Reggie on Wii U power, insider compares performance to next iPad, lots more
Reggie Fils-Aime has opened up on the Wii U’s power… slightly. The Nintendo of America president commented on the console in an interview with Kotaku, which comes as part of a larger article about the hardware overall.
Reggie first pointed out the faults with the Wii, including the lack of HD support and limited online functionality. He noted that these issues have been fixed with its successor.
“…as third-party publishers make their decisions somehow they’re going to view competitive systems more favorably than the Wii U. What I would tell you is that, fundamentally, the reason certain games didn’t make it to the Wii was because, first, the developer or publisher had invested in art at an HD level. For them to rework that art to an SD level was a cost they were unwilling to accept. Second, that the online capabilities especially for in-game purchase, or things of that nature, [were things] they viewed it as a key part of their business model, which the Wii didn’t support. Looking to the future, both of those issues have been solved with the Wii U.”
As far as how the Wii couldn’t handle the dominant engines of last generations, Reggie explained:
“I think to have the full discussion we need to go back to 2004, 2005, 2006 [before the Wii was launched]. The fact of the matter was that, in 2004 and 2005 and early 2006, the vast majority of the publishing community did not see the Wii having the, dare I say, success in the marketplace that it did. So all of their early-development engines were not compatible with where we were going. That is not the case today.”
When the Unreal Engine 4 technology was mentioned for Wii U, Reggie said that “they’re not finished yet. There’s still work they need to do to finish that engine.”
Reggie ultimately compared the Wii and Wii U by stating the following:
“I think with Wii we had a limited number of crayons. It’s the 16-pack of crayons. This is the 128 pack. We’ve got a lot more options.”
Continuing on with the Wii U’s power, one “industry insider who is familiar with the specs of the new Nintendo console” said that the hardware will be more comparable to the next iPad rather than next-gen consoles.
“After the next generation of machines come out, Wii U will be a performance orphan. It will be closer in performance to the next iPad than the next-gen machines. “
We’ve picked out a few excerpts from Kotaku that goes into detail about the Wii U’s hardware through various sources. It’s an interesting read – you can find the entire piece here.
We’ve relied on industry sources to assess the Wii U’s ability to play the probably cutting-edge games of the year 2014. These insiders themselves cannot assess the Wii U’s power with 100% accuracy because the might of a console is the product of multiple factors. Judged by its RAM, the Wii U could be viewed as up to four times as powerful as the Xbox 360, boasting as much as 2GB of RAM to the 360’s 512. But one insider who has had access to the machine says that the console’s impressive AMD Radeon-based graphics chip is off-set by a CPU that runs at low speeds, can do out-of-order processing but has fewer threads than the 360. The insider says the Wii U has the power to run Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 ports with little difficulty. But they predict trouble when major third-party companies start producing games for the next Xbox and PlayStation, which will be about 6-8 times more powerful than the current 360 and PS3 according to several Kotaku sources who are aware of Sony and Microsft’s plans for those machines.
As Nintendo was showing that its new machine could run Unreal Engine 3, 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.
Nintendo’s bigger power problem with the Wii U, however, is Epic’s Unreal Engine 4, a radically different engine that Epic’s Allen Willard has told Kotaku major development houses will need to make a clean break from UE3 in order to work on. Willard expects UE4 to become the popular engine for third-party game development, if not for launch PS4 and Xbox 720 games then for the second wave of games on those machines, circa 2014 or so. Still, some UE4 games are expected as soon as next year, and UE4 is unlikely to run easily or immediately on Wii U. Our Direct-X-comparing insider considers UE4 as requiring Direct X 11 performance and capabilities, a standard beyond Nintendo’s new device.
Still, gamers may have liked to have known that Nintendo’s next machine would effortlessly handle any major third-party game made in the next half-decade, a piece of mind that purchases of the 360 and PS3 have had for the last six years. Nintendo has made no such assurances and may not be in a position to deliver any, because the Wii U just doesn’t seem to be future-proofed that far ahead.
