Battle Plaptypus, on 08 June 2011 - 03:45 AM, said:
I think you're mistaken about the Wii U's (shudders) chances. Like the Wii it will sell like hot cakes because all the insane shit it does will draw in young and old more over, once again Nintendo beats Sony and Microsoft to punch and it will have its new console out on the market a year or two before the other two. It will by default capture a big chunk of the market.
The issue is with its power. From an earlier source I heard speculation that the Wii U will be an improvement on the PS3 and 360, but not by that much. It is not a new generation, more like a half. Which is a shame, because that means when the new consoles come they will make the Wii U look like shit.
Crytek for example has been clamouring for consoles with AT LEAST 8 gb of RAM. The wii U will have something like 2 gb.
Oh, yeah, I should have picked a different phrase. I don't think it's dead in the water as a product - it is bound to sell well, though I'm not convinced it will meet the Wii's sales figures due to the sheer price tag it's going to *have* to have - I just think as a platform it's a failure. The power issue is going to cap it in the knees in two years or less, the controller is going to limit the involvement of third-party AAA developers, and the hardcore market is going to eschew it in favour of the next generation.
Yes, I've only heard rumours that it's slightly more powerful than a PS3 - which is why I don't think we can say Nintendo has beaten PS3/MS to the punch with a 'new console'. New, technically. 'New', no. This is the console the Wii should have been five years ago, or however long it has been now. It means, essentially, that the Wii brand is a generation *behind* Playstation and Xbox. Which is terrible. And another reason the hardcore market won't take it up.
And I can see why Crytek wants that RAM - Crysis 2 is not flawless in its performance on consoles (it's pretty good, but there is still a sense of disconnection between input and action, sometimes, which quite simply isn't there on PC) and that's a current-gen game. Sure, it's partly them (the reason Crysis itself is still such a system hog is poor coding practices leading to inefficient running, whereas Warhead doesn't have this problem), but hey, give the devs a platform that is relatively close to modern PCs, and they'll run with it for all it's worth.