edgecrusher said:

That's Nintendo for ya.

They've been obsessed with small consoles at any cost for over a decade now.

This is encouraging though:

Kotaku said:

In the short-term, the Wii U will be able to keep up with the most powerful consoles on the market, the 360 and PS3, and will likely even surpass them through much of late 2012 and early 2013. Proof of that was shown at E3 in Los Angeles earlier this month when the game was shown running Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed III, a higher-end 360/PS3 game, without breaking a sweat and while transmitting supplemental graphics to the Wii U's signature controller, the 6.2-inch screen-enabled GamePad.

The buzz of the show was the futuristic graphics on display in games like Ubisoft's Watch Dogs and LucasArts' Star Wars 1313. The latter was, in fact, running on UE3, though on a PC and using a version of the engine that was modified in the same manner as Epic's own 2011 modified-UE3 demo called Samaritan. LucasArts has not specified which platforms will run 1313 other than the PC on which it was demoed and has offered no hint as to whether the game could run on Wii U. Our tech insiders are skeptical, at best, noting that the Samaritan and 1313 demos both run on computers that ran UE3 with Direct X 11, the newest version of Microsoft's suite of graphics and other gaming-centric protocols. One source encouraged us to think of Unreal Engine 3 as requiring the performance and capabilities of Direct X 9 but advised that demos running UE3 with enhanced specs, a la Samaritan and 1313, require DX9 performance but DX11 shader capabilities. They consider the Wii U close to that DX9-performance/DX11-capabilities combo but possibly hampered by its CPU, which they believe Nintendo is requiring to run at lower speeds in order to keep its chips from getting too hot and therefore allowing the machine to run as quietly as the Wii-and with relatively low power consumption.

At the end of last year we heard the GPU would be 'more current' to 2012 features when it was finalised, it sounds good here. One thing GAF has brought up is that the article makes no allowances for the seperate sound chip - the lack of which ate up the 360s CPU.

Plus this post from a dev working on Wii U suggests the CPU has been changed:

Pitchford said it was 'a really great processor' because it was late in the cycle, I'd like him to explain why.

The kotaku piece says that the RAM is now 2gb, not 1.5gb.

Really think I don't want an XL.  Thing looks as big as my netbook.  No.

edgecrusher said:

Seems like the Wii U is basically this gens Dreamcast, as in a nice step up over current machines but not quite up to new tech. That's not necessarily a terrible thing.

Depends how much of a window it's allowed by Sony and Microsoft.  By the looks of it it'll probably have something like 2 years (unless we're all taken by surprise), so hopefully a bit longer than the Dreamcast to establish itself and build a larger userbase

Dvader said:

The Wii U wont be a step up on current machines while to me the DC was the biggest leap in graphics consoles have ever had.

You never had an N64 though. So you went from 32 bit to 128 bit in one jolt.

aspro, don't be sorry about thatgamecompany box not making it to Europe bro.  I have journey and flower on psn and I even have flow on the psp, so I'm covered.  I wasn't going to buy the boxed compilation anyway

Game Critics Awards 2012 winners: (E3)

• Best of Show: The Last of Us
• Best Original Game: The Last of Us
• Best Console Game: The Last of Us
• Best Handheld/Mobile Game: Sound Shapes
• Best PC Game: XCOM: Enemy Unknown
• Best Hardware/Peripheral: Wii U
• Best Action Game: Halo 4
• Best Action/Adventure Game: The Last of Us
• Best Role Playing Game: South Park: The Stick of Truth
• Best Fighting Game: Injustice: Gods Among Us
• Best Racing Game: Need for Speed Most Wanted
• Best Sports Game: FIFA Soccer 13
• Best Strategy Game: XCOM: Enemy Unknown
• Best Social/Casual Game: Dance Central 3
• Best Motion Simulation Game: Dance Central 3
• Best Online Multiplayer: Halo 4
• Best Downloadable Game: Unfinished Swan
• Special Commendations for Graphics: Star Wars 1313, Watch Dogs
• Special Commendation for Sound: The Last of Us
• Special Commendation for Innovation: Watch Dogs

aspro said:

Video Game Manual or Religious Instruction?

Quiz:

I got one wrong.  Damn

aspro said:

Today in boxshots:

LA Clippers' Blake Griffin, Chicago Bulls' Derrick Rose, and Oklahoma City Thunder's Kevin "Durantula" Durant.