Wii-U thoughts so far

[Tanooki]

I think I may do that too. I did it last holiday season and picked off like 3-4 WiiU games because of the discount involved.

[MyNameIsVince]

You know what, I might be an asshole, but I'm right, unlike some butthurt people.

I'm out.

[BogusMeatFactory]

You know what, I might be an asshole, but I'm right, unlike some butthurt people.

I'm out.

Do assholes make people butthurt? I would think dicks do, what with all the penetration and such.

In all honesty, my butt does hurt, but from anal fissures... not from you.

[ZeroAX]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014- ... still-slow

Nintendo's STUPID design decisions for this console come back to bite them HARD in the ass. They have an underpowered console and because they chose parts based on making it small, they can't cut costs and thus cut price....we can't even get a bigger "hard drive" since it's flash memory and not HDD.....

[Sarge]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014- ... still-slow

Nintendo's STUPID design decisions for this console come back to bite them HARD in the ass. They have an underpowered console and because they chose parts based on making it small, they can't cut costs and thus cut price....we can't even get a bigger "hard drive" since it's flash memory and not HDD.....

I don't think that's Nintendo's problem at all, honestly. At this point, especially after the Wii, they have to swing for the fences with disruptive tech as opposed to just doing what Sony and Microsoft are doing. They go toe-to-toe with them and they likely lose every time. I mean, I loved the Gamecube, which is the last system they had with any sort of parity, and they still finished dead last.

At least their shot with the Wii paid off, and they managed to take the top spot. The Wii U was another swing, and to this point it missed, but I'm not entirely sure sales would be appreciably better with near-parity. The "kiddie system" image has stuck with Nintendo ever since the SNES days, and I'm not sure they can ever shake it. I'm not sure they ever recapture the "hardcore".

As an aside, I'm less than impressed with the PS4/XB1. I mean, they're basically just mid-range gaming PCs. The leap really isn't that significant from last generation.

[ZeroAX]

Read my post again.

[Sarge]

I tend to put the lack of power together with judgments on them integrating the tablet while keeping the price reasonable. So I thought that was part of your argument. Apologies if it is not.

Could you link me to a source on them choosing parts to make it small, and thusly not being able to reduce costs? I don't see how one follows the other, unless they're having trouble sourcing the parts or something, or can't get the volume they need manufactured. Not that I'm any sort of industrial savant, so I see this as an educational opportunity!

As for the "hard drive"... I'm pretty okay with the way they implemented it. Most folks don't need that kind of storage space, and adding an external drive seems to be the way to go while not having folks that will never use the space have to pay extra for it.

[ZeroAX]

Source (one of many really):
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digit ... side-story

Useful quotes:

They wanted a console that was the same size as the Wii and wouldn't make much noise, so "mum wouldn't mind having it in the living room".

First problem: believing their own marketing. The Wii wasn't succesful because of its killer marketing and slick design (though those helped) but because it had a killer app and offered a very fun experience. Thinking that something as trivial as the size or sound the console makes would influence the buying decision of consumers is all kinds of stupid.

Second problem: (though they talk about this in this article, it's not my direct source for this). Basically nintendo used a slower and weaker but more expensive CPU to achieve this lower footprint, but at a big cost for performance. Simply put they COULD have had a faster CPU for the SAME money if they just accepted a louder fan and a larger box.

Third problem (no source for this, my opinion, but you can google it if you want): while nand flash memory is faster than an HD, HD just provides a much better Gb/€ ratio. And I'm sorry you say you don't need it, I respect that, just I respect people who don't need facebook or a smartphone, but you can NOT deny that most people DO care about how much storage their console has since it limits how many games they can download and store. I changed my PS3's 80Gb hard drive into a 500Gb all the way back in 2009 (inside the first year that I owned it).

Same for my 3DS which has a 32Gb card (though of course having many games in the system's memory is much more important for a handheld than a home console). And yeah I know you can connect a USB HD, but the USB presents a bottleneck and I am quite curious if the games (full HD games, not VC or eshop games) being run from the HD don't suffer in performance because of that.


I LOVE nintendo, but these 2 choices have restricted them for no reason. If they had a more loud normal CPU they could have a console that's at least a good amount stronger and if they had gone with a HD drive instead of flash memory (which I am very worried they again only chose so they could make the console smaller in size) they could increase the size of the given memory more easily. Really as it stands the 8Gb model is pretty useless from what I understand.

[Sarge]

Interesting stuff. Thanks for the link.

Honestly, the more I think about it, I think a discussion I had with Exhuminator is making more and more sense. If you look at the Wii U as a transition towards a hybrid handheld-console, where they look to get completely out of the console side of the equation, or at least dedicated consoles, the Wii U's design starts to make at least a little sense.

Heck, I don't know if it would have changed much if they had done things a bit differently. Maybe so, maybe not. Seems like they were shooting for second-console status by that article, having something unobtrusive that folks could own by default, and wouldn't take up the main screen. So quiet and small.

On the storage, though, it would concern me more if there were no options to expand the memory. But there are, so if I do go on an eShop splurge, I can get a ton of capacity for relatively cheap. It's nice to have it built in, I don't disagree, but it would bother me a lot more if it were like Microsoft did things last generation with their proprietary hard drives (which can be worked around, but still).

Anyway, I totally get where you're coming from. I guess I'm just not too torn up about it. And looking on the bright side, at least they'll have a chance to correct things the next time around.

[Tanooki]

Oh they'd be doing better had they went with a rough parity power wise (cpu, gpu, ram) to what the others did. I'm sure it isn't covered or at least not easily googled from main sources, but had they done it they were offered third party games and they thumbed their nose at it. Outside of a few immature developers who just dislike Nintendo for whatever reason, just as there are a few who won't touch MS and will play with Sony hardware for irrational reasons, it would have had the games that the 2 get currently. At that rate it would have come down to which unique games, which online service do you feel you like best/need at all, and comfort of the controller. Nintendo chose to go cheap, go quiet, go tablet and they got what they had coming unfortunately.

The gamecube was the last time they were kind of at parity, but as lame as it sounds, Nintendo was at fault there too. A good few developers backed away from them and not because it was hard to port to, the chipset was easy, but it was the lack of a standard controller and lack of a standard dvd disc as they went with a 1.5GB mini-dvd. Many game developers didn't want to re-tool their games for less buttons and didn't want to chop their games up to fit on 2+ discs either. Online wasn't huge except for MS fanboys with their live accounts then as Sony didn't really bother either except with a few games here and there like FF11 and its hard drive storage package so it did come down to the hardware/accessories and games in that run. If there's something you can say for NIntendo, they know games, but they never learn their lessons when making consoles.