Poll: What performance level will Wii U release at?

[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

Spoiler

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.

 

[DuckThor 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...

 

[AlNom]

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-]

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]

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.

 

[DuckThor Evil]

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]

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

Oh, yeah.

 

[Rangers]

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]

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.