They should do, because it is a GameCube!
Gaming Wii-U
- Thread starter AVARiCE
- Start date
Why did they remove that functionality from the later models then?
To save on cost. Weaste is right, from a technical stand point there is very little difference between a GC and a Wii.Why did they remove that functionality from the later models then?
The way Nintendo neglects Eastern Europe is honestly disturbing. Wii is still priced at more than £100 while game cost £40 (even the older ones), now they've also announced that they Wii-U won't be available here until next year - three days ahead of supposed launch is a bit of short notice. I probably wouldn't buy it at launch anyway but now I'm probably not going to buy it at all as it's pretty clear that they will have trouble with distributing games as well. It was the same with 3DS and even now you have to wait 2-3 weeks before you can get a big title after its launch (that's why I buy this stuff off Amazon UK these days). It's nonsense and it brings sales down, Poland is a big market but it will remain almost fully devoted to Sony and Microsoft.
In terms of magnitude of the logistical Nintendo is small fry in comparison to Sony and Microsoft.
Yeah, it was a lot worse when they had to make and distribute catridges. The whole of Europe suffered then!
It still hurts them. I don't think that many people realise how much it actually costs to move things around the planet and get it to where they will buy it, nor appreciate that they have to take on the costs of that.
Mine just arrived.
I expect a review soon then
Post a pic of the caf on the tablet thingy!
Wii-U CPU
Apparently the Wii-U CPU comes in at 1.25GHz. That's awful when you consider that the PS3 and 360 are clocked at around 3.2 GHz. They'll have a hard time porting this gen games to be on parity let alone next generation.
Apparently the Wii-U CPU comes in at 1.25GHz. That's awful when you consider that the PS3 and 360 are clocked at around 3.2 GHz. They'll have a hard time porting this gen games to be on parity let alone next generation.
1.25GHz? Jesus Christ. My three year-old i7 spits out 3.8GHz.
Link?
Edit - Nevermind it's from a hacker who claims the speed. Not that it means it isn't true of course, but raw speed isn't the defining measure of performance.
Not that any of it matters of course, no one expected power that greatly surpasses this gen, and devs can certainly find a way around it. It's a shame though, as I've said before, it won't impact graphically but it certainly will any game with something actually going on (physics and A.I mostly). Though, not that I'm expecting the next gen to get any better than this is that aspect.
Edit - Nevermind it's from a hacker who claims the speed. Not that it means it isn't true of course, but raw speed isn't the defining measure of performance.
Not that any of it matters of course, no one expected power that greatly surpasses this gen, and devs can certainly find a way around it. It's a shame though, as I've said before, it won't impact graphically but it certainly will any game with something actually going on (physics and A.I mostly). Though, not that I'm expecting the next gen to get any better than this is that aspect.
To be fair, pure clock is no measure of power, it's what you can do per cycle. 1.25GHz however is taking the piss, but it's not surprising due to the thermal and power envelopes that Nintendo have been working towards. It's was obvious the day that we first saw the case that the size of the thing wouldn't allow for a great deal.
Yeah, as in my edit it's not the defining test. Thank feck for Nintendo that physics have stalled and A.I gone backwards huh?
You'll get a kick out of knowing I've just bought my eldest an Android tablet for xmas with more speed
I'm sure I read it has 3 cores.
Doesn't having 3 cores mean it can run more instructions, so it isn't that bad?
Also, can the GPGPU help out with some of the tasks that are usually left to the CPU?
Obviously that won't help for ports!
Doesn't having 3 cores mean it can run more instructions, so it isn't that bad?
Also, can the GPGPU help out with some of the tasks that are usually left to the CPU?
Obviously that won't help for ports!
My watch has more than 1.25GHz and I don't even have a watch.
Like the XB360 does?
As long as the task is massively parallelizable, and obviously, even then, you are taking away resources and time from the GPU that could be used for processing graphics.
So it's basically as powerful as a PS3 that I have sitting in my living room, which currently costs £120 brand new and has a massive library of games with about a hundred games rated at 80/100 or more costing less than £15.
And it's biggest advantage over recent Nintendo console is that it can play multiplatform games. From the previous generation.
I think I'm going to keep that £200 for now. Perhaps I'll ask for it at Christmas.
And it's biggest advantage over recent Nintendo console is that it can play multiplatform games. From the previous generation.
I think I'm going to keep that £200 for now. Perhaps I'll ask for it at Christmas.
As with the Wii, it's about the controller and games. We've known that from day 1, I don't see why that would have changed.
Yeah the CPU is a bit weak, but that doesn't actually mean anything to the majority of people and the developers will find the power in there with a bit of time. Like the PS3, if they get the time is another matter, but it's irrelevant to us as gamers anyway because let's face it, it's all about HD Mario, Zelda and Metroids is it not? If it was just about graphics and power, I'd never own a single console due to having an always superior PC.
But yeah, I'm not buying one until I feel there's games and value in it for me. The launch line up is vast a good, but nothing sparks me personally as a must have, I'm not overly keen on the latest platform Mario and I'm pretty much done with Zombies for now
Yeah the CPU is a bit weak, but that doesn't actually mean anything to the majority of people and the developers will find the power in there with a bit of time. Like the PS3, if they get the time is another matter, but it's irrelevant to us as gamers anyway because let's face it, it's all about HD Mario, Zelda and Metroids is it not? If it was just about graphics and power, I'd never own a single console due to having an always superior PC.
But yeah, I'm not buying one until I feel there's games and value in it for me. The launch line up is vast a good, but nothing sparks me personally as a must have, I'm not overly keen on the latest platform Mario and I'm pretty much done with Zombies for now
The slight difference is that you cannot just throw code at the Cell (no matter what its throughput) due to the way it works. If the CPU in Wii U was as capable as Xenon, you should be able to do that. Being OoOE and having large caches as well should help even the most optimized code. I'd like to know how many instructions per cycle this CPU can shove. Each SPU can shove between 2 (if everything is properly double buffered and DMA fetched) and 1 instructions per cycle, PPE around 0.3. For a full blown 8 SPU Cell, that's a rough estimate of 8, or 256,000,000,000 instructions per second, of which the PPE is around 10,000,000,000 or so under good conditions. Real world performance of a full Cell is around 186,000,000,000 IPS with fully optimized code, probably about half in the real real world. SPUs can be SIMD heavy though, so a single instruction can deal with certain things it would take a non-SIMD capable CPU many instructions to perform (obviously SIMD operations can take many cycles anyway). Cell is the polar opposite of what Nintendo declare they have tried to do - low latency and low bandwidth, vs. Cell, high latency and high bandwidth, stuff has to be DMAd in on time to reduce latency - programmer problem.
I saw one of these for the first time today. Why does the controller have a screen in the middle of it?
So, as of now. only one poster in this thread has actually bought it?
Went into town today, GAME and HMV had plenty in stock, couldn't believe how expensive ZOMBIU was in GAME, £54.99!!
It's just aimed at kids and families, so it will sell loads. For pure gaming I don't know why anyone would choose this over the PS3 or Xbox.
1st party Nintendo games?
Yawn. What it "pure gaming" anyway?
Yeah, feck that. But that's the thing with new consoles, I don't know why people buy them in the first couple of months.
Also, there hasn't been much advertising yet for this has there? It's all a bit rushed for the xmas market methinks.
Do the general public actually see the brand differentiation, or do they look at two different units and go for the cheaper one with the same name?
I was in GAME this morning and the geeky dude that works there (every store has at least one) was telling me that the WiiU was selling like hot cakes.
He was also saying that Tesco have not been able to deliver on all of the pre-orders.
He was also saying that Tesco have not been able to deliver on all of the pre-orders.
I've been impressed with it to be honest, more-so than I thought I'd be (although I was expecting the worst). The console is sleek and well built, as are the controllers. I got the ZombiU bundle with a Wii Remote Plus (never bought one of these for Wii) and New Super Mario Bros. U.
Haven't really played ZombiU much yet, literally for about 20 minutes to see what it was like. I can tell it's going to be very hit-and-miss already, but it's difficult and will last me a while when I get into it. If you like survival horror like the original Resident Evil games, you'll probably love it.
New Super Mario Bros. U doesn't really offer much different to previous games in the series, but my first night with the Wii U on Thursday was with the girlfriend and two mates playing four player with some beers. Like with the Wii, it was amazing fun. Haven't laughed so much in a long time.
Graphics wise, it's as good as anything I've seen before, which was the one thing I expected it to do as good if not better
OS is a bit slow for now but I think they're working on improving that in an update eventually, but it's not annoying slow. Interface is nice, everything is bright and fluid. GamePad works great and is very comfy despite being quite big. It already feels like the next step in gaming and I'm sure Microsoft and Sony will copy it in some way come late 2013 or sometime in 2014. However, if Nintendo's somewhat average powered console for the current time costs £300 , then if we're seeing a major upgrade these ones are going to have to be over £500 to break even.
For anyone interested, I'd definitely buy it online and probably from ShopTo. Don't feck about with the Basic pack, get one of the Premium ones.
Haven't really played ZombiU much yet, literally for about 20 minutes to see what it was like. I can tell it's going to be very hit-and-miss already, but it's difficult and will last me a while when I get into it. If you like survival horror like the original Resident Evil games, you'll probably love it.
New Super Mario Bros. U doesn't really offer much different to previous games in the series, but my first night with the Wii U on Thursday was with the girlfriend and two mates playing four player with some beers. Like with the Wii, it was amazing fun. Haven't laughed so much in a long time.
Graphics wise, it's as good as anything I've seen before, which was the one thing I expected it to do as good if not better
OS is a bit slow for now but I think they're working on improving that in an update eventually, but it's not annoying slow. Interface is nice, everything is bright and fluid. GamePad works great and is very comfy despite being quite big. It already feels like the next step in gaming and I'm sure Microsoft and Sony will copy it in some way come late 2013 or sometime in 2014. However, if Nintendo's somewhat average powered console for the current time costs £300 , then if we're seeing a major upgrade these ones are going to have to be over £500 to break even.
For anyone interested, I'd definitely buy it online and probably from ShopTo. Don't feck about with the Basic pack, get one of the Premium ones.
It should be, the other two are seven years old!
Did they have any on the shelves?
Interesting. I was actually in London talking to a couple of guys from down the surrey way (I'm not naming companies) who haven't had first hand experience with the system, but who obviously do know their company is keeping an eye on it. Nothing really technical, but word around the campfire is there's no problem with memory and memory access, the GPU is pretty hot, but obviously there is a major problem with the raw grunt of the CPU.
Obviously we all thought this meant it's less about what the machine can do when optimised, but more about the speed of getting anything to work on the bloody thing. They reckon it's the same route as the PS3, where it can run anything but needs separate versions of the engines to actually make anything work, but unlike the PS3 the raw grunt just isn't there to even do semi-decent ports. Nothing new to what we know, of course, but it is a bit of a ball drop from Nintendo, unless it sells shedloads next year to convince publishers it's worth it. Basically as you and I have been suggesting all along, it's capable of producing images slightly better than the current gen, but devs are fecked with anything even close to needing much from the CPU. Should run trash like COD perfectly well, obviously no problem with the likes of Mario and Zelda, but as we see with Batman the second the CPU has to actually handle anything, it needs a lot of work to get anything running smooth.
I just don't get why they didn't clock up the CPU a bit more (they could have afforded a bit more power consumption in there!), and at least gave us this gen with smooth HD at 60fps. That would then have been a decent machine capable of surviving the long term.
On another note, I was also talking to a game design student from Uni, and feck me no wonder games are more and more shit. They aren't taught any of the classics (he knew not a single designer/programmer from back in the day) and struggled with I asked him about something like Molyneux or McClean. I nearly fell off my chair when he said the main part about games mechanics looked at Rockstar primarily! fecking hell, no wonder level design and gameplay is going backwards.
Do systems always sell out straight from the shelves these days? I would have thought online pre-ordering takes the vast majority of stock.
Then again, maybe more people are becoming like us and choose to wait and see.
Which game is that for? Nothing I've seen online has impressed me graphically.Graphics wise, it's as good as anything I've seen before, which was the one thing I expected it to do as good if not better
Depends what they are like on the screen in front of you.
But you won't see much better than the current gen, certainly not until the late next year titles. Theoretically the graphics should look better than the current two, but due to the slow CPU we will see framerate issues for a while.
Like I said earlier in the thread, it's like the Snes vs Megadrive. Superior graphically, but throw Megadrive levels of sprite handling at it at the thing needed a zimmerframe.
Only two left in the store mate.
It'll be interesting to see how well they sell come the new year. Everybody loves a new toy to play with for Xmas.
I played ZombieU in store today and the graphics/texturing looked a lot smother than what i've seen from the PS3/360.
It bloody well should though considering the age of the aforementioned consoles.