UK GAF on what UK retail is like:

So, UK retail is pretty terrible right now.
Or at least for 3DS games. I spent a good few hours tonight going around my local mall looking for Fire Emblem Awakening. I looked in Toys R' Us, ASDA, Sainsburys, HMV, PC World, and GAME. I only managed to find the game in the final store, and for the cringe-worthy price of £39.99. I was going to cave and buy it, only to be told it was out of stock. HMV too was particularly pathetic, the 3DS "chart" consisted of Spirit Camera and Lego Batman 2. I had a similar situation a month ago when Luigi's Mansion 2 came out. When I went into ASDA on release day and asked if they had a copy, they claimed they hadn't got it in, "maybe tomorrow".

I understand that internet shopping is always going to be better, but it just feels like they're not even making an effort anymore. I surmised this might be a problem with Nintendo's stocks, but on further inspection the Xbox 360/PS3 sections in the store were anemic too, perhaps a little less so.

Archangel3371 said:

3 more days until the Xpocalypse.

Doesnt seem to have the same hype as the PS4 but I'm excited. A new system reveal is huge. Sucky thing is I will be working.

  Poor Nintendo.

BTW GG what is with the 720p thing? Are games not running at 1080p and look worse if you have it on that setting?

Dvader said:

Doesnt seem to have the same hype as the PS4 but I'm excited. A new system reveal is huge. Sucky thing is I will be working.

It does not have the same level of hype.  Forbes published this article that said the PS4 is getting twice as much social media buzz at the NextBox. I'm sure that'll change once its finally released. Probably doesn't help that at this stage of the game, no one really know what the system is going to be called. Probably tougher to track.

Dvader said:

^ !!

GG, I tried the 720p thing, no change. I never noticed it until I did a direct comparison but it is there. Very very slight but a difference. Best way for you guys to see is put the game on the pad, now raise the pad up so its in line with your TV and carefully look at how the background reacts to how you are moving. The TV screen will studder more and won't be as smooth as the pad.

Dvader said:

BTW GG what is with the 720p thing? Are games not running at 1080p and look worse if you have it on that setting?

The only reason I notice these minor resolution/alising differences is because I flip consoles between 3 different hdtvs of different sizes/resolutions. On U GAF and Miiverse say the framerate problems in Batman AC resolve if you switch the U to 720p. I noticed no framerate differences in Lego but that's technically a poor performing game. I did notice aliasing differences in NFS and assassins creed 3.

Developer Provided Tech For Square Enix’s Luminous Engine

said:

Silicon Studio makes games like 3D Dot Heroes and Bravely Default, but their core business is providing software solutions for video game developers. They have a full game engine called Paradox and Yebis 2 which Square Enix utilizes in their Luminous Engine. Since Silicon Studio’s middleware works with PlayStation 4, PC, Wii U and other platforms they are in a unique position to talk about the next generation of consoles.

 

What are you thoughts on all of the new hardware announcements? Takehiko Terada, President: PS4 and Wii U are very different. PS4 has decided to go closer to the PC architecture and I think people will like it. It’s much easier to port too. Recently, developers more often make PC versions and focus on cross platform development. PS4 makes it different, so it’s good there.

 

Wii U has very specific characteristics. Some game designers will like it. Some others will have a hard time to port their game. There are pros and cons. We are very close to Nintendo, so we were working on Wii U for a long time. We almost got the maximum performance with the hardware. Since we are working closely with the Nintendo support team they gave us a lot of useful information.

 

Ian Graham, Principle Engineer: I think it was a bit of having a headstart and there was a lot of continuity from the Wii in terms of architecture. They added a significant amount of horsepower, but there was no revolution needed at the engine level to take advantage of it.

 

Are people going to use Silicon  Studio’s tools for Wii U?

 

TT: Not yet, I think. We have an internal development team, but we just started to sell it on Wii U.

As a developer and middleware maker, do you feel the leap between PS3 and PS4 is a big leap?

 

TT: I don’t know yet. The horsepower in the system is very powerful. For us, it’s one platform customers will want to port to. Since the performance [of the console] is higher we have a better version [of our engine]. For example, we’ll have C# plus multitasking or multithreading so we will use all of the CPUs and GPUs power in our engine.

Dvader said:

GG you dont see it cause you have not compared it. Its there. Your Wii U isnt magically different from mine. Everyone on gaf says the same thing.

Its extremely minor but there.

And a lot of people who have tried the U demo on GAF say it's perfectly smooth, as do myself, Robio and Edge here. So the only logical explanation from some U owners noticing problems others not, is TV response times (they do differ) - if we were to exclude background downloads, resolution settings and firmware versions. If you're noticing a difference vs PS3 fine, but like I said you can't compare U pad screen vs HDTV because it's already been tested by Digital Foundry and the u pad response times win everytime and actually show up how laggy you tv actually is. Someone on GAF made a comparison gif of ign's NFS video which showed tv and pad at the same time, tv was significantly more laggy because the pad latency is so low. For me, RE Revelations demo is probably the smoothest 3D game on the system.

Ah, 13.5 hours of sleep without once getting out of bed.  I almost feel sub-human again.

Ravenprose said:

Damn, you must have an elephant sized badder.

He doesn't. He woke up because he pissed on himself.