Wii U Review: Nintendo's Latest Is Out the Door

[Sunny87]

While Halo 4 looked pretty good, it's obviously memory limited. Low resolution, low texture res, low framerate. More System RAM and GPU memory is required to raise all of those areas. Although, I agree 8GB in a console at the moment may seem excessive, but you have to realize these things have to last 5-8 years (and MS/Sony would much prefer 8 if possible.) Games on PC are already being 64 bit optimized (Says it right on the back of Dishonored.) Since the industry is heading towards 64 bit over the next few years it makes sense for both companies to take advantage of that for minimal cost. 4GB RAM costs you and I around $20, and 8GB around $35. Even if the price increase is the same for Sony and MS (doubt that, but let's go with numbers we have,) the industry is looking to make use of 8GB systems already... I think they'd side with futureproofing and spend a few extra bucks. CPU side is where they can slack. Even a low-end QuadCore will be able to handle pretty much anything over the next 5 years or so (hell a Q6600 with a minor OC to 3Ghz still works great today.) That's where they'll find most of their savings, and invest heavy in the GPU. Next round of consoles (the next NEXT gen,) will be something interesting as 4K TVs will be come the standard, and pushing those resolutions will be interesting to say the least.

In a PC you need more system memory in a games console you need more GDDR, system memory is not dumped into games on a games consoles it might be only $20 for 4GB of RAM but times that by however many units you need to shift and at either break even or profit margin it becomes an expensive waist, the most your going to see in the next Sony and MS iterations will be 2GB of system memory, while I agree with the lower res yes this is true but the Wii U exceeds the Xboxes 256MB by 768MB of GDDR5, if the next Sony or Xbox product exceed more than 2GB of GDDR5 then expect either a console sold at a loss or a console with much less CPU and GPU power than expected, 3GB GDDR5 cards can be in the region of £390-£450 and the 6GB GDDR5 monsters out there are nearly £600, Sony must have learned their lesson by now I highly doubt they will exceed that price point or want to sell at a heavy loss again.

 

[Burty117]

So Sunny87, Now all the console specs have been pretty much finalized and prices...

You must feel slightly stupid reading back your comments above no? xD

 

[Sunny87]

So Sunny87, Now all the console specs have been pretty much finalized and prices...

You must feel slightly stupid reading back your comments above no? xD

Not really no because those system still suck in comparison to my better gaming PC, while I have XB1 and PS4 on pre order I'm in no way deluded about the fact that devs have gotten their own way with the systems, meaning shoddy PC ports and poor frame rates that has already been proven by ubi, if you have a custom designed bit of kit then you have to work at producing great looking games and now that 2 systems on the market have x86 CPU's do you not think that devs will just copy and paste code from one to the other then troubleshoot from there, of course they will that's why the demanded it not because it's better but because it's easier for their lazy asses to port port port.

And the age old "Yeah but the games will look better once devs get to know the technology" argument has been thrown out of the window as devs already do know the hardware and they have done for years it's called the PC, so don't expect them to be awesome extreme gaming machines with full 4K res 60 fps games in the future as it's simply not going to happen on their lackluster hardware, and remember it's still an crappy AMD CPU MS and Sony didn't want to spend the money on a better performing intel equivalent. Expect lowered res to higher fps ratio in the near future.

And while my memory argument might have been slightly incorrect it was still correct as they have saved money by not including system memory even though MS has in their system I still believe that the rumoured 8GB to 12GB RAM was in fact actually 4GB to 8GB after they see the PS4 specs.

At least Nintendo has a custom setup that is producing some nice looking games and will produce some amazing looking ones in the future once devs get to know the hardware better, as that argument still stands on the Nintendo platform, what you've also got to remember is Nintendo doesn't compete with the other systems as far as Nintendo is concerned they don't even exist and DS and the 3DS proves/d that by completely destroying the PSP and PS vita in sales over and over again despite the lower spec hardware.

It's about exclusive games not who has the highest number that argument should stay where it is, the PC specs department as consoles are just toys in comparison.

 

[Burty117]

Haha! Just by the way your replying you clearly know your predictions were completely wrong.

Don't get me wrong, I bet they can get more out of the Wii U but fact is, it is nothing compared to the Xbox One and PS4, The argument of "they'll unlock more power out of it over time" holds true but it still is considerably under powered, with today's tech, you can only get so much out of 33 watts.

My PC still is my primary gaming machine, hell I have a GTX 780 which has 7.1 billion transistors which is almost double that of the Xbox One Transistor count but again, I can happily bet they will get more out of the PS4 graphically than what developers will from my 780, reason? It's still a bespoke architecture that runs primarily on GDDR5 memory, I'm sure on your earlier posts you mentioned they would never use 8GB of GDDR5 or even 4GB because of price limitations and it wouldn't helo? well, turns out your completely wrong. Ow, and they won't be 64-bit, again, totally wrong.

Anyway I have no idea why you rambled on about PSP / 3DS, my beef was how wrong you were about the Xbox One and PS4, they both have 8 core processors and use the same architecture GPU wise as the 7970 and the PS4 uses primarily 8GB GDDR5 memory, everything you said they wouldn't do due to price and loads of other factors you listed. You were wrong. Hell the last post you did was trying to explain why they wouldn't use system memory for games, the Xbox One uses DDR3 for games and OS, It's ok, sometimes we are wrong, I was wrong about SBS 2011, I thought it was going to be rubbish but it ended up being quite good and I lost a bet with a work colleague.

In this case, everything you said trying to compare the power of the Wii U to the Xbox One and PS4 were down right wrong. Although It is nice to see Nintendo's console is at the same resolution output as the competition though.

I wonder if the new limitation will be the DVD for the Nintendo console? It holds considerably less than a BluRay so I wonder if cross platform games would come on multiple DVD's?