[Shifty Geezer]

It's time to put your virtual money where your digital mouth is! Rumours are flying, and before too long we'll know what's what. So this is our last chance to win/lose some serious cred and boasting rights, by being right when others were wrong.

For a chance to rub everyone else's nose in it (or eat crow), put your name down on your prediction. What have you to lose except your pride ?!

[Shifty Geezer]

Yes, I've voted. I never vote, because I consider such things indeterminable and will always wait and see. But I thought I should risk eating crow the same as everyone else. Besides, crow is low in saturated fats and good for the complexion, so it may do me good. And my choice was a toss up between options 2 and 3, and my pessimistic nature pushed me to the lower option.

[Dr Evil]

Saturated fat is good stuff, you should't be afraid of it, but the second display in Wiiu plays at least some part in this, because the system has to push more pixels. Hmm a tough one as there are somewhat mixed rumours flying around...

[AlStrong]

It'll be the most powerful platform for Nintendo gaming... of all time!...


...yet!

[AlphaWolf]

What is the criteria for the resolution of this question?

[-tkf-]

Originally Posted by AlStrong

It'll be the most powerful platform for Nintendo gaming... of all time!...


...yet!

And that will be a giant leap, many WII games have been fun to play and worth the money. Personally i am looking forward to the classic franchise games in HD. They don't need to push uncharted graphics in Mario Games.

[babybumb]

I consider 2x to be "on par". It will have enough power to do some nice stuff on the tablet and standard 720p current-gen title

[Shifty Geezer]

Originally Posted by AlphaWolf

What is the criteria for the resolution of this question?

It'll be pretty hazy and subjective, unless Wuu's a power monster! Or two Wii's duck-taped together. But I'm sure Al and I can come up with a very scientific metric once we get some reasonable specs. Some flops/bandwidth/weight/number of LED's system.

[Shifty Geezer]

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr. It's anonymous. Might try again.

eidt: Nope. New poll wasn't listing who voted either.

[Dr Evil]

Originally Posted by Shifty Geezer

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr. It's anonymous. Might try again.

eidt: Nope. New poll wasn't listing who voted either.

It works just fine, you just have to click on the numbers on the chart.

[Grall]

I voted "about on par"; I really hope it's actually 50+% MORE powerful than PS360, but I felt this was a safer choice. It better not be any LESS powerful; if the pad display is going to be useful at all it can't be or games will look simplistic as hell.

I also won't buy it if it is even one iota slower than half-decade old (or more) consoles.

It would be the first stationary Nintendo console I didn't buy, but a man's gotta have principles. Technology is meant to progress, not run in retrograde compared to everything else.

[BoardBonobo]

I think they practically gave the game away (sic) today when a Nintendo spokesperson said:

"We do not focus on technology specs,"
"We understand that people like to dissect graphics and processing power, but the experience of playing will always be more important than raw numbers."

It's the old by saying nothing you've said it all statement. They're not focused on performance and are betting the house on getting people engage in gaming rather than box ticking. So I believe it will be better than the Wii but not quite up to PS3/360 level. Nintendo have their own definition of target market and it's not the hardcore FPS and Action gamers.

src

[Shifty Geezer]

Originally Posted by Dr Evil

It works just fine, you just have to click on the numbers on the chart.

Oh, yeah.

[Rangers]

Originally Posted by Grall

I voted "about on par";

'

Me too, it sounds like it will have some things better, some worse, overall about on par. It will probably have 1GB RAM which is nice, but it'll probably be slow RAM and the tablet (and probably some OS bloat) will nullify the extra 512 somewhat. And so forth.

[Acert93]

I think in total it will be slightly faster (enough to compensate in most cases for the Tablet and keep the primary visuals on par). There will be cases where it is a bit faster and others where it is a little slower; more cases of slightly faster than slightly slower and the extra memory will go a long way to making things easier to do/look better--even if it may lag in some other areas. The big difference I think will be it will be easier to develop on due to the CPU. I voted 1.5x-2x but I think it will fall more in the 1-1.5x range.

[Ruskie]

I think general performances should be somewhat better in GPU and memory department, but I suspect CPU will be slightly underclocked. I also think what you'll be seeing on the screen will be very close to PS360 because of tablet controller.

[manux]

Originally Posted by Ruskie

I think general performances should be somewhat better in GPU and memory department, but I suspect CPU will be slightly underclocked. I also think what you'll be seeing on the screen will be very close to PS360 because of tablet controller.

this is my guess too.

[BadTB25]

I voted about on par. It will do somethings better and somethings worse, but overall it won't be generational or even a 2X leap in performance IMO.

[Acert93]

One thing that should be clarified about performance; when I read in the poll performance I think: Performance to power the Tablet(s) + Performance to generate on screen images. If the onscreen images match the PS3/360 plus generate a quality image on the 480p tablet that, to me, indicates the Wii U's hardware performance is more than matching the 360/PS3. If it were only about par the onscreen image would actually be a bit worse for all but the most simple tablet images and thus the Wii U would appear to consumers to be less powerful even if it was on par. But the reverse could be argued that performance on screen needs to accommodate the Tablet, period, and any resources used for such should be considered a sunk resource to power their "new waggle replacement" hence the question shifts back to what the hardware can put on screen. So the question of power or performance being on part with the 360/PS3 to be on par assumes it would need to be faster to accommodate the tablet as well, but with the understanding some of the extra performance goes to the tablet.

This leaves a pretty wide window where depending on how you look at it options 1 and 2 and 3 could all fit within a small envelope depending on what angle you are picking. The console could be 1.5x faster in hardware (option 3) but with a fancy Tablet (or Tablets) images could produce images that show it to be clearly slower in regards to main screen rendering.

[AlphaWolf]

Most people are going to look at screenshots and say which looks better (there is no such thing as a tie unless it's exactly the same image). The tablet isn't going to do Nintendo any favors in that regard, but that's their design choice and they are going to have to live with it.

[Rangers]

Originally Posted by AlphaWolf

Most people are going to look at screenshots and say which looks better (there is no such thing as a tie unless it's exactly the same image). The tablet isn't going to do Nintendo any favors in that regard, but that's their design choice and they are going to have to live with it.

Why cant a game basically ignore the tablet, or make a static image or something there and just concentrate on the main screen? Or maybe put a inventory or something non-demanding there I guess?

As bad as recent rumors sound about Wii U power, it might amount to spitting in a rainstorm, but hey.

I imagine at first Nintendo will mandate everybody do something unique with the tablet and blah blah all that jazz, but before long they might not be in a position to dictate much of anything.

[BRiT]

Originally Posted by Rangers

I imagine at first Nintendo will mandate everybody do something unique with the tablet and blah blah all that jazz

I hear the WuuPad can be used as a scale...


As for the performance level of Wii U, I think most folks view of performance will solely be looking at the image on the main screen and completely forgetting about the WuuPad and what resource requirements it has. That along with basic premise that the first release of any software for any new system will never be at the height of genuine system potential (that comes years later), especially when the software is mostly ports from other systems that have been fine tuned over the last 5-7 years, will lead to an at best a case of on-par performance perception.

[Dr Evil]

I think analysing/estimating actual computational cababilities would be more suitable and objective for our cause than just different camps shouting how much more impressive Zelda looks compared to Halo 4 and vice versa. I think with regards to power there is still some amount of disagreements with current and even with the previous gen, so are we all just going agree on this, when the WiiU launches?

[ninzel]

I think it will be slightly more capable somewhere in the range of 1.25X.
I don't really care about next gen yet. I'm wondering what else can be done besides evolutions of what's already being done.
So if the WiiU can extend this gen for another 2-3 years for me, I'm good if it's priced at around $300.

[RobertR1]

I think slight more powerful. Ultimately the next 360 and PS4 will blow it away.

Nintendo will need to find a hook for the casuals if they intend to fall well behind on the tech front again.

To be fair for casuals, you are getting close to point of diminishing returns. Sure we can tell the difference between say Skyrim on running on the 360 vs PC with all the bells and whistles but casuals don't see the finer details and frankly don't care enough. Nintendo is very conscious of that.