Rumor: Wii U CPU Twice as Beefy As Xbox 360

[Kahani]

Twice as powerful as a system that came out in 2005? Color me completely unimpressed.

Indeed. Although I guess "Twice as powerful as an obsolete doorstop" or "Almost as powerful as a new fridge" don't sound quite as good from a PR point of view.

But Microsoft have already released details that the new Xbox will be <a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/115471-Rumor-360-Successors-GPU-and-Release-Date-Detailed>six times as powerful as the current 360

But again, six times as powerful as a system released 7 years ago, probably 8 or 9 years by the time the new one is actually on sale. That still amounts to saying basically "Not quite as bad as the competition", rather than actually saying anything good about their own system.

 

[FamoFunk]

Lets just wait and see what happens. I hate rumours, they're never true.

 

[bomblord]

It's really simple actually. This was stated over a year ago, the old dev kits were under clocked and didn't have finalized hardware. Now that the system's final dev kit is out the system is 5x as powerful as the ps360 and 2.5x as powerful as the old dev kit.

 

[SuperTrainStationH]

Why are people pissed and disgusted that Wii U's CPU is "only" twice as powerful as the 360 on the basis their own assertion that "Thats BS the Wii U's graphics are gonna suck it should be 10 times as powerful or more!".

I somehow imagine if this same figure came out for Microsoft, that the Xbox 720's CPU could be said to be twice as powerful as the 360's, that that would just be proof of how amazingly powerful Microsoft's system is going to be.


The fact is, the evidence right now is generally pointing to the Wii U and Xbox 720 being MUCH more comparable in horsepower than most people would have dared imagine back during E3 2011 when Wii U was announced and everyone was calling it a stopgap system, even though developers even back then were saying that Wii U was more capable than a lot of people were willing to consider possible.

The assertion that Microsoft's 8th gen console would completely outclass the Wii U in terms of graphics yield in the same way that the Xbox 360 did to the deliberately low performance Wii to me stems from an anti Nintendo bias coming from the same sort of people who demand Nintendo to stop being conservative and "do something new for a change", and then accusing anything new they come up with of being a "worthless gimmick" that proves that Nintendo's games and systems aren't worth playing.

I know it may be hard for some of the younger gamers out there who grew up in the N64 and Gamecube days were it was actually popular and fashionable to hate games and systems just because they're Nintendo's, and hard to imagine a world where Nintendo might have a post-Gamecube system that actually has comparable visuals to the competition, but based on the picture a lot of these horsepower rumors are painting, in addition to comments from third party developers, that may be more likely to be the case than a lot of people realize.

 

[ReinWeisserRitter]

Oh, fear not, all, the developers themselves are going to make enough empty promises for everyone. We won't need rumors.

With that said, it'd behoove Nintendo to continue to do things their way, but also adopt a very important intent: giving people what they want. The Wii may have been successful with soccer moms, fine, but they could have bagged so much more if they spent less time making things unintuitive and irritating for everyone else, and yes, also competitive in terms of hardware capability with the other guys. Then you can make a legitimate case that the game developers should come to you, because you offer what the other companies do, but also offer something wholly your own, a chance to deliver on all fronts.

Not that my opinion is going to change a thing, but hey, you're in this to make money anyway, aren't you Nintendo?

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

Is this like when they said N64 was twice as powerful as the PS, but it turned out to be just adding the two separate chips together?

 

[SuperTrainStationH]

Is this like when they said N64 was twice as powerful as the PS, but it turned out to be just adding the two separate chips together?

In terms of pure graphical grunt, the N64 was twice as the PS. The Playstaion was a 32-bit console. The N64 was a 64-bit console (hence the name). In terms of poly count and pixels, the N64 shat all over the PS...

... The fact that the PS used CDs over cartridges meant games were able to store a lot more raw data than N64 games, allowing for games like Final Fantasy 7. And the N64's lack of ability to render proper textures meant that a lot of PS games had more detail painted on (and therefore in many ways looked better), despite the fact that the N64 was pumping out higher fidelity but-somewhat-blandly-coloured visuals.

That only proves the point that ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY &#8800; SUPERIOR HORSEPOWER when it comes to video game consoles.

Having technology better suited to the intended experience rather than leaning on horsepower bragging rights is EXACTLY why the PlayStation ended up with a better, more varied game selection and better marketshare than Nintendo 64.

And I say that having owned BOTH PlayStation and Nintendo 64 back then.


With that in mind, it really strikes me as baffling how it's always been somewhat fashionable to paint Nintendo consoles in a negative light as having vastly inferior graphics and horsepower to the contemporary competition.

The Super NES, the Nintendo 64, and GameCube all suffered this sort of trash talk in spite of their visuals and horsepower having been comparable or in some cases objectively superior to other systems of their respective generations, and has ONLY come bear with Wii, which was DELIBERATELY designed to be a low cost, low performance platform.

It sometimes seems to me as though if any system other than Nintendo's isn't the top dog in terms of horsepower, its okay because its the game selection that matters and not having the best graphics, but when it's NINTENDO that has the potentially lowest horsepower, than it's just something to kick them to the gutter for and proof that they are irrelevant to "real" gamers.


I really don't see how any gamer who chose PlayStation 2 over graphically superior Xbox, or Xbox 360 over the graphically superior PlayStation 3, has any right to judge Wii U as a poor or unimpressive system based purely on the fact that it won't be the most powerful console available when other systems are EVENTUALLY released, especially when we have yet to even see a proper demonstration of the console and its games yet and won't until E3 2012.

Its perfectly okay to be excited, or skeptical over a radical new system we know very little about and has next to nothing shown for it, but this spec sheet snobbery over visual improvements that are likely going to be less significant than an any previous situation.

 

[SuperTrainStationH]

SNIP

Please don't misunderstand me. I wasn't trying to bash one console or paint another as being superior. I was simply trying to explain a little just how the N64 compared technologically to the PS. I actually owned a PS myself back in the day, so I'm well aware that in terms of game libraries, Sony shat all over Nintendo.

And regarding your other points, I totally agree. When three consecutive generations of console have been dominated by the least powerful console available to consumers, then it's time to stop acting as if being underpowered compared to your competitors is in any way a sure sign of defeat.

No, I wasn't disputing you, I was agreeing in full with you, you got it head on.