Thursday, April 12, 2012

Wii U's hardware to "blow current gen out of the water"




This bit of "informed speculation" comes from someone who has been confirmed to have contacts in the game development world and has given more information on what the developers have been talking about lately with the Wii U:

"Everything I have been told is "best of the current generation by a country mile but not significantly beyond that."

It is the XBox to the PS2. The Gamegear to the Gameboy. The Mad Men Alison Brie to Community's Alison Brie. It'll look better, but generational transition probably won't apply to it.

On the plus side, there will probably be nothing hardware-wise stopping downgraded ports from what people think the new XBox will offer. We're talking, like, Witcher 2 on high settings vs. Witcher 2 on low settings. Same game, same basic idea, different graphics.

But games that do take advantage of the Wii U's hardware are going to blow this current gen out of the water. I am not sure we'll see that at E3 (seriously, think back to nearly every console's launch, most of those titles don't stand up today), but I'm sure we'll see it eventually."



"The XBox was a crazy beast if used right. But it was just an analogy, it wasn't meant to be a proper comparison of power.

Dreamcast to N64 might be a better comparison?
"



Link

To tell you the truth, this is kinda what I was expecting the systems power to be like since the rumored specs were announced last year. When games are made from the ground up for the Wii U, it should be a big leap from the current HD systems. The Dreamcast was a pretty big leap from the N64, but the N64 was still able to play ports from the Dreamcast (some of them). The Dreamcast in my opinion was never truly used to it's full potential since it died off only 2 and a half years into it's life. Many of the Dreamcast games looked as good or better than Playstation 2.

Having the Wii U be a leap similar from N64 to Dreamcast is certainly not bad news by any means. This also means that the Wii U would be able to handle ports from Microsoft and Sony's next systems as well. The hype train for the Wii U has been way up and way down over the last month, so it's nice to get something positive that re-enforces what has already been said by official developers on the Wii U's power. 

12 comments:

Biohazard said...

Sega's Dreamcast had a lot of potential, but the console was up to its neck with N64/PS1 ports. However, as a former Dreamcast-owner, there were very noticeable resolution quality between Sega's last console and the N64/PS1. I remembered it had anti-aliasing, which was the Achilles heel of the PS2. No one should be surprised that the Wii U will be getting current-gen "ports," as the gaming industry still have their minds on it.

echopeus said...

Nice gaf quote...

Anonymous said...

Greetings from NeoGAF! :D

Metaldave said...

Hey guys! I love GAF, I'm still waiting to get approved to post there.

I've also never tried to hide that I link to NeoGAF a lot for my articles. It's a great place for news and rumors.

Metaldave said...

To ShockingAlberto:

Yeah using your quote as "news" is rather funny...even though I did say it was "informed speculation" in the opening sentence.

It's funny because sites like IGN really seem to know less about what is going on with the Wii U than people at GAF, when it's supposed to be the other way around. I remember back in the day when IGN would actually report things that no one else knew and did so consistently throughout many years of the 64-Cube era. Now, IGN is pretty much in the same boat as everyone else: gather rumors and speculation from anonymous sources and post it as news.

At least you have been confirmed by the mods at NeoGAF to have connections with developers etc.

Also, I do think what you said is just as much news worthy as some of these other sites that seem to deem it very necessary to post random comments from "unnamed sources" saying the Wii U is less powerful than the current HD systems.

I think many would take your word over these "unnamed sources" unless of course official documents say otherwise or developers like EPIC and Gearbox suddenly change their minds and come out and say the Wii U is less powerful...when they just said the opposite in the last month.

Anonymous said...

some kid in his bedroom says not above ps3 x360 theres a global debate about under powered wiiU

gearbox say its clearly more powerful everyone ignores them THE WORLD IS AWASH WITH MORONS

ITS GOING TO BLOW PS3 AWAY LOAD VASTLY FASTER AND BE EASY TO CODE THERE FACTS LEARN TO LIVE WITH IT

Anonymous said...

ps3 to wiiU = N64 to Dreamcast

id say that makes perfect sense to me and exactly what i expect WITH DREAMCAST BEING ABLE TO DO TEXTURES AND COLOUR WERE PS2 NEVER COULD LOL

or another way im looking at this is ps3 x360 wii combined witch is amazing power at 720p plus

Anonymous said...

some guy now saying @ the gaff LOL that wiiiu is a country mile ahead of ps3 and is CURRENT GEN and wont be anywewre near ps4

that above BS comes from one guy in the same post

how can wiiu be country miles ahead yet not AT THE SAME TIME

how can wiiu be current gen yet not at the same time I DO WORRY ABOUT THESE PEOPLES SANITY AT TIMES

IT CANNOT BE NEXT GEN BUT NOT OR CURRENT GEN ONLY BUT NEXT GEN TOO THATS SCHIZOPHRENIA CONSOLES DONT SUFFER FROM FANBOY MENTAL ILLNESSES

wii like cude like DS like slander get used to it its going to be like that all wiius life these people are insane

MingZX said...

"Having the Wii U be a leap similar from N64 to Dreamcast is certainly not bad news by any means."

so does that mean the Wii U has the possibility to die off in 2.5 years like the Dreamcast did?

Gregory Weagle said...

Yeah; Dreamcast to N64 is a BAD analogy guys. I think a much better analogy would be like the situation with 3DS and DS with the comparison being night and day with Wii U being a lot more powerful than Wii; but also it is more powerful and more interesting as a device than PSP; but less powerful than Vita (but only less powerful); which is falling fast in Japan.

And considering that Sony's finances right now are really bad (if you thought Nintendo losing $800 million was a horror show (and it is a horror show all things considered); look at Sony's forecasted $6.4 billion for this year. And they have lost money for four straight years now. Granted; most of the loss is from tax write offs and not from the gaming business, but it shows that sometimes being a Jack of All Trades can be more dangerous than being one type of business); Sony cannot afford to release two bleeding money systems (Vita and Orbis or whatever the hell they ultimately call it) within a couple of years of each other. They don't have the cash reserve Nintendo has (or Microsoft or Apple for that matter). So Sony is stuck with PS3 right now until Vita starts making profit (which is expected to happen in three years) to justify the bleeding money system; assuming Sony even goes there and tries to trump Nintendo in power.

And who knows with Microsoft. They are truly the only one who has the competition chops to trump Nintendo right now unless Apple decides to fully get into the gaming business.

So yeah; another day, another dollar in a "Nintendo is doomed" echo chamber. As one person said about racists: This shit is getting old.

Gregory Weagle said...

Okay; that didn't come out right either. I meant: Wii U is much more powerful than Wii; and more powerful and interesting than PS3 and XBOX 360; but MIGHT be less powerful than whatever Microsoft and Sony offer as their next consoles. It's similar to 3DS being a lot more powerful than DS and more powerful and interesting than PSP; but less powerful than Vita.

I'm sorry for the error I made in the previous comment.

Anonymous said...

Sony lost 4 billion this year thats more than before there loss is increasing not decreasing...

sony have effectivly lost every dollar pound penny yen they ever made in all there years of existence

sony has bled more money between 2006 and 2012 than ps1 ps2 ever made MANY MANY MANY TIMES OVER

add to this the western currencies are near dead $£ euro etc and japan cannot profit with a high yen

Sony is a bankrupt dinosaur pretending its still alive SONY IS NO MORE THERE A ZOMBIE THERE NOT REALLY ALIVE ANY MORE

thids is a fact and sony will go under OFFICIALLY WITH IN 2 YEARS

F-A-C-T

but it wont matter as the US dollar wiull go under by 2015 then its game over or WW3

fact is fact NWO have set it up to happen