Concept Grand Prix Wii U? Nice time for ludicrous rumours, before E3 LOL

Sonic co-creator joins Nintendo? Well, it's all over, Nintendo, the dick rot starts here.

EA the Worst company in America? Come on. It's becauses gamers are more internet savvy and would vote for stuff like this.

IGN leaked PS4 specs

According to the official product specs, the A8-3850 packs a quad-core 2.9GHz processor with an integrated graphics chip. The APU will work in tandem with the system's dedicated GPU, the HD 7670, a DirectX 11-enabled card clocked to 1GHz with up to 1GB of dedicated VRAM.



The HD 7670 is a rebranded version of last year's HD 6670, sporting identical specs across the board. If you recall, the HD 6670 is the same card that we reported will be used in the Xbox 720. The implication, of course, is that the two systems will effectively go toe-to-toe as far as discrete graphics are concerned.

By current standards, the HD 6670 is an entry-level processor with a price of about $74.99. Benchmark tests place framerate performance for taxing titles games like Metro 2033 and Crysis 2 set to high settings at a resolution of 1920x1080 (1080p) with average framerates of just over 30 frames-per-second.

CVG said

Wii U games 'look just as good' as PS3

But it's still 'not as capable'

key developers told CVG that it's processor intensive game systems which they're struggling to get up to par with current-gen consoles.

Sources said graphical quality "won't be a problem" on Nintendo's new console, but a drop in CPU horsepower compared to 360 and PS3 could see Wii U lag behind in areas such as complicated physics and AI.



"Assumptions that Wii U games will look like 'up rezzed' current-gen titles with better textures aren't quite right. They'll look just as good, but not better," one developer told CVG. "You shouldn't expect anything special from a graphics point of view," they added.


A second source working on a big name franchise said GPU and RAM power "won't be a problem" on the new console but, again, claimed Wii U struggles to match PS3 and 360 in processing power.

"We're still working on dev machines but there have definitely been some issues [in porting PS3/360 games]," our source said. "It's not actually a problem getting things up and running because the architecture is pretty conventional, but there are constraints with stuff like physics and AI processing because the hardware isn't quite as capable."


The same source concluded, bluntly: "I suppose you don't need sophisticated physics to make a Mario game."

This contradicts the Gamesindustry article which said the GPU was weak. These anonymous reports are saying the CPU is weak and the GPU is fine. Oh, but yesterday the Gearbox director said that Wii U was late in the cycle so had a "really great processor." So who are we suppossed to believe?

From developers we have heard about on GAF, these problems were due to middleware (software problems) and that performance had increased 400% since then. These guys must have been working on V3 devkits.

And now we have another new article today:

Gearbox boss says impressive Wii U 'a really nice bridge' to the next generation

Nintendo's Wii U demo reel at E3 last year contained a clip of Aliens: Colonial Marines, but we haven't heard much about the version since then. Speaking with Gearbox President Randy Pitchford, we tried to surgically extract a viable specimen of information out of him, but he refrained from getting too specific.


"Nintendo still has a lot to announce with their platform, and it's not up to us to go ahead of them," he told Joystiq. "I think it's a great platform and I'm really excited about it, particularly with this game, there's a lot of exciting opportunities like, 'Wow, my motion tracker is there, and I can move it like this!'" he said as he moved his arms side to side. "There's just so much cool stuff."

Brian Burleson, the game's producer, was a lot less forthcoming with details on the Wii U version, but he was still positive about it. "You'll have to wait," he told us. "But I play it all the time, and it's really good."


That's great for this particular game, but what about the system in general? How does an acclaimed developer like Gearbox feel about it?

"There's a lot that we can do with that screen," Pitchford said. "It's a really cool system -- it's pretty powerful. I want to be careful, because I don't want to risk any sensitive information that Nintendo's not ready to share yet, but in our experience it's a great system. I think it's a really nice bridge to the next generation. I think people will be surprised. I don't know off the top of my head how many of the specs they've released, so I want to be very careful not to jump the gun, but we're very pleased with the hardware. And even since they gave us our first alpha kit, our very first 'pre-prototype' development hardware that they kind of let us play around with, they've done so many things to make the platform better. So it's getting better for us as developers."

"One thing looks certain though, and that's that Nintendo is sticking to its strategy of less powerful hardware combined with an innovative interface, leaving the high-end console space to its rivals."

Ok....so what happened to Xbox 720 only being 20% more powerful? These guys seriously need to get their facts straight about these consoles before they start reporting they are or aren't to a certain level.

edgecrusher said:

"One thing looks certain though, and that's that Nintendo is sticking to its strategy of less powerful hardware combined with an innovative interface, leaving the high-end console space to its rivals."

Ok....so what happened to Xbox 720 only being 20% more powerful? These guys seriously need to get their facts straight about these consoles before they start reporting they are or aren't to a certain level.

E3 is only a couple of months away. At this point the contradicting reports are getting annoying, especially the anonymous ones. At least if we knew who they were we could sit them in a room together to hash it out. As I said before, even if PS4 and Nextbox had the exact same specs, integrating Kinect would see a performance hit unless MS compensated for it by bumping the specs over and above PS4.

edgecrusher said:

I really hope they don't make Kinect the big feature of their next system...its so gimmicky its not even funny. Press a button to throw grenade, or yell at your camera like a retard? Cmon.

Honestly I'm not expecting any huge graphical bump over what Nintendo's machine that's supposedly no more powerful than the PS3 as is, can do. That card they are reporting for both consoles isn't even as powerful as my current PC card. Nintendo I am excited about because their console is a huge leap over the Wii, I like the controller, and they have lots of awesome exclusives to look forward to. Microsoft and Sony are gonna have to really show me something badass beyond a system with just a bunch of non gaming youtube, facebook, tv crap or a built in camera. And they're gonna have to bring the exclusives...lots of badass exclusives that are GUARANTEED to stay that way to get me excited.

We shall see.

From what I'm reading, even if PS4 and Nextbox are better than Wii U, they still won't be anywhere near as good as modern PC components -all the GPUs mentioned are low end PC standard?- so how are we suppossed to see this next gen leap people keep talking about? We're just going to see more PC-ish graphics right? You might have more native 1080p console games and some better lighting. What is going to make it wow? I can't wait to see UE4 and then hear how it will scale down to these new consoles. Will it be worth it?

GAF guy on Wii U CPU talk:

Re: Comments on the CPU




In almost all real-world in-game scenarios with properly optimised code, the Wii U's CPU should outperform the XBox360's CPU, even if it's clocked as low as ~2.5GHz. That's even ignoring the impact of the dedicated I/O processor and DSP.




As far as I can see, there are three reasons a developer could come away with the impression that the Wii U's CPU is less capable:




1. They're working on early dev-kits.



2. They're working with poorly-optimised middleware.



3. They're not very smart.




Point 1 is very plausible, as not every developer will have the latest round of dev-kits yet, and we know there's a bump in performance with them.

Point 2 is very likely. As wsippel pointed out, there is middleware out there which has seen massive performance improvements on the Wii U over the past few weeks due to optimisation. I've seen the document he's talking about, and as I understand it, said middleware doesn't even make use of the dedicated hardware yet. There's likely to be a lot of other middleware out there which is still unoptimised, and developers who use it and don't know any better will be liable to blame the hardware.




This brings us to point 3. There are a lot of people in the video games business, not all of whom are particularly intelligent. And in my opinion, the ones who leak these sorts of vague stories with trolly comments like the Mario one are much less likely to be intelligent than the sensible ones who keep their mouths shut.

Wsippel is a confirmed Wii U dev on GAF.

And our resident french journo weighed in

Foolz said:

gamingeek said:

From what I'm reading, even if PS4 and Nextbox are better than Wii U, they still won't be anywhere near as good as modern PC components -all the GPUs mentioned are low end PC standard?- so how are we suppossed to see this next gen leap people keep talking about? We're just going to see more PC-ish graphics right? You might have more native 1080p console games and some better lighting. What is going to make it wow? I can't wait to see UE4 and then hear how it will scale down to these new consoles. Will it be worth it?

It'll be a reasonable step up. My even more out of date video card puts console games to shame, but yeah, doesn't look like it's going to be a genuine generational leap.

Basically what you're saying probably. Consistent 1080P, improved textures and lightning, and there should be an improvement on massive games like Skyrim and the like too.

If it turns out like that then it's even harder to take given how fucking long this gen has been.

Yeah, I find it kind of hyperbole when people say those are low end cards....it makes them sound weak, which they aren't. I'd say more middle to high end...in that range.

You make a good point about how long this generation has been. You'd think by now we'd be able to get new consoles pretty affordable that are a really nice leap up. If these new consoles aren't going to be THAT much of an improvement, then why not just stick with 360 and PS3? Why the fuck not? Nintendo has needed to replace their dated as fuck hardware for a long time, but the other two have zero reason to outside of a major tech jump.

Again, not excited at all about new Playstation or Xbox right now. Especially when my PC as it is right now can outperform them.

gamingeek said:

This brings us to point 3. There are a lot of people in the video games business, not all of whom are particularly intelligent. And in my opinion, the ones who leak these sorts of vague stories with trolly comments like the Mario one are much less likely to be intelligent than the sensible ones who keep their mouths shut.

Wsippel is a confirmed Wii U dev on GAF.

And our resident french journo weighed in

Yeah that Mario dig..again, sounds like its just anti-Nintendo bullshit that every new Nintendo console seems to have gotten since the Gamecube.

I read an article in Next Generation magazine back when Gamecube and Xbox were launching, where they compared all 3 consoles head to head.

They literally said that the Gamecube was nowhere near as powerful as EITHER Xbox or the Play fucking station 2!!! They said Nintendo wasn't concerned with power because cartoony games like Mario and Zelda didn't require it, but that the Resident Evil remake did show that the system could be very good at faking it.

No joke..this is really what the article said. Its then and there that I learned you can't always trust the word of people in the gaming business.

edgecrusher said:

I read an article in Next Generation magazine back when Gamecube and Xbox were launching, where they compared all 3 consoles head to head.

They literally said that the Gamecube was nowhere near as powerful as EITHER Xbox or the Play fucking station 2!!! They said Nintendo wasn't concerned with power because cartoony games like Mario and Zelda didn't require it, but that the Resident Evil remake did show that the system could be very good at faking it.

No joke..this is really what the article said. Its then and there that I learned you can't always trust the word of people in the gaming business.

Sony and MS released these raw power spec sheets with fillrates and speeds they would never be able to acheive.

Nintendo chose to release a realistic, real world performance tech sheet. Obviously the numbers were far lower.

They were ripped to shreds in the media and since then, they don't release specs to anyone publicly.

New Pokemon game that looks like Final Fantasy tactics