Official Nintendo E3 Press Conference Thread

[akugami]

New rumors peg the Wii U at 50% more powerful than a PS3/360.

I see great possibilities for the Wii U controller but I just can't get myself excited considering you can only use one Wii U controller. They really really need to allow the use of two of them.

 

[finbarqs]

someone already needs to release the specs of the wii u!

 

[darkewaffle]

does it match up to the units sold though.
it isn't all that hard for nintendo to mop up with parents buying child safe toys for their children, but I seriously have doubts about those who bought it as casual gamers.

Depends what you mean by match up, relative to previous years the Wii is actually selling fairly slowly. The PS3 is ahead of it in 2011 and the 360 is just about dead even. In spite of this, the Wii is still selling 10% more games than either the 360 or the PS3 this year and has 3/5 of the highest selling games of 2011 so far.

 

[BD2003]

This is why they only showed the wii U from the front:

http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/15/nintendo-wii-u-console-shown-off-in-its-bright-minimalistic-ent/

Holy crap, that's long.

 

[darkewaffle]

lol reading the comments on that engadget article

Console size is about as tertiary as it gets, even if the WiiU was a foot long it would still be a fraction of the size of a 360/ps3/xbox and I've no problems making room for any of those personally.

 

[BD2003]

lol reading the comments on that engadget article

Console size is about as tertiary as it gets, even if the WiiU was a foot long it would still be a fraction of the size of a 360/ps3/xbox and I've no problems making room for any of those personally.

Yeah, I don't particularly care either, but it just looks so....bizarre. That def isn't going to stack well on anything either. I'd rather it be twice as high and more boxy than what looks like two feet deep.

 

[purbeast0]

personally i don't give a crap what a console looks like. the ps3 is the ugliest console in the current gen but that really means nothing.

 

[Anubis]

the PS3 isnt ugly but its rounded shape pisses me off cause you cant stack anything on it, the WIIU shape is just long and skinny, woudl like to see it next to the other 2 because it looks like they just put the drive on the end of it and not the front which is why it looks odd


also they confirmed that it cant even play DVDs, which IMO is really fucking stupid

 

[BD2003]

Yeah, I mean stackability can be somewhat important, although I suspect the shape might be partially due to increasing surface area to aid in heat dissipation. Still, it's early hardware, and given how reluctant they were to show it, it will likely change quite a bit.

Also of note is the sensor bar port. Given how heavily their demos leaned on new controller + wiimote play, I think more likely than not it's also going to come bundled with a wiimote plus and sensor bar.

 

[smartpatrol]

According to Jon Stokes, smartphone processors will surpass Wii U in terms of computing power sometime in the middle of Wii U's lifecycle.

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2011/06/report-wii-u-50-percent-more-powerful-than-ps3.ars

 

[darkswordsman17]

I hate it because it looks like a terrible design for heat dissipation. They should have made it like a Gamecube, but with the drive on the bottom, and then a big fan that pushes air out the top. Make it so you can put it on its "back" so that the drive is vertical and the air is pushed out the back.

How it is now, they have a crappy little fan in the back (which is going to be noisy to push out the heat properly), and with that drive in the way, it limits the size of the heatsink they can probably use as well (they should ask Microsoft how well that works).

Even a 5770 at 28 or 32nm is going to put out some heat, and haven't they already said the CPU is going to be 45nm? Which means its probably bigger than the 360s CPU.

 

[purbeast0]

this console is over a year away ... you guys are crazy to think that picture is the "final" design. i'm sure that was a huge reason why they didn't even show the console and have them on display in general.

i don't even think the hardware is finalized at this point.

 

[BD2003]

I hate it because it looks like a terrible design for heat dissipation. They should have made it like a Gamecube, but with the drive on the bottom, and then a big fan that pushes air out the top. Make it so you can put it on its "back" so that the drive is vertical and the air is pushed out the back.

How it is now, they have a crappy little fan in the back (which is going to be noisy to push out the heat properly), and with that drive in the way, it limits the size of the heatsink they can probably use as well (they should ask Microsoft how well that works).

Even a 5770 at 28 or 32nm is going to put out some heat, and haven't they already said the CPU is going to be 45nm? Which means its probably bigger than the 360s CPU.

Well, it seems like not having a disc spinning at 10000rpm right above the chipset wouldn't do great things for dissipation either.

The more I think about it, the more I like it. The limiting factor in my cabinet is horizontal shelf space, not depth. I honestly don't have room for another wide console but I could easily slip this thing in right where the wii currently lies.

45nm is kind of odd though. The 360 is a single 32nm SoC in the slim, isn't it? Perhaps they're getting a deal on the manufacturing by sticking with the outdated process.

 

[MikeyLSU]

The Wii U's power compared to the PS3/XBOX 360 doens't matter at all.

All games will be ports from one another and will all look pretty much the same. The real test is the Wii U's power compared to the PS4/XBOX 720 as that will let use know if they will continue to have 3rd party support if their system will be able to keep up with games.

But whether it is 50% more or 500% more powerful than PS3 doesn't matter, 3rd party games will only make it look the same as the current generation to save on costs.

EDIT: I just read that the Wii U will not be able to play DVDs either. I knew they weren't doing the blu ray thing, but I assumed it would be able to play simple DVDs.

 

[BD2003]

The Wii U's power compared to the PS3/XBOX 360 doens't matter at all.

All games will be ports from one another and will all look pretty much the same. The real test is the Wii U's power compared to the PS4/XBOX 720 as that will let use know if they will continue to have 3rd party support if their system will be able to keep up with games.

But whether it is 50% more or 500% more powerful than PS3 doesn't matter, 3rd party games will only make it look the same as the current generation to save on costs.

EDIT: I just read that the Wii U will not be able to play DVDs either. I knew they weren't doing the blu ray thing, but I assumed it would be able to play simple DVDs.

It does matter quite a bit. Having power on par with the 360/ps3 isn't a selling point to those who already own a current gen console.

But if it can play those ports at a significantly higher frame rate or resolution, then theres a real reason for a whole lot of people to consider it, even if it's just in the interim.

It doesn't require any extra work on the part of the devs to enable true 1080p. It'll build installbase and momentum. It's very important they get off to a good launch.

 

[purbeast0]

It does matter quite a bit. Having power on par with the 360/ps3 isn't a selling point to those who already own a current gen console.

But if it can play those ports at a significantly higher frame rate or resolution, then theres a real reason for a whole lot of people to consider it, even if it's just in the interim.

It doesn't require any extra work on the part of the devs to enable true 1080p. It'll build installbase and momentum. It's very important they get off to a good launch.

that's not entirely true. they will need to have higher res textures and images, and then actually load those into the game to get the true higher res.

but at the same time, that won't be too much extra work so i see what you mean.

 

[alent1234]

The Wii U's power compared to the PS3/XBOX 360 doens't matter at all.

All games will be ports from one another and will all look pretty much the same. The real test is the Wii U's power compared to the PS4/XBOX 720 as that will let use know if they will continue to have 3rd party support if their system will be able to keep up with games.

But whether it is 50% more or 500% more powerful than PS3 doesn't matter, 3rd party games will only make it look the same as the current generation to save on costs.

EDIT: I just read that the Wii U will not be able to play DVDs either. I knew they weren't doing the blu ray thing, but I assumed it would be able to play simple DVDs.

not really true

game devs use universal dev tools and then use other tools to code specific features of each console into a game or to export the code to. if the tool isn't optimized for a platform you get bad code that won't run very well.

it's the reason why a lot of games ran better on the xbox 360 than the PS3 even though the latter was more powerful.

 

[MikeyLSU]

I guess I just don't see a lot of gamers who already own a PS3/XBOX buying a Wii U just for a slight upgrade in performance(if any).

I really don't think you will see very much improvement from graphics in the Wii U at all for ported games.

But I guess we will see.

 

[Anubis]

I guess I just don't see a lot of gamers who already own a PS3/XBOX buying a Wii U just for a slight upgrade in performance(if any).

Agree and so do all my friends. the ONLY way any of us are going to get it is if the exclusives are flat out amazing must haves. and we all doubt that will be the case

 

[BD2003]

that's not entirely true. they will need to have higher res textures and images, and then actually load those into the game to get the true higher res.

but at the same time, that won't be too much extra work so i see what you mean.

Screen resolution has zero to do with texture resolution. You can (and I have) run n64 games with 32x32 textures at 1920x1080 and it's still a huge improvement in image quality overall. In either case, most cross platform games also target PCs and tend to already have those higher res textures and flexibility in the engine.

Plus, more processing power enables them to increase Antialiasing, shadow precision, number of light sources, particle density, physics precision, shader precision/complexity, texture filtering, draw distance/LOD, tessellation, etc - basically anything procedural, with the only real work being inputting larger values and optimizing for the particular power of the system at hand.

It's not particularly difficult in any way, and it's fundamentally the same thing we've been doing for years on our older PC games as we upgrade through the years, and it's all done by the user. Just basically turn the knobs up...any PC gamer fundamentally understands this.

This is why the whole "devs wont be able to afford the next gen" argument is bunk. There's plenty of very easy ways to soak up that power and put it to good use with very, very little work.

 

[finbarqs]

as steve jobs would say, "DOA"

 

[Queasy]

as steve jobs would say, "DOA"

I think it is way too soon to say that. Nintendo has undoubtedly F'd up the announcement of the console but we are far away from calling it a failure or DOA.

 

[darkewaffle]

Agree and so do all my friends. the ONLY way any of us are going to get it is if the exclusives are flat out amazing must haves. and we all doubt that will be the case

Do people really make buying decisions based on power? I get the platforms with the games I want, which at this stage in their lifecycles is all of them to some extent. Suppose someone had no console and wanted to know whether to get a PS3/Wii/360; are you really going to point them straight for the PS3 simply on the basis of processing power? I think most people would ask first which games do you want to play and take it from there. And even then, I think controllers, online experience, media capability and more take precedent for most people.

I just think that particular point is given too much priority in a lot of cases. The end user experience console to console depends more heavily on other factors than pixels pushed.

 

[BD2003]

Do people really make buying decisions based on power? I get the platforms with the games I want, which at this stage in their lifecycles is all of them to some extent. Suppose someone had no console and wanted to know whether to get a PS3/Wii/360; are you really going to point them straight for the PS3 simply on the basis of processing power? I think most people would ask first which games do you want to play and take it from there. And even then, I think controllers, online experience, media capability and more take precedent for most people.

I just think that particular point is given too much priority in a lot of cases. The end user experience console to console depends more heavily on other factors than pixels pushed.

For the console purchase, not so much. For a multiplatform game, you'd obviously want the best version, and that's where comparative power makes the difference.

With the systems being so close in power it can be a moot point. But if one is consistently better looking and playing than another, it's obviously something to consider.

 

[purbeast0]

Do people really make buying decisions based on power? I get the platforms with the games I want, which at this stage in their lifecycles is all of them to some extent. Suppose someone had no console and wanted to know whether to get a PS3/Wii/360; are you really going to point them straight for the PS3 simply on the basis of processing power? I think most people would ask first which games do you want to play and take it from there. And even then, I think controllers, online experience, media capability and more take precedent for most people.

I just think that particular point is given too much priority in a lot of cases. The end user experience console to console depends more heavily on other factors than pixels pushed.

to be quite honest if someone asked me which console they should buy, i'd assume they are only talking about PS3 and 360 and i probably wouldn't even bring the Wii into the discussion. and since they are both fairly comparable graphically, i'd then ask them the questions about what kind of games they would like, online, etc.

and the reason i say that is because i see the Wii in just a totally different area than the Xbox360 and PS3. and i don't mean that as a bad thing, i just mean if someone wanted a gaming machine like a Wii (basic party machine with AAA first party titles) they wouldn't really have any options, because it has nothing really competing directly against it.