The Struggles of Wii U Development

Incredible read. Nintendo limboed even under my low expectations. Below are three snippets from the very large article.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2014-secret-developers-wii-u-the-inside-story

Nintendo worries more about power consumption than performance

So a basic comparison/calculation makes the Wii U look, on paper at least, significantly slower than an Xbox 360 in terms of raw CPU. This point was raised in the meeting, but the Nintendo representatives dismissed it saying that the "low power consumption was more important to the overall design goals" and that "other CPU features would improve the performance over the raw numbers".

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Hard to use tools, poor documentation and no real support

Now that the game was up and running on the console we could start developing features that would use the new controllers and make our game stand out on the platform. But soon after starting this we ran into some issues that the (minimal) documentation didn't cover, so we asked questions of our local Nintendo support team. They didn't know the answers so they said they would check with the developers in Japan and we waited for a reply. And we waited. And we waited.

After about a week of chasing we heard back from the support team that they had received an answer from Japan, which they emailed to us. The reply was in the form of a few sentences of very broken English that didn't really answer the question that we had asked in the first place. So we went back to them asking for clarification, which took another week or so to come back. After the second delay we asked why it was taking to long for replies to come back from Japan, were they very busy? The local support team said no, it's just that any questions had to be sent off for translation into Japanese, then sent to the developers, who replied and then the replies were translated back to English and sent back to us. With timezone differences and the delay in translating, this usually took a week !

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Making online games hard to develop

As promised, (just) before the worldwide launch we received the final networking features that we required for our game along with an OS update for the development kits that would allow us to test. So we patched up our code and tried to start testing our game.

First up we had to flash the kits to the retail mode that had the Mii and network features. This was a very complicated manual process that left the consoles in a halfway state. In the retail mode we could test our features and ensure that they worked as expected, which would be a requirement for getting through Nintendo certification, but in this mode the debugging capabilities were limited. So we could see when things went wrong, but we couldn't fully debug to find out why. As developers, we had to make a choice and hope that any issues that you found were due to the (untested) OS code and wouldn't happen in the final retail environment. What should have been simple tasks were long-winded and error prone. Simple things like sending a friends request to another user were not supported in the OS, so you had to boot a separate program on the console manually, via a debug menu, so that you could send one. But if any error occurred there was no way to debug why it had failed, it just failed.

This is what i picture happening when vader and carnage read the same news article and want to make a thread about it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-7Vu7cqB20

Here's a recent article about the Gamecube which points out that some of Nintendo's problems/attitudes have been years and years in the making.

http://www.dromble.com/2014/01/07/dolphin-tale-story-of-gamecube/

At GDC 2000, most software houses were already well into production with PlayStation 2 and Xbox titles, but very few developers had signed up to create games for Nintendo’s Dolphin. According to various sites, Dolphin was the butt of jokes at GDC, and one major respected developer told IGN, “We’ll develop for Dolphin in five years when Nintendo finally releases some information on it”. Another developer said, “Nintendo is making the same old mistakes, it’s not giving us any incentive to bother with Dolphin”.

At the same event, Bill Gates called for mass developer support to drive the Xbox, and Microsoft was aggressively pursuing third party developers by delivering development kits to as many studios as possible. Technical director Jim Merrick admitted to IGN that it did not yet have a formal development program in place. He suggested that potential Dolphin developers could prepare for Nintendo’s future system by creating prototypes of their games on the highest performance PC that can be configured

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Would Nintendo’s conservative approach to online gaming with the GameCube place the company in a disadvantage with future next generation consoles? If Nintendo takes too long to create a sophisticated online network, would it become too difficult to catch up with Microsoft and Sony in this area? This was a question that Electronic Gaming Monthly asked Nintendo of America’s George Harrison in 2004.

“If we look at the situation as it stands today, we’ve got about 30 million systems sold between the PS2, Xbox and GameCube, and about a million and a half people have actually bought an online service — about a million for Sony and half a million for Xbox. So that’s about five percent of the hardware install base that spent the money to get involved. Most of those people have yet to spend any money on a monthly or annual basis for a subscription,” said Harrison.

Fast forward to 2012 where Nintendo is preparing to launch their next-gen console Wii U. Because Sony and Microsoft have been building their online networks for years, Iwata says it wouldn’t be easy to catch up to their online networks.

Not surprising in the least. I love many of Nintendo franchises but when it comes to hardware and online services they are thee most self-centered and stubborn companies ever.

well at least their online if free.

@Shielder7: Their online isn't great though.

This is so heartbreaking. I remember the big deal they made about the low power consumption of the Wii U. I'm sure they had one of those Iwata-interviewing-the-staff videos on that. Is power consumption an issue in Japan? (I understand the need for it, I'm just saying..)

I've always been very understanding of Nintendo. I completely understood their stance on cartridges (not that I agreed), the weak specs of the Wii, and even the Wii U. I even accepted their reasoning of not having an online presence with the Gamecube.

But this is just too much. Since the SNES, I've purchased Nintendo consoles on day 1, no questions asked. For the first time ever, I'm considering not getting the next one until it proves itself. And it sucks because, to me, they are the fun company. Their games are simply fun. But now even that's changing. It's good that I never played Mario 3D Land, because maybe I wouldn't have enjoyed World as much. Also glad I only played a bit of Donkey Kong Country Returns becasue Tropical Freeze looks exactly the same, albeit in HD (and with more Kranky Kong, of course!).

Their lack of an online infrastructure is absolutely ridiculous at this point. And that they can try and defend lack of online in Animal Crossing, Mario 3D World, and Pikmin is not only disappointing, but a clear indicator of how they're not keeping up.

In regards to their lack of support for their developers... I'm disgusted. In my job we require a lot of vendor support. And it seems like Nintendo is failing at that as well. And I can tell you that if that was at my job, we'd be suing the vendors for breach of contract, as well as risk going out of business.

Now I'm questioning who's fault it is that the Wii U gets crap ports of games. Is it the developers that don't think Nintendo is worth it, or is Nintendo purposely holding back developers?

This makes me angry.

Me too, in fact I grew up with their merchandise. I wish they could give me a really good reason to buy the Wii U.

At this point the best thing Nintendo could do to help the Wii U would be to buy up as many developers as possible.

Heh, or this one: http://youtu.be/sNNf5HUgt50?t=29s

:P

The Wii U needs much better devs, more must-buy games (like Pokemon X & Y) and cheaper games (40 $ for each exclusive and 50 for the really good ones. But Nintendo probably won't succumb.) and it needs to be cheaper (200 $ is a must-by price).

After reading the article i it's entirety, and one that was linked about Gamecube development, it's clear to me now that Nintendo refuses to change with the market. NoJ could not understand why GTA San Andreas was so popular. There was/is a big cultural difference. Violent games did not do well in Japan.

Also, Nintendo does not like the idea of multi platform games. They want to be unique and offer games you cannot get on other consoles. They believe that will draw people to them. They feel that 3rd parties are inferior and only serve to fluff the game catalogs of console manufacturers. This is why Nintendo has so many 2nd party devs. For studios that they felt were "worthy", Nintendo wold buy them outright or fund their projects which would be Nintendo exclusives.

So among other things, Nintendo lacks knowledge of the western culture (and doesn't seem to care to learn it) and they do not feel 3rd party developers and muti platform games are a necessity. This thought process is something Iwata has felt since the N64 days, so I don't see Nintendo making any huge changes with the Wii U and with Iwata in charge.

Sounds like it's continuation of their general apathy towards third-party developers. It's sad that they still can't even come close to the support that Sony and MS provide their developers.

Eh. Maybe if the Wii U had a stronger install-base, but as it stands now, they'd only be wasting money. They need to regain strong third-party support first.

At this point, it might as well be a mixture of both. All the years of Nintendo refusing to adapt to current technological trends hasn't earned them many friends these days. It's not hard to see why so few developers see the point in making games for their systems given all the bullshit they have to wade through. That Nintendo continues to make things difficult for them only strengthens the animosity toward them. They need to get their act together if they want to turn things around, finally.

Yeah, I played 3D Land heavily when it came out, beat the full game, secret levels and all. Went into World with high expectations, and yeah it's a good game. But it's just that, good. I was expecting far better. On some of these levels I reach the end and start to sputter, "Seriously, that was it!??!?". I know it's inspired directly by Land, but dear Pesci, why are the levels still so bite sized and portable friendly? I'm blowing through the levels at this point, and on a good half or better of them, I don't even crack a smile… I'm just going through the motions.

Each Mario game used to have a different and unique feel to it. They seem to be stuck in a rut lately with Mario though. NSMB games all felt like expansions of each other. Pretty much the exact same game with a slight new twist. Sadly, Mario 3D World feels pretty much like that. An expansion of 3D Land with a new slight twist. That twist being the cat suit. Which they seem to really think a little bit too much of, as they literally drown you in cat bells in this game. I actually have to actively avoid the damn things because in some levels it just makes the game feel even easier and the levels even shorter. It feels like a cheap shortcut you can't avoid using.

I deeply fear for the future of Nintendo. From reading this (and many other articles) it strikes me that they are a company that is now rife with incompetence at nearly every level of their business. Not only does it seem like they're unable, even worse is the fact that they hold philosophies and attitudes in today's market that are way out of date and frankly dangerous ("we don't care what the competition is doing".....), just as the article stated that none of their networking support staff had ever even used PSN or Live....that's incredibly difficult for me to swallow.

Nintendo needed the support request in English to be sent off to be translated?? W.T.F??? I can't bring myself to believe a multi-billion dollar international corporation could suffer from such ridiculousness, and this part pulls this article's validity into question to me. I understand Nintendo's struggling, but if that's true then things are not only bad, they're suicidal.

What astonishes me the most is that Nintendo seems to believe that sticking its head in the sand is some type of virtue to be admired, as if they were aware of what was going on in the world around them it would somehow pervert and detract from any innovative ideas they may have. Not to mention their continual arrogant attitude of "it's our way or the highway" dismissive stance towards the rest of the industry, even held as they are now a joke to many. This willful ignorance and elitist attitude is destroying them. What really saddens me is that all of their problems are deep-rooted to the very core of who they are, hence I don't think things will change. Hell, they're SO clueless that even if they realized they needed to change and tried, they'd probably mistakenly attribute a failure to something other than its cause and implement a solution where it's not needed which could make things exponentially worse.

Being so out of touch is extraordinarily dangerous. This is why Iwata, in this respect most of all, needs to go. He's the one that is holding and directing the company with this "ignore everything" attitude.

Not to mention their corporate culture reinforces these issues and will make rectifying them even more troublesome, and this notion is evidenced by the fact that they've been having the same problem for YEARS. Times are rapidly changing and Nintendo adamantly refuses to while seemingly priding themselves on it. We're seeing the consequences of that same attitude held years ago manifesting today, and unless they drastically alter course and completely overhaul their top management and swallow their pride to be able to rethink their strategy, I have no doubt they're on the road to destruction, or at best, complete irrelevance.

hold on a tick...to those saying nintendo need to adapt to market movements...after reading this article do you really think they can? do you really think nintendo can actually change they way they work after 30 odd years?

and if they did start trying to compete in areas like online do you really think they could succeed? Ms and sony have been making online games before the first xbox and Ps2 (remember sony has SOE who make PC online MMOs.....successful ones too). what do nintendo have?

i dont think they can. at the end of the day the online boat has long sailed and both MS and sony have decades of experience on delivering online services. nintendo have none...nothing...zip. i would argue that in areas like online and horsepower there is still absolutely no point in nintendo trying to compete directly. they cant win. they cant outspend the competition and they cant catch up on the technical side. those ships have sailed.

nintendo can not compete with juggernauts in a market thats already well established by jjuggernauts. they have to try and move the goalposts.

the lack of focus on online and the lack of focus on the horsepower is not something i am worried about for nitnendo. the fact that nintendo have no knowledge of live or PSN is neither a surprise nor an issue. they cant compete so any time spent on it is needlessly burning money. they should remain focused on local MP and SP (areas where the competiton is increasingly moving away from). another area they should continue to focus on is making proper DLC and gaining a good reputation for not taking the whizz. you pay your money for a game and you get the coimplete game. additional DLC is just that...more content. no nonsense (something they have managed well overall so far).

what concerns me is the complete lack of communication, the dreadful documentation (are they intentionally keeping it from 3rd parties or do internal developers at nintendo and studios like retro also have the same problem. going by the difficulties the internal studios are having im guessing this is incompetence rather than anything vindictive), not having systems up and running until the last minute (the wiiu clearly wasnt ready when it launched).

one of their goals with the wiiu was to make porting 360 and Ps3 games over an easy process and yet NONE of their hardware decisions with the wiiu supports that objective. as i said, they should stay out of the hardware race, but what possessed them to make a processor that bad and have no HDD as standard? they knew they messed up the storage for the wii and yet they went ahead and made the same mistake again (the 8GB model being so bad they stopped making it). no HDD, no DLC from 3rd parties. i mean for gods sake nintendo themselves are trying to push sales through the Estore and yet they STILL dont provide a HDD as standard.

what department at nintendo thought it would be a great idea to try and compete on the power consuption side of hardware design? even then their choice of hardware is shoddy and AMD had many a solution ready to go to provide a decently powerful bit of kit that wouldnt need massive coolers and fans.

the complete state of unpreparedness of their own developers had to deal with newer tech (which probably contributed to delays in getting answers back to 3rd parties also). i know i said nintendo shouldnt concern themselves with what the competiton are doing...but their developers should be well versed in the latest even if they are not quite using it yet. they will use it in the future (developing completely custom nintendo only tech is no longer viable). i mean do their developers go to conferences like GDC?

this stuff, repeating the same basic mistakes from one gen to the next (lack of a HDD, a console architecture as bad as the N64s), the thinking that power draw should be a major focus on console design (seriously the head of the person who thought that needs to be acquainted with a 2X4), developers who didnt have a clue how to use the new wiiu tech....this is of far more serious concern. nevermind competeing directly with MS and sony, this stuff is not even letting them play to their own strengths.

@osan0: Sorry for the tl;dr. :) I hate GS's new quoting system, I've put yours in italics.

"Hold on a tick...to those saying Nintendo need to adapt to market movements...after reading this article do you really think they can? Do you really think Nintendo can actually change the way they work after 30 odd years?"

Yes, they just need new management that doesn't suffer from such a myopic, antiquated outlook to do it.

"If they did start trying to compete in areas like online do you really think they could succeed? MS and Sony have been making online games before the first Xbox and PS2 (remember Sony has SoE who make PC online MMOs.....successful ones too). What does Nintendo have?"

They have a horrible online infrastructure, but this does not mean they are incapable of modernizing it if they truly wished to.

"I don't think they can. At the end of the day the online boat has long sailed and both MS and Sony have decades of experience on delivering online services. Nintendo has none...nothing...zip. I would argue that in areas like online and horsepower there is still absolutely no point in Nintendo trying to compete directly. They cant win. They cant outspend the competition and they cant catch up on the technical side. Those ships have sailed".

No offense here, but this is apologist nonsense. Nintendo has money....TONS of it. They don't need to start at the bottom and gain experience to learn networking. There are plenty of people out in the world who are familiar with the intricacies of networking, proper UIs, and all other elements pertinent to a competitive online offering that they could hire to help get them up to speed. It wouldn't happen overnight, but they could do it. They simply don't care to....it's not a priority to them. Iwata coming out and saying, "We're not good at competing" is easily interpreted as, "We really don't care to". It doesn't mean they're unable. This goes to their hardware as well.

"The lack of focus on online and the lack of focus on the horsepower is not something I am worried about for Nintendo. The fact that Nintendo has no knowledge of Live or PSN is neither a surprise nor an issue. They cant compete, so any time spent on it is needlessly burning money. They should remain focused on local MP and SP (areas where the competition is increasingly moving away from)".

The fact (if true) that Nintendo has no knowledge of what Live or PSN entails is outright frightening in this day and age. I have to ask: on what basis do you say they can't compete? Is it just because Iwata has said they're not good at it? Have you considered that the man may not hold the skills, attitude, ambition, and proper strategy necessary to successfully compete? That he and many in upper tier management are not suited to their positions given the direction and growth of the market in contrast to many years ago? What he says is not Godsend and needs to be questioned and opposed. Personally, every time that man opens his mouth I hear either defeatist excuses or apologies for (the same) mistakes repeated year on year with no change. You don't need to look very far to see why Nintendo struggles with competition, or hell, simply struggles in general.

What concerns me is the complete lack of communication, the dreadful documentation (are they intentionally keeping it from 3rd parties or do internal developers at Nintendo and studios like retro also have the same problem. Going by the difficulties the internal studios are having I'm guessing this is incompetence rather than anything vindictive), not having systems up and running until the last minute (the Wii U clearly wasn't ready when it launched).

I've heard Nintendo is reluctant to fully lay their system's specs on the table so that their games will always be able to outshine 3rd parties, but that's just hearsay.

One of their goals with the Wii U was to make porting 360 and PS3 games over an easy process and yet NONE of their hardware decisions with the Wii U supports that objective. As I said, they should stay out of the hardware race, but what possessed them to make a processor that bad and have no HDD as standard? They knew they messed up the storage for the Wii and yet they went ahead and made the same mistake again (the 8GB model being so bad they stopped making it). No HDD, no DLC from 3rd parties. I mean for Gods sake Nintendo themselves are trying to push sales through the e-store and yet they STILL don't provide a HDD as standard.

I think it's pretty obvious at this point that Nintendo views 3rd parties with contempt, apathy, and doesn't care if they put games on their wares or not. If they do, great, a better library. If not, no worries, their 1st party will float the boat (but I think even this belief is becoming a risky gamble at this point). If they were so concerned with 3rd parties, they'd go around asking what was desired to aid a user-friendly environment and tailor their systems to 3rd party desires during its design, aggressively pursue them, and then set up a decent support infrastructure with proper documentation, tools, and staff at the ready to assist. This (according to this article) is just not there.

What department at Nintendo thought it would be a great idea to try and compete on the power consumption side of hardware design? Even then their choice of hardware is shoddy and AMD had many a solution ready to go to provide a decently powerful bit of kit that wouldn't need massive coolers and fans.

Agreed. Seems their priorities are incredibly mixed up.

The complete state of unpreparedness of their own developers had to deal with newer tech (which probably contributed to delays in getting answers back to 3rd parties also). I know I said Nintendo shouldn't concern themselves with what the competition are doing....but their developers should be well versed in the latest even if they are not quite using it yet. They will use it in the future (developing completely custom Nintendo only tech is no longer viable). I mean do their developers go to conferences like GDC?

Makes me wonder.

I think it's important to keep in mind that this article references to a time when the U wasn't even launched yet, so I believe that things are in all the more likely-hood a lot better currently than this gives off, but nevertheless the damage has been done. Why should a developer start on another project with such hassle, which ends up selling like shit, which has barely comparable (and oftentimes worse) features than LAST-gen tech, when PS4/One are on the horizon offering everything better imaginable? There is literally NO reason to develop for Nintendo. If I were a developer, I can't think of a single one.

This stuff, repeating the same basic mistakes from one gen to the next (lack of a HDD, a console architecture as bad as the N64s), the thinking that power draw should be a major focus on console design (seriously the head of the person who thought that needs to be acquainted with a 2X4), developers who didn't have a clue how to use the new Wii U tech....this is of far more serious concern. Never mind competing directly with MS and Sony, this stuff is not even letting them play to their own strengths.

Again agreed. I don't know what's going over in Kyoto, but there had better be some serious changes going around. I get so passionate about Nintendo because I greatly care for them as a company and it sucks to seem them being treated like this. Watching Sega go down the tubes was hard enough.

It is crystal clear to me that Iwata is the sole purpose of Nintendo not being more competitive with Sony and MS. He is the boss. The company does as he says. He would be the one to start the initiatives to go online, get 3rd party support, and lead the company. I'm sure other executives, especially from NoA, have suggested making stronger efforts, but have been shut down by Iwata. He and his management team must go, if they are to compete.

However, it is possible that they are happy where they are. They may be making a profit on the Wii U, and the 3DS is doing very well. It's very possible that we want Nintendo to be something they don't want to be.

@MirkoS77:

My bit is in italics, your bit in bold (i hope :P)

"The lack of focus on online and the lack of focus on the horsepower is not something I am worried about for Nintendo. The fact that Nintendo has no knowledge of Live or PSN is neither a surprise nor an issue. They cant compete, so any time spent on it is needlessly burning money. They should remain focused on local MP and SP (areas where the competition is increasingly moving away from)".

The fact (if true) that Nintendo has no knowledge of what Live or PSN entails is outright frightening in this day and age. I have to ask: on what basis do you say they can't compete? Is it just because Iwata has said they're not good at it? Have you considered that the man may not hold the skills, attitude, ambition, and proper strategy necessary to successfully compete? That he and many in upper tier management are not suited to their positions given the direction and growth of the market in contrast to many years ago? What he says is not Godsend and needs to be questioned and opposed. Personally, every time that man opens his mouth I hear either defeatist excuses or apologies for (the same) mistakes repeated year on year with no change. You don't need to look very far to see why Nintendo struggles with competition, or hell, simply struggles in general.

The reason i say nintendo cant compete in the online stage is the same reason google+ cant compete with facebook and twitter directly or nokia cant compete with apple directly or other MMO devlopers using a sub model cant compete with WOW. They are too far behind. If they do try and compete the best they can expect is to be considered an also ran. Even if they do manage to get to parity with MS and Sony (which will take years) are they really going to be able to drag prople who use Live and PSN away? Will people be prepared to chuck in all their friends lists, achievements and so on to use the nintendo network? Would they be prepared to pay to use the nintendo network?

The people who really want online are already using other services and once people are using one service and are established its very hard to get them to budge (trying to get facebook users to switch to google + or trying to get WOW players to switch to something like star wars for example). If they were going to take online seriously then they should have been doing it at the start of the wii at the latest.

At the end of the day even if nintendo do reach parity with the competition in terms of features and services they still wont have an answer as to why people should use the nintendo network instead. Why would people use it for 3rd party games instead of PSN and Live? They would use it for nintendos own games of course but then nintendo, internally, do not care about making online games. so the people looking for online nintendo games will probably be dissapointed.

personally i am with bigboi on this one. forget the 3rd parties and focus on building up a legion of first and second party developers to carry future consoles and handhelds. dont outright reject 3rd parties but just dont go after them. try to position the console as the best complementary console to a PS or xbox. make the hardware as simple to develop for as possible and be generous on the licencing terms. as i said in another thread regarding nintendo and 3rd parties its a case of 3rd parties dropping half hearted efforts (though this article certainly answers some of the reasons why 3rd party games are in bad shape it still does not give 3rd parties an entirely free pass) on a platform that was not developed with their needs in mind into a market that is, at best, apathetic to 3rd party offerings. no one is winning with nintendo continuing to pursue the bigger developers at least.

look for the next CD Projeckt Reds, retros, rares, monolits and so on. nintendo should expand to have the biggest first party collection of developers on the planet by some margin (i think sony currently has that title). they should be looking for developers the world over, not just NA and japan (eastern europe is ripe for the picking). try to expand the types of games nintendo releases, from family friendly mario or something like cyberpunk 2020 and so on.

whatever about services and horsepower, if nintendo have the content then people will still come. remember when it was rumoured that project offset was coming to the wiiu (complete nonsense of course)? that caused a bit of a rumble. if they have something like that exclusive to the wiiu then that will get more peoples attention.

nintendo make content, they are a content company and they will live or die and their ability to deliver content the public wants. the biggest failing they have on the content side at the moment is its too narrow in terms of appeal (it has gotten narrower since the wii) and they are now relying too much on mario on the console side (on the handheld front nintendo are doing very well content wise).

the other big failing with the wiiu is they seem to have made a console and actually have no idea what to do with it which is another content problem. with the wii they knew exactly what they were about..they could see how it would fit in their games. with the wiiu nintendos own developers seem puzzled. add that to my lists of concerns for nintendo...did they actually consult the game makers in nintendo when making the wiiu?

Just unbelievable. It's the kinda shit you'd expect from a third world country.

Also, the only reason Sony didn't struggle like the rest of the Japanese development community was due to their Western studios. In fact, i just read a Naughty Dog history article on IGN and they badly struggled with the PS3 hardware for two years. Half of their studio left and apparently Uncharted Drake Fortune was made in only 9 months after they wasted two years just trying to get the engine up and running. But they quickly adapted like every other Western studio while Team Ico, Polyphony Digital and practically every other Sony Japan studio struggled to put a game out for 5+ years.

The part about them underestimating the efforts required to make HD games is mind blowing. How fucking out of touch are they? This is really making me angry and I am not even a Nintendo fan. How the **** can you not see the million or so articles about devs struggling with HD game development? How did they miss every single GDC conference? Do they live in a bubble and not interact or follow the outside gaming world? Did they not see Capcom, Sony, Konami struggle with this?

What the **** man. What the ****.

@CarnageHeart: TBF, Both Sony and MS also cared about keeping the power consumption down. Both Cell and the 360 Processor ran at 3.2 Ghz while the PS4 and XB1 CPUs run at 1.6Ghz.

They could've made them faster since i believe both use less power than the launch PS3 and 360s. But chose not too.

That's not the conclusion a recent study came to.

http://www.neowin.net/news/report-xbox-one-and-ps4-use-up-to-three-times-more-power-than-xbox-360-and-ps3

The non-profit Natural Resources Defense Council claims to have "completed rigorous measurements of the power use" of both consoles. On the plus side, the group praises Microsoft and Sony for putting in features such as charging accessories while the consoles are in a lower powered "sleep mode" and reducing power when left on for 10 minutes.

However, the same report claims that because the Xbox One and PS4 use more power overall to play games and watch movies, the energy efficiencies that the companies have put into the console are overridden. It states, "For example, the Xbox One uses approximately 40 percent more power to play a game than the Xbox 360, and the PS4 consumes almost twice as much as the PS3."

In a head-to-head study, the PS4 uses a lot more power than the Xbox One when playing games, streaming movies like Netflix and navigating through its interface. By the same token, the Xbox One uses more power when it is in Connected Standby mode than the PS4, as well as when both consoles are turned "off" but still connected to a power socket.

You may not be a Ninty fan but you have at least followed what they've done. Nintendo has always been like this, thinking they know better than everyone else. It has led to some great successes for them, but it has also led to things like the N64 being cartridge based and the Wii U being a huge disaster.

That developer is talking about before the Wii U launched. It was difficult they had no support, the tools weren't there, the devkits weren't final but multiple developers have said that since the Wii U launched it is no different making games for the Wii U than it is developing for the Xbox 360 and the PS3.

Criterion said they had a lot of help from Nintendo but they started development after the Wii U launched.

Nope. They are looking at the latest slim models of both the PS3 and 360. That's a bullshit comparison because these Slim versions are a result of up to 8 years of hardware iterations. Same thing is going to happen with the PS4 and Xbox One as the technology improves in years to come.

The launch PS3s used up to 209 watts when playing games. The Super Slim PS3 only uses 75 Watts. The PS4's power consumption is at 139 Watts when playing games. That's 70 watts lower than the fat PS3s. The X1's power consumption is only 119 Watts when playing games, but thats because it has a much weaker GPU.

Both of these consoles decided to go with low powered CPUs. Hell, their GPUs are downclocked to 800 Mhz when the retail versions of these GPUs are sold at 1000 Mhz.

So no, while Nintendo may have gone overboard with their fascination with low power consumption, BOTH Sony and MS did the same thing.

Source:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7528/the-xbox-one-mini-review-hardware-analysis/5

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-wii-u-is-the-green-console

@osan0: Again, yours in italics, mine not.

"The reason i say Nintendo cant compete in the online stage is the same reason Google+ cant compete with Facebook and twitter directly or Nokia cant compete with apple directly or other MMO developers using a sub model cant compete with WOW. They are too far behind. If they do try and compete the best they can expect is to be considered an also ran. Even if they do manage to get to parity with MS and Sony (which will take years) are they really going to be able to drag people who use Live and PSN away? Will people be prepared to chuck in all their friends lists, achievements and so on to use the Nintendo network? Would they be prepared to pay to use the Nintendo network?"

Nintendo is far behind, I don't deny that, but they can hire people and companies in the know that would bring them up to competitive speed. This isn't like a social site so the analogy is poor. Online for gaming gives so many benefits to gaming overall, that even if they weren't competing, they'd be great to have just with the system as each system has different games. Things such as a speedy, well-laid out and efficient UI and OS, a good account system and VC, with things such as cross game-chat, invites, achievements, etc. And gamers wouldn't be "dragged away" from Live and PSN to be able to have access to what Nintendo would offer, it would simply be another alternative residing in Nintendo's universe. Why is having three systems, each offering their own unique online experience not possible? Why would it be necessary to give one up to have another?

"The people who really want online are already using other services and once people are using one service and are established its very hard to get them to budge (trying to get Facebook users to switch to Google + or trying to get WOW players to switch to something like star wars for example). If they were going to take online seriously then they should have been doing it at the start of the wii at the latest."

Again, they wouldn't HAVE to budge. Keep playing Live, PSN, and Nintendo's Miiverse at the same time. Each of the big three players have games that are the determining factor that will make people use the net. If Mario Kart, SM3DW, Pikmin 3, and mostly all of Nintendo's 1st party offerings had online features that were up to speed with what Live and PSN are doing today, I guarantee you people would flock to play them online (as so many of their games are perfectly suited to multiplayer).

"At the end of the day even if Nintendo does reach parity with the competition in terms of features and services they still won't have an answer as to why people should use the Nintendo network instead. Why would people use it for 3rd party games instead of PSN and Live? They would use it for Nintendo's own games of course but then Nintendo, internally, do not care about making online games. So the people looking for online Nintendo games will probably be disappointing."

Well you're right on this, people would use Live and PSN for 3rd party games, at this point only Nintendo games would be used with it. That could change with time and if Nintendo makes it possible to rectify 3rd party issues though. I agree that Nintendo doesn't seem to care about online gaming from what they've said and tends to focus on local MP. Doesn't change the fact that local multiplayer in the West is very impractical for most people, and I'd imagine it is just as much in Japan also. There are Ninty 1st party games coming that will support online multi (Kart and SSB) so Nintendo's not entirely against the idea, they're just reluctant to it or do not have the skills for it. But yea, this is one thing they will have to drastically expand and improve upon if they want their online environment to ever gain any substantial grounding.

Look for the next CD Projekt Reds, Retros, Rares, Monoliths and so on. Nintendo should expand to have the biggest first party collection of developers on the planet by some margin (i think Sony currently has that title). They should be looking for developers the world over, not just NA and japan (eastern Europe is ripe for the picking). Try to expand the types of games Nintendo releases, from family friendly Mario or something like cyberpunk 2020 and so on.

Nintendo will never go after 3rd parties. They expect 3rd parties to go to them.

"The other big failing with the Wii U is they seem to have made a console and actually have no idea what to do with it which is another content problem. With the Wii they knew exactly what they were about...they could see how it would fit in their games. With the Wii U, Nintendo's own developers seem puzzled. Add that to my lists of concerns for Nintendo...did they actually consult the game makers in Nintendo when making the Wii U?"

I'm sure they did.

I think Nintendo got so arrogant with the Wii's success that they believed they could afford to use cheap nigh last-gen hardware, charge an exorbitant price for what it offered, slap on another novelty onto the system without much thought given to it in the attempt to lure the casuals once again, and then throw it out there while siting back and have it lean heavily on the Wii brand-name's popularity in the hopes the systems would be flying off the shelves just like its predecessor (not expecting the mass confusion people had[ve] instead with the name). And hey, maybe they wouldn't have to actually truly work hard anymore but could just sail through another gen on the Wii name. What I see is a company that once again was hoping for lighting in a bottle which would've saved them from having to get their asses in motion, only thing is.....lightning didn't strike twice this time and Nintendo's apparent lack of effort that was depending on that second lighting strike to cover their apathy is now out on the table for all to see.

What it looks like to me anyway.

Not surprising. It's part of the reason I'll NEVER buy a Nintendo console, ever. Gave up on them after GC, and have joyfully moved on.

If I had to choose between a functional but dirty SNES console with it's top casing missing and the entire motherboard exposed for $300 dollars and Wii U, I'd single handedly choose the SNES.

Do you read your own links? According to your second link, the Wii U uses less power than all versions of the PS3 and X360, so its kind of bizarre to dismiss the fact that the PS4 and Xbone use more power than their slim iterations. There's also the fact its kind of an apples to oranges comparison since the Sony and MS (and much of the industry) place more emphasis on GPUs nowadays, but I'm not trying to write a book so we'll look past that.

What is most important is that MS and to a somewhat lesser extent Sony had problems with early systems overheating due in part to that high power consumption you mentioned and among other measures both steadily brought down power consumption (which generates heat) in order to try to end the problem. When building their new systems power consumption and heat generation went back up but not to its old, dangerous heights.

http://www.gamereactor.eu/news/83714/Mark+Cerny%3A+%22they+know+how+to+design+PS4+so+it+won%27t+overheat%22/

Gamereactor Spain caught up with Mark Cerny shortly after he delivered his Road to PS4 presentation at this year's Gamelab in Barcelona.

As part of a longer GRTV interview, which will be shown in full this Sunday on the site, we asked Cerny how the PlayStation 4 would cope with the intense summer heat that Spain's currently sweltering under.

"I think it will be fine," he replied. "They know how to design the console so it doesn't overheat. If you notice that PlayStation 4 is smaller, it's because power consumption is less; simple as that."

http://www.nowgamer.com/news/2015280/ps4_has_less_risk_of_failing_consoles.html

We'd already thought the PS4's low power consumption would mean cooler operating temperatures, but Sony has now had the PS4 approved for FCC registration.

This means that - as far as the FCC is concerned - the PS4 is a viable electronic suitable for sale to the public in America.

It's fairly early for an FCC which does suggest the PS4 could be further along the line than we might have been led to believe.

What is interesting is the tidbits of info the FCC registration coughs up. According to the registration, the PS4 will run at 5-35 degrees Celsius - which is fairly cool compared to the PS3's average of 45-55 (over 60 and you're at risk of the YLOD).

So the low power consumption of the PS4 does mean that it's at less risk of failures, since overheating is the primary cause of failure for consoles.

I don't think that'd do much. I think they should just ride out the storm and pump out their exclusive content as per usual while seriously re-evaluating the way they conduct business for their next console.

I actually don't know what they need to do next. Going after the core Sony/Microsoft market won't do them much good, even if the platform is on par with every feature and specs -- see GameCube. Focusing on the expanded audience won't help much either, it's a viable market short term but it's not a long term money maker. That audience played anything beyond Wii Sports and Mario Kart Wii. I also don't think having a unique differentiating factor like the Wii Remote or GamePad will do much going forward either.

The only thing I can think of is if Nintendo starts to seriously invest in third party relations to help create (I hate saying this) 'core content' for the typical Sony/Microsoft buyer. New IPs would be nice and more titles that are out of Nintendo's comfort zone would be great. So, I guess it's similar to what you're suggesting but I think they should focus on more partnerships with both Japanese and Western studios. They've already proven they can create great titles while working with other developers -- just look at stuff like Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon for example.

Nintendo fans love to point to the GC as an example of irreconcilable differences between console developers and Nintendo, but its worth keeping in mind that Nintendo in the GC era made it very clear they didn't want anything to do with third parties.

They spewed at third parties every chance they got, declined to give interested third parties specs (let alone devkits) and told those lucky few who had devkits that they would have to pay much higher licensing fees than Sony or MS charged.

At one point a Nintendo exec proudly stated that despite Nintendo's contempt for them, some third parties wanted to support the GC, but Nintendo turned them down because it wanted only Nintendo software to sell Nintendo hardware. Mission accomplished!

http://www.dromble.com/2014/01/07/dolphin-tale-story-of-gamecube/

“I’ve been told that Sony won over Nintendo by surrounding itself with software companies, and I will admit that situation was there in the past. However, times have changed, and it’s no longer a race to see how many useless companies you can get on your side.” said Yamauchi.

---------------

At the same event, Bill Gates called for mass developer support to drive the Xbox, and Microsoft was aggressively pursuing third party developers by delivering development kits to as many studios as possible. Technical director Jim Merrick admitted to IGN that it did not yet have a formal development program in place. He suggested that potential Dolphin developers could prepare for Nintendo’s future system by creating prototypes of their games on the highest performance PC that can be configured

By June 2000, no US companies hadworking GameCube development kits yet and were still in prototyping stages. Miyamoto explained, “There are several different stages of the development tools and until the final one is ready we just cannot mass produce them.

-----------------

In the December 2000 issue of Next Gen Magazine, approximately 7 months after GDC, Hiroshi Imanishi said they are not approaching third parties to make games for GameCube. Instead, they expect third parties to come to them once the GameCube starts growing their install base.

“Nintendo’s position is that we are going to sell our hardware with our own software titles, and if consumers buy a number of Gamecubes, then licensees would become interested in making games for Nintendo Gamecube. That’s the general idea in Nintendo’s business. So we are not actually approaching them [third parties] and asking them to make software for Nintendo. Already there are a number of requests [from publishers] who would like to make the software for Gamecube, so probably in September we will start explaining the technology and delivering the development kits to them. Once again, it’s their decision. If they would like to make Gamecube software, that’s fine, but we will never demand them to make games for Gamecube,” said Imanishi.

What are you even arguing about? I specifically said that the PS4 and X1 power consumption is lower than launch PS360 which you then countered by mentioning the Slim versions. Something I was not talking about. Now you are bringing up the Wii U power consumption in relation to the Slim versions which again makes no sense because I am specifically talking about the power consumption of PS4/Xb1 in relation to the launch PS360s.

A 70 watt difference is massive. I am not saying they should release a console that will YLOD after two years. The YLOD was mostly due to the poor soldering and cheap thermal pastes anyway. Laptops run past 60 degrees all the time yet they dont YLOD or RROD. So do PCs. They could've easily made the PS4 a little bigger and given it a bigger fan to make sure the heat dissipates efficiently. It really isn't that hard. Hell, the XB1 console is massive... there is no reason why their console has lower power consumption than the PS4 other than the fact they cheapened out on the CPU and GPU.

Same thing with the PS4. They didn't downclock the 1.6 Ghz CPU and 800 Mhz GPU because they were worried about YLOD. They did it to keep the power consumption down, the console size small and keep the costs low. Just like Nintendo.

@S0lidSnake: Fair enough. My initial response didn't take into account your launch systems qualifier.

Yeah but my point was that even if Nintendo does make a console on par with the others, I don't think that's going to benefit them much, third party relations aside. It's going to be pointless to have three consoles that are essentially the same thing. It's already pretty pointless to have PS4 and Xbox One as virtually the same machine save for a select few games, neither has too many features to set them apart either. I guess Sony and Microsoft have first party titles, but those don't really help much in certain circumstances.