Crysis 3 on the Wii U? "Fat Chance"

[Hazy992]

Hasn't it been "confirmed" that the Wii U will be several times more powerful then the 360 or PS3?

So, technically it has more then enough "juice" to run it, but I guess it's cheaper to not make a Wii U version.

The spec rumours are all over the place; one week it's more powerful than a 360, next week it's 'on par' with the 360 and the week after it's not as powerful.

 

[Korten12]

The hell? What kind of news article is this?

Crytek have already said that the Wii U is capable of running Cryengine 3. Their own directors have said they're impressed with the dev kits they've been given and the processing power of the Wii U. Every bit of information released about the Wii U's tech-specs point towards it being more powerful than either the 360 or the PS3, by margins dependent on which sources you read.

Now, considering that the 360 and PS3 are both capable to run Cryengine 3, that the Wii U is all but confirmed as being more powerful than either, and that Crytek have said themselves they've got Cryengine 3 running on the console, wouldn't it be reasonable to assume that the Wii U can in fact run Cryengine 3?

Most importantly of all, nowhere in the interview was it stated that Crysis 3 wasn't coming to the Wii U because of technical restrictions. All they said was that it wasn't on the cards for the time being. Which was also said about the Mass Effect series coming to PS3, Dark Souls coming to PC, and a host of other games being ported to other systems outside their original release schedule.

Much as I normally respect you Greg, you are quite obviously putting words in the developers' mouths here, and trying to draw conclusions outside of what was intended to be said. Everything released about the Wii U so far, including the comments of Crytek themselves, point to the Wii U being able to handle their games if they choose to develop for them, and nothing about this interview claims otherwise, simply that it's not in their schedule. Sorry, but this article is from the Fox News school of reporting, and I expect much better from the Escapist.

Various other sides reported the game thing, that they confirmed that it wont be on the ps3.

http://wii.ign.com/articles/122/1223691p1.html

http://www.destructoid.com/-fat-chance-of-crysis-3-coming-to-the-wii-u-226413.phtml

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2012/04/24/we-39-re-probably-not-getting-crysis-3-on-wii-u.aspx

This isn't the escapist having anything against the Wii U.

 

[SuperTrainStationH]

Isn't it weird how "not a fat chance" and "fat chance" mean the exact same thing?

That non-quote makes it out like Crytek dislikes or has low expectations of Wii U in general, which flies in the face of earlier quotes from Crytek which I believe went as far as to say that the preliminary Wii U devkits they were working with had "very good specs" and that they were "very happy with it" or something to that general effect.

The keyword being preliminary, not current devkits.

So you think Nintendo downgraded the devkits to the point where a company that said (paraphrase) "its very powerful, the specs are very good" would then go to completely reversing their position on the entire platform?

And Angry Juju, no, Nintendo themselves never said that Wii U is more powerful than the 360 or PS3, though nearly every on the record developer before three weeks ago or so had.

 

[Woodsey]

"It was such a resource hog that just getting 20 fps took a hugely expensive gaming PC."

Well, no. It required a decent PC to run it on decent settings. 'Ultra' was pretty much future-proofing at the time. (It's like moaning that The Witcher 2 is difficult to run right now when you've got ubersampling turned on.)

And I agree with everyone else: you seem to be drawing conclusions from nothing much.

 

[gigastar]

I would think this has more to do with Nintendo forcing Crytek to utilise the WiiU controllers unique features.

And then forcing them to tone down all those bodily fluids that come gushing out of knife wounds.

And then the prospect of having to deal with Nintendo's infamous online support schemes.

And then developing a game like Crysis 3 on a new console for a release in line with its competitors.

Processor power hardly needs to come into it.

Hasn't it been "confirmed" that the Wii U will be several times more powerful then the 360 or PS3?

Nothings confirmed until Nintendo actually rolls out the info at E3.

Everything until then is best dismissed as optimistic rumors. Or degradatory rumors, whichever you deem fit to label them.

Actually.. The 'being stronger than the Xbox 360 and PS3' part isn't a rumor.... Nintendo has said themselves that it will be stronger...

And before you say anything, no Nintendo cannot say "Oh yeah we were only joking about it being stronger than the Xbox and PS3"

I dont believe in what Nintendo community reps say, i believe in what the model numbers say.

 

[SuperTrainStationH]

I would think this has more to do with Nintendo forcing Crytek to utilise the WiiU controllers unique features.

And then forcing them to tone down all those bodily fluids that come gushing out of knife wounds.

And then the prospect of having to deal with Nintendo's infamous online support schemes.

And then developing a game like Crysis 3 on a new console for a release in line with its competitors.

Processor power hardly needs to come into it.

Hasn't it been "confirmed" that the Wii U will be several times more powerful then the 360 or PS3?

Nothings confirmed until Nintendo actually rolls out the info at E3.

Everything until then is best dismissed as optimistic rumors. Or degradatory rumors, whichever you deem fit to label them.

Actually.. The 'being stronger than the Xbox 360 and PS3' part isn't a rumor.... Nintendo has said themselves that it will be stronger...

And before you say anything, no Nintendo cannot say "Oh yeah we were only joking about it being stronger than the Xbox and PS3"

I dont believe in what Nintendo community reps say, i believe in what the model numbers say.

There's no need to be skeptical of Nintendo community on this one.

Chiefly because they never made that claim to begin with.

 

[Zer_]

Hmm. That is odd.

I have a fair grasp of estimated hardware power of consoles owing to their relation to PC hardware. (Architectural overheads on PC and optimisation issues mean a console with a given spec is more powerful than an equivalent PC, especially towards the end of a console cycle).

For this to be true though, it'd have to be really low-end components.

(Some articles implied it's about 3 times the power of an Xbox 360... But who knows? Especially when comparing a new console to one where games have been heavily optimised.)

I feel reasonably confident in the rumours that it's based around Ati 4000 series components.

To put that in perspective, the PS3 uses a close relation of an Nvidia 7800, while the 360 uses something closely related to the ATI 2000 series, but slightly less advanced.

The Xbox Xenos graphics chip has just 48 shaders, and the weakest 4000 series gpu in the entire range already has 40.

figures like that alone don't really tell you the whole story.
Benchmarks give a better picture.

3dmark06 scores imply a midrange part from this range should be around 20% faster than the PS3 gpu.
So... Any implication that is slower would suggest the use of very cheap low-end parts.

I guess it's possible, but... It's a little disturbing.

(Especially since the use of a controller with a display would in some cases imply needing to process a combined resolution somewhat higher than HD resolutions alone.)

Who knows. Though Nintendo's usual cryptic comments on the matter aren't encouraging either.

Actually, the 360's GPU is more capable than that of the PS3's (By a small margin). The PS3's GPU definitely is based off of the GeForce 7800 series. It's been boosted slightly, though. The 360's GPU is based off of a VERY heavily modified 2000 series ATi Card. It implements a Unified Shader Architecture (something that was only introduced in the 8000 series nVidia GPUs and 3000~4000 series for ATi respectively). To compensate for this discrepancy, many games offload some of the GPU workload on the PS3 to the Cell processor.

You're also mentioning 3DMark, which means absolutely nothing when it comes to console GPUs. PC games have to run through several layers of interpreters when being run in real-time. Consoles games have something much closer to direct hardware access. Basically that means that console games are inherently more efficient on the platform they are programed for.

However all this information is useless when looking at the WiiU. Speculation has gone from the WiiU using a 4000 based ATi card to a 6000 based AMD card. One thing I do know is that many of the Alpha hardware samples given out to developers are running at lower clock speeds than the final product will have.

The spec I'm most interested in is how much VRAM the WiiU will have. In many of the alpha hardware samples, even the VRAM and DRAM are far from final. Assuming the WiiU has at least 3 cores running on two threads each (similar to the 360's) and has a GPU that is on par or better than the PS3 or 360s, then it's reasonable to assume that the console would easily handle CryEngine 3. Some questionable sources stated that the WiiU would have a total of 1gb RAM split 50/50 between GPU and CPU, which means that it can handle a lot more texture data... which is a good thing for the console.

In the end we can only speculate. I believe we'll find out at E3.

 

[-Dragmire-]

Regardless of the Wii U's specs, I don't think the controller would be very comfortable for a game like this.

I could be wrong but it looks so... uncomfortable.

Granted, it's Nintendo. I'm sure they don't mind selling us more peripherals and classic controllers in order to make up for any failings the default controller might have.

 

[SuperTrainStationH]

Regardless of the Wii U's specs, I don't think the controller would be very comfortable for a game like this.

I could be wrong but it looks so... uncomfortable.

Granted, it's Nintendo. I'm sure they don't mind selling us more peripherals and classic controllers in order to make up for any failings the default controller might have.

Nearly EVERYONE who has actually used the controller says its very comfortable.

I personally have only read one negative hands on impression of it since E3 2011.

 

[Baresark]

I was going to spew hatred on this page for paraphrasing the source material so horribly wrong.. but I see just about everyone has beat me to it.

Even if Crytek isn't supporting the Wii, all the publishers they go through are, meaning EA, Ubisoft, etc.

I see the system power speculation has made it's way into the thread. Gotta love the stock people put into rumors.

 

[-Dragmire-]

Spoiler: snip

Regardless of the Wii U's specs, I don't think the controller would be very comfortable for a game like this.

I could be wrong but it looks so... uncomfortable.

Granted, it's Nintendo. I'm sure they don't mind selling us more peripherals and classic controllers in order to make up for any failings the default controller might have.

Nearly EVERYONE who has actually used the controller says its very comfortable.

I personally have only read one negative hands on impression of it since E3 2011.

I've done no research on it what so ever, so my opinion is only based on the visuals. It just looks too bulky for a fast paced game like an FPS... hmmm, that still not a very good explanation, it probably just my lack of familiarity with it that makes it look unappealing to me. I don't know...

 

[SuperTrainStationH]

Isn't it weird how "not a fat chance" and "fat chance" mean the exact same thing?

That non-quote makes it out like Crytek dislikes or has low expectations of Wii U in general, which flies in the face of earlier quotes from Crytek which I believe went as far as to say that the preliminary Wii U devkits they were working with had "very good specs" and that they were "very happy with it" or something to that general effect.

The keyword being preliminary, not current devkits.

So you think Nintendo downgraded the devkits to the point where a company that said (paraphrase) "its very powerful, the specs are very good" would then go to completely reversing their position on the entire platform?

No, but Cryteks comments sure seem to indicate so.

how on earth does

"it's highly unlikely we'll put this particular game on wii U", which was said in the interview

equate to

"nintendo downgraded the specs on the devkits we were previously praising to the point where wii U can't handle the graphics we wanted to have for Crysis 3", which flat out wasn't even stated in the interview.


The only thing saying that is the Escapist "report" on the interview, which just makes stuff up that literally wasn't in the interview at all just because the author seemingly felt like saying it.

In fact, if this were any company other than Nintendo, would the idea that a company would have prototype devkits of a new console decent enough to make a company say it has good specs, then downgrade it to the point where they "no longer think it can handle their game" according to this conjecture even be taken seriously?

As far as I know, NO console manufacturer has a history of doing that.

And historically, Nintendo's consoles all except for the Wii have been horsepower competitive for their time frames.

I'm not going to try to claim that Wii U is going to be incredibly more powerful than the HD systems that are already available, but I wonder if there's an element of denial about that between 06 and 12 gamers in the general public are so accustomed to the low performance reputation of the original Wii that a Nintendo system featuring graphics even akin to consoles from seven years earlier is hard for them to comprehend.

 

[stewox]

Great going Escapist GRET TITO spreading misinformation.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/116947-Crysis-3-on-the-Wii-U-Fat-Chance

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=37284816&postcount=12388


Crytek's creative director is an idiot on this anyways. He only said the controller was weird for him - he never said anything about system's power.

http://purenintendo.com/2011/07/01/eguchi-talks-about-wii-u-zapper/

And for the record you journalists have no idea about tech so stop comparing PC hardware with consoles - there is a software overhead issue(proprietary drivers, closed API, OS) the reason why PC hardware is incredibly inefficient compared to what developer are able to do on consoles - it's called programming directly to the metal or low-level access. Look it up im not going to waste time explaining it here from scratch.

Not only does Escapist falsely claim what crytek has not said - he adds in to "count in one more developer that doesn't support the new platform" - now your getting into the waters of anti-information - this is pure BS.

If you noticed in the neogaf quote - the quoted says "im not linking to it" - that's a sign when something is so bad it's not even worth looking it and reading. Did you think this was the only reason. That's minimizing other people from viewing the article - the whole point of media is pagehits - they make up this false drama to attract easily shocked kids and less informed people to get more ads revenue and thus profits. Corporate journalism - false information is the oldest of the strategies - plain and simple.

 

[stewox]

"Crytek doesn't think Nintendo's new console can handle it."

That's not what was said in the interview at all.

That non-quote makes it out like Crytek dislikes or has low expectations of Wii U in general, which flies in the face of earlier quotes from Crytek which I believe went as far as to say that the preliminary Wii U devkits they were working with had "very good specs" and that they were "very happy with it" or something to that general effect.

Additionally, hasn't Crytek already confirmed Wii U support anyway?

The way the story was written here seems to make a hell of a lot of assumptions that aren't featured in the actual interview, some of which to the best of my knowledge are objectively incorrect, or are based on conjecture that's not congruent with what most named, sourced developers who have spoken out about Wii U have said about its capabilities.

Yeah, I have to agree with this. What is up with these kind of articles?
Sure, Wii U specs are rumours right now, and overall it might seem below expectations, but it seems fairly obvious that it will at least be more powerful than the 360 and PS3.

How then, is it plausible to find an article claiming:

1. The Wii U is not powerful enough to run Crysis 3
2. Crysis 3 will be released on Xbox 360 and PS3

One of these two statements is almost certainly false.

It's not obvious that the Wii U will be more powerful though (well it would seem obvious, but this is Nintendo and they don't always do obvious ), people have been talking about on par so far and remember it's hard to squeeze full power out of a console for the first couple of years of development.

It's hard to find anything solid but we have this one
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/116517-Darksiders-Dev-Wii-U-is-on-Par-With-Current-Gen
this one
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-04-05-nintendo-responds-to-wii-u-power-reports
and this one
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-04-03-wii-u-not-as-capable-as-ps3-xbox-360-report

all suggesting that the Wii U is on par so much with the 360 and PS3 or even slightly inferior. The one from Nintendo seems to be all but confirmation. They say numbers aren't important but if they had the numbers they wouldn't be risking all this negative PR

It's a bit worrying, my first thought was that it'd keep down the price, but the controller system is already making the price high. I guess Nintendo are committing to the idea that power convinces developers to spend too much time and resources on games

The media took the all the negative (and fake/old kits/april fool/BS) points ... basically if you all depend on the media - you have no idea about wiiu. WiiU might even get renamed - they can't secure the brand name trademark because of an ongoing lawsuit.