Nintendo WiiU : Thread 04

[Duncan James Waugh]

Nintendo are stuck with the Wii U for the next 4 to 5 years and when the 3rd parties shut down their 360 and PS3 pipe lines then ports of 3rd party games are going to dry up, worse than they are now .

The Wii-U supports the Unity and Unreal engines, which make up the bulk of 3rd party middleware solutions so there's no pipeline issue.

Assets might have to be further downscaled, but depending on your workflow this isn't necessarily a big, time consuming job. Companies always take much higher-res models, bake the details into normal maps and apply them to low-poly versions regardless of the power of the platform in question.

[Team Andromeda]

The Wii-U supports the Unity and Unreal engines, which make up the bulk of 3rd party middleware solutions so there's no pipeline issue.

It doesn't support Frostbite 3 or Unreal 4 so there's going to be issues down the line, more so when corps shut down their 360 and PS3 pipe lines and hence ports to the Wii U dry up

Assets might have to be further downscaled, but depending on your workflow this isn't necessarily a big, time consuming job

Given the Wii U low market share and poor 3rd party game sales , most 3rd parties aren't going to bother or put little effort in above porting their 360 or PS3 code over .

[Duncan James Waugh]

Frostbite is an in house engine not widely used across the industry, as far as I'm aware there are only a handful of games released per year over the last few years using it.

Epic have stated that Unreal Engine 4.0 games can be ported to the Wii-U. Console based licensees of the engine have access to all the source code and so could provide a base port. It's not inconcievable that once one company has done so this can become licensed out.

Now my experience is solely in Unreal Engine 3.0 but from my understanding UE 4.0's main changes revolve around the new real time lighting system, the switch from UnrealScript to C++ and a number of toolsets to improve rapid prototyping.

Unreal Engine 3.0 is extremely capable, while initially the switch over to C++ might sound like everything has to be re-written from scratch, from what I've been told the library, function and variable names all remain the same. Compiling managed code into another un-managed language is not a terribly difficult task and most graduates can do it. As such it isn't hard to imagine a team continuing to write in UnrealScript in order to leverage their pre-existing code bases and simply run it through an additional code compilation step to generate the C++ for UE4.0. UE 3.0 can also handle dynamic lighting, you just have to be careful in its utilisation - ensuring no surfaces are lit by more than 1 or 2. Kismet, Matinee and the Materials editor are all still there as far as I'm aware. I'm happy to be proven wrong but I think you're over-egging the difficulty of porting a little. And let's not forget a lot of games are built using UDK which is looking to remain UE 3.0 for the forseeable future.

Unreal Engine 3.0 is a fantastic engine still making top notch looking PC games that can show up what's on the XBox One or PS4 currently. It really won't hold back Wii-U developers.

['Press Start']

I hope you stepped in and did your duty.

Nope, I felt like David Attenborough watching nature take it's course.

Wii U is truly doomed if their core Wii customer thinks they already own it

[Team Andromeda]

Frostbite is an in house engine not widely used across the industry, as far as I'm aware there are only a handful of games released per year over the last few years using it.

An engine used by one of the major 3rd parties in the industry; Games that have more of an impact than any game using the Unity engine

Epic have stated that Unreal Engine 4.0 games can be ported to the Wii-U. Console based licensees of the engine have access to all the source code and so could provide a base port. It's not inconcievable that once one company has done so this can become licensed out.

Epic aren't supporting the Wii U, which kind of says it all .

Unreal Engine 3.0 is a fantastic engine still making top notch looking PC games that can show up what's on the XBox One or PS4 currently. It really won't hold back Wii-U developers

Hardly anything on the Wii U looks better than whats out on the 360 and PS3 from 3rd parties . 3rd parties aren't really going to take the time to make Wii U games look good given the Wii poor sales and poor sales for games (non Nintendo). .The Wii U will really suffer when 3rd parties stop using Unreal 3 and the like and shut down their 360 and PS3 support

And let's not forget a lot of games are built using UDK which is looking to remain UE 3.0 for the forseeable future.

No different from Unreal 2 for the early 360 games and so on , but in the end developers moved on to Unreal 3 . They'll do the same with Unreal 4 and then we'll see the Wii U come up short again

[Sam The Man]

Im gonna stick my neck out and say it's not the software that sells the hardware it's unfortunately the hardware that sells the software.

[randombs]

As for the Wii U, well people are idiots. The Wii U has the best games at the moment, but people are morons and like TEH SHINY which is why they are willing to pay ?400 to play crap like Ryse and Knack when they could be playing real, great games for much cheaper on the Wii U.

Alternatively they're not idiots and have simply invested their money in a console that is more likely to last a few years. Ryse and Knack might well be crap but if I had to choose between plonking down 180 quid for a Wii-U or 350-400 for a PS4/XB1, I know which one I'd go for. Even worse, here in Japan the PS4 will be around 250 quid which almost destroys any reason for me getting a Wii-U.

Now, the Wonderful 101 is glorious. Utterly glorious, to the point that I was genuinely upset about its sales and the negative reviews by monkeys who completely missed the point. But it's just one game. Mario 3D Land is also lovely. But that's only two games I really really want to play on the Wii-U. Zelda might be the bestest game ever but I'm not interested in playing it so it wouldn't sway my vote.

And I'm not confident in the Wii-U's third-party support because it's not the Wii. With the Wii, despite the power difference, devs knew there was money to be made porting their games to it. Now, even if porting is easy, porting is only one part of the equation. There are other costs to consider beyond that. Point is, this isn't some Kickstarter campaign for a Megadrive coffee table book, it's an actual console from an actual manufacturer who's been in the business a number of years now and has still managed to cock up like this. If my unwillingness to invest in it means I like TEH SHINY then I like TEH SHINY. They had a year's head-start and they wasted it.

I say Nintendo are the idiots, not us.

[wakka]

It depends how much you like Nintendo games really. I had a PS4 preordered from around June of last year, and ended up cancelling it and getting a Wii U instead. To me it was worth ?200 all-in to play Super Mario 3D World, whereas a PS4 might be a good long term investment, but in the short term I couldn't bear the thought of dropping ?450 to play Knack and an ever-so-slightly upgraded version of NFS Rivals.

SM3DW, MK8, Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze and Smash Bros will justify my Wii U purchase, even if I don't ever buy anything other than those 4 games. I really like Nintendo games and local 4P multiplayer though, and you can't get either of those anywhere else.

Im gonna stick my neck out and say it's not the software that sells the hardware it's unfortunately the hardware that sells the software.

For me it's more about the software than the hardware. It can be the coolest, best console ever, but if there isn't a game I really really want to play, I'm not interested.

[Guts]

Alternatively they're not idiots and have simply invested their money in a console that is more likely to last a few years. Ryse and Knack might well be crap but if I had to choose between plonking down 180 quid for a Wii-U or 350-400 for a PS4/XB1, I know which one I'd go for.

It's not an investment, an investment is something that will grow in value over time. The smart thing to do, is to wait at least until there're a few killer games out and maybe even a price drop. The absolutely opposite of that, is buying an expensive piece of plastic to sit there unplayed, collecting dust, after you've finished your 8 hours of Knack/Ryze.

[VR46]

Unepic hits the eShop this Thursday, nine quid, sounds promising

http://www.nintendolife.com/reviews/wiiu-eshop/unepic

[randombs]

No it isn't. An investment is something you hope will increase in value over time. Whether that's an actual monetary value(not with a console unless it becomes super rare or has an exploit that later versions don't) or a perceived value based on the enjoyment you get from it depends. Just like any other investment there's a risk involved.

Microsoft could decide tomorrow that it'll give up on the Xbox. The likelihood of that is quite slim.

These idiots might be doing your smart thing with the Wii-U and waiting for the price to drop before jumping in.

You might think Ryse and Knack are crap and people who bought them are now sitting there waiting for Call of Duty 7 while you're enjoying your Nintendo games but you know full well that's not the case for everyone. Maybe they're enjoying telling their Xboxes to sign out or not watching MP4s on their PS4s. Ahhh

[kryss]

I'm hoping there's more discounts on WiiU games on PA this week. I'd been waiting for Res Revelations and Ninja Gaiden to drop and that took long enough. They're still full price here actually.

[Lebowski]

Unepic hits the eShop this Thursday, nine quid, sounds promising

http://www.nintendolife.com/reviews/wiiu-eshop/unepic

vid of it here im so desprate for games to play on my wiiu i half considered this but then i thought if this was on another system would i even give it a second look? the answer was no. http://www.nintendo.com/games/detail...0mnu1pYI-JZMfG

it came out in 2011 on the pc and has a metascore of 68 among the five people that bothered to play it, and as you can see from the Vid above it looks and moves terribly, why did this even get converted and how can Nintendo think this is worth ?9? it costs less than a fiver on PC and looking at the graphics i bet it will run on the most basic of systems too.

[PaTaito]

Here's some newS for you: It isn't.

As for the Wii U, well people are idiots. The Wii U has the best games at the moment, but people are morons and like TEH SHINY which is why they are willing to pay ?400 to play crap like Ryse and Knack when they could be playing real, great games for much cheaper on the Wii U.

The 3DS big selling point was 3D, then they released a machine without the need for it, and at the same time installed a huge gamer base that cant play stuff in 3d...meaning devs have even less onus on it.

HD-DVD stuff was available for a long while after it was as good as dead.

3D on the whole is, from what i've read, a bit of a failure.

As for TEH SHINY...

Battlefield 4 online on ps4 is amazing, not been bored once since i had the ps4, and its only been out a couple of months. Been playing lego marvel, bf4, and ac4.

[wakka]

Those games are on PS3 and 360, so it's not the most compelling reason to buy a console. Whereas the Wii U's key games are exclusive.

It's a totally pointless argument though. Like, my console is better than yours? Errrrr because it is? *waves dick*