Unreal Engine 4 not designed to work on Wii U [Update]

Update: Rein spoke with Engadget and clarified his comment from the presentation, noting that it's totally possible to run Unreal Engine 4 games on Wii U. "You heard the stupid gaffe yesterday about the Wii U," he said. "If someone wants to take Unreal Engine 4 and ship a game on Wii U, they can! If they wanna ship an Unreal Engine 4 game on Xbox 360, they could make it happen."

[profgerbik]

Well this just about confirms why I wasn't impressed with the UE4 demos period. There was just something about it that really didn't scream next generation to me, sure it is a slight step up from UE3 but I personally didn't feel it deserved the title UE4.

This seriously has nothing to do with Wii U before some of you jump to conclusions and possibly think I am saying this because he said it can run on the Wii U. I knew it could just based on seeing it in action.

Just saying I wasn't impressed by the PC demo or the PS4 demo and to know it would be able to run on the Xbox 360 is all the more less impressive.

I love UE but seeing these demo's the first thought that seriously came to mind is they are actually behind for once in terms of a graphics engine. So many other engines being shown off lately seem far more impressive to me honestly.

More on the subject of what Rein said, why would he straight up say it couldn't run on the Wii U for the most part but now all the sudden has changed his mind? That I don't get, he made it seem like it just wasn't efficient enough to run UE4 but now is even saying the 360 which is slightly weaker also can?

[NastyLeftHook0]

I WASN'T EITHER, IT LOOKED LIKE CRYSIS 2

[KwietStorm_BLM]

Did you see Infiltrator?

[Starfox-17]

Listen wait for Retro Studio's GameEngine that is built solely for WiiU and its unique memory intensive design ie huge eDram cache and massive bandwidth ram ect,dont forget the employed ex Naughty dog,Virgil,Crytek staff that are all helping with this Engine i think this Engine will make the biggest impression at E3 2013.

[ProjectVulcan]

UE3 was designed for the existing generation HD consoles, of which Wii U is quite closely matched to.

UE4 is really designed at the top end for next generation technology, like PC and PS4.

Both scale downwards to mobile.

However, so does windows 8. You can run windows 8 on a 10 year old machine designed for windows xp.

But you probably shouldn't...because you'll never get all the enhancements and it will be suboptimal.

In short, software is usually better when it is used on the hardware is was designed for...

[lilbroRx]

That is false. The strength of the Wii U is more or less directly halfway between the PS3 and PS4.

Its a technological generation ahead of the last gen consoles in every category. Its 1 generation behind the PS4 and some of the "presumed" Durango specs.

The increase in power is larger than what people want to give it credit for.

The Wii U's GPU is a little over twice as a capable as the ones in the last gen consoles and the baseline for what the GPU can do is this. http://www.youtube.com/watc...

[Baka-akaB]

Only one gen behind is still being behind . Dont misunderstand , i dont care much about that aspect , and the world could do imo without universal prefabricated engines such as UE4 imo (it would sucks for many devs and publishers , but would boster overall creativity) .

But the point still stands , it's a scalable engine , but they dont feel like downgrading themselves for older and one gen behind consoles . It's left up to each publisher

[ProjectVulcan]

I'll let you down gently, but absolutely best case scenario Wii u is twice as fast as PS3 and 360. It's GPU is certainly not more than this in terms of fill rates and it's CPU is no better than what is in said aging consoles. In reality it is maybe 1.5x current consoles.

If Durango has the touted 7670 like then it is at least a little more than twice as fast as Wii U and PS4's 7850 like performance is again at bare minimum 3 times as fast as Wii U. In reality and practice it will be more and I am conservative.

Using a dated tech demo is pointless as a baseline.

There isn't a single game on Wii U presently that offers truly a leap over what has been seen on PS3 and 360. Indeed if the technological gap were as large as you say we would at least see virtually every game with significant res or framerate upgrades despite being ports.

Indeed a dated PC with an 8800GTX in it can offer resolution and/or framerate enhancements over the current consoles that Wii u cannot and does not offer even with supposedly the console platform optimisation advantages so banged on about.

The best case we have seen is a few upgraded textures here and there and a bit better filtering possible mainly because the architecture lends itself to that anyway.

Wii U has the performance edge over the existing consoles but at this rate it'll hardly ever be exploited properly by anyone other than Nintendo because 3rd party devs aren't exactly pouring gazillions into their Wii u investments...

In the end this is the difference and where we will see Wii u fall even further behind the other next gen consoles. The 3rd party investment in technology on the other platforms will push them closer to their maximum potential.

[Starfox-17]

Even xbox and ps4 are closely matched to ps3 and 360 powerwise it means nothing wiiu is using a gpgpu design but with tons more cache memory which is very expensive ect and eDram which is very powerful and expensive and is built to push powerful hardware,wiiu cpu and gpgpu on benchmarks will do anything ps4 can do ???

[ProjectVulcan]

Wii U's GPU is not hugely faster than Xenos in 360, which is over 7 years old.

According to the various info gleaned it has 320 unified units, 16 TMUs and 8 ROPS @ 550mhz.

In short those specs would show it is SLOWER than a Radeon 4650, less than half the TMUs- it has only 25 percent better pixel and texel fillrates than Xenos. Although the architecture is better elsewhere, it is by itself at most 50 percent faster than Xenos in practice.

It is absolutely nowhere near something like a 7850.

These are totally backed up by the fact that none of the ports thus shown offer anything more than some modified textures and filtering at the same resolutions and frames.

If said ports where converted to PS4's hardware, it would easily end up doubling the resolution and framerates just like that, as a minimum...

[Starfox-17]

WiiU

Modified E6760 gpgpu dx11 ect.
2 GB RAM.
Multi-core cpu,1.24 ghz,512 bit,out of order execution,edram cache,ect.
25 GB single layer discs.
Well over 200GB of fast bandwidth ram.
32/64 MB edram.
Multi display support.
Fastest browser on any console or most pc's FACT.
Off TV play.
Multi tasking.

Well i would say its light years ahead of ps3 and 360 tech wise.

Remember ps3/360 have gpu's equivalent to HD3000 series or less ?

http://www.vg247.com/2012/1...

Read this it proves wiiu has no limitations end of and with little effort they got the data transfer speed 6x faster with out the use of additional cores ? which proves my point about powerful edram cache ect and how it makes for more power and zero bottlenecks.

[ProjectVulcan]

I can see you need to learn a bit more about technology.

A lot of what you said is meaningless and a bit stupid to be honest. 'Wii U has no limitations'

O RLY???

Comparing generations of graphics cards is also irrelevant. Just because a GPU is older, doesn't make it vastly slower....

Wii U isn't really much faster than Xbox 360 or PS3. Its main advantage is just that it has more RAM. Its GPU is not really more than 25 percent faster in terms of key fillrate stats over Xenos in 360.

'Light years' more advanced is a vast overstatement. If Microsoft were to build a machine like 360 now they would come up with what Wii U has.

It isn't designed to compete with the other next gen consoles on power, I guarantee it won't and it can't.

[N4g_null]

Great post pref. let me also say yes unreal 4 is an impressive engine from a lighting stand point. Every thing about it screams frostbite, crysis engine now. They all do very similar things now. So the problem is every developer has this power now. What the unreal engine is doing isn't exclusive to unreal4 any more. Some of it almost isn't exclusive to next gem anymore.

Direct x 11.1 and shader model4,5 are just way to easy to use now that even a small developer could make alot of these effects. Yet even epic knows if the hardware isn't already designed to literally turn on effects then you could write a software engine to just that. This is what was done on the ps3 and even on the Xbox 360 with its frame buffer tricks.

You have to understand mark did not make this engine he is not the programmer. Epics programmer has said some pretty terrible things about gpgpu computing due to cost. The wiiu is just that. The ps4 is a gpgpu system yet it is being helped out by the ram and a slightly better card, yet they will not try to push the gpgpu side until 1st party studios push it.

So with that said all engine going forward are going to look great including unity3d. So suddenly power will not be a selling point for engines it will be ease of use.

The problem with the wiiu is you will have to break the bank on optimization and creating code where silicon would have left off. Basically epic does not want to foot the bill for the conversation. I don't blame them actualy. Yet if they want a monopoly are more buyers of their engine they will need a bigger presents on the wiiu.

Imagine if they had the only engine that could port ps4 level graphics to the wiiu, well that is what unity3d is trying to make happen, they will be leveraging the html5, and java code sets in their engine on the wiiu I believe also.

On another note the gpus in these console are laughable compared to what is coming down the pipe for pc gaming. You have to also understand that epic like crytek are pc developer basically. They all sort of look down on all consoles tech wise.

Yet seriously the wiiu depends on what games Nintendo releases the 3rd parties are all doing horrible on the stock market right now. I mean squares president stepped down. Lots of devs and publish are about to be in trouble next gen unless they go back to their roots.

Console gaming is more about the games and the art rather than just the engine otherwise why would I have a wiiu, ps3 and a high end pc? They all are worth owning due to games.

[coolmast3r]

UE3's for current generation, UE4's for the next. Seems fair.

[pompombrum]

If UE4 can run on Wii U, it's hardly optimal for next gen.

@Cooguy1212

But Mark Rein said that it's possible to make Wii U games with UE4. I'm in complete agreement with you, the ps4 and nextbox specs should make the Wii U almost obselete hardware wise and if the UE4 engine can scale so far as to work with the Wii u, it's either extremely good or more than likely not the best it can be for next gen.

[M-M]

@aiBreeze, I know I'm probably going to get flamed for this, but if it can't run on the Wii U because of hardware limitations, then it makes complete sense and here's why. The Wii U is built like current generation consoles, the PS4 and Microsoft's next generation console's specs(based on rumors) blows any current gen specs and the Wii U's out of the water.

[DeadlyFire]

Frostbite 3, CryEngine 3, and so on work on PS3,X360. Should be able to get UE4 to work on WiiU just fine.

Yes there are hardware limits. It will not look the same. You just scale out different things in the engine for the WiiU to run it at a decent pace. Epic just doesn't want to do that. So they are leaving that up to the developer. Its not impossible, but its not practical if your gutting half of it to run something then UE 3.x would be a better choice.

Game engines are very scalable and get optimized greatly over time. Unreal Engine 3 for instance can work on cell phones, and web browsers now.

[jcnba28]

Yeah whatever helps you sleep at night.

[quantae06]

@DeadlyFire CryEngine 3 has already been confirmed to work on the Wii U. Crytek has already said CryEngine 3 runs beautifully on the Wii U. Look it up!

[jcnba28]

Exactly, Wii U is a next gen system. Might not be as powerful as the other two but it's still next gen.

[Donnieboi]

Lol ok whatever u gotta keep telling yourself.

[mcstorm]

Jcnba22 it is next gen no matter what people say or how powerful other consoles are as its nintendos next generation console.

Donnieboi how old are you because it sounds like your 1st console was a ps3. Look back in history and you will see there has always been a console on the market with less power than the other. For example look at the psx and N64. Your telling me that because the N64 had more power than the psx that there were not the same games running on both consoles?

Power dose not matter that much when it comes to consoles. As long as the power is more than the last console that was out that's all that matters and you will get games on all 3 consoles one will look better than another but console gamers don't care about this as long as they get the games they want.

If you really want are bothered about how games look your in the wrong group for gaming you need to buy a high end pc as this will always look better than the consoles.

If you don't believe me about console games don't care about graphics the same way pc gamers do look at the top 10 selling games on each of the consoles from each gen.

[DivineAssault]

Duh! Its a nx gen engine.. He actually laughed when asked about it.. That right there should ring a bell to people who think nintendos support will be any better than before.. UE4 is designed to be scaled down to even mobile devices so its possible but devs & pubs dont want to touch the thing.. U cant blame anyone for that except the fans for not buying enough 3rd party games.. A little blame on nintendo for using proprietary hardware when they know the whole "CELL" sony used ended up biting them in the a$$

[INMATEofARKHAM]

Translation: "Wait. What do you mean I may have cost us money?"

* Runs out and makes above statement *

[Jadedz]

Once the system is used to its full potential; gamers will see the ''games'' instead of ''specs.''

[PR_FROM_OHIO]

Is it me or that UE4 demo wasn't nothing special?? meh

[krazykombatant]

another day another doom and gloom post about the WiiU on N4G

[Realplaya]

When I saw the report I had to laugh. I honestly feel for Nintendo because they are going to always be the butt of a joke.
But lets take a step back for a moment and look at things from a different perspective. The reason why the UE4 will be used on the WIIU it all comes down to sales. With developers reporting losses at a alarming rate it will be hard for them not to try to port a game to the WIIU system Case and point square says that they didn't hit there goal with laura crofts newest adventure. Had they released that game on the WIIU they would have sold maybe 2 million plus more copies. So look who isn't laughing now.

Now lets look at how Nintendos top games sale without any special graphics engine.
1. New Super Mario Bros. Ds 29.9 million, 2.Mario Kart DS- 22.57 Million,3. Pokemon B and W- 14.71 million
4. Mario Kart Wii- 32.44 million, 5. New Super Mario Bros Wii- 26.6 million, Wii Sports Resort 30.14.

Those Numbers point out the fact that you don't need a fancy engine to sell games on a Nintendo system you just really need great quality and fun games. Also a key thing to remember is if you go into store you rarely see Nintendo games on sale hell New Super Mario bros Wii is still $49.99 at Walmart. So selling number at that price is why Nintendo isn't reacting to all these bashing's there taking. Remember not a fan boy rant to defend a company but some developers are going to making games using technology and resources they have no business using. I hope companies use the KISS motto keep it simple well you know the reset.

[Rainstorm81]

Or have a game with Mario or Pokemon in it.......Zelda doesn't put up these numbers and its my preferred Nintendo franchise

[Baka-akaB]

" Had they released that game on the WIIU they would have sold maybe 2 million plus more copies."

You are way too optimistic , it wouldnt sell quarter of a million and might not have offset the cost of porting it PLUS adding requested exclusive features . The public for the new tomb raider isnt on Wii U , at least not yet . Tomb raider sold extremely well on ps3/360 , SE's expectations were way too high that's all .

[ceballos77mx]

Good sales but I don't see any 3rd party title on that list, and that is what's hurting them now.

[Realplaya]

@ Baka-akaB that's like saying that it will only sell to hardcore on Sony and Microsoft consoles. Guess what it didn't sell well Should they have set there numbers on selling 100,000 units? You heard it directly from the horses mouth. Spin it whichever way you want to make yourself sleep better at night as far as what they spent money they borrowed investors they have to pay overhead and under head they need to get back that's why they needed to sell more.

@ cebalos77mx You have a good point but the list wasn't meant to show how games sales but to illustrate that Nintendo has never needed high powered engines to sale games but more or less to show that time plus effort plus simplicity is what sales games.

Also if Nintendo is so open to working with third parties to produce a masterpiece why are third parties not willing to work with them. Case and point the original developers of starfox.

[Baka-akaB]

That's not what i said .

For starters let's stop pretending consoles demographics arent tied to the type of game . Those things change but the wii u , based on this and current install base , for now , isnt where most gamer will purchase and play some titles .

Or should we pretend the bulk of tekken gamers would be on wii u too ?

Hell the ps4 and 720 will also struggle with that at first

". Guess what it didn't sell well Should they have set there numbers on selling 100,000 units? You heard it directly from the horses mouth. way you want to make yourself sleep better"

Sounds more like a thing for a bitter guy like you .

The game sold well and fast , everyone agrees on that . It's a fact and it even broke a record for the franchise with a million in 48h .

My point still stand , but by all mean keep dreaming that with the current , even if expanding , user base , Tomb Raider would be a success on wii u and selling millions .

[Realplaya]

Bitter?
Unlike you I don't work for a games company, Don't have a tattoo of a console manufacturer on my body and I don't have a companies blood running through my veins. I was merely stating that had it been released on 3 systems instead of 2 it would have moved more units.

You seem to forget that Wii U owners were looking for good games to buy. Sorry old ports that don't perform better yet not the same as older versions don't inspire people to spend there hard earned money.
I myself am a buyer who looks for a great deal and will only spend $60.00 plus dollars on a piece of quality software.

Now since you work in the industry and you have the right to tell square there wrong lets look at the low sales expectations from the actual companies standpoint.

Tomb Raider has sold 3.4 million units in the last four weeks, which is still a failure in the eyes of Square-Enix’s financial report. The company published a grim revision of its expected financials this morning, citing the poor performance of several titles as a key contributor.

I recommend that you check out our first report on Square’s financial revision here, and our report on Square president Yoichi Wada’s resignation as a result. It’ll put the below into context.

Another part of the Square financial report has now surfaced, breaking down sales figures for each of its key releases for across the current financial year. Here’s an excerpt of one presentation slide:

All three games have failed to hit their sales targets so far.

The report continued, “Despite the high critical acclaim, [the games] failed to meet each target. In particular North America sales force as ineffective, ending up with two-thirds of number of units sold in Europe.

“Moreover, price pressure was strong, which forced spending additional channel costs such as price protection.”

Here's another report
3.4 million copies of Tomb Raider have been sold in four weeks, publisher Square Enix has revealed, which is not enough to hit the game's sales target.

Fellow Square Enix title Hitman Absolution sold 3.6 million units since its launch in November last year, while Sleeping Dogs sold 1.75 million since last August.

There's no mention of what the company's internal sales expectations were for the trio, just that all three missed their respective marks.

Square Enix expected 14.9 million retail game sales from North America and Europe combined in its six-monthly forecast last September. Considering the fact that Tomb Raider, Hitman Absolution and Sleeping Dogs were the only big releases for these regions and accounted for a combined 8.75 million sales worldwide, it's clear that their targets were a good deal higher.

Today's numbers, published in Square Enix's latest financial report, do not count digital sales.

The figures are predicted totals for the current financial year. With five more days to go, they're unlikely to change very much unless you personally go out and buy 500,000 copies of Tomb Raider right now.

So why you read forums and make your defense I look at company projections and there fiscals. Step your game up and approach my opinion from a neutral perspective don't come back one from a one sided stance.

[Baka-akaB]

"Bitter?
Unlike you I don't work for a games company, Don't have a tattoo of a console manufacturer on my body and I don't have a companies blood running through my veins. "

Definitively bitter indeed , given your aggressive behavior ...

"You seem to forget that Wii U owners were looking for good games to buy."

I should know , i actually got one with only Ac3 and tekken . Do you as well ? I just know it wont be my main console for the foreseable future and have a set of awaited games (Xenoblades 2 , bayonetta and the usual mario kart , smash bros and metroid )

"Sorry old ports that don't perform better yet not the same as older versions don't inspire people to spend there hard earned money. "

See there is your agressive BS again . When did i say it should ? You decided i'm anti wii U and thus keep spreading it and laying it thick .

" I was merely stating that had it been released on 3 systems instead of 2 it would have moved more units. "

And i was merely addressing your argument that it would shift additional millions thanks to the Wii U . Again mostly unlikely .

As for the rest i give up you win the internet ... go square off with some 1 bubbles troll , instead of a guy that was actually posting the better launch and early hardare sales (compared to the ps3 and 360 their first 6 months , in a recession free period)

[Ck1x]

Judging by the comments and all I'm actually wondering how many people read the article before posting... "Because most of you were here in the previous UE4 post laughing your asses off that the WiiU can't run the engine and now many of you don't have much to say on how Mark Rein put his entire foot in his mouth for making that statement." We were already saying that UE4 could run on WiiU if developers wanted it to, its just not going to be maxed out on said console. Here's a newsflash for people though, it won't be maxed out on the PS4&720 either though so what's the point of that argument really! Mark Rein is just a lonely man in life with no real friends at all, so he takes his stale moldy bread to the park and sits and talks to the pigeons all day. You guys that ran with the bait believing that this UE4 comment was true, equal these dumb pigeons in this regards for sitting and eating stale moldy bread. When you could have taken yourselves to the dumpster like crows and gotten yourself a real meal! Lol (aka Trolls=bottom feeders) :-)

[Realplaya]

Agreed I hope that every company does well. The world needs the 3 companies to do well.

[ironmonkey]

best way wii u can show its power is zelda. if it fails to show amazing then yes nintendo is done.

[jacksheen0000]

The reason why the wii U is not getting the supports its needs from most DEV is because working on a weak gaming console as such as the Wii U is too risky.

Mind you, this is a race/competition between all DEVs, they have to make sure they work with cutting edge tech/tools to stay on top gaming industry or else they will fall behind.

Working on the Wii U hardware would mean that most Devs would have to divide their teams in to two groups(one group work on wii U, the other group work on PS4/720) which would not only slow them down but would give other DEv the chance to surpass. them.

[lovegames718]

Starfox 17 aka wiiualpha lol

Stfu already with the Retro studios bs blah blah blah no one cares about a game coming out in like 2014 lol Spitting out computer jargo as if you knew what you were talking about and as if Wiiu was this techinical beast lol Whatever Naughty Dog, Santa Monica, GG show during E3 will shit all over whatever your expecting to see from Wiiu during E3 lol and keep waiting for that awesome Zelda wiiu engine used in Zelda tech demo.... lol ohhhhhhhhh it isnt coming because wiiu cant handle a game like that instead Nintendo is making Zelda of course another cartoony Zelda game lol hahahahahahahaha something that wont show Wiius tech. weakness lol hahahaha

http://wiiudaily.com/2012/0...

Wiiu is weaker than ps4 by alot and only a slight percentage stronger than ps3/xbox and thats not even true of the cpu that is weaker than current gen systems lol Only gpu is stronger and of course it has that whopping extra ram lol Thats why these engines wont be on it and that is why its like deja vu all over again with the games that will be passing wiiu and coming to ps4