Wii U (game console)

[Rottedfreak]

They have got to get their act together and make massive software announcements and should open their checkbook to make it happen. That new Monolith X trailer they shown has raised interest but they need more and quickly. Just announcing Mario and Zelda being in planning stages and showing nothing but a HD Zelda remake shows they haven't got a strategy for Wii U. They might want to cut prices on games like Mass Effect 3 and smack EA around, tell them to get off their lard butts and have the dlc ready.

[Danny]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/df...nally-revealed "we can now, categorically, finally rule out any next-gen pretensions for the Wii U - the GCN hardware in Durango and Orbis is in a completely different league" Ouch, thats pretty damming press for nintendos hopes of recapturing the 'hardcore market'. All the more so if rumours are correct and the playstation 4 is being announced in a few weeks and its a dramatic jump in power from the wii U. Theres only so long nintendo could have run on a lack of innovation and for my money mario galaxy was the only remotely inventive game they put out since the gamecube era. People arent as sold on "yet another attempt to sell the same 30 year old mario 2d formulae" as we used to be and if its reached the point where the only way to keep investors was iwatas promise of stepping down as ceo if another quarter in a row is a loss then personally i think we might actually see something much the same as what happened to SEGA back at the turn of the century. What was once a console giant just ran out of steam and fell behind the times and ultimately becomes just another 3rd party developer. and this is all before the orbis, durango, steambox, ouya or any of the other new up and comers show up on the market. It's kind of a shame, but it cant really be helped when on one hang more kids know of call of duty than mario nowadays and most japanese devs think anything bombs because of some fault with the customers and never them so they never learn - just look at squaresoft and its "b-but why dont they like final fantasy 13 and its spin offs? maybe we need to make another to sway them" thinking. I think nintendos needed a big f*cking shake up for about ten years. This will either be the wake up call they need or one more victim of the 2nd great videogame crash.

[Rottedfreak]

From that Eurogamer article: While there's still room for plenty of debate about the Wii U hardware, the core fundamentals are now in place and effectively we have something approaching a full spec. It took an extraordinary effort to get this far and you may be wondering quite why it took a reverse engineering specialist using ultra-magnification photography to get this information, when we already know the equivalent data for Durango and Orbis. The answer is fairly straightforward - leaks tend to derive from development kit and SDK documentation and, as we understand it, this crucial information simply wasn't available in Nintendo's papers, with developers essentially left to their own devices to figure out the performance level of the hardware. Real time footage from Bayonetta 2

[Neil]

^^ Sorry, all looks like current console tech. to me? ie: Nothing the XBox 360 couldn't do?

[Rottedfreak]

^^ Sorry, all looks like current console tech. to me? ie: Nothing the XBox 360 couldn't do? And you and me may end up saying that about what's shown on the next consoles. Monolith X (better called Xenoblade 2) is said to have a massive open world that only Wii U (and PCs) can currently do due to it's RAM, and dx11 shading which many of us consumers don't even register visually. Metal Gear Solid Ground Zeroes, Watch Dogs and Star Wars 1313 had everyone fooled too, my jaw hit the floor when I played the Dead Space 3 demo.

[krisvds]

Power is one thing. Fun another. One doesn't necessarily rule out nor imply the other. Nintendo will be just fine as long as they keep releasing a steady stream of quality titles. I enjoyed the Wii. Some of the best games of these past few years were released for it; Mario Galaxy, Zelda skyward sword, sin and Punishment 2, Xenoblade Chronicles, No more heroes and Madworld to name but a few. This looks like crazy fun BTW. Regardless of platform: EDIT: that eurogamer article does not mention this, straight from Jim Morrison at Chipworks, taken from Neogaf: Been reading some of the comments on your thread and have a few of my own to use as you wish. 1. This GPU is custom. 2. If it was based on ATI/AMD or a Radeon-like design, the chip would carry die marks to reflect that. Everybody has to recognize the licensing. It has none. Only Renesas name which is a former unit of NEC. 3. This chip is fabricated in a 40 nm advanced CMOS process at TSMC and is not low tech 4. For reference sake, the Apple A6 is fabricated in a 32 nm CMOS process and is also designed from scratch. It’s manufacturing costs, in volumes of 100k or more, about $26 - $30 a pop. Over 16 months degrade to about $15 each a. Wii U only represents like 30M units per annum vs iPhone which is more like 100M units per annum. Put things in perspective. 5. This Wii U GPU costs more than that by about $20-$40 bucks each making it a very expensive piece of kit. Combine that with the IBM CPU and the Flash chip all on the same package and this whole thing is closer to $100 a piece when you add it all up 6. The Wii U main processor package is a very impressive piece of hardware when its said and done. Trust me on this. It may not have water cooling and heat sinks the size of a brownie, but its one slick piece of silicon. eDRAM is not cheap to make. That is why not everybody does it. Cause its so dam expensive

[Neil]

Monolith X (better called Xenoblade 2) is said to have a massive open world that only Wii U (and PCs) can currently do due to it's RAM, and dx11 shading which many of us consumers don't even register visually. Metal Gear Solid Ground Zeroes, Watch Dogs and Star Wars 1313 had everyone fooled too, my jaw hit the floor when I played the Dead Space 3 demo. Skyrim? Fallout? Crysis? These are all on the consoles? Anyway, so your impression is the Wii U is leaps and bounds visually more impressive than the current consoles?

[Rottedfreak]

Need for Speed Most Wanted The best not release it for full price but you have to laugh when they say porting PC assetts was literally ten minutes work, I guess Batman, Mass Effect and so on took five then.

[Rottedfreak]

This past month has been odd for Nintendo Wii U, sales are said to be up in some key areas yet there's been a bit of gloominess about it's future after epic states they won't support it with Unreal 4 and EA flat out won't develop for it. The thing is, Nintendo have a strategy and have been making deals investing in the future with rising companies. Unity and Nintendo are cooperating to make it possible for indies to export their projects to Nintendo’s Wii U platform. Nintendo will distribute a Wii U-only version of Unity with every Wii U development kit to its in-house and external developers. They get access to the same set of Unity tools, hallmark efficiency and ease of use to create an awesome Wii U game. Were hearing about developers losing their passion for AAA development, leaving studios and going 'indy' (small time) and while we won't see anything with the budget of Mass Effect 3, Tomb Raider, Dead Space 3 or Resident Evil 6, in some ways it's a good thing. Nintendo are willing to support Platinum Games make Bayonetta 2 and The Wonderful 101. All I'll say is some of the games I mentioned have been flops and with costs on PS4 and Nextbox set to soar it might be on Wii U where some future classics are born much like on NES and PS1.

[Danny]

Been another bad month for nintendo, a bunch more publishers pulling support from the console, madden - always a surprisingly large seller for nintendo - is no longer going to be on nintendos consoles and bad for them, but not bad for us, amazon has had to reduce the price to £149 because the console isnt selling. Id say it might be a great time to pick one up, but then again with so much support being pulled as the industry is calling it "dead in the water" and "failing on a level worse than the dreamcast" it could be a waste of money. still, its a much better price for any console in this day and age.

[Rottedfreak]

Nintendo's attitude to it all sickens me. You'd think their virtual console line up would be more then what you can already get on the regular Wii and DS systems but it isn't. No N64 or Gamecube games. There's no TVii in Europe yet, not even a app for BBC Iplayer in the UK. And to top it off Iwata, new CEO of NOA admits Pikmin 3 and the like are running late because their teams underestimated development needs. Third party games came to Wii U in name only often lacking DLC and features, check out the criticism leveled at 'Injustice Gods Among Us' for example. Know what else stuns me? yesterday Shadows of the Eternals was announced, it's a sequel to Eternal Darkness coming to Wii U and PC but it requires a kickstarter for every subsequent episode they'll release. If I had known how badly organised Nintendo was six months ago I would have never bought Wii U, they want t get their fucking act together. You could point out their focus is 3DS but it should be on Wii U.

[Rottedfreak]

After Xbox One, Playstation 4 reveals maybe Nintendo should consider relaunching Wii U with a new unit including a bigger hard drive with Nintendoland installed, and advertised as just a games dedicated console. That said they would also need a damn good E3/Nintendo Direct presentation with gamer friendly exclusives, like say Metroid Blast as a full retail game gearing towards the shoot em up crowd that likes Halo and Call of Duty.

[krisvds]

After Xbox One, Playstation 4 reveals maybe Nintendo should consider relaunching Wii U as just a games dedicated console with a bigger hard drive and Nintendoland installed. That said they would also need a damn good E3/Nintendo Direct presentation with gamer friendly exclusives, like say Metroid Blast as a full retail game gearing towards the shoot em up crowd that likes Halo, Call of Duty among others. I believe they have that covered. Anyone not slightly interested in the likes of Bayonetta 2, The Wonderful 101, the new monolith RPG ('X'), Pikmin 3, a new 3D Mario platformer, Mario Kart, Smash Bros, ... is probably not the intended audience anyways.

[Danny]

http://mynintendonews.com/2013/06/04...u-basic-model/ Apparently Nintendo is discontinuing the basic wii U model. Who would have thought that a console with only an 8gb hard drive wouldnt sell? Not that nintendos the only one with this problem, sonys just as bad. if i can get a terrabyte harddrive for £30 online i see no reason why that shouldnt be the norm in this age of increasingly common digital downloads of increasingly large filesizes.

[Rottedfreak]

We still get basic Xbox 360's but yeah 8 and 32 GB consoles are a joke in this day and age. If Nintendo plan to launch a new model it should be one with a 1TB HDD and USB 3.0 ports for external HDDs. Hopefully they won't do something stupid like drop Wii U and make a Wii K with 512Mb X86 CPU and GTX680 equivalent GPU with 16GB DDR3 RAM for 4K gaming. I'm not saying they should Wii K with 512Mb X86 CPU and GTX680 equivalent GPU with 16GB DDR3 RAM for 4K gaming but if they wan't to do a Wii K with 512Mb X86 CPU and GTX680 equivalent GPU with 16GB DDR3 RAM for 4K gaming that's their business.