Wii U retail impressions?

[AlphaWolf]

It's probable many of their fans will overlook many of the issues as they are still the only platform delivering Mario. The press and the forums rarely decide the success of a product. No one expected the Wii to take off the way it did either. Forums like the press don't really carry the moderate stance, it's always the best or worst thing ever.

 

[Sonic]

Kind of late to the thread here? Is the Wii U's launch a victim of internet hyperbole, or has Nintendo really overlooked so much of what we've come to feel as standard for nearly 7 years now on PSN/XBL?

I've never actually seen such much negativity within the first 2 days of a system launch. Even the press reception is luke warm. I sit tight for my system next Friday (European launch), but christ.....

It's most likely a mixture of both. There are very clear problems with the launch of the system and with the ubiquity of the internet these days and sites like Facebook the problems get magnified much more than they used to. Word of mouth is very powerful and I've seen lots of negative comments from FB friends who say or comment on negative Wii U comments some of whom I suspect never have seen it in person. I've also seen a lot of positive comments with people saying they can't wait to check it out. The power of social networking obviously has an effect on this. That's something that needs to be taken into consideration by console manufacturers these days.

 

[(((interference)))]

I beg to differ. My private 360 red ringed on me right away. We've also had to replace around 10 systems here in the office thus far, and as far as I know none of the privately owned systems of my colleagues have survived their first 2 years. The failure rate of the 360 was unprecedented. No small feat considering how both the PSone and the PS2 weren't exactly built to last either.
That said, we've also had to replace quite a few PS3s. Not nearly as many, but I'd still call the situation unacceptable.

The RROD issue wasn't entirely MS' fault, since it was due primarily to the introduction of unproven, environmentally friendly, lead free solder. Many Nvidia mobile GPUs of the time, using the same solder had the exact same issue, with widespread failures in laptops using them regardless of manufacturer (even Apple was affected).

In fact my own Dell XPS M1530 failed on me, as the high operating temps eventually melted the solder and caused the GPU to become unseated from the motherboard - so it was always going to be an issue in a then state of the art gaming console.

 

[BRiT]

Thought I'd share this Wired's 10 - Things I hate About Wii U article.

I found point number five relating to Miiverse to be a bit surprising given what I've seen on XBL and PSN.

 

[Billy Idol]

Nintendo is lucky, as most of their consumers are uninformed parents, buying the consol for their kids.

But from an engineering point of view, the ultra low battery life of the Wuublet (3,5 hours according to DF, with non-optimal recharge possibility), low HDD with the only recommended possibility of an external HDD (which seems to need extra power, as USB connection does not safely provide it!) and the overall system performance 7 years after PS360 at this hefty (relative) price is imo really....arrogant.

 

[TheLump]

It's probable many of their fans will overlook many of the issues as they are still the only platform delivering Mario. The press and the forums rarely decide the success of a product. No one expected the Wii to take off the way it did either. Forums like the press don't really carry the moderate stance, it's always the best or worst thing ever.

This. You're spot on there.

I do hope even the biggest Nintendo fans at least admit they cocked up the account system (transferring downloads etc ). Nintendo need to sort that very quickly and they need to hear that from fans. They've done a lot to give fans what they asked for recently, so hopefully they'll listen before they completely balls up their new console launch....

Im a Nintendo fan (amongst others ) and was considering going 100% digital this gen. No chance now as I'm not risking losing it all.

 

[TheLump]

For those that don't know, the first case I heard of the Wii U bricking during the update process was by Ben Fritz. He's a reporter for the L.A. Times. So I'm sure it'll hit the major news outlets.

There are additional reports all-over of systems being bricked just by having their internet cut out during the download.

sorry to bring this one back up, but just read somthing intetesting on gaf; a member there had internet issues and its cutting out in the middle of updating. It hasn't bricked it, he just has to restart and the d/l resumes from where it was. So hopefully that's a sign it isn't doing something silly like overwriting as it downloads. Or maybe Nintendo fixed it, I don't know.

one less thing to worry about though. Maybe...

 

[Nesh]

This. You're spot on there.

I do hope even the biggest Nintendo fans at least admit they cocked up the account system (transferring downloads etc ). Nintendo need to sort that very quickly and they need to hear that from fans. They've done a lot to give fans what they asked for recently, so hopefully they'll listen before they completely balls up their new console launch....

Im a Nintendo fan (amongst others ) and was considering going 100% digital this gen. No chance now as I'm not risking losing it all.

Lets see GC and N64 for a moment....Their sales reveals that less than half of the 97 milion Wii owners may be Nintendo fans. This shows that most of the Wii's userbase is consisted of newcomers.
If the product has functionality and other issues it will matter to a huge portion of non-die hard fans of Nintendo and the console may be affected largely by lower reception as word of mouth spreads.
The casual will sure be pissed with all the technical and usability difficulties he may experience. The only thing a casual wants is plug and play

 

[Shifty Geezer]

That doesn't really matter though; it's still a new piece of hardware, new architecture and so on even though it's not a step up in power compared to the competition. You still need to learn the ropes on a new piece of kit before you can make it sing, ya know?

Sure, but Wii U's somewhat different. Every other gen, the hardware is completely new and unknown. From this gen onwards, Wii U included, it's all the 'same' PC hardware. Wii isn't providing an architecture completely alien to 3rd party devs in the same way PS2, GC, XB360 and PS3 did.

Secondly, even if devs are having a hard time getting use out of Nintendo's hardware (and the DF review has an anonymous source claiming poor tools), it makes no difference to the consumers. Prior poorly utilised hardware still offered a significant upgrade from day 1 over the previous gen to wow consumers. Wii U isn't wowing anyone; it's just offering more of the same. It'd be like MS or Sony releasing their console 5 years after the other. Nintendo is entirely dependent on the Wuublet being a massive draw now, because they aren't offering anything else.

---

As a little devil's advocating, comparisons with the current gen need to factor in the size of the console. Although PS360 are matching Wii in performance, Wii is achieving its results in a much smaller, more power efficient package, which is going to put the price up. How much would it cost MS to squeeze an XB360 into the same sized case and be suitably cooled? IMO Nintendo's choice of box is completely wrong, but given they seemed to pick a case size first as the main priority, price/performance may not be that bad, I don't really know what the state of laptop components is for a comparison. DF's comparison to their £300 gaming PC that outperforms Wii U also doesn't consider form factor either. Wii U's dimensions are a little misleading if you use an HDD though. The final footprint will be Wuu+HDD, something that's not being compared in comparison photographs.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

But from an engineering point of view, the ultra low battery life of the Wuublet (3,5 hours according to DF, with non-optimal recharge possibility), low HDD with the only recommended possibility of an external HDD (which seems to need extra power, as USB connection does not safely provide it!) and the overall system performance 7 years after PS360 at this hefty (relative) price is imo really....arrogant.

Not only hardware engineering, but software. The release FW is a skeleton. The updated FW is slow as treacle by reports. The whole thing sounds like Nintendo were beavering away up to the last minute on the system and just couldn't manage it in time. The end result is the release of an incomplete, beta product, much like contemporary software. "Release it broked and fix it with patches." Sony's efforts were similar with PS3 lacking features, but at least the out-of-the-box experience was a swish, working platform.

 

[DuckThor Evil]

The abysmal loading times in the OS would drive me nuts. Press settings and wait 10 seconds for them to pop up?

 

[function]

As a little devil's advocating, comparisons with the current gen need to factor in the size of the console. Although PS360 are matching Wii in performance, Wii is achieving its results in a much smaller, more power efficient package, which is going to put the price up. How much would it cost MS to squeeze an XB360 into the same sized case and be suitably cooled?

Well, the 360 has a full size DVD drive in there (needed because of its speed) and a HDD in the enclosure so that's going to bulk things up. Only other big thing in there is the heatsink, but the CPU is probably the big power hog being both physically larger and probably twice as fast as the WiiU CPU, and by the sounds of it somewhat more powerful despite its age and lack of OoOE. On the original 360s the CPU heatsink was much larger and more complex than even the boosted emergency GPU heatsink (with added heatpipe).

With the CPU clocks halved and CPU power consumption quartered (or thereablouts, using that watts = volts x clocks business) you could probably shrink the cooler considerably. It's worth bearing in mind that the 360S is really, really quiet and that its 92mm fan turns incredibly slowly. I have mine on my desk and even in a game like Halo 4 you can feel very little air coming from it (although it does get quite warm).

 

[Nappe1]

Seems like some have had their WIFI or Internet connection go belly up. Remember, the Wii U has no wired ethernet port so it does the updates all via WiFi.



Most people with bricked system have had the update fail at the "download" status screen and it bricked their system.

It does not need to be flashing while downloading, but as simple and not so rare bug in automatic software updates in which the code does not check (or checks and always clears good to go) the validity of just downloaded package. So, technically, the system downloads the update and does not notice that the file was not complete received and then starts flashing the firmware with broken file. You end up with being updated with broken software and results of next boot are very unpredictable at least.


(I have been doing WinCe development for time attendance machines and come across all kind of wierd stuff when el cheapo chinese gprs modem decides go nuts for whatever reason...)

EDIT: as a non console tech guy, it is a bit wierd to me that when Wii was released, some people wer saying that it is not next gen... Now, when Wii U comes out, same guys are saying that this is not next get either. So, what is this then? a remade Game Cube with bigger discs and more power consumption? Just like Wii was? OR maybe it's not a console at all? yeah, it's eastern bunny with too little hair and egg basket on the lose. Come on, am I making as much sense as you are?

 

[Arwin]

Well, the 360 has a full size DVD drive in there (needed because of its speed) and a HDD in the enclosure so that's going to bulk things up. Only other big thing in there is the heatsink, but the CPU is probably the big power hog being both physically larger and probably twice as fast as the WiiU CPU, and by the sounds of it somewhat more powerful despite its age and lack of OoOE. On the original 360s the CPU heatsink was much larger and more complex than even the boosted emergency GPU heatsink (with added heatpipe).

With the CPU clocks halved and CPU power consumption quartered (or thereablouts, using that watts = volts x clocks business) you could probably shrink the cooler considerably. It's worth bearing in mind that the 360S is really, really quiet and that its 92mm fan turns incredibly slowly. I have mine on my desk and even in a game like Halo 4 you can feel very little air coming from it (although it does get quite warm).

And the PS3 has never had an external powerbrick. The Wii U does have one. The Wii U also doesn't have a host of other things. But it definitely only uses about 32W when playing new super mario brothers (although as pointed out, not really demanding game), where the lowest the newest PS3 will go is something like double that.

But that alone makes me think the Wii U isn't going to perform a lot better than the PS3 or 360, and for multi-platform, will likely even always keep struggling to achieve for parity in some cases.

All in all, it looks more and more just like from when the Wii launched, and considering the launch price, power consumption and the included Gamepad, I don't think it's a really big surprise.

 

[TheLump]

Yay! Some (potentially) good news: http://www.nintendolife.com/news/20...allows_you_to_play_wii_u_games_off_an_sd_card

Before the launch of the Wii U, Nintendo confirmed that software could not be played from an SD card, but it would appear that it is technically possible - provided you have one of those cheap USB card readers handy.
YouTube user Shokio discovered that if you pop your SD card into one of these readers and then insert it into the Wii U USB port, the system will treat it as a standard USB thumb drive, and therefore allow you to move - and play - software from it.

So basically, as many pointed out before launch thinking this might be possible - it is. The WiiU sees it as just another USB storage device and lets you format/use it. I might be wrong here, but this should mean SDXC cards (like the 128GB one I was eyeing up) will work, no? Seeing as its just treating the reader as a USB storage device I dont suppose it cares/can tell whats in it?


Edit: Anyone know if 35MB/s write and read 50MB/s is enough for external WiiU storage?


Edit 2: More (potentially) good news!

Turns out you can download the 1GB firmware update in the background. You just have to press cancel when it first asks you if you want to download it when you switch on, and it carries on in the background while you can carry on using the system. Multiple reports now of people doing this and not realising it was downloading in the background, playing NintendoLand/Mario for an hour and then returning to the home screen to see "Download Complete" and its ready to install.

Could have saved a lot of people a lot of hassle if Nintendo just said "Download in Background?" instead of just Agree/Cancel. I suspect considerably less fuss would have been made and we wouldn't be seeing reports of this "5GB compulsory download" (which turned out to be 1GB) preventing people from using their WiiU for 2-3 hours when they first switch it on...

 

[Billy Idol]

Not only hardware engineering, but software. The release FW is a skeleton. The updated FW is slow as treacle by reports. The whole thing sounds like Nintendo were beavering away up to the last minute on the system and just couldn't manage it in time. The end result is the release of an incomplete, beta product, much like contemporary software. "Release it broked and fix it with patches." Sony's efforts were similar with PS3 lacking features, but at least the out-of-the-box experience was a swish, working platform.

That is true. But at least in favour of Sony/PS3 one could argue that back than at release, they didn't know what is possible and how a modern console OS should look like. MS taught them with Xbox and Live how to do it and Sony tried to catch up. But Nintendo had 7 years to watch and learn from the competition...

The abysmal loading times in the OS would drive me nuts. Press settings and wait 10 seconds for them to pop up?

OT: If you want to experience this to some extend...just try the new PS store: it really drives me nuts. Booting up costs so much time, the menus are slow as well, maybe not Wuu slow but still no fun to use...

 

[BRiT]

Experience with Wii to Wii U game transfers

Ars has an articled titled "How Nintendo DRM trapped $400 of downloaded games on my failing Wii (updated) And why the console maker wants $60 to help me free my purchases." where they share their experience with the transfer of games from Wii to Wii U.

I hope others don't experience similar issues.

 

[Grall]

What I totally don't fucking get is why you need not only connect both wii and wuu to the internet (simultaneously, I presume), AND use a SD card to transfer the actual games when there's this thing called networking. It doesn't make sense.

But then again, so little about Nintendo with regard to the wuu does. If I hadn't grown up with nintendo (well, since my mid-teens anyway), seriously, I wouldn't have bothered with this machine at all. The level of ineptness and shortcomings of both hardware and software are simply astounding.

 

[swaaye]

Nintendo likes shortcomings in their hardware. Nothing new there. I eagerly await seeing whether or not they get their massive "casual" and "exercise" gamer flock again this time.

If it's easily hackable, it might make for a cool new homebrew / emulator platform. Retire me olde Xbox 1.

 

[liolio]

Ars has an articled titled "How Nintendo DRM trapped $400 of downloaded games on my failing Wii (updated) And why the console maker wants $60 to help me free my purchases." where they share their experience with the transfer of games from Wii to Wii U.

I hope others don't experience similar issues.

Well lets say that pirates have now "fair" incentives for cracking the system...