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THQ Clarifies Claims of "Horrible, Slow" Wii U CPU
An anonymous reader writes "THQ has clarified comments made by 4A Games' chief technical officer, Oles Shishkovtsov, about why their upcoming first-person shooter, Metro, won't be available for Nintendo's new Wii U console. Shishkovtsov had told NowGamer, '[The] Wii U has a horrible, slow CPU,' by way of explaining why a Wii U version of Metro wasn't in the works. Now, THQ's Huw Beynon has provided a more thorough (and more diplomatic) explanation: 'It's a very CPU intensive game. I think it's been verified by plenty of other sources, including your own Digital Foundry guys, that the CPU on Wii U on the face of it isn't as fast as some of the other consoles out there. Lots of developers are finding ways to get around that because of other interesting parts of the platform. ... We genuinely looked at what it would take to bring the game to Wii U. It's certainly possible, and it's something we thought we'd like to do. The reality is that would mean a dedicated team, dedicated time and effort, and it would either result in a detriment to what we're trying to focus on or we probably wouldn't be able to do the Wii U version the justice that we'd want.'"
... because Nintendo is still stupid when it comes to the long term health of their console sadly. If we see third parties abandon Nintendo's new console again everyone nay-saying against Nintendo's ineptitude will have their concerns about poor 3rd party support confirmed once again.
While Nintendo is certainly a profitable company it seems the corporate culture there lives in a bubble when it comes to winning the long term war.
I have a strong suspicion that Microsoft and Sony's next hardware is only going to be a modest step up from this current generation. Sony's taken about five billion dollars of losses on the PS3, and recently had their bond rating downgraded to junk territory, while Microsoft took substantial losses on the RROD debacle. Simply put, nobody can afford a repeat of the seventh generation of the console wars. Except for Nintendo, which, between the Wii and the DS, pretty much had a license to print money. Third party problems notwithstanding, Nintendo's lower-end hardware approach seems to be the only sustainable one, and I think Microsoft and Sony would have to be asleep at the wheel to fail to recognize that in time for the upcoming eighth generation.
Apart from the spin in either direction, is there any solid information? Some quick googling turns up wildly divergent performance rumors, ranging from "equivalent to a 1 GHz x86" to "equivalent to a 3.5 GHz x86".
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
people have been blaming the PS3 PPC to be "slow as hell" too and yet we have decent programmer making good use of the Cell archtecture and SPE units
until the clock speed of WiiU processor(s) is revealed, I will take any extrem comments with a grain of salt
also 1GB ram for the OS why not put in a HDD for swap space and for downing games as the game disks can range from 4.7 GB - 25GB+
MS can make a PC / X86-64 based system that can be setup for TV / game pad use but also let the same games run on any X86-64 based PC as well and sell it as a media box and have no lock in so they don't piss off OEM's and EU laws.
You don't buy Nintendo if playing First Person Shooter is your type of games.
That's like buying a hatchback when you like to transport lumber.
Be seeing you...
It sounds as if Nintendo's priorities when designing the Wii U's chipset in contrast to the Xbox 360 were similar to what they were when designing the SNES in contrast to the Sega Genesis: more RAM, more powerful GPU, slower CPU. Some SNES launch games either suffered slowdown and flicker (Gradius 3) or lacked a two-player modes and had fewer enemies onscreen (Final Fight) compared to similar Genesis or arcade games (Thunder Force 3 and Final Fight arcade). Most post-launch SNES games fared much better in these areas: Axelay, Space Megaforce, Turtles in Time, Final Fight 2, Smash TV. So far the Wii U is repeating the SNES's launch pains. Let's hope it repeats the payoff years!
Such bitching and whining from developers. No wonder some games look and play like crap these days on both pc and console from 3rd party some just don't care anymore. Look at the 80's and early 90's and why they had to work with and they pulled it off, now, a lot of dev's cry because their shitty unoptimized bloated engine that barely runs on an nvidia 300+ cuda cores or ati radeon 2000 streaming processors on the pc can't run on the wii u. Even today with all these processor streams and cuda cores the only thing these dev's could do is run games that don't even come close to realism at 60 fps@1080p.
They don't know how to code for the newer chip designs. Nvidia and AMD are already looking at or arguing for lowering chip cycles and increasing cpu cores. The Wii U almost certainly utilizes eDram to simplify multicore programming and give you increased performance if you use it correctly. If you can't code for this newer design but everyone else ether does or knows they will have to then learn then get out of the market while you can.
Why do you buy that new-speak crap? The original comment wasn't unclear and the "clarification" is not in any way clearer. The CTO made a very clear comment that the company is now regretting and trying to spin to reduce its damage to the relations with Nintendo.
This always seems to happen when a new console comes out. In time people will actually learn how to use it properly.
I really get the impression that the thing now is to to rely heavily on someone else to do the work for you via a framework, engine or whatever, don't really care about optimisation and just get the thing out the door as quickly and cheaply as possible.
If, for example, a developer relies on Unreal engine then I'm not surprised if that wouldn't run well on the Wii U and probably the reason Epic will avoid it but I've never seen anything that says Epic can write great highly optimised code. Their games always seem to run like shit on PCs unless you spent a fortune on hardware. The specs on the box were just there for a laugh, I think. Too many companies rely on this kind of work to make their games.
I'm not surprised that as the US becomes a major player in consoles again they're ruining it. I'd even bet on us seeing a repeat of the crash in the 80's thanks to Microsoft and the sort of developers they have attracted to console gaming. They can go back to the PC and stay there, imo.
Well, when doing cross platform, you sometimes have to code for the lowest common denominator
Whatever. I couldn't care less about this gen or next gen. We need either the headsets that Carmack et al are working on or holograms to make me care about some "next gen". Modest steps up don't interest me. Decreased power consumption and thermals interest me but not enough to make me drop $400 on something that isnt as open of a platform as a PC is.
Oh they aren't, it would take effort and we all know THQ is all about effort
Everyone I know with a Wii has it sitting on a shelf collecting dust.
I think the biggest problem is with their resolution. When you have a 1080 TV, 480 is pretty damn noticeable.
Now we hear that they had to go back on their word and downgrade the new mario game to 720?
Why would I spend $300+ on a system that is already obsolete compared to 6 year old systems?
Which is why PC gaming is force-fed shitty console ports that look and play like ass with mouse and keyboard. Good thing console sales have been on the decline every month this year, hopefully console gaming will die and we'll get decent PC games again.
Your hyperbole is as tired and rehashed as the blowjibbers your mother hands out like candy behind the local corner store. First and foremost we live in a glorious capitalistic society which we recently honored on Friday leaving no doubt as to our consumptional mores. Therefore it seems disingenuous to me that it is the existence of the console platform is what shackles you to your shitty ports, you and your PC gaming brethren could no doubt vote with your wallets? Or perhaps it just isn't as big a deal as your vitriol fueled post here would lead us to believe? Or perhaps the PC gaming market just isn't that valuable to those that create mainstream games.... Hmmmm. Of course I wouldn't expect a person like you to look at the world in anything other than the immediate, let alone over the course of decades where you would see console sales always slipping this far into a life cycle. But who knows? Hopefully I'm wrong and you can get back to that glorious rose-tinted yesteryear of Grus and ASCII graphics. That is the hey-day you'r referring to isn't it? Or is the glorious era of FMV? Or isometric pseudo-3d? Obviously it doesn't matter as any era of PC gaming was glorious and absolutely head and shoulders above our current console induced catastrophe of gaming we now weather. That fee bro.
On the Oregon Cost born and raised, On the beach is where I spent most of my days
MS needs to go for cooling over looks.
They need to take the word of the hardware guys saying that that case is to small / more fans / better air flow is needed. and not take the word of the marketing guy saying that does not look very HIP.
People are comparing apples to oranges. Nintendo is doing the same thing they've always did. Aside from the n64, Nintendo has always had the best designed console system. They do an exceptional job.
PC never was a good comparison, until Steam and scalable 3D engines it was ridiculous to compare. The system costs are quite high, new games often demand a lot.
Xbox and PS3 push hardware generations ahead at a HUGE $$$ loss just below the cost of a PC system. With cheaper PCs and Steam it makes sense to see Steam enter into the market without the high custom hardware dev costs.
Nintendo is always in the same price range (actually, lower if you consider inflation) and does amazingly within those limits. I wouldn't be surprised if the WiiU is slower than an iPhone-- those phones cost more than the WiiU and the GPU is probably the biggest expense.
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THQ hasnt put out a well programmed and optimized game in years. Along with just about every other big name game company.
Everyone has forgotten how to program efficiently. It's all about throwing more hardware at the overbloated software now just to keep up. Heck it's the same for every os now too. windows 7 cant be stripped much smaller than 12 gig... 12 god dammed gig for the OPERATING SYSTEM. and all it's doing is running the same basic hardware we've had forever.
"good enough, it works" has been the standard for gaming for at least a decade now. Along with "release now, patch later. maybe"
What thq is really saying is... their old mode of just tossing more bling and eyecandy on top of the heap wont do it anymore. and they have no fucking clue how to do anything else anymore. And it's not their fault.
Yeah. bullshit.
You win the internets.
So what CPU does the WII U have that it's so shitty? Or is that a secret that I may be arrested for just by asking?
http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2012/11/23/kids-want-an-ipad-more-than-a-wiiu-for-christmas/
... is that this time, it's three GameCubes duct-taped together?
Very CPU intensive game my ass. Metro 2033 runs on the Xbox 360 and the PS3. THOSE CPUs rely on ~4-6 threads with wimpy per thread performance. If the Wii U CPU is indeed quad core, and each thread is less powerful than a 360 or PS3 CPU thread, then those are some shitty 2012 era processors.
Alternatively, they don't expect much Wii U sales, they don't want to give it near the assembly optimization of the 360 or PS3, and Metro 2033 stresses the 360 and PS3 CPUs.
My phone has a 4 core CPU, so does my desktop. However just one core of my desktop destroys my phone performance wise. A quad core processor doesn't mean performance, it means that to get the max performance it is capable of, you have to have a minimum of 4 threads that all work concurrently to their full capacity.
I can build you a slow quad core CPU.
Also you misunderstand how hyperthreading works. It doesn't only give X% of the CPU to a given process. It simply allows for more threads in hardware, and thus less context switching (which is expensive). My desktop CPU is hyperthreaded, however a single thread can use 100% of one core no problem. If I load two threads, both demanding as much time as they can get, on one core each gets 50% of the core.
That aside, MOAR THREADS!!111 isn't always the way to go. With games, there is only so much you can divide tasks down and still have the threads working efficiently. Not all problems are infinitely divisible.
If you cannot manage to off-load a large portion of your game programming to the GPGPU then you have a serious lack of technology talent to do so. You better catch up or your games will get smoked by the competition.
We are so fucking beholden to console vendors that we can't even call them on their bullshit anymore?
I don't think you should ever do cross platform. Best games are always platform specific (Or better on one platform than the rest).
Good thing console sales have been on the decline every month this year, hopefully console gaming will die and we'll get decent PC games again.
Uh, it's much more likely that it's because the current generation's achieving market saturation than because console gaming is dying.
"People don't want to learn linux" hasn't been a valid excuse since '03.
Wii u uses ddr3 1600 ram. They could have used regular desktop ram for the console and as much as 8gb or even 16gb for storing game data from the slow blu ray type drive.
Nintendo, Sega, Sony, really need to create their own(or join forces) Linux gaming Distro to turn any pc into a gaming console to run their games on instead of wasting billions to produce a gaming console. Shit, nintendo could have done this and also just release that tablet controller gimmick for the linux distro, this would have saved nintendo money. Or just develop on windows.
I can understand why we had gaming consoles in the 80's, and 90's, but now there is no point in doing so since we have very powerful pc's that can pretty much run pretty much anything. If Sony goes for amd cpu/gpu A10 system and they actually lose money on the console they are a bunch of freaking morons. Consoles are obsolete.
The only growth market for games atm seem to be indie games that could also run on tablets. I think the market for AAA overproduced titles is the one that's shrinking. In fact it seems to be reduced to about 10 or so derivative works of an already established series.
Just take a look at what you get for a full priced AAA game. I know this is anecdotal but when I take a look at what I played for how long then Bastion is a better game than AssCreed: Revelations. Or Warlock: Master of the Arcane is a better game than The Witcher 2. If you know all 4 games then you'd agree that they are roughly the same in longevity and enjoyment. I bought all 4 right when they got published at full price. In that respect, Warlock and Bastion were a steal. Together they didn't cost as much as AssCreed: Revelations. And they didn't need as much work. You'd be a fool to spend 60 bucks on a AAA game. And you'd be a fool if you (over)produced a AAA game outside of a well established series.
The market may be oversaturated but it is also shifting. Game producers who'd better produce the next Hollywood pap with explosions and no story at all are going the way of the dodo.
On a sidenote:
Warlock has become a very nice game after a bit of DLC and patches. It was sadly rushed. Not quite MoM but what is?
20 minutes into the future
Fuck. The first day in a week that I don't have modpoints. I want to mod you up to get rid of whatever fuckwit modded you "flamebait." _
Wow, so many incorrect assumptions all over this topic.
I've read nearly all the comments and people are blabbing on about "Intel i3" this, "GDDR" that.. In reality if you took the time to look, you'd find the Wii U is actually a pretty well designed machine.
In fact, if you even read the full comments by the THQ rep. you'll see they even admit the problem is that THQ doesn't want to dedicate a team of engineers to revise their game's engine to take full advantage of the Wii U's design. The rep. didn't go into secific details, however it reminds me of the same moans and groans from the game development industry about the then-new PlayStation 3, as it also has more CPU power than GPU power at a time when games depended largely on the power of the GPU.
So, lets get some facts straight:
According to Microsoft, the XBox 360 CPU is IBM's Xenon processor. The Xenon is a triple-core processor and in fact, these cores are based on the main Power Processor Element (PPE) core in the PlayStation 3's Cell processor. According to IBM (Who in fact designed or participated in the design of all 3 console's CPUs..) the Wii U's POWER7 "Watson" processor is significantly more advanced than it's Xenon predecessor.. By a factor of at least 2 or 3 depending on the package Nintendo purchased, which they've not revealed.
So what about the GPU? Well according to AMD/ATI the 360's Xenos GPU is based on their existing R520 architecture with a few R600 features incorporated into it.. Whereas the GPU AMD/ATI built for the Wii U is based on the R700 chip.. So, what's going on here? :)
Based on the facts, it would appear that the CPU and GPU found in Nintendo's Wii U are in fact better than their counterparts in the 360 and the PS3.. On top of that, the Wii U has more DDR3 ram than both the 360 and PS3 combined! What could all the fuss possibly be about? Personally I wonder if there's some gaping bugs in the Wii U's OS which is giving the entire machine a really bad rap.. Maybe with some system updates the machine's real performance could be enjoyed.
Or maybe it's that certain game development companies really are too stubborn to want to port their existing game engines to yet another platform?
I guess we could only speculate on the motivations of game devs.. We really shouldn't be speculating on hardware specifications that are easily found online, though :P
oles has a child named shish kebab?
iPod touch is the price of the Wii U
iPod touch:
MUCH Weaker GPU.
No HD-DVD-like drive.
No SD slot.
Cheap low watt charger.
Has headphone port.
Choose colors! Aluminum.
Better touch screen.
http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_ipod/family/ipod_touch
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It's the SAME reason why Borderlands 2 isn't coming to the Wii U. The PUBLISHER doesn't want to cut into their PROFIT MARGINS!! See, wasn't that a SIMPLE explanation?? Now everyone can stop arguing flippers and floppers and get back to gaming!