Wii U Memory Analysis

I like what Nintendo did with the controller, but I admit I am baffled at their hardware decisions here. Nintendo should have made hardware that plays to the same strengths as 360/PS3 and made it as attractive as possible to move titles over. There's really no reason not to.

The article says that the system is cleverly thought out but the world is moving on from clever and unique systems and towards standardized hardware with differentiation in software.

This isn't a bash, but it seems that once again Nintendo hardware will lean heavily on Nintendo games.

It has the same memory bandwidth as my iPad 3 which renders ridiculously good looking games at 1080p at a solid frame rate. It is also roughly 2/3 the bandwidth of my 8-core beast of a PC which is commonly asked to render at 4x the resolution of the Wii U.

This is a non-issue. This is doubly true considering the inclusion of the 32MB chunk of edram. At 3x the size of what the 360 shipped with, it has plenty of space for six in-process frames, meaning triple-buffered vsync with HDR is perfectly attainable without the resolution drop or the triple-buffering sacrifice required on the other consoles.

If one wants to pick on the Wii U's specs, then pick on the CPU. The author of this poorly-researched article knows that that discussion has already been had and is over, so he found something else that sounds bad enough on first glance that it makes great page-view bait.

Nintendo's philosophy and design is about low watt usage while being supremely efficient.. the hardware is extremely customized so you can't just use X = X... it has a TON of dedicated chips (DSP for off-loading sound from the CPU) and edram that is local to the cpu or gpu and direct paths between the two, OOE CPU cycles, not to mention the most powerful Power 7 CPU ever created.. it's a BEAST in a really small form factor and there is little reason to try and dissect it. Already the game Xeno or "X" which is in early development is being compared to Far Cry 3 on a PC! IF that tells you anything, then you will realize in the right hands, it can dish out all the effects of current gen PC cards.. obviously not as many GFLOPS but it can hold its own. Also Nintendo went to great lengths to get current gen ports up and running failry quickly. It took a few guys from THQ to get Darksiders II up and running in a matter of DAYS! All without ANY custom code specific to their engine.. Yeah, Nintendo really did do their homework this time around. And if you think the next gen systems are going to blow the doors off of the Wii U, be prepared to cry in a corner because they aren't.

It's NOT a fair comparison because the CPU is no longer doing a LOT of things that the ps3/360 HAVE to do on CPU!!! It's so irrelevant these days.. There is a massive shift to GPU centric code which at the core is what most gfx engines use.. trust me.. the Wii U design from top to bottom is a marvel! Just read up on developers who are on the bleeding edge of software design.. Shinen has barely tapped the system and have stuff going on that would have taken AGES to do prior!!

I still think its concerning that there's *any* spec of the Wii U where current gen systems are ahead. Even if there is untapped power, clever coding can get you only so far.

I have no doubt Nintendo themselves will put out amazing looking games - despite the resolution, Super Mario Galaxy was very impressive from an artistic standpoint. And I'm willing to buy a box that's purely a first party Nintendo player (once those games start to come out). But can it really survive just on that alone?