*spin* Nintendo Philosophy

[terraincognita]

Hopefully this is on-topic. Not trying to derail GPU speculation discussion at all.

Based on what we think we know about the hardware, where does the Wii U fit within Nintendo's hardware philosophy? What I mean by that is in terms of their entire console history as outlined in AlStrong's original article. Not counting their portables which have always been in a separate class.

IMO, there is no actual consensus to how gamers define a console generation. I don't say this to sound like an apologist, what I mean is there has never been much of a standard - the "standard" being tossed around is mostly just PS2/GCN/Xbox -> PS3/360. More or less anyways. Which in terms of historic console generations is an exception when you think about it. I don't mean Nintendo re-branding an overclocked GCN and adding motion controls, I mean MS moving the goal posts and shipping what was then (in 2005) considered high end even on PC, taking a massive loss and gimping stuff like solder to save a few bucks (and costing them much more in warranty repairs later on). It's kind of an exception because even compared to the first xbox it was ahead of its time for a console. From the rumored and leaked specs regarding Durango and Orbis, the goal posts are being moved back 'closer' to where they were prior to the current gen.

But still, Wii U is behind even that. Now it appears if third parties want to port current gen games, they can achieve near parity with what I assume is little effort. I don't mean to discount the work of the teams which ported the third party launch titles. I'm sure they worked hard given the 'hand they were dealt' so-to-speak. Heck, I'm sure the guys who ported the Orange Box to PS3 worked their arses off too. When people say "lazy port" I would hope they mean lazy on the publisher's part (as in outsourcing or assigned a small secondary team) and not lazy developers because the developers are not the lazy ones. Anyways, it also appears possible (but in all fairness remains to be proven) to get something "extra" compared to the current gen out of the hardware. And I have no doubt that to-the-metal titles coded from the ground up will be an improvement over the aging current gen. Not a 'generational' improvement obviously, but the jury is still out on Durango/Orbis IMO (I was personally very impressed with the 360 version of Witcher 2 compared with the PC version. Sitting 7 feet from a 50"+ TV also helps hide the deficiencies).

Sorry for the tl;dr, given what we think we know about the Wii U hardware and given Nintendo's historical hardware philosophy (for consoles and not portables), compared with the rumored next gen specs... Is it closer to the Wi situation or the Gamecube from a hardware philosophy standpoint?? (And I get the modern feature set thing, but pretend in this case that the Wii's GPU had programable shaders, like if it used a modified X1300 with the remaining hardware staying the same)

 

[Strange]

Hopefully this is on-topic. Not trying to derail GPU speculation discussion at all.

Based on what we think we know about the hardware, where does the Wii U fit within Nintendo's hardware philosophy? What I mean by that is in terms of their entire console history as outlined in AlStrong's original article. Not counting their portables which have always been in a separate class.

IMO, there is no actual consensus to how gamers define a console generation. I don't say this to sound like an apologist, what I mean is there has never been much of a standard - the "standard" being tossed around is mostly just PS2/GCN/Xbox -> PS3/360. More or less anyways. Which in terms of historic console generations is an exception when you think about it. I don't mean Nintendo re-branding an overclocked GCN and adding motion controls, I mean MS moving the goal posts and shipping what was then (in 2005) considered high end even on PC, taking a massive loss and gimping stuff like solder to save a few bucks (and costing them much more in warranty repairs later on). It's kind of an exception because even compared to the first xbox it was ahead of its time for a console. From the rumored and leaked specs regarding Durango and Orbis, the goal posts are being moved back 'closer' to where they were prior to the current gen.

But still, Wii U is behind even that. Now it appears if third parties want to port current gen games, they can achieve near parity with what I assume is little effort. I don't mean to discount the work of the teams which ported the third party launch titles. I'm sure they worked hard given the 'hand they were dealt' so-to-speak. Heck, I'm sure the guys who ported the Orange Box to PS3 worked their arses off too. When people say "lazy port" I would hope they mean lazy on the publisher's part (as in outsourcing or assigned a small secondary team) and not lazy developers because the developers are not the lazy ones. Anyways, it also appears possible (but in all fairness remains to be proven) to get something "extra" compared to the current gen out of the hardware. And I have no doubt that to-the-metal titles coded from the ground up will be an improvement over the aging current gen. Not a 'generational' improvement obviously, but the jury is still out on Durango/Orbis IMO (I was personally very impressed with the 360 version of Witcher 2 compared with the PC version. Sitting 7 feet from a 50"+ TV also helps hide the deficiencies).

Sorry for the tl;dr, given what we think we know about the Wii U hardware and given Nintendo's historical hardware philosophy (for consoles and not portables), compared with the rumored next gen specs... Is it closer to the Wi situation or the Gamecube from a hardware philosophy standpoint?? (And I get the modern feature set thing, but pretend in this case that the Wii's GPU had programable shaders, like if it used a modified X1300 with the remaining hardware staying the same)

Probably closer to the Wii in that all they apparently care about is three things on the WiiU:
1. Backwards compatibility
2. Re-using whatever they had before
3. A new innovation that they hope will catch on.
All three of the above happened on the Wii, so I expect the philosophy to be similar.

However there is one difference. Wii was clearly stronger than the previous generation. (GCN/PS2/Xbox) but WiiU is not.

I've used this analogy before and I'll use it again.
WiiU is like someone releasing a new smartphone that has similar capabilities to "the original" iPhone in 2013.

Mind you the original iPhone released in mid 2007. WiiU is smack on competing against 2006~2007 products.

 

[Exophase]

IMO, there is no actual consensus to how gamers define a console generation. I don't say this to sound like an apologist, what I mean is there has never been much of a standard - the "standard" being tossed around is mostly just PS2/GCN/Xbox -> PS3/360. More or less anyways.

You think so? Look at how consoles on Wikipedia, they have seven generations defined with some contention on calling Wii U the start of the eighth generation.

The reason there's any point of confusion now is because people don't know whether to group console generations by release date or by capability. In the past this wasn't a problem because two things were virtually always true: a new console was at least similar in capability to consoles released shortly before it (within 1, maybe 2 years) and a new console was much higher in capability to consoles released long before it (4+ years). Wii defied the first point and Wii U defies the second.

There are some other criteria too - you could look at which consoles got ports that were roughly based on the same game to consider them part of the same generation. SNES and Genesis got a lot of ports that were of roughly similar quality (and some to PC-Engine as well). Same with PS1 and Saturn, or PS2, Gamecube, and XBox.

These days console exclusivity is greatly down so that should be an even bigger criteria. PS3 and XBox 360 shared much of their library but little of it with Wii. Wii U on the other hand is so far mostly third party ports of games that are of similar quality levels to their PS3 and XBox 360 counterparts. We'll have to wait and see what the situation is like once Durango and Orbis are out, but if it continues to get cross-support more against PS3/XBox 360 then that would make it more under that generation using that criteria.

Counting it as the same generation doesn't mean it can't be somewhat stronger, of course (just like XBox was vs PS2 and Gamecube).

Sure, if all you care about is chronology then you can't argue a generational difference between Wii U and XBox 360, PS3, and Wii. But this isn't very satisfying on a technical level, and therefore not something you'd expect to be embraced on a technical forum. I mean, do you want to consider OUYA a next generation console? How about all the knock offs that keep getting churned out in China? They still release handhelds there that use derivatives of NES clone chips.

Which in terms of historic console generations is an exception when you think about it. I don't mean Nintendo re-branding an overclocked GCN and adding motion controls, I mean MS moving the goal posts and shipping what was then (in 2005) considered high end even on PC, taking a massive loss and gimping stuff like solder to save a few bucks (and costing them much more in warranty repairs later on). It's kind of an exception because even compared to the first xbox it was ahead of its time for a console. From the rumored and leaked specs regarding Durango and Orbis, the goal posts are being moved back 'closer' to where they were prior to the current gen.

XBox 360 wasn't moving any goal posts. Many consoles have had very ambitious hardware designs and it certainly wasn't the first company to start with major loss leaders.

If anyone was moving goal posts it was Nintendo (if you can call it that if no one else follows that goal). It was completely unprecedented to release a console that used the CPU and GPU from the 5 years older predecessor, with only a shrink/clock bump and some more RAM. Eventually progress in consoles has to slow down (and probably already is substantially for MS and Sony's next consoles) but Nintendo was way ahead on that trend.

 

[terraincognita]

Probably closer to the Wii in that all they apparently care about is three things on the WiiU:
1. Backwards compatibility
2. Re-using whatever they had before
3. A new innovation that they hope will catch on.
All three of the above happened on the Wii, so I expect the philosophy to be similar.

However there is one difference. Wii was clearly stronger than the previous generation. (GCN/PS2/Xbox) but WiiU is not.

I've used this analogy before and I'll use it again.
WiiU is like someone releasing a new smartphone that has similar capabilities to "the original" iPhone in 2013.

Mind you the original iPhone released in mid 2007. WiiU is smack on competing against 2006~2007 products.

Kinda like what Samsung was finally able to do last year - after years of trying someone was finally able to deliver a phone that could compete with the iPhone! I'm totally kidding by the way

I disagree about the Wii being clearly stronger than the previous generation. On a technical level that might be true, but it was just a gamecube with higher clocks and a little more RAM. Up against the best of the Xbox, only a few titles could be argued to be superior. Look at the launch titles. Wii Sports wasn't going to win any graphics awards and Twilight Princess was a gamecube port. Skyward Sword is probably the most demanding Wii title graphically. Compared with TP, the textures are definitely better, the models are better, the animation is better, but compare them side-by-side and some people think bloom-heavy TP with it's gamecube textures is better looking. So I wouldn't call it clearly stronger because it isn't so clear. On paper it is compared to PS2/GCN but people still argue over whether that's the case with the xbox.

 

[terraincognita]

You think so? Look at how consoles on Wikipedia, they have seven generations defined with some contention on calling Wii U the start of the eighth generation.

The reason there's any point of confusion now is because people don't know whether to group console generations by release date or by capability. In the past this wasn't a problem because two things were virtually always true: a new console was at least similar in capability to consoles released shortly before it (within 1, maybe 2 years) and a new console was much higher in capability to consoles released long before it (4+ years). Wii defied the first point and Wii U defies the second.

There are some other criteria too - you could look at which consoles got ports that were roughly based on the same game to consider them part of the same generation. SNES and Genesis got a lot of ports that were of roughly similar quality (and some to PC-Engine as well). Same with PS1 and Saturn, or PS2, Gamecube, and XBox.

These days console exclusivity is greatly down so that should be an even bigger criteria. PS3 and XBox 360 shared much of their library but little of it with Wii. Wii U on the other hand is so far mostly third party ports of games that are of similar quality levels to their PS3 and XBox 360 counterparts. We'll have to wait and see what the situation is like once Durango and Orbis are out, but if it continues to get cross-support more against PS3/XBox 360 then that would make it more under that generation using that criteria.

Counting it as the same generation doesn't mean it can't be somewhat stronger, of course (just like XBox was vs PS2 and Gamecube).

Sure, if all you care about is chronology then you can't argue a generational difference between Wii U and XBox 360, PS3, and Wii. But this isn't very satisfying on a technical level, and therefore not something you'd expect to be embraced on a technical forum. I mean, do you want to consider OUYA a next generation console? How about all the knock offs that keep getting churned out in China? They still release handhelds there that use derivatives of NES clone chips.

I don't disagree with you. I didn't intend to sound like I was arguing for the Wii U to be considered next gen. What I meant was I don't think there is a general consensus. Like you say, going by chronology the Wii U, 360, PS3, and Wii could all be the same generation. Going by technology, the Wii U is current (soon to be last) gen. And going by ports, near parity like SNES and MD/Genesis, PSX and N64, etc.

But now that I'm thinking about it, the original Famicom/NES was also kinda technologically "old" even in 1983. It's got some extras like a PPU compared to say an Atari 400/800, but hopefully you get my meaning. And even though the PC Engine was overall weaker than the SNES, I don't think SNES was that much of an improvement considering it arrived over three years later. There are some NES-looking PC Engine games but it still managed to produce near SNES visuals (the audio though, not so much..)

Perhaps it's best for me to leave it up to the masses in terms of what next generation means for them. I wouldn't call OUYA and various Chinese knock offs next gen, but to be fair Wikipedia should consider it for consistency

XBox 360 wasn't moving any goal posts. Many consoles have had very ambitious hardware designs and it certainly wasn't the first company to start with major loss leaders.

True, but they took a pretty big loss for a few years even before factoring in whatever the RRoD warranty stuff cost them. Didn't Sony start this trend with PS2? I know others have been sold at a loss, but I think PS2, xbox, PS3, and 360 re-defined what it meant to be a loss leader. Maybe the loss per console wasn't much different between the original xbox and the 360. I remember building a PC in very early 2002 with a geforce 3 ti200 that almost cost the same as the xbox which essentially had the same thing. IMO though, I think the 360 was a couple years ahead of it's time so-to-speak. Literally because from what I read, anybody who bought one in the first couple years would be lucky to still have it working! I know some people still have them, but personally I wouldn't be comfortable with a time bomb like they are.

If anyone was moving goal posts it was Nintendo (if you can call it that if no one else follows that goal). It was completely unprecedented to release a console that used the CPU and GPU from the 5 years older predecessor, with only a shrink/clock bump and some more RAM. Eventually progress in consoles has to slow down (and probably already is substantially for MS and Sony's next consoles) but Nintendo was way ahead on that trend.

Good point. From a certain POV, one could probably argue that Nintendo left the traditional console market in 2006. I can also see Nintendo pretty much doing their own thing. Like that device they released in China that played n64 roms off of SD cards or whatever, release things like that. The Wii U hardware takes up so little space, I wouldn't be surprised if it was integrated into the gamepad at some point in the far off future. Plug in and play (or wirelessly stream) sort of deal with their entire library of games and stuff.

Anyways, their console hardware philosophy definitely changed with Wii compared to previous consoles. If Nintendo released a less powerful (but modern, compared to 360 I mean) box in 2006 instead of the Wii and the Wii U now just as they had, would it be within their traditional hardware philosophy? N64 was definitely innovative from a hardware standpoint (even with its hardware flaws) in 1996. Gamecube was good hardware in 2001. Whatever it lacked compared to the PS2 it made up in efficiency and other areas and despite xbox being more powerful then both they roughly output similar looking and playing games. Xbox got technically deeper games ported from the PC. When those games were ported to PS2/GCN they had to be re-made (like with the original Splinter Cell).

I guess what I'm saying is if Durango/Orbis are the original xbox, what would the Wii U be? Oh and I'm not trying to argue for the WIi U being anything other than it is technologically, I was just curious what others thought about it in terms of Nintendo's historical console hardware philosophy in which the Wii was an exception. Is Wii U continuing the trend? I still think Sony and MS changed perceptions with their last couple machines. They created a play field I'm not so sure Nintendo can afford to play in. The Wii was embarrassing on a hardware level even for Nintendo. Is Wii U? That's all I was trying to get at.

 

[AlNom]

What I mean by that is in terms of their entire console history as outlined in AlStrong's original article.

Mostly Farid's, if not 99.31415%.

 

[milk]

I am curious about the first batch of Orbis and Durango games. How many of them are gonna be 1080p+ versions of ps360 games? And for how long are there gonna be cross-generation titles being released. And the non ps360 compatible games, are their engines gonna be significantly different or just upgraded versions of previous tech? Is the content creation pipeline going to change significantly?
I ask this, because there was a huge technological difference both in the production side and in the game's code between ps2/GC/xbox games and ps360 ones. Yet, that big leap lead to many financial strugles that I think publishers and devs are going to try to avoid this time. So maybe, we might see more upresed versions of current gen games and current gen engines on the Orbis and Durango, and for a longer time maybe 2 or 3 years into those consoles lifecycles.
If that is the case, then WiiU has a chance of remaining relevant, as if engines don't change all that much it won't be too costy to release severely downgraded wuu ports together with ps360 ones. If that happens they are going to enjoy some moderate success as the poor man's next gen console (between 360 and Durango sort of thing).
Even then, It will be hard for nintendo to justify buying a wuu instead of sticking with old 360 when all it does is play the same ports of next gen games the 360 is already playing. The tablet is hardly that apealing to do that, but good marketing can in fact do wonders.
If not, it is going to live on nintendo's first party games and its fans much like the gamecube. The only chance it has of finding the same kind of success wii had is by finding some other "magical" feature like the motion sencing and the balance board was, and the tablet hoped to be and faild at.

 

[terraincognita]

Mostly Farid's, if not 99.31415%.

Oops, my mistake!

My apologies for venturing too far off the original subject.

I am curious about the first batch of Orbis and Durango games. How many of them are gonna be 1080p+ versions of ps360 games? And for how long are there gonna be cross-generation titles being released. And the non ps360 compatible games, are their engines gonna be significantly different or just upgraded versions of previous tech? Is the content creation pipeline going to change significantly?
I ask this, because there was a huge technological difference both in the production side and in the game's code between ps2/GC/xbox games and ps360 ones. Yet, that big leap lead to many financial strugles that I think publishers and devs are going to try to avoid this time. So maybe, we might see more upresed versions of current gen games and current gen engines on the Orbis and Durango, and for a longer time maybe 2 or 3 years into those consoles lifecycles.
If that is the case, then WiiU has a chance of remaining relevant, as if engines don't change all that much it won't be too costy to release severely downgraded wuu ports together with ps360 ones. If that happens they are going to enjoy some moderate success as the poor man's next gen console (between 360 and Durango sort of thing).
Even then, It will be hard for nintendo to justify buying a wuu instead of sticking with old 360 when all it does is play the same ports of next gen games the 360 is already playing. The tablet is hardly that apealing to do that, but good marketing can in fact do wonders.
If not, it is going to live on nintendo's first party games and its fans much like the gamecube. The only chance it has of finding the same kind of success wii had is by finding some other "magical" feature like the motion sencing and the balance board was, and the tablet hoped to be and faild at.

We'll have to wait and see the games I guess. I think we can reasonably speculate based on the rumored/leaked specs and comparable PC hardware. It's not going to be Nintendo that's their competitor either, they're going to have to compete with themselves as in with the PS3/360. As old as those consoles are, general consumers will not care and I would bet the bank on it. There will be a difference in games, but like my gamecube/xbox example earlier I don't think people will see it. What I mean is that Nintendo fans often boast about how the gamecube fared versus the more powerful xbox, that they were within the same league. Which is true to a degree but in a lot of cases wasn't. Those cases being the PC ports and it wasn't just because it had a hd. I don't think ports of say Morrowind or even Doom 3 & Half Life 2 (among many others) would have been possible on the gamecube without essentially re-writing them to suit the hardware (as in the case of the original Splinter Cell). I'm interested in where Wii U might fit compared with Nintendo's prior console philosophy. If Durango is the original xbox, maybe Wii U isn't gamecube but how far removed would it be? What Sony and MS have done these past couple console generations, IMHO, is use their money to re-write the rules so-to-speak (and they are NOT doing that with the new stuff). The Wii re-wrote the rules (in an opposite and negative way), but is the Wii U following that philosophy or is it in line with their historical offerings? I'm personally undecided.

(BTW, from a business perspective I think Nintendo is mostly on their own; Wii U will live or die based on first party titles like the gamecube. There were rare occasions with the Wii where 3rd parties had the odd successful title. If you noticed though, for the past few years Nintendo allowed third parties to make games with Nintendo characters. I think that's because Nintendo is in competition with third parties and that's one of the only real ways for those third parties to sell games)