The Wii U might be a big leap over last gen overall?

Does anyone have evidence or proof of this? I haven't seen any wii u game look as good as UC 2/3, GOW 3, Killzone, Halo4, Forza, or GeOW 3. If the wii u doesnt show advantages over 8 year old consoles, why buy one?

You seem to love Nintendo. Seems like 99% of topics regarding them are from you :P

On topic...I don't have a Wii U, so I'm unable to give you a fair answer to your question.

Nintengodno is 1 gen ahead of the ps2

Wii U has more RAM, GPU is supposedly a bit better.

That's about it.

Well from Watch Dogs or AC4 * I can't remember which* devs general comment, kinda go along the lines of Wii U version of those game is in between 360/PS3 & Xbone/PS4 ..my understanding is better than 360/PS3 but won't be as good as Xbone/PS4. So 360/PS3 low end scale.. Wii U middle...Xbone/PS4 High end scale. Just wait & see now. :)

The reason anybody enjoys a console... Really good games...

I mean just look at the galaxy games or journey... These games are nowhere near tech masterpieces but they've received high praise out the wazoo.

It's true that more power gives the developer more to work with, but Nintendo's developers are among the best in the business and have proven time and time again that excellent core gameplay and level design are timeless and don't have to rely on cutting edge tech.

Kaszilla thread...

Big leap? There's ZER0 leaps.

Proof of the pudding is in the eating. Like the original wii, I have yet to see one single game which outshines the best from the outgoing gen graphically.

It depends on how you want to define a "next-gen" experience. In a sense, bringing more immersive input methods and adding variety to the system may be more next-gen than buffing the graphics and tweaking the controller. You could argue, however, that the true evolution lies within the games. A boost in graphic prowess and computing can lead to more complex games. Thiscomplexity and ability to immerse the player seems to be the main focus nowadays over much of what gaming used to be, the mechanics. Interactive storytelling has grown this generation and looks to continue on. If you really consider it, Nintendo is really the only one who makes videoGAMES, not interactive features. The Wii U is designed to bring you a different "experience", whether that has been truly realized is up to you. There is plenty of room to accommodate the vast variety of games we have today and tastes vary person to person. If you like what the Wii U offers, then get it. If third party matters then get both =D.

@MajorPain10: This sounds like a corporate press release and not an organic post by anybody. "immersive input methods" for example. It's not your argument, it's that of the company and there are more holes in it than a sieve.

But you've fallen into the same old trap of suggesting Nintendo is the only one releasing games. This is, to be frank, a joke. The "different experience" you speak of is a cumbersome controller with an inventory screen on it, which hasn't been used properly and is the reason you can't have cutting edge technology in the console for a reasonable price.

False. Wii U is ahead more than 1 gen of PS2.

This is the only thing you ever post about. More than double usable main memory, 35mb's total eDRAM (that's more than Xbox one, funnily enough) and a GPU far far more advanced than Xenos in Xbox 360. The CPU is better than Xenon by a lot as well. Wii U is well over double Xbox 360 in capabilities.

Once Sonic lost world, DK tropical freeze and Mario 3D world come out, those will be great examples of how much more powerful Wii U is. Even Pikmin 3 takes a lot of power to run at 60fps and have the whole map loaded at once, and it still has techniques not possible on last gen consoles.

Look at WW HD, Ps3 struggled to run straight ports of 6th gen games at 1080p (only one's were Okami and ICO, and those are Ps2 games so in general a lot less intensive than Gamecube games in the first place) Then look at WW HD not only is it 1080p but textures are completely re-drawn, lighting is completely overhauled and draw distance increased. And it still only took 6 months to remake the game.

@ronvalencia: do u compute what a joke means or it needs to have benchmarks and 5+ links to random shit to be funny?

@ronvalencia: The Wii Ewww is on par with the last gen consoles which are 1 gen ahead of the ps2

Not unless you consider a tablet controller to be a "big leap".

Who buys consoles based on power?

the leap between the Wii and Wii U is comparable to the leap between Xbox/PS2 and X360/PS3, and once again Nintendo is a generation behind on performance

thing is...

playstation and xbox rely on realistic graphics for their games....thats why its easier to say the look just as good.

nintendo like going for cartoony graphics....nintendoland,pikmin3 and windwakerHD look very pretty...

different artstyles.

@Michael0134567: Me, if the hardware is no more powerful than 8 year old consoles. Would you buy a next gen console with ps2 graphics?

X destroys everything PS3 ever did graphically. so yes, there is your evidence.

I am looking forward to that game as well, will wait a few years for wii U to get around $150 before I jump down.

@casharmy: No it doesn't, nothing on the wii eww can blow anything on the ps3 away because the specs dont blow the ps3's specs away

even killzone 4 doesnt blow killzone 3 away...so lol

@KBFloYd: Well then why even buy a wii eww then if you can get the same results from 8 year old systems?

Yeah Wii U is a big leap over the Wii, but compared to PS3 and 360, not really. Hell it's CPU is weaker, MUCH weaker than Xenon and Cell.

for 1st party games in HD.

why buy a ps4 or xbox one?

Broadway was about 60% of one Xenon core in capabilities, and now that it's a triple core with a huge clockspeed boost, modern cache in comparison to PS3 and 360, and increased registries, it easily beats Xenon. You'll probably bring up some BS about SIMD but that's just one area even if true, and the GPU in Wii U is designed to do some of the CPU work (not to the extent of the Ps4's compute though). Espresso has an extremely small data path so the low clockspeed doesn't mean anything, it's quite a powerful little chip.

You're just plain wrong. Even if you were right, the GPU and RAM is a night and day increase and CPU's can now be a lot weaker than the GPU in a system these days without causing bottlenecks. The idea that Nintendo of all companies would make an unbalanced console is funny.

I dunno about hardware but is it my opinion that GOW3/ascension are massively overated for graphics? I don't honestly find them as that good looking games. Uncharted, Killzone, GeOW3 yeah though.

Not just you. They're great, but incredibly focused. The sense of scale is there, but the focus is often solely on Kratos.

Ports are going to look pretty much the same on all three and most of the Nintendo exclusives have color palates where you won't really notice any difference. Unless they come out with a Mario game that ends up melting faces.

@KBFloYd: For a next gen experience

There is no evidence that could convince you since you've already made up your mind.

@TheKingIAm: but killzone 4 looks like killzone3 and the controller is the same shit.

60% of a Xenon core that is clocked over 4x faster? I highly doubt that, especially when Xenon has SMT. And SIMD is important. If it wasn't necessary, MS wouldn't have had 128 bit VMX units on each Xenon core and Sony wouldn't have designed a whole CPU around it (Cell). Modern games are SIMD heavy and a game like BF3 or BF4 for example is a far flung dream for those hoping it may hit the Wii U. As for GPGPU, sure I Nintendo designed the Wii U with that in mind, but using it is just a crutch for the Expresso CPU only made it harder for developers to bring their code to the Wii U because now they have to schedule it between a CPU and GPU.

Nintendo for example could've designed Expresso as a single 750cle + 3 750VXs (assuming it was every finished) or even some or 750cle + 2/4 PPC A2 cores.

Silly Nintendo, designing another system around their development and game styles while not thinking about how 3rd parties could utilize it.

they don't look the same nor play the same. KZ SF actually has high res textures, open environments, the gameplay has verticality, you have an OWL device that let's you activate shields, use a zip-line and many other equipments.

Art style wise KZ SF is not brown anymore because the game takes place on Earth and not the heavily contaminated Helghan with its weird vegetation, deteriorated cities or deserts. The setting is during a cold-war so you're more of a spy (shadow marshal) than a front line soldier like in the older games. This time around they apparently hired a decent writer for the story (don't know who he is though). Rumor is that the antagonist is a woman and the game takes place 30 years after KZ3. Etc. etc.

To put GFLOPS in perspective for the Wii U lovers out there.........

The Wii U has a considerable GPU advantage. But with GPGPU making up for the CPU in SIMD heavy titles (think BF3), the advantage of the Wii U's GPU gets almost negated, especially when you consider it might be rendering to the tablet controller too. For non SIMD heavy games, sure the extra graphics grunt is great, but Nintendo basically flipped the bird at the 3rd parties who want a system that at least has parity in both CPU and GPU capabilities.

Thank god I'm not alone on this. I just don't see the graphics as all that.

Just because the clock speed is lower doesn't mean the CPU is weaker. That would be called the Megahertz fallacy, and it was already debunked.

@PC_Otter: Actually, the wii eww's gpu is 165 gflops. It's pretty much accepted as such on beyond3d

@PC_Otter: Read these tweets. http://www.kotaku.com.au/2012/11/hacker-says-hes-cracked-open-the-wii-u-cpu-is-nothing-special/

So it's better in most area's like I said, just not SIMD. Overall, the CPU is better. Wii U games are going to be designed for its strengths, and those games are going to show (already show) how bad it blows last gen consoles out of the water when the console's advantages are utilized properly. Why would you make a game on it that is SIMD heavy if that's not where it's strengths are?

You do make a good point, i'm just saying that it's irrelevant at the end of the day. Hell, even if a game was SIMD heavy on Wii U, if the hardware was properly utilized it could still have a lot more bells and whistles than Ps3 and 360 games, problem with that is big publishers and developers focusing on more powerful hardware don't want to do that, you're right. But really, would you want to buy a Wii U multiplat over a Ps4 version in the first place?

wow really your telling me a the wii u is better than 7 year old tech.....i would never had guessed

Because power determines generations and the experience around it,right!

Because lacking SIMD capabilities limits what a developer can do with Nintendo's hardware in some ways compared to older systems like the PS3 and 360 assuming the Wii U has the GPGPU flexibility people love to tout it may have. If the GPU is RV700 based, then it's going to be more limited in GPGPU flexibility than newer architectures like Evergreen, Northern Islands and GCN which were designed with GPGPU specifically in mind via DirectCompute and OpenCL.

Most current games are SIMD heavy. Physics, animation, etc. Without it, it's difficult to expect PS4 and Xbox One games to be down ported to the Wii U, especially if they are games that use GPGPU + CPU SIMD. The Wii U won't have the headroom for it without really cutting down features and graphics.

And the CPU isn't the only problem with the Wii U. It should've had at least a Turks level GPU or even something on par with RV770 or perhaps a custom part between Turks and Juniper. The eDRAM was actually a smart idea, because it can be used exclusively with the 1 and 2 MB GPU eDRAM caches to fully emulate the memory environment of the original Wii. It stands in for the 1T-SRAM while offering a still fairly large and fast pool of memory for the framebuffer, and further decreasing the need for a wide main memory bus. AMD APUs actually do quite good on 16 GB/s bandwidth thanks to a well managed memory system and the Wii U likely benefits from AMDs experience with this

This does not discount the Wii U still being a full generation behind in processing power compared to the PS4 and Xbox One.

That's false. There are numerous cartoony games on Xbox and Playstation. They generally look better than Nintendo's ones too. Viva Pinata and Ratchet and Clank both look better than the Galaxy games for example.

It has a little more power if devs bother to make use of it (see differences between Need For Speed versions as an example). I don't think there is a lot of difference though and haven’t seen much better graphics than the best on 360/PS3. But like most people I got mine for exclusives and that’s the sole reason I own one. If I want power I’ll play on my PC. As far as decent exclusives go it’s got far more than the XB1 or PS4 at present!

@negro-y-azul: Out of all the styles, animation benefits from HD the most. If Super Mario Galaxy gets a HD remake, you can be sure that it would look better too.

@DocSanchez:

I guess it's the way I write. Regardless, "games" in this case is subjective. Depending on the amount of interactivity, the game can go two ways: cinematic or mechanics (Nintendo focusing on mechanics). I hope they can push both aspects equally, which should be the objective. I mentioned the lacking effort that Nintendo and third-parties have put into the controller, which is obvious. If we were to finally get a game that utilized this piece of technology in an "innovative" way, then it might change people's minds.

I have a Wii U and I think it has a lot of potential. The Gamepad allows for a lot of creative possibilities. The only real issue is that good games are few and far between. The good games the system does have show that it has a lot of potential. At this point, I'm looking forward to Super Mario 3D World, Mario Kart 8, DKC Tropical Freeze and hoping that the new Zelda arrives soon.

the wii u is more powerful then current gen, this is evident by games like need for speed, etc where it runs with pc textures as apposed to the 360 and ps3.

games like watch dogs, the developers have said the wii u version will be between current gen and next gen,

the main reason i purchased a wii u, is for the simpler games, mario, mario kart, smash bros, and the game pad is different and i genuinly think its a great addition,,

I own a Wii U and I have to say that it does feel pretty different from ps3 and x box. The tablet is awesome and the games just feel different.