I remember your statements being true near the beginning of the PS3s cycle. It's now quite the opposite from what I hear. Often higher res textures and better lighting on the PS3. And less choppy. But my words mean little as I am not speaking from personal experience.

There's no reason for the Wii-U to not look better than the PS3 and 360. It will be arriving 5 to 6 years after those consoles.

It's more a matter of difficulty in coding. The PS3, while more powerful, is also more of a convoluted system. The 360, by comparison, is a pretty straightforward machine. What it generally comes down to is that you rarely have a cross-platform release that's equally optimized for both platforms (though plenty are very close). Digitalfoundry does some pretty comprehensive comparisons.
Most noticeable thing tends to be that there are different base gamma levels between the two, but that's a result of the video encoder chips used.

It's still never gotten to the point where one of them is definitively better than the other - varies from release to release.

One angle with the Wii U is that it might end up running the sure-to-be-plentiful cross platform releases at true native 1080P, where the PS3/360 generally render at 720P or lower and just scale up. Nintendo seems to have little other than ideas and tech demos to show for the system yet - whether due to secrecy, or due to not actually coding for it for long (the dev kits haven't been in the wild all that long yet at least).

[AppleQueso]

Yeah, I'd wait until we actually had some Wii-U releases before I started seriously scrutinizing its graphical capabilities.

360 is the lead development platform for most multiplat games. It's no suprise they aren't optimized as well for the ps3.

Only game that comes to mind that was multiplat with the ps3 as the leading platform was Final Fantasy XIII, which, surprise, looked better on the ps3.