News EA could skip Wii U with next gen titles

EA is unlikely to release 15 upcoming titles powered by the Frostbite 3 engine on the Wii U due to compatibility issues.
http://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/2013/05/09/ea-could-skip-wii-u-with-next-gen-titles/1

 

EA wanted full Origin on the WiiU with complete control and profit, using Nintendo servers, and want to sale it's "season pass" DLC crap. Nintendo refused (like anyone with the right mind would), so EA, like a 5 year old kid, pulls a tantrum, and forces it's developers and related studios to call the media to say how crappy the console is, and block any release of games to the WiiU.

 

^^ nothing to do with compatibility -Crysis 3 was ready to go on Wii U and because Nintendo wouldn't do origin exclusive for download sales EA pulled out

 

Meh. I quit giving a s*it about EA titles some time ago. Origin is also a pile of crap. Fairplay to Nintendo for standing up to EA's bullying, regardless of the negative publicity for the Wii U. I'm very tempted to get one once prices lower more just to play Zombie U. That looks awesome.

 

I agree. And personally, if I got a WiiU, I would not care about missing EA games, because they all be on PC in any case. I guess the looser here, are the WiiU owner who can't afford another console nor have PC that can play games. As instead of playing EA games right now, there is a big void of titles, and people are turning their thumbs until E3.

 

Goodbytes, I don't think that's the situation, there's probably more to it that isn't known. Considering that EA gets along with Microsoft, the two you would think would be at each other's throats after the EA/Valve falling out. Nintendo is probably charging EA an obscene amount in order to use it's servers that EA doesn't want to pay or feels that it shouldn't have to pay given Nintendo's current standing.

 

The 'Our tests weren't promising' line is a load of bull. If they wanted to release games on the Wii U then they'd work something out... just drop the texture size, filters and poly count down enough to make it work. It would be awkward for them and make the U look like the runt it is.

Here's what's happened. They've looked at the sales figures and the deal on the table from Nintendo and they've made the decision it's not worth spending millions adding the U to their development when all the other platforms (4th Gen + PC) are broadly equal.

They've decided for them it's not worth it. So why say it's purely due to performance? Because that way it hurts the U a bit and drives people to other platforms.

EA want to sell games and they can't sell U games if they don't build them. So their advice is 'The Wii U is underpowered' (Which it is!)

No point feeding the runt of the litter in next-gen-console land.

 

How is the WiiU underpowered? It has a more powerful CPU, memory, memory speed, GPU, GPU features (so in every way) than the XBox 360 and PS3, by a nice margin too. I am looking at the Assassin Creed 4 PS4, and it doesn't look that much better than AC3 on the WiiU, and looks less than AC 3 on the PC... and AC4 on PS4 looks like it runs at 30fps and frame dips. Not really impressive.

While there is no doubt that the PS4 and XBox Inifnity are more powerful than the WiiU, even if Nintendo put a Core i3, GeForce 580 in there, Sony and Microsoft will put the Core i5 and GeForce 690. There is nothing Nintendo could have done. So it will always be underpowered, unless it's the last console release.

Also Nintendo has been producing under-powered console since day 1. They lasted all these years.
Sega didn't even have a chance.

Power doesn't make good games. And this time, Sony doesn't have something to intense buyers to the new console (The PS1 had disk (it was cool back then), DVD with the PS2, and Blu-ray with the PS3). It will be the role of each to present good and exclusive games.

 

It's also worth noting that the most powerful console has never won a generation in terms of sales. I think that is true for both home and handheld consoles.

 

4k movie support?

Okay so not everyone has gone 1080p yet, but with 50" 4K screen being available for $1500 I think there'll be some demand for it. I suspect it'll be one of the cheapest ways of getting native 4k playback in the home. Just like the PS3 was for blu-ray.

http://www.theverge.com/2013/2/28/4...ll-work-with-ps4-require-100gb-plus-downloads

 

1- There is no visible different between 1080p and 4K unless you are up close.
2- TV content is in 1080p.
3- Broadcast network and your TV provider don't have the equipment or bandwidth for 4K.
4- HDMI 1.4 can only do 24Hz in 4K.
5- Less than a hand full, literally, movies where filmed in 4K
6- 4K is 4096x2160 OR 3840x2160. No standard set.
7- People just got their 1080p TV... they won't buy 4K. Heck, I still use a CRT TV. People are not uber rich like you.
8- Multiple Blu-ray needed or expensive multi-layer Blu-ray disk needed for movies, driving the cost of the movie much higher.

 

Yeah the idea of 4K video taking off for a long time is utterly ridiculous. When DVD came along how long did it take before people were willing to give up their DVDs? Even now there is a serious lack of Blu-Ray players in the average household. So now we'll need new expensive TVs, likely new Blu-Ray players because they certainly won't have the horsepower for 4K video and most won't support a video connection which could provide it. Then you have TV content which is mostly 720p/1080i in the UK, we still struggle to find actual 1080p broadcast video. ISPs will absolutely cry if they have to be the deliverers of 4K video because of the sheer size of the videos and the constant load.

Remember how 3D TVs were going to take over and everyone was going to have one and use it......yep, dead on its arse. 4K video will not be a console selling feature this generation. Perhaps next generation but certainly not this generation. Everything is too far behind for that to be a reality.

 

Incredibly, shockingly wrong. It has more memory and a better GPU, but these are hobbled by a CPU slower than the 360's and some terrible memory bandwidth (12.8GB/s Vs 22.4GB/s). In both cases this RAM is shared between CPU and GPU (and the Xbox has a significantly slower GPU).

Check out the comments on the Ars thread for more. Kevin G's posts (about a quarter the way down the page) is where I got the bandwidth numbers, and very shortly afterwards a ton of number crunching comes in to play, as well as feature discussions about the Wii U's hobbled CPU.

EDIT: As far as CPU performance goes, I dug out the final (user calculated) numbers for the benefit of anyone reading. For the Xbox 360 and Wii U; 76.8 GFLOPS Vs 14.88 GFLOPS respectively.

 

No it does not. The CPU is much faster. Games on the WiiU who also have a XBox 360 port, has more things (more units with AI) than on the XBox 360. Devs also said how powerful the console is.

Nintendo didn't release any specs for the console. So I don't know where you get these numbers.

Yes, lets believe assumption mania. Clock speed means nothing.
Devs said that it's faster than the current gen consoles on the market CPU wise.

But if it makes you sleep at night that the WiiU is 3 Wii processors stuck together, as you suggest, that's fine.

 

Ok, so I post intelligent discussion backed up by evidence such as die shots, and you just say "Nope. Wrong. The Wii U CPU is much faster". Since Ninty haven't released any specs, what else do you want me to go on? I'm the only one with any evidence here. You can find as many developer claims about an amazeballs CPU as I can find developers bitching about it being underpowered, so those are instantly inadmissible. What else do you have? Try countering points instead of just saying I am wrong.

BTW, the numbers are from previous confirmed numbers on the Wii, die shot analysis and this guy's hacking. Just because Nintendo doesn't release specs doesn't mean they can't be found.

Clock speed matters a great deal, but it isn't everything, you are right. So when the Wii U is missing other important feature sets like VMX, I fail to see how your point improves your position. And unfortunately, it seems like the Wii U CPU largely is just three Wii CPUs stuck together, and clocked at almost twice as fast (with the addition of OoO and a shorter pipeline. Good moves, in all fairness).

I would love to see a source for that "Devs said that it's faster than the current gen consoles on the market CPU wise.", but like I said, I could just dig up one saying the CPU is terribad, so I suppose its a wash. Still, I certainly haven't heard a claim quite as strong as the one you are making, so I would appreciate a source all the same.

I sleep as well at night regardless of what the matter is, I just find tech interesting and thought I would correct your misunderstanding. Interesting you would bring up such personal attacks though, considering my last post was entirely neutral and merely based on evidence and as much objective analysis as possible.

 

I don't believe EA would intentionally drop their AAA support for the Wii U based solely on sour grapes over online stuff. It just doesn't make any sense, especially with their current financial situation. Even if it only means a few hundred-thousand to a million or so sales for a port of a AAA game on the WiiU, that's still profit. Ultimately they answer to shareholders, so it doesn't make any logical sense to give the finger to Nintendo over something stupid.

No, it's far more likely that the Wii U is just technically incapable of properly supporting Frostbite 3 without needing a huge investment in porting and support teams. Not to mention a reduction in quality. At that point, I can see it being it financially questionable to invest in a system with a low install base where the games are going to be demonstrably worse than the original game.

At some point, it must become technically "impossible" to run a high-end game on the Wii U without making drastic, fundamental changes to the underlying game mechanics. Like... try to get Final Fantasy X to run on an N64 (the Wii U is pretty much "last gen" tech compared to the new consoles).

It makes even less sense when we're talking about -core- AAA games that 90% of their audience is going to be playing on their PC/PS4/XBOX

Nintendo is pretty much at fault here for putting out yet another gimmick system that won't support modern advancements in console gaming technology. They will probably be very successful, as they have always been, but it's something that they consistently choose to do.

 

EA did the same thing to Dreamcast from the start, and hell, DC was doing ok without EA. Just shows how greedy that company is.

 

Goodbytes - most TV content is either 720p or 1080i (sky hd - the hd in most homes)

 

EA can do what they want, It is after all there own company. Wii U sales are what has caused most developers rethinks. Activision and EA both have suggested similar things.

Frostbite is an expensive engine and the cost to port it to the Wii U was probably higher than the potential sales.

DC was Segas last major console and it was destroyed in sales terms by an old playstation, Not to mension what happened once the ps2 came out. DC sold well in only Japan.

Wii U is not selling well anywhere most see it as a Wii with a handheld screen. ( aka gimmick) Nintendo have not exactly advertised the console you would not even know it was on sale in the UK there has been so little marketing for it, Seen alot more Nintendo 3ds adverts than i have Nintendo Wii U adverts.

4K is a dream nothing more than that at this point. TV content providers can bearly provide 720p to 1080i let alone 4k. Sky HD pack in the uk is very few channels (60-75 i think it works out at). No one knows what hdmi specification the ps4 will launch with the playstation 3 was hdmi 1.0 but with firmware updates that has now hit 1.3.

You dont provide content for 1% of the world either till 4k tvs hit below £/$1000 for a decent set like current 1080 tvs then 4k will never take off in most major countries who simply do not have the bandwidth in tv or internet to support such a service.

Remember native blueray is 22 megabyte ( that is byte not bit ) per second thats only at 1080p, 4k is 4 x that thats effectively a 1gb internet for streaming purposes. Outside of Japan such things do not exist and even there they are not exactly mainstream.

The world is not ready for 4k tv.

 

Sorry for the minor side step here, but that isn't entirely true.

For the first couple of years of the N64's life, Nintendo was happily advertising it as the "Fastest, most powerful games console on Earth"

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