Rumor: Wii U slower than PS3 and Xbox 360, release date leaked

Rick

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According to GamesIndustry International and two of its sources, the Wii U is expected to have unimpressive graphics hardware. In relation to the Playstation 3 and Xbox, "the graphics are just not as powerful." stated an anonymous developer from GamesIndustry. A second developer who works for a "major company"  corroborated this opinion, adding that although it is more modern, there aren't as many shaders. The Wii U just "can't quite keep up", the source said.

Since we're talking about rumors, WiiUDaily has also reported what they believe to be the Wii U's launch date: November 18, 2012. According to WiiUDaily, this date comes from an internal Media Land memo, one of the largest video game shops in Japan.

It's interesting to note that in 2006, the original Wii launched on November 19. Both dates fall on the third Sunday of November.

Given the long stretch of time that exists between current-gen and next-gen consoles, we've all come to expect each iteration to be vastly superior to its predecessor. Superior in what way, though? In an industry where high-end performance is necessary to push impressive graphics, speed has traditionally been paramount. In recent years however, there seems to be a growing expectation of innovation as well. A good example of this is the Wii itself, when it disrupted the long-held status quo of console gaming with its motion-sensitive controllers. Nintendo may be trying to replicate that success by shaking up the gaming establishment once more, but this time with tablets.

A good reason for a slower console, explains GamesIndustry, may be cost. When compared to a traditional or even motion-sensitive controller, Wii U's tablet-based controller must be far more expensive to manufacture. I believe most of us know what a cut-throat industry console gaming is. Nintendo may have decided to scale back on the Wii U's graphics hardware in order to retain its unique, tablet-centric vision, yet keep the system affordable.

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Was there ever any doubt that it would be slower? During an interview I saw with the president of Nintendo US I noticed the interviewer trying to get details about the GPU used and all he could get out of him was that it would run 1080p. IGP can run 1080p so that wasn't a good answer at all. Oh well, let's see if they can sucker enough people into jumping on board when ti first launches. I was really surprised by the Wii's acceptance and even though I got one right away, the novelty wore off really quickly for me.
 
Well if current rumours are to believed none of the next gen consoles will be worth owning, in fact I've been so disappointed even with the current gen that I've been looking into things like onlive and going back to more PC games, over steam act.

At least you know where you stand owning a Nintendo console, if you want to play online you can and you don't have to be online to authenticate a game, at least with Nintendo its about enjoying yourself and having a laugh and now they have made the leap into HD and looking at the latest images and videos of the next LoZ game, you can be a serious gamer.
In fact I wouldn't call myself a hard core gammer if I didn't own and play games on all the platforms that I can, it makes me less bias and fanboy blinded and at least if one system gets a game that the others don't then it won't matter for me.

And to be honest the Nintendo Wii-U is probably going to be the best games console you can own if rumours are believed about new security policies and knowing the Microsoft Xbox brand to well the hardware and software issues will be rife and massive unreliability will be an issue for me, and thats there own fault they brought that upon themselves!
 
The Wii U will outsell both the 720 & Orbis because of the recent rumors about the always on online connection, not being able to play used games, no backwards compatibility, etc.
 
this the swan song for Nintendo. After this they will be a software only company like SAGA
 
Not as powerful as 5-6 year old hardware.....what a joke. Just a reason to cut costs and not leading into hardware/software innovation. Adding more gimmicks to their list.....I hope Orbis and 720 wipe the floor off Wii U, Nintendo is just a company that wants higher margins and to fool its consumers with marketing BS. And yes terrible news for PC gaming.....software/game development will never catch up with actual tech GPU developments. They said they want photo realistic graphics not going to happen until another 10yrs on consoles at this rate.
 
By that definition all consoles are a joke when you compare them to the PC, so you might as well condemn all consoles.
Take a look at the Wii sales when it was released. Then compare it to the PS3 and Xbox 360 sales. Can you really blame them for cutting out on high-end hardware? If I was running the business, I sure as hell wouldn't want to mass manufacture a high risk product.
It's like shorting in the stock market, sure the profit margins can be higher, but what happens when the stocks shoot up and you run into a mountain of debt?
 
The WIi U GPU is based off of the R700s, and I've read that it was the equivalent of the HD 4870. How can the Wii U be slower than the 360/ps3 with their ancient GPUs.
 
Kids just want to play a fun game & realistic graphics aren't that important to them. Nintendo knows this demographic and the Wii U is more for them than for hardcore gamers.
 
Gearbox who are doing Aliens said that the Wii U is more powerful. Look it up. They say it has more ram ect. Who are you gonna believe? Anonymous sources or devs actually for a fact working on the console?
 
@ venomblade

That's why this rumor is 100% BS. The CPU in the Wii U may not be revolutionary but it's almost impossible that any R700 GPU would be slower than the R520 in 360, unless they are using HD4250...

Even if they just use a 1GB HD4650, that's at least 2x faster than the GPU in the 360.

Considering Wii U was already shown to run modern games at 1080P, something current consoles cannot do, it's laughable that people actually believe this.

I mean seriously, the R520 in 360 is just a 48 shaders, 16 TMUs graphics card. People have to be absolutely GPU illiterate to believe this rumor. Even the crappiest Llano CPU has faster APU that the graphics card in the 360/PS3.
 
People who want Nintendo to fail are ******* retarded. Zelda, Mario, Donkey Kong, Metroid, Mario Kart are 100x more innovative than the garbage that COD is. Those games can be enjoyed by people of any age and have provided enjoyment for many of us since we were little kids.

If those mascots/games never existed, decades of innovation in these genres would be completely wiped out. COD is nothing but a Goldeneye 64/Perfect Dark ripoff that's just adopted to modern warfare. If it wasn't for those 2 games revolutionizing close FPS combat on consoles, COD wouldn't even exist in its current form.

Even to this day, the Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time is one of the best games I've ever played. No one is going to remember BF3 the minute BF4 is out, etc. If it wasn't for Nintendo, we would have never had millions of people get into gaming, the thumb stick/modern controller, etc.

As a PC gamer, I am amazed how elitist some PC gamers are. Really, wanting Nintendo to fail and follow Sega?

It's funny people want innovation but are too quick to blame Nintendo for trying something unique. Consoles have never been about delivering the best graphics. The sad part is all companies have to do now is keep remaking the exact same game and calling it "millionth" edition (COD 15th and BF 10, etc.) and millions of people will keep buying it. BF3 is the same freaken game I've played 10 years ago. There is 0 innovation in the FPS genre at the moment. That's the highlight of PC gaming superiority nowadays?
 
Slower, faster who gives a crap doesnt matter. Here comes the Wii U and another batch of Mario. Zelda, Donkey Kong, Metroid, Mario Kart, and other crutches Nintendo used for yrs to stay in business. Yawn, after 30 yrs I'm tired of seeing these games. Every new system nintendo puts out is just a new way to play the same old thing, yawn again. Old man miyamoto needs to retire or for once for some real innovation make a new game with such impact it would retire these old and tired depends wearing games. New mascot, new games, new something....Nah wait, its easier to make these games another 30 yrs.
 
venomblade said:
The WIi U GPU is based off of the R700s, and I've read that it was the equivalent of the HD 4870. How can the Wii U be slower than the 360/ps3 with their ancient GPUs.

Thank you. I know the R700 was a rumor. But it's a pretty good one. It seems perfectly in line with how nintendo thinks. the R700 chips would be extremely cheap to make. Like you said with a R700 under the hood, it's almost impossible to even get close to achieving slower results based on the fact that the R700's are so much newer then the old stuff in the XBox and PS3, not to mention faster. The only thing I could see that would "Support" this "rumor" is the CPU. Not much is really known and the PS3/Xbox are not really "slow" by today's standards.
 
Lol. A POWER 7 CPU and Radeon HD 4800 series GPU (practically based on the R700 series architecture) are much faster and more powerful than a Radeon X1800/1850 with a 7 year old IBM processor in an Xbox 360. Plus, major devs such as THQ, Team Ninja, EA, Activision, Epic Games, etc have stated the Wii U is indeed powerful. These rumors have no credibility.
 
Well Nintendo never really aimed at the High-end gaming market as of the last decade atleast.
But who cares? It worked for them.
90% of families, and kids still use nintendo products.
It offers something for them which Sony and microsoft does not.
I mean clearly a 10 year old kid doesn't wanna troll his mom in BF3 in the living room.
But rather in mario party and such games.
 
Twixtea said:
Well Nintendo never really aimed at the High-end gaming market as of the last decade atleast.
But who cares? It worked for them.
90% of families, and kids still use nintendo products.
It offers something for them which Sony and microsoft does not.
I mean clearly a 10 year old kid doesn't wanna troll his mom in BF3 in the living room.
But rather in mario party and such games.
This person understands :)
 
Guest said:
The Wii U will outsell both the 720 & Orbis because of the recent rumors about the always on online connection, not being able to play used games, no backwards compatibility, etc.

That and being released nearly an entire year before the competition might do it! Nintendo knows what there doing and as stated this rumour is completely fanboy fuelled, by some snotty nosed PS3/Xbox fanboy!

I'm going to buy it because I enjoy games with substance and storyline, unlike BF/COD act those that state they don't like Legend of Zelda games are the same people that you see on youtube getting owned by the first level boss, but then there next video is them quick scoping on COD or raping the heck out of the helicopter on BF3.

Just like to point out I also play BF3/COD/LoZ/Mario Kart and own all systems including a high end gaming PC and high end Mac(not updated my sig by the way) So my opinion is less bias than around 90% of you on this site, no offence to the other 10% but those 90% are why we have BS news like this floating around the web, there the same people that can't see that brand competition is the best thing for the consumer!
 
Anyhow, a medium-level gaming PC of today (AMD quad-core with 6gb of RAM and a Geforce 560) boasts any console away in performance and graphics quality...

U MAD? :)
 
I just want to play a new Super Smash Bros. game. I don't give a **** if the graphics aren't as good as the ps3/xbox360 (if the rumors are true). Just give me another Smash Bros. and I'm a happy camper. Also, a new Mario Kart and Metroid would be nice ;)
 
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