Cronozilla wrote: but this system is nowhere near on par with current consoles, it is significantly more powerful.
I'm glad you think it looks great, but sites I trust to do graphical comparisons just don't substantiate your claim that is is AT ALL more powerful than PS3/360, let alone "significantly" so. Your arguments about shadow flicker don't really sway me given the realtively simple graphics of Nintendo Land...and are you certain that the game is in fact in native 1080p?
Cronozilla wrote: but this system is nowhere near on par with current consoles, it is significantly more powerful.
I'm glad you think it looks great, but sites I trust to do graphical comparisons just don't substantiate your claim that is is AT ALL more powerful than PS3/360, let alone "significantly" so. Your arguments about shadow flicker don't really sway me given the realtively simple graphics of Nintendo Land...and are you certain that the game is in fact in native 1080p?
Nintendo had confirmed that their first-party launch titles (if not first party games for the system in general) were all 720p.
Some of the other comparisons, like the relatively poor performance of the (still 720p) Mass Effect 3, Ninja Gaiden, and so on could just be launch title optimization problems. But, still, I don't get the impression that the thing is blowing the doors off the 360/PS3 just yet.
EvilRyu2099 wrote:Edit: this actually seems like a console that would excel in Shmups.. Let's hope developers doesn't neglect Nintendo like they did PS3 or Wii for that matter..
There were a fair amount on the Wii, just not Cave.
Cody_D165 wrote:Nintendo Land: I've tried both Takamaru's Castle and Zelda Battle Quest so far. Takamaru is addicting for sure, and the multiplayer mode on Battle Quest is pretty awesome.[/b]
I had not heard of Battle Quest, that is friggin awesome. Its like an onrail 3d version of Four Swords. I really hope they develop that further. Into its own FSAU title.
For those of you with Call of Duty, can you answer a couple questions about it for me? Specifically does it have decent splitscreen multiplayer, and does it support legacy controls and left trigger shooting? We crunched the numbers last night and we might be able to float a Wiiu this year, and those are a deal breaker on me buying a fps title. And while Mario is my first pick and Tank Tank Tank my second, CoD and Sonic Kart are tied for third.
fastbilly1 wrote:
For those of you with Call of Duty, can you answer a couple questions about it for me? Specifically does it have decent splitscreen multiplayer, and does it support legacy controls and left trigger shooting? We crunched the numbers last night and we might be able to float a Wiiu this year, and those are a deal breaker on me buying a fps title. And while Mario is my first pick and Tank Tank Tank my second, CoD and Sonic Kart are tied for third.
Yup, you can even take your splitscreen online (one person can play on the gamepad, the other can use the TV). I haven't looked to see if it has legacy controls.
Edit: I have no doubt that the WiiU is slightly more powerful than other current consoles. The launch lineup is always rough.
Also, Nintendo Land very much looks 1080p in the plaza. Maybe I'm crazy. It looks much too sharp to be lower.
It will be interesting to see just how powerful it is in the coming years though.
RyaNtheSlayA wrote:Yup, you can even take your splitscreen online (one person can play on the gamepad, the other can use the TV). I haven't looked to see if it has legacy controls.
Can you do two on the tv and none on the pad? I am just curious.
It leads to an interesting thought of an FPS where four play on the tv and two play on the pads - something not as graphically demanding as a blockbuster shooter obviously, something in the graphical style and at the same level of say Timesplitters Future Perfect, could be done this way.
I understand skepticism, but it's not necessary to exaggerate what I said. I said the Wii U is significantly more powerful graphically, making it not on par with the current systems. That isn't to say ... it's a power house, or it blows the pants off them, or something like that. That isn't what I'm saying. What I am saying is that the fidelity of what appears to be launch-average on Wii U, is beyond what most games look like on 360 and PS3. Trying to analyze specific clockspeeds of GPUs can only go so far, it is how it's used and the way the entire thing is managed. I imagine, what's going on is it's not really able to push significantly more polygons, but it's video memory is larger, and it helps.
There's a couple things: the first is that
, just because an art style looks simple, doesn't actually mean the rendering is. An example is a game like Team Fortress 2, looks "simple" but is one of the most demanding source games for graphics. I'm not saying, that's what Nintendo did ... but, unless it's literally flat shaded polygons or something, you can't really make that argument based on style alone unless you can point out where the artifacts from rendering and what techniques they're using. If you're just going off the art style then I think that's not necessarily indicative of the rendering capability, more indicative of your impressions of the art style.
The second is
, using ported games as a basis for graphical comparison, doesn't generally yield the best comparison. The games weren't actually built for that system. Developers generally don't rebuild their render pipeline from the ground up or anything, so they're going to be working within the framework they already built. Meaning, there's potentially artificial limitations to graphical capability that aren't because of the hardware. And it's a very important note to make. Not to mention how much money they actually spent doing it, whether or not the publisher actually cares, etc.
For the graphics on display in the games that I got,
the Nintendo Land hub world, or whatever it's called, does indeed appear to be rendered in 1080P. I can see the aliasing due to rastarization, it does not look like aliasing seen on PS3 for 720P titles. If they said their games are 720P, then they probably are, but what that would mean is that there's either a fantastic upscaling algorithm, or a really clever pipeline trick with antialiasing. Or, the games I've played on them were actually upscaled from below a 720p render. In any case, it looks better. But I was also saying, it seems like we've reached a point where purely increasing graphical capability isn't going to make much of an impression, it'll be the art style you present.
However,
if you look at the games, and you claim, okay, they're on par with 360 and PS3, graphically. On those systems, those 720p games or upscaled 1080p games (rarely native 1080p), are generally running at about 30fps, if that. I think Rage is one of the only games that really made an effort to get 60fps, there's probably others, but it not very common. These games, you're claiming, aren't graphically superior because they're 720p ... but they're running at almost double the framerate, without draw distance issues, without horrendous aliasing artifacts, without jittery and overtly aliased shadows, while also rendering an addition scene with similar graphics (it's a change in resolution, but it otherwise looks the same on the gamepad) ... and you're claiming that isn't more powerful? Also consider, technically what the interview is saying is that, they wanted to secure 60fps, so they aimed at 720p. That would infer that, they can easily do 1080p games at the same graphical quality, but they can't secure that 60fps mark ... for launch titles. That would infer that at 1080p, the Wii U is graphically on par with PS3 and 360 ... which would mean that it is significantly more capable in graphics.
I was mistaken in the native resolution of the games, it looks like 1080p, but to say that it's only on par with current consoles graphically, which is what I was actually addressing, is ridiculous. I absolutely stand by that statement.
I'll take a closer look at the games, I'll move them over to a monitor to take a better look (I run the system on a 42" plasma) and I'll reassess what I was looking at, but all the things I'm seeing from the actual system look graphically superior than what is put out on PS3 and 360.
Cronozilla wrote:I understand skepticism, but it's not necessary to exaggerate what I said. I said the Wii U is significantly more powerful graphically, making it not on par with the current systems. That isn't to say ... it's a power house, or it blows the pants off them, or something like that. That isn't what I'm saying. What I am saying is that the fidelity of what appears to be launch-average on Wii U, is beyond what most games look like on 360 and PS3. Trying to analyze specific clockspeeds of GPUs can only go so far, it is how it's used and the way the entire thing is managed. I imagine, what's going on is it's not really able to push significantly more polygons, but it's video memory is larger, and it helps.
There's a couple things: the first is that
, just because an art style looks simple, doesn't actually mean the rendering is. An example is a game like Team Fortress 2, looks "simple" but is one of the most demanding source games for graphics. I'm not saying, that's what Nintendo did ... but, unless it's literally flat shaded polygons or something, you can't really make that argument based on style alone unless you can point out where the artifacts from rendering and what techniques they're using. If you're just going off the art style then I think that's not necessarily indicative of the rendering capability, more indicative of your impressions of the art style.
The second is
, using ported games as a basis for graphical comparison, doesn't generally yield the best comparison. The games weren't actually built for that system. Developers generally don't rebuild their render pipeline from the ground up or anything, so they're going to be working within the framework they already built. Meaning, there's potentially artificial limitations to graphical capability that aren't because of the hardware. And it's a very important note to make. Not to mention how much money they actually spent doing it, whether or not the publisher actually cares, etc.
For the graphics on display in the games that I got,
the Nintendo Land hub world, or whatever it's called, does indeed appear to be rendered in 1080P. I can see the aliasing due to rastarization, it does not look like aliasing seen on PS3 for 720P titles. If they said their games are 720P, then they probably are, but what that would mean is that there's either a fantastic upscaling algorithm, or a really clever pipeline trick with antialiasing. Or, the games I've played on them were actually upscaled from below a 720p render. In any case, it looks better. But I was also saying, it seems like we've reached a point where purely increasing graphical capability isn't going to make much of an impression, it'll be the art style you present.
However,
if you look at the games, and you claim, okay, they're on par with 360 and PS3, graphically. On those systems, those 720p games or upscaled 1080p games (rarely native 1080p), are generally running at about 30fps, if that. I think Rage is one of the only games that really made an effort to get 60fps, there's probably others, but it not very common. These games, you're claiming, aren't graphically superior because they're 720p ... but they're running at almost double the framerate, without draw distance issues, without horrendous aliasing artifacts, without jittery and overtly aliased shadows, while also rendering an addition scene with similar graphics (it's a change in resolution, but it otherwise looks the same on the gamepad) ... and you're claiming that isn't more powerful? Also consider, technically what the interview is saying is that, they wanted to secure 60fps, so they aimed at 720p. That would infer that, they can easily do 1080p games at the same graphical quality, but they can't secure that 60fps mark ... for launch titles. That would infer that at 1080p, the Wii U is graphically on par with PS3 and 360 ... which would mean that it is significantly more capable in graphics.
I was mistaken in the native resolution of the games, it looks like 1080p, but to say that it's only on par with current consoles graphically, which is what I was actually addressing, is ridiculous. I absolutely stand by that statement.
I'll take a closer look at the games, I'll move them over to a monitor to take a better look (I run the system on a 42" plasma) and I'll reassess what I was looking at, but all the things I'm seeing from the actual system look graphically superior than what is put out on PS3 and 360.
That's all long and very involved, and I'll grant you that ports aren't the best way to compare graphics - but it's what we've got for the most part right now.
Bottom line:
1) Ports look on par at best, worse in some cases = not evidence it is more powerful than PS3/360
2) Existing majority of games run in 720p, the same native resolution as majority of PS3/360 games = not evidence it is more powerful than PS3/360
3) We know the memory is slower. That's not an end-all be all determination of graphics, but again = not evidence it is more powerful than PS3/360
4) The first party games thus far do have a simple art style, which - you are right - isn't itself an indicator of graphics BUT none of them are doing anything that I haven't seen in PS3/360 games = not evidence it is more powerful than PS3/360
I am guessing that in the final analysis the Wii U will likely be close to the PS3/360 in terms of graphic possibilities and processing power just as the Wii was with the PS2/Xbox/GCN. I wouldn't be shocked if it even excels in an area or two over those existing systems, but thus far there is NO EVIDENCE that it is indeed more powerful and all indications thus far point to parity or worse.
Last edited by dsheinem on Mon Nov 19, 2012 3:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.
noiseredux wrote:so Dave, I guess what you're saying is
noiseredux wrote: And the Wii-U will be able to compete with the soon-to-be "last gen" consoles... well played Nintendo.
Which is fine. It worked for the Wii in terms of total sales, and there are great first party games for that system and some really interesting third party titles. I like the Wii, but at the same time I was hoping for greater game-industry relevance from the Wii-U. People who keep talking about it as somehow more graphically impressive than the PS3/360 (drastic changes in graphic capabilities being the standard measure of gaming generation shifts) have no good evidence to support that claim, and there's lots to suggest that the opposite may be true. I basically see a repeat of the Wii strategy with a new gimmick that is (to me and likely to the general public) less compelling than motion controls. I'm concerned that if thee Wii-U can't sway the average contemporary gamer with the hardware specs and can't sway more casual gamers with the gimmick, that the company may run into some problems.
To put it another way, an impressive launch would have been full of third party titles that were new entries in well-regarded series. Show me Arkham 3, Mass Effect 4, Quake 5, etc. that requires the beefed up specs and capabilities of the Wii U to make it run. There's nothing like this.
