Who thought it would?

@Dany said:

Well they fucked up with third parties when the wii was launched and will most likely have ports of ps360 but what about in 2-3 years, they are going to be behind.

Agreed. Hopefully they've been researching/planning for the next-gen because I'm pretty sure Sony and Microsoft already started.

Well they fucked up with third parties when the wii was launched and will most likely have ports of ps360 but what about in 2-3 years, they are going to be behind.

@Rolyatkcinmai said:

@TooWalrus said:

@joku2002 said:

hmm i smell a dreamcast

How so? Dreamcast outperformed N64 and PS1 by a long shot.

The Dreamcast sold 10 million units compared to the PS1's 100 million and the N64's 32 million.

So no, it didn't.

I think he was talking about performance. Dreamcast had about 25-50% more power than the PSX and the N64

@Max_Hydrogen said:

Now I'm not an expert in marketing or anything.... I mean, I haven't been to business school or studied advertising but even I think Nintendo's presentation of the Wii U is pretty STUPID. "Hey, guess what? Our new console won't be as powerful as the current competition..." So let's see... You're telling me that this thing is basically a Wii with a screen in its controller and I can only use one controller and I have to wait a whole year before I can play? GREAT! Can I give you my money now?!

That is... As long as third party game developers find interesting ways to use said controller (Nintendo hopes...) This is starting to look like the worst ad campaign in gaming history. It just seems like a shameless money grab: Nintendo has made money on the Wii right out of the gate since day one because they charged double what it cost to make while Sony lost money on the PS3 estimating that it could make that money back on game sales. Nintendo figured that if worked last time, why not just repeat the system; especially now that the Wii is bringing in diminishing returns. You see, this is what greed does: an inferior system. Does Nintendo take for a market of suckers? This might seriously bite them in the ass and I hope that's the wake up call they need.

At this time, it seems that you can only use of the Wii U controllers with the system and any other participants must use the Wii controller. So I see: Nintendo wants to appeal to the "core" gamers who were repelled by the Wii by making them use the Wii controller that repelled in the first place.

BRILLIANT!

The article doesn't say its less powerful than the 360/PS3, it says it won't be dramatically more powerful. So at the very least, its just as powerful as the 360/PS3.

The WiiU is a half step generation wise, at best. Nintendo is releasing this to stay competitive until they figure out what to do next.

Miyamoto; keeping it real.

People buy Nintendo consoles for Nintendo games.   It's a simple idea that has kept me playing on a Nintendo console for 25 years.    The addition of HD to Nintendos existing IP's is all I need to warrant a purchase. 

So Nintendo is releasing a next gen console that is only slightly more powerful then the current generation PS3 and Xbox360. The console will only have one next gen controller(not including Wii controllers). Then Nintendo will pump out Mario, Zelda, and Pokemon then plan for the next generation.

yawn.

@joku2002 said:

hmm i smell a dreamcast

Right down to the controller with a screen...

I like some of the functionality of the controller, and I'm sure Nintendo will know HOW to use it...I just can't see why I'd want a Wii U over what I have now, and what Sony/MS will have in the not-so-distant future (doesn't help that Nintendo games don't appeal to me).

Would be more surprised if it does tank sales-wise, though.

@Rolyatkcinmai said:

@TooWalrus said:

@joku2002 said:

hmm i smell a dreamcast

How so? Dreamcast outperformed N64 and PS1 by a long shot.

The Dreamcast sold 10 million units compared to the PS1's 100 million and the N64's 32 million.

So no, it didn't.

I think he was talking about performance. Dreamcast had about 25-50% more power than the PSX and the N64

I have no problem with that.

@joku2002 said:

hmm i smell a dreamcast

How so? Dreamcast outperformed N64 and PS1 by a long shot.

The PS2 was weaker than the GCN and Xbox, didnt seem to make a dent in sales. A balance is always necessary.

I hope this is the end of Nintendo. I really do.

I hope this is the end of Nintendo. I really do.

why cant the controller be cheap? from the slide pad to the low res resistive touch screen, everything is cheaper than it could be.

Jumping to conclusions as usual. I thought Giantbomb was better than this ):

@Dany said:

Then what is the fucking point?

The point is that there isn't enough tech to justify a new generation jump, keep costs down to be competitive with 360 and PS3 at launch and not drive developers into more R&D/upscale asset creation costs after being assured by both Microsoft and Sony that there is plenty of life in this generation to go on.

@Marokai said:

@ShinAli said:

@Dany said:

Then what is the fucking point?

The point is that there isn't enough tech to justify a new generation jump, keep costs down to be competitive with 360 and PS3 at launch and not drive developers into more R&D/upscale asset creation costs after being assured by both Microsoft and Sony that there is plenty of life in this generation to go on.

I hate you, I really do. I hate everyone who continues to say it's "too early!" or "the tech isn't there!" because that's stupid and wrong. No, we're not going to see a huge generational leap in new hardware when we move forward again the next time like we have seen in the past, but that doesn't mean there isn't substantially more advanced graphics tech out there that we're straight-up ignoring. The tech in the 360 and Ps3 are about four generations of graphics cards old and consist of tech mostly from 2002/2003. In the closed platform of a home console they're able to stretch and milk that old hardware for all they can with any trick they have up their sleeve but there is far more advanced tech out there we could definitely have at our disposal.

The real point is twofold. For one thing, companies are too terrified to put together a strong technical machine because of cold business calculations after seeing the Ps3 initially stumble out of the gate and seeing the success of the Wii. Of course, the Wii wasn't really great for gaming in the grand scheme of things, but it was super for business. This generation has been defined more by the incredible business-ification of the videogame industry more than anything else. It makes developers and hardware companies stop doing what they could do and start focusing more one what's better for the bottom line. Which also, by the way, sucks for us. And secondly, this generation has expanded more than any other generation that we've accumulated so many goddamn whiners who are quick to say "but I'm not READY to move on yet! i just got a 360 last year, i'm fine with the way things are, who cares if it's old tech!" Which, A, only encourages the video game companies to continue acting like amoral businesses, and B, who the fuck cares if Joe Blow on the street corner isn't "ready" to move on? The tech is old, the performance of games is starting to crash, graphics have hit a wall for a long time now, and it's starting to get extremely depressing seeing ambitious projects like LA Noire be handcuffed by the limitations of systems running on graphics tech that is the better part of a decade old. We need someone to show leadership and show us what we could have, but no one wants to show that leadership because the businesses are doing just fine with the current state of affairs, all because of people like you enabling them and others that won't hold their feet to the fire as consumers.

I'm definitely not as fired-up as you are about it, but yeah, I'm pretty much on the same page. It's pretty deflating to see these unique, inventive new games come out and be hampered by visuals that pretty much look downright bad at this point. So, yeah, I'm ready for new hardware. I also should really build myself an awesome gaming PC to bridge the gap, and of course expose myself to the wealth of games to be had (and only be had) on PC.

@Mr402 said:

People buy Nintendo consoles for Nintendo games. It's a simple idea that has kept me playing on a Nintendo console for 25 years. The addition of HD to Nintendos existing IP's is all I need to warrant a purchase.

The visual style of their games holds up really well in the face of games with more sophisticated graphics. Now that they're putting out a system that can do 1080p and has capabilities similar to the 360 and PS3, I don't think graphics will be nearly as much of an issue as they have been for the Wii.

The only thing I'm really concerned about is whether or not they can consistently put out good games for the Wii U. They can't have another generation of consumers looking at their dusty Nintendo consoles and wondering why they even bought it.

Not sure why anyone thinks this will ever be a problem for Nintendo.

They just dominated the market for, what, five years? Clearly they have proven they can be successful with hardware that is technically behind the competition.

If anything is going to be threatening to Wii-U I don't think it will be technical specifications, but something like Kinect which they have no direct answer to.

Still, they are the most "Family Friendly" company and have the largest and most iconic family brands. Zelda, Mario, Kirby, Pokémon, Smash Bros, Nintendogs, Animal Crossing... those will remain strong to new (and old) players and continue to drive parental sales.

Curious how much of an improvement the next 360 and ps4. I doubt MS and Sony can get away with charging more than $400 at launch. And games are expensive to develop as it is. I can guess that the difference between the difference between visuals of ps3 to ps4 won't be as obvious as ps2 to ps3.

Honestly if the rumor about it having a R770 GPU in it is true, it does have quite a bit more horsepower than what the Xbox 360 or PS3 have.

Just a quick comparison between the GPU in the 360 and the rumored one in the Wii-U.

Xenos(Xbox 360): 48 SPUs at 240 GFLOPS.

R770(Wii-U): 800 SPUs at1200 GFLOPS.

Nintendo's not going to do a damn thing to push a new standard of graphical hardware? What a fucking shocker.

Nintendo games in HD are all I'm looking for from the Wii U, not some graphical beast.

I dont think it will be as powerful from what i am hearing, once you take into account resources available for the game 
 
An more than one screen controller, dream on it cant handle it

@Lobster_Ear: So Edgy.

Nintendo - same old games with a new peripheral.

You want to pull some people away from Xbox and PS3? Gotta compete on specs not on "innovative gimmicks" and get the 3rd party support you severely lack.

You want 3rd party support? You have to give them a reason to design the games on YOUR system and not just port Xbox/PC/PS3 games over - otherwise you just get ports w/ lame touch functionality, not real innovation.

Make the 3rd parties come to you on tech and they will innovate for you on the controller. And then you're not just up-rezzing the Wii and taping an iPad to the Wii remote (well, you still are but it won't suck as much).

I really wish some people would stop comparing the Wii with the 360/PS3.  They had completely different consumers and game styles.  Yes, the Wii did push more hardware for a few years but that is long over with and the software consists of 90% shovelware.

@Marokai said:

*snip*

I didn't say that out of ignorance about the current tech in consoles today and the newer stuff out there, or to stifle any such advancements just because I want to hold on to my consoles a little longer. I keep up with technology and have an interest in the field of real-time graphics. No doubt games would look stunning if we took the latest nVidia or AMD GPUs and stuck it on a console; they would look most likely at least a little better than that last Unreal Engine tech demo that was recently shown.

The tech industry, however, is still in this weird transition with multiple core processors and the GPU's potential. It is still really difficult to create parallel code in which there seems to be not a lot of cases for, and the fact that how AMD and nVidia don't really know how to push GPGPU programming forward beyond CUDA or OpenCL. These are new paradigms that hardware vendors and developers still need to figure out; find out what the next generation would or should look like beyond just pushing more polygons or having a higher fillrate.

To provide a technological example, people at id Software like John Carmack, Jon Olick and etc. are currently looking into a solution for MegaGeometry, meaning having geometry as detailed as the artist would want. They're checking out voxels to accomplish this (more specifically, sparse voxel octrees), which each voxel would be as big as a pixel in your monitor. This would allow artists to do away with normal maps, textures, etc and just shape geometry however they please. All this in computational cost is the number of pixels in your screen, multiplied by a tree traversal. Unfortunately, this has a humongous memory requirement, well over beyond of whatever is in desktops today.

Current tech today mostly limits visual clarity. You can still make whatever game you're thinking of in some decent representation. I'd much rather see something more significant than just a faster GPU in the next generation. Not a revolution, mind you, but something that's more concrete on how developers make games now and days.

Aside from that, if Nintendo released something that is significantly more powerful than PS360 today, I would guarantee you that developers would not put much effort into making games look so much better. That would be just wasted cost for Nintendo. The core market has been lead by Microsoft and Sony for a while; it's not going to budge unless everyone wants it to.

I don't care, just as long as there are Nintendo games in HD. All "more advanced graphics" means anymore is more ugly ass gritty realism. It means more brown, more smeary filtering effects, more bald men, more dirt particles, more post apocalyptic warehouses and sewage treatment facilities. " "Outperforming" just means a further lack of variety and colour.

Miyamoto's been rather mouthy as of late, hasn't he?

I'm fine with Nintendo's choices of horsepower for this machine. I'll buy it, because I want to see nintendo's IP's in HD.  So these news stories don't have me too on-hinge.  
 
What I am anticipating highly is what Sony and Microsoft will do. They don't at all want to launch new consoles any time soon, but they may just because of pressure from Nintendo. So there's a question of time.  
Furthermore, how much horsepower will THEY put in their consoles when they launch? PC games certainly look very good now compared to consoles, but the gap isn't extreme; consoles are still keeping up somewhat admirably. I think a console could be launched today for 300-400 dollars and be able to run the latest games maxed out at 1080p.  
So exactly how powerful will their consoles be when they're released?  
 
This next generation is going to be highly interesting. 

From seeing the Wii U at E3 (albeit they were only demos) the hardware did not look as powerful as either the PS3 or the Xbox 360. If the Wii U can run BiosShock Infinite at parity with either system then I'll eat my hat (made of nachos).

hmm i smell a dreamcast

Give me F-Zero in HD, kthx

@joehandel: It costs like $1200 for a decent gaming computer so a large company could probably buy enough quantity of parts for $800 machine. So you want to put about $800 bucks into a box and sell if for $400/300. You wouldn't make a good CEO.

He's right, the only requirement they have to satisfy is "HD Graphics" which resonate with most of their audience. It will be plastered all over the box and marketing materials. Plus all reports from credible gaming people are that it looks "fantastic in HD", so Nintendo can keep making money off of consoles by doing just enough with the guts, and everyone's happy.

nintendo has tried to shift their pricing model from the typical game supporting their company to constant console refreshes supplemented by peripherals. In the GBA and DS this has been extremely obvious in the form of handheld refreshes, and in the Wii's case we've seen it in the form of the balance board, the vitality sensor, the steering wheel, the motion plus, and now we're seeing what is essentially a hardware update that includes a new controller- but is backward compatible with the wiimote, sort of edging back toward the 'peripheral' business model. It wasn't just the Wii either, the gamecube had a modicum of success with the GCN-->GBA cable and the game boy player. Since the original NES Nintendo has used peripherals as an incentive to purchase consoles in bundle, a vessel for moving certain games, and then the games people hooked on the newer system. Unfortunately, lately they've been focusing too much on that side and I don't think they've given enough thought to the game part XD

When I lived there only kids and man childs were the ones that acceptably played video games in that culture. We have so much free time here and space expecting blockbuster experiences in our living rooms. The Japanese companies haven't caught up with this western generation.

@joehandel: It costs like $1200 for a decent gaming computer so a large company could probably buy enough quantity of parts for $800 machine. So you want to put about $800 bucks into a box and sell if for $400/300. You wouldn't make a good CEO.

Meh, I already have a PS3 and a 360, so unless Nintendo's going to do something other than rehash the same three or four mascots ad infinitum, I'm not biting.

I hope it fails. Nintendo can then focus on making games and release them on proper platforms instead of putting out gimmicky hardware that's stuck in the past. How could anyone not want this?

This is what I think:

There's one big ass reason the Wii "won" and "lost". The controller. Not the hardware, not the specs. The controller. The controller sold a lot, but the controller wasn't good enough for lots of companies. Companies do not look to sell you a game that requires an accessory that is not included with the console, and doesn't support the main controller that is already included with the console.

What does this mean? Lots of people hated the Wiimote. Lots of companies hated it as well for the lack of compatibility with their big titles. As much as people want hardware, when it comes down to preferences, it's always the games. And games weren't appearing on Wii just at the same rate. 

Sure it doesn't help that basically the PS3 and 360 hardware is just more similar than the Wii and any of them. But the point is, before the Wii came out people were expecting great games even at the cost of outdated hardware. Because it can be done. It's not pretty, but it can be done, and Nintendo is aware of this. They're also now aware of the controller flaw. So they basically decided to support third parties on classic controllers. They still keep with outdated hardware, but they advanced to the point where gamers can also find this console entertaining, and companies can just port games over the console due to how universally appealing it is. Sure it is a big screen, but it doesn't seem to lack functions, except for thumb"slider" buttons which are supposed to be there though. Also, gyroscopes are a good contribution to actual gaming rather than the casual market. These, combined with the second analog slider can provide precise aiming that does not require aim assist.

Overall I think that if Nintendo doesn't win in terms of market sales this time around, they will at least win a little in the gaming business.

I still think E3 2012 or sooner - Xbox xxx Everyone going "HOLY CRAP" and "Wii What?"
 
Kinect for example is missing its dedicated processing chip so it could be even more then it is, they removed it to keep the cost down.
What I think the next Xbox will have is the same camera support but a chip and maybe memory and more dedicated to handle whats coming from the camera.
 
This should expand what the camera can do without new hardware and not harming the main CPU.

And that is why Nintendo (or anyone else) cannot produce a console which pleases everyone. They touted the Wii U as the machine for core gamers and yet they still revolve all their strategy around the kiddy market who needs their mums to buy them stuff. When the Wii U comes out both Microsoft and Sony will be almost ready to start talking next generation. When the second generation of Wii U games start coming out core gamers will already be glimpsing the future. Still getting myself a Wii U though. I think there is only so much you can do graphically at this point in time.

Nintendo is gonna have to really impress me with the first year launch of games before I even consider buying the Wii U. Just like some of the previous posts about the Wii..it was a a kiddie/family system with so small of a selection of games to even want to play it, I just have a hard time even having hopes they will serve the hardcore players like Microsoft/Sony are able to.