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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
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.
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.
The Wii U has neither a Cell nor SPE units, it only has it's slow CPU. On top of that not even the PS3 ever fully recovered from it's hardware issue, as third party titles almost always end up looking better on Xbox360.
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.
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.
You have that backwards. First person shooters are the AMC Gremlin of games. They take a lot more to get you where you are going, and they always feel as if the engine is underpowered because they are dragging around a lot of unnecessary weight. First person shooters are what effectively killed off video game arcades. The places you can find arcades still eking out a living, the the Santa Cruz Boardwalk, all have almost nothing but vintage pre-first person shooter games.
This always seems to happen when a new console comes out. In time people will actually learn how to use it properly.
Well, when doing cross platform, you sometimes have to code for the lowest common denominator
Oh they aren't, it would take effort and we all know THQ is all about effort
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.
And racing games, don't forget racing games. There's a few other arcades around. They all have figured out some way to be ultra-competitive, by offering something more than just video games. The arcade at the boardwalk survives mostly by virtue of being super-awesome, which it only manages because they own the property. If they had to pay rent on that space, that arcade would have been gone already. It's part of the package that people are expecting from the boardwalk, which is to say rides, fried food, mini golf, arcade, and of course the beach but let's face it, you don't go to the boardwalk to actually be on the sand. Maybe if you eat lunch at lunchtime, and you can't get a table.
God damn it, now I want a corn dog.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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
Yeah, I'm really hoping the laziness on pc ports is a result of the fact that we're at the end of the console cycle, and they have enough extra power in most PCs to BE lazy. Maybe they'll actually have to optimize some code when Unreal 4 is used on the next consoles and ported over. It's possible that they'll just not bother porting until the majority of PC's catch up GPU wise. I'm getting a new Sager gaming laptop next week (I know, I know, gaming laptops, pfffftttt! My GSR position is subsidizing all the non-gaming parts, so it works out economically) and I'll be interested to gauge the performance of the next gen ports. As far as I know the Unreal 4 has been using dual top-o-the-line video cards for all its demonstrations. Googling doesn't get me to an official quote on specs, but I'm not too hopeful for my new mobile gpu (7970m) In any case, there's always the indie gaming scene...
Everyone I know
Oh great, more useless statistics directly from the horse's ass.
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.
That's not always a testament to the 360's strengths.
Some contracts with console companies actually include certain requirements, which will force the product to favor their platform over the competitor's. Some don't even beat around the bush and pretty much tell you that it has to look better on console A than console B.
Yes, they've crippled the FPS genre so much that they can be played even on a console.
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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You win the internets.
First person shooters are what effectively killed off video game arcades.
I always felt that the biggest thing that killed off the video arcade was the fact that home consoles and PC gaming finally met and surpassed arcade quality. Back in the glory days, if you wanted state of the art, you went out to the arcade, because except for Pong, none of the games you could play at home came close to matching what you could get in the 'cades.
Sure there were quite a few home games that were addictively fun and were able to compete with the arcades for the players' time (Parsec, TI Invaders, Tombstone City, Enduro, River Raid, Megamania, Pitfall, and others), but they were still lacking that special something that made arcades so appealing. For me, it was the retro future ambiance of the arcades that drew me in.
Then in the 90s, home video games not only caught up with the previous generation's arcade quality, but also with the current generation (or at least the early years of the current generation). I remember at a local pizza place here in my home town, they had a Super Mario Brothers arcade game in their little game room, and my first thought was "who would blow quarters in that, when the home version was pretty much identical?"
In addition to saturating the market for fighting games (which was easy for the home market to match already), the arcade makers started getting more elaborate and gimmicky in their offerings with games that were becoming larger and larger, taking up more and more valuable floor space.
Actually, I think the big gimmick games started becoming more prevalent closer to the turn of the century. During the 90s though, the games were becoming fancier, and (except for the fighting games genre) were still impractical for home ports, such as Space Lords for example. Of course, these big elaborate games were expensive, expensive to play and obviously expensive to maintain. And home video games were now at the point where they were actively competing for the gamers' attention.
I think the final death knell for arcade gaming as we knew it, was the sudden prevalence of home networking and network gaming, which eventually became a regular feature in consoles. So it really wasn't FPS games per se that killed arcades. They were doomed from the restart (the rise of Nintendo and the rebirth of the home market after the crash), due to the understandable inability to grow and expand their market at the same rate.
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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.
I still love my Wii. It has my favourite games of this generation of consoles such as Mario Galaxy 1 & 2, Zelda TP & SS, Xenoblade Chronicles, The Last Story, Pandoras Tower, Metroid Prime Trilogy (amazing FPS experience on a console IMHO), Okami (PS2 port I know but it is so much better on the Wii), Super Paper Mario... I could go on and go.
Yes I enjoy other games not on the Wii such as CoD:BO2, Uncharted, God of War, etc. but over all if I had to pick one console I would pick the Wii without question. I bought it for entertainment and fun not to just have 1080p@60fps graphics. If I was a graphics addict I wouldn't bother with a console anyway as a PC easily offers far greater graphical performance. I never really understood when people say attack the Wii (and the Wii U now) for not being the most powerful console possible. I will take amazing gameplay over HD graphics any day. Super Mario Galaxy is a great example of this. It didn't have amazing graphics (although they were still pretty damn beautiful) but god damn that game was a superb platform game. Absolutely amazing gameplay.
>Everyone I know with a Wii has it sitting on a shelf collecting dust.
Not mine. The offspring has just diligently worked through the lego starwars trilogy and is starting on Okami.
The right way to view a Nintendo is to accept that it'll be fine for a year or two before you get bored, then you can pass it off to a child who will be delighted with it.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
The Wii U has neither a Cell nor SPE units, it only has it's slow CPU.
Wii U has only a CPU and no GPU? It is already a known fact that Nintendo's approach is to use the GPU as co-processor.
I looked a bit of info up about the 4A Engine. Turns out that it's extremely bad designed. It only runs on a single thread (therefore even multiple CPU cores are unused) with NVidia PysX technology as only exception.
Xbox 360 has a relatively strong CPU and PS3 has a NVidia GPU. If PS3 had a Radeon-based GPU, PS3 would have been in exactly the same state as Wii U.
As a result, even PC gamers without a NVidia GPU one will suffer.
4A Games was either too stupid or received sponsoring money from NVidia to only support PhysX.
If 4A Games had done vendor-independent GPGPU programming (via OpenCL) from the beginning, not only would the Wii U probably run etro Last Night just fine, the other platforms (esp. PC owners with Radeon GPU) would benefit as well.
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.
I remember at a local pizza place here in my home town, they had a Super Mario Brothers arcade game in their little game room, and my first thought was "who would blow quarters in that, when the home version was pretty much identical?"
People whose parents wouldn't buy an Atari, Nintendo, or Sega because "we bought you a Fairchild years ago!" Same deal with an 8088 running DOS in 1995, although I had computers available at school.
We are so fucking beholden to console vendors that we can't even call them on their bullshit anymore?
I'm upset at Nintendo for Super Paper Mario, and apparently Paper Mario: Sticker Star too. I *loved* Paper Mario and Thousand Year Door - I own an original PM cart and am actually doing a play-through on my N64 right now with friends. I think it's the best example of how to do turn-based combat ever made, with witty story, great characters and just well done in general.
SPM's combat was uninteresting by comparison, and from what I hear, PM:SS gets it wrong on both combat and story, cutting out the elements that made PM great. I was going to buy a 3DS just for it, but given what I have heard and the fact it isn't even coming out here in the UK until well into next year (late feb, IIRC) despite the fact it's already out in the states, it isn't going to happen.
-- Lattyware (www.lattyware.co.uk)
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
Stop pretending the Wii U has anything to do with POWER7. It doesn't. The console would melt instantly if it did, and it would cost 10 times as much.
The Wii U has a PowerPC-based CPU, just like the XBox 360 and the Playstation 3. Later generation than those two admittedly, but apparently a design with comparably few transistors. CPU design has not progressed enough in 6 years to offset a significant loss of transistors.
The Wii was underpowered at the time it launched, but the Wii U appears to be even further behind.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
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!