Wii U retail impressions?

[Grall]

The really stupid thing about this whole transfer process is that Nintendo themselves KNOW what software we've bought. There's actually no need to PHYSICALLY MOVE the data off of the wii and faff about and fiddle with memory cards and installing apps (on both systems!) and so on when our purchases could simply be flagged for re-downloadability directly from nintendo themselves.

Nintendo deserves a huge giant fuck you from all of their virtual store customers. This is so stupid there's no word for it in the dictionary...

 

[BRiT]

Wii U system freezes and hard-locks

Some retail consumers are reporting their Wii U systems are hard-locking on them. The one report mentions it happening in Assassin's Creed 3 and also Metroid Blast with other users in Nintendo Land or Miiverse or Mario or Netflix or even the Settings menu. The only way to progress was to unplug the console from the wall. Here's the GAF and GameSpot and GameFAQs and TheWiiU and Wii Nintendo threads. There are threads in nearly every online gaming forum with sizable users.

Seriously, what a rushed piece of trash this is turning out to be.

 

[Mize]

Ok, when they couldn't make a coherent sales pitch three months ago at whichever expo that was, didn't we already know it was going to be trash?

The tablet controller is a good innovation for same-room, multi player games, but it needs real hardware behind it.

Nintendo needs to exit hardware by outsourcing/subcontracting it asap and focus on software. This release may sink them.

 

[liolio]

Ok, when they couldn't make a coherent sales pitch three months ago at whichever expo that was, didn't we already know it was going to be trash?

The tablet controller is a good innovation for same-room, multi player games, but it needs real hardware behind it.

Nintendo needs to exit hardware by outsourcing/subcontracting it asap and focus on software. This release may sink them.

I got exactly to the same conclusion by looking at what Google, among others, for example do with its Nexus line of products.
I also do agree that once again Nintendo came with a great idea, that open possibly more doors as far as a gameplay is concerned than Motion sensing did and in a more classic range of games, then there is the convenience the pad brings to players and family.

EDIT
To give some context to the claim, Nintendo is loosing money on their pretty sucky 3ds, when Archos launched its gamepad for 150Euros (sadly pretty close to what Nintendo may ask for the gamepaf sold in insulation...). There is no disputing that there is something rotten in the land of N.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Does Wii U render Wii games in HD?

 

[Arwin]

Does Wii U render Wii games in HD?

Nope. Just upscaled by the internal scaler. None of that stuff currently works with the gamepad screen either.

 

[TheLump]

Nope. Just upscaled by the internal scaler. None of that stuff currently works with the gamepad screen either.

And thats the biggest let down for me. The gamepad screen is perfect for 480p (and is about the only sized screen where Wii games would look good ) and apprantly its "technically impossible" right now to stream Wii content to the 'Pad whilst in Wii mode.

I'm guessing cos when in Wii mode the entire WiiU funtionality is lost as it functions as a Wii - much like DS games on 3DS. Does this shed any light on how they've achieved backwards compatability?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

And thats the biggest let down for me. The gamepad screen is perfect for 480p (and is about the only sized screen where Wii games would look good ) and apprantly its "technically impossible" right now to stream Wii content to the 'Pad whilst in Wii mode.

I'm guessing cos when in Wii mode the entire WiiU funtionality is lost as it functions as a Wii - much like DS games on 3DS. Does this shed any light on how they've achieved backwards compatability?

How would you handle Wii input on that tablet screen? You need the sensor bar by the screen, the screen stationary, and the player suitably far away to fit the sensor bar nicely to the Wiimote.

 

[Grall]

It's exactly how they did GC BC on the Wii. (What a strange sentence... ) They just shed all the extra functionality, and damned be the consequences.

The only credible reason they don't do tablet streaming is because of the reliance of waggle in many wii games. Even though the wuublet has a built-in sensor bar it seems awkward in the extreme to try and wave a wii-wand around in front of it in any meaningful fashion.

It's still a letdown of course.

 

[Arwin]

I believe that games using the gametablet use a separate graphics driver with a very different pipeline to allow for the least possible lag. They probably just didn't have the time - they barely got the gamepad working well in time (and you still have pretty visible red artifacting, from what I've seen from Digital Foundry). They may still support it later, but certainly don't have to and may well not. Full backward compatibility is impressive enough by itself.

 

[TheLump]

How would you handle Wii input on that tablet screen? You need the sensor bar by the screen, the screen stationary, and the player suitably far away to fit the sensor bar nicely to the Wiimote.

Yeah I suppose the built in sensore bar isn't much use for Wii games due to its size. But Virtual Console games would look lovely.....then again they'll apparently be available through the WiiU eshop anyway so problem solved.

It's exactly how they did GC BC on the Wii. (What a strange sentence... ) They just shed all the extra functionality, and damned be the consequences.

The only credible reason they don't do tablet streaming is because of the reliance of waggle in many wii games. Even though the wuublet has a built-in sensor bar it seems awkward in the extreme to try and wave a wii-wand around in front of it in any meaningful fashion.

It's still a letdown of course.

Makes sense now, I didnt think of the need for motion controls (lol, I dont know how I forgot about those on Wii).

I believe that games using the gametablet use a separate graphics driver with a very different pipeline to allow for the least possible lag. They probably just didn't have the time - they barely got the gamepad working well in time (and you still have pretty visible red artifacting, from what I've seen from Digital Foundry). They may still support it later, but certainly don't have to and may well not. Full backward compatibility is impressive enough by itself.

I guess doing it like that is the most stable way to acheive backwards compatibility, right? Rather than it being emulated or something?

 

[TheLump]

edit

 

[TheLump]

originally posted this in the "metro dev slams wiiU" thread, but probably better suited to here. DF's review of ME:3 offers some interesting insight;

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-mass-effect-3-wii-u-face-off

I suggest reading the whole article, but for those that just read conclusions - here it is:

Aside from some cute but non-essential gamepad features, it's safe to say that Mass Effect 3 on Wii U is a solid enough conversion but offers nothing of substance to elevate it over the existing Xbox 360 and PC versions of the game - it's clearly an improvement over the lacklustre PlayStation 3 release with a higher performance level, but across the overall run of play it's somewhat disappointing to see a vintage 2005 console with slower GPU and less RAM match and indeed exceed the quality of the experience found on the brand new Nintendo hardware.

Regardless of the fact that the game has been farmed out to another developer, and irrespective of the state of the current Wii U toolchain and the overall lack of experience the studio would have had with the console, the fact is that a true generational leap in power - even the 2x to 4x jump represented by the Digital Foundry PC - would be reflected in a much higher level of performance than we see here. That said, we must remember that this is a first gen Wii U title, a conversion of a game that was never designed with the platform in mind. Assuming publishers put the resources in, there's no reason to believe that we shouldn't see superior results into these multi-platform titles in the future

They actually sight the WiiU as performing better than the PS3 version overall (not really an achievment) but given the PS3's usually considered pretty CPU heavy spec wise its an intersting insight into the difficulty of judging a system's capability based on ports. It at least gives some perspective to the Metro devs comments on the CPU. It can obviously handle more than some are giving it credit for, unless the GPU is taking all the load off? Who knows.

 

[BRiT]

The part I find damning to Nintendo is the following "but across the overall run of play it's somewhat disappointing to see a vintage 2005 console with slower GPU and less RAM match and indeed exceed the quality of the experience found on the brand new Nintendo hardware."

 

[Arwin]

They actually sight the WiiU as performing better than the PS3 version overall (not really an achievment) but given the PS3's usually considered pretty CPU heavy spec wise its an intersting insight into the difficulty of judging a system's capability based on ports. It at least gives some perspective to the Metro devs comments on the CPU. It can obviously handle more than some are giving it credit for, unless the GPU is taking all the load off? Who knows.

Obviously if a game like Mass Effect isn't CPU bound in the least, then a weaker CPU isn't going to matter. And in multi-platform cases, the PS3 is only at a CPU advantage when CPU tasks are efficiently divided over all its cores, which, because they are heterogenous and not that easy to work with, still doesn't always happen.

Lead platforms will always do best. If Wii wanted parity or better, it needed to spec better in all areas. Clearly, that's not what it's doing.

 

[liolio]

Another thing I find disheartening is how Nintendo handles the 3ds.
They release the 3ds XL while completely disregarding the opportunity for it to interact in any significant way with the WiiU.
Now they have a pretty suck home console which comes with a pretty expansive controller, and a handled console that can't interact in any meaningful way with their new console. To push irony further they are pushing bundles that include both the WiiU and the 3ds...

Looking at costs and potential adaption by the mass market, I still think that Nintendo main mistake is that the 3ds has not be designed as the WiiU gamepad. the cost of the gamepad altered badly their budget for the home console, worse I suspect the cost of the gamepad is not that far off from the the cost of 3DS.

Exec will have to go soon imo.

EDIT wrt to the part I just put in strong.
To put it in a clearer fashion I mean that the cost of shipping a wiiU without wiiUmote + a 3ds might not have been much higher that the price of shipping the WiiU as it is.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Now they have a pretty suck home console which comes with a pretty expansive controller, and a handled console that can't interact in any meaningful way with their new console. To push irony further they are pushing bundles that include both the WiiU and the 3ds...

Well, they've tried that before haven't they and it's never gone very far. They probably saw it as not worth effort of trying again.

 

[babybumb]

The tag on this thread.. MAN.

http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_sacat=0&_from=R40&_nkw=wii+u&_sop=1 The demand seems really low based on Ebay.

 

[TheLump]

Obviously if a game like Mass Effect isn't CPU bound in the least, then a weaker CPU isn't going to matter. And in multi-platform cases, the PS3 is only at a CPU advantage when CPU tasks are efficiently divided over all its cores, which, because they are heterogenous and not that easy to work with, still doesn't always happen.

Lead platforms will always do best. If Wii wanted parity or better, it needed to spec better in all areas. Clearly, that's not what it's doing.

Agreed. If its main function was to receive ports (which it probably was) then it's not well designed at all as whatever advantage it may have had in the GPU dept are seemingly outweighed by the slow cpu and need to feed the tablet with data (assuming that takes much juice).

 

[RancidLunchmeat]

I've read two interesting tidbits while reading the reviews for the WiiU.

And they are rather contradictory, which may signal yet another design error.

The first is that the distance you can use the WiiU tablet from the actual console is significantly lower than has been advertised. In short, you can't use it in another room while somebody else is watching something on the TV. This dramatically decreases one of its supposed selling points.

The other is a comment that the way the system is designed, it's almost as if Nintendo is really trying to make the WiiU tablet a handheld gaming system and would really seem as if they'd like to be able to divorce the tablet controller from the system entirely. Feed everything through the tablet while the console itself essentially just acts as "a server".

As I said, the two comments seem to be in conflict with each other because of the limited range that people are experiencing with the tablet controller.

Does anybody who has a WiiU have any experiences or comments with these?

I can try to find the links to those reviews if need be, but I've read so many over the past week, I can't really keep them all straight.