Given what we know, how powerful do you think the Wii U is?

[American Gunner]

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Not only that, when you start pricing games, console games add up fast compared to PC.

Do console games never come down in price or something? I mean, you can get games for pretty cheap on amazon a few months after they come out.

 

[GoSharks]

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I think the point people are missing is that you can choose to spend as little or as much as you want on a PC. Since 90% of games are consolized, you don't need a $500 graphics card to get the "Best" graphics a game can offer. Not only that, when you start pricing games, console games add up fast compared to PC.

What kills me is people compare the "entry" level consoles, which, really is just that..entry level. You aren't talking about Live, the extra controllers, the HDMI cables, etc etc that nickle and dime you to death. Not only that, when the consoles came out, base models were not $200/$250, more like $399 and $499.

Why aren't you applying your first paragraph to your second? I'll grant you Live, but everything else is optional. And who doesn't have a spare $3 HDMI cable lying around these days?

Console games are basically the same price as PC games. Not sure what you are trying to say...

 

[Sulaco]

Do console games never come down in price or something? I mean, you can get games for pretty cheap on amazon a few months after they come out.

That, and a big plus for console games (albeit who knows for how much longer): USED GAMES.

And that goes both ways, not just as the purchaser. If I'm not at all happy with a game, I can still turn around and sell it for a fair chunk of cash (depending on the game) online or trade-in. 99% of PC games now, especially STEAM activated ones, cannot.

 

[tipoo]

It's surprising and disappointing how little we still know about the chips in the Wii U, yes Nintendo has been secretive on specs for the last few gens but something like shader core count and eDRAM size would be easy to figure out by taking the chip apart and looking at it under a microscope. Like Chipworks did for the Apple custom designed Swift CPU and a few other architectures.

We did get the clock speeds from the hacker Marcan, that's about it. 1.24GHz for the CPU, 550 for the GPU, and the shared main memory bandwidth is 12.8GB/s.