An analysis of what Microsoft and Sony's new consoles will mean for the Wii U

In all it’s fair to say that Nintendo had its finger on the pulse of what would matter this generation when they designed Wii U, and it absolutely has the potential to compete directly with the two upcoming consoles in many respects. It would appear that Nintendo has failed to live up to that potential somewhat in the early days, but then Nintendo doesn’t exactly colour inside the lines very often, and their social-friendly infrastructure and indie-ready online service is liable to kick off at any time. The most important thing to note here is that Nintendo does not intend to compete with the other two console directly as they compete with each other, however have the ability to successful ensured they appeal to some customers who might only want one console.

[jc48573]

There aren't that many games that wow me. I need a little bit more and maybe wii u can fill me in, especially some jRPGs.

[LackTrue4K]

i have no doute that Nintendo can support its own system, problem is....there has to be 3rd party support!!

http://24.media.tumblr.com/...

(i added the video as fact of what would happen)

[Qrphe]

Nintendo will always bring Nintendo games to each platform and although they will move hardware sales they will not allow them to move significant amounts (refer to 5th and 6th generations).

The Wii U NEEDS 3rd party support.

[BattleAxe]

"An analysis of what Microsoft and Sony's new consoles will mean for the Wii U"

Certain Death...

[stragomccloud]

Kinda' like how Sony's and Microsoft's last consoles meant "certain death" last generation?

I mean they sold 100 million consoles, and 150 million handhelds, and on the software side Mario Kart Wii sold 33 million copies, New Super Mario Bros. Wii sold 26 million, Pokemon diamond sold 18 million. These are not small numbers.

In fact if you look at the numbers for best selling games of all time, The top 25 are all Nintendo titles except for 2 Grand Theft Auto games and Microsoft's Kinect Adventures.

Needless to say, between both consoles and handhelds, Nintendo is a force that can't be stopped. No matter how dismissive "gamers"(In quotations because actual gamers don't hate) have become.

Game on.

[xursz]

^ not that I disagree but you mention the Wii's sales but the truth is everyone was fascinated with it and it took off. Wiiu is sort of not as fascinating and most gamers right now are waiting on Sony's and MS next gen systems.

I do think that when the Wiiu gets a nice price drop that it should be competitive at that point.

[skyrimer]

*Looks at Wii U sales below Vita sales in Japan*

*Raises eyebrow*

[MultiConsoleGamer]

Absolutely nothing.

[HammadTheBeast]

They will mean something... sales-wise maybe?

[kingmushroom]

DOOM!....JK ...i don't know.

[NastyLeftHook0]

ill buy a wii u for 75 dollars and there games for 80.

[stragomccloud]

I think you've been sniffin' the fanboy glue a little too much.

You're loss though. Can't be helped though as more and more "gamers" are more concerned with trash talking, humiliating others, and being very nearly abusive towards all things Nintendo. Good on you! You're part of the problem with gaming!

Remember boys and girls! Gaming isn't about gaming. It's about saying everything you can to demean the company in the other camp, as well as the gamers who play those consoles! It's a fact! /s ←For those who don't know, "/s" denotes sarcasm.

[kirbyu]

Do we even know for sure M-soft is making a new console? Has there been any confirmation?

[Kevlar009]

We don't know what MS is doing with the Xbox, but from the looks of it each will be going a different route with their systems.

Sony wants the core gamer, all the people MS and Nintendo left behind. Delivering with the best and diverse selection of games.
Nintendo wants a mix of casual and core gamers, interesting gameplay through the gamepad, the Nintendo franchises you know and love, and some other family/online social features
MS will want gamers and people who want to have diverse multimedia capabilities with games on the side.

Each is vying for a different audience unlike every other generation were each were vying for the same audience.

[delboy]

In order words you're saying MS and N are dumb and Sony is smart, for targeting the core audience?
I don't think so.
Vita is a core gamer device, if the core market was so big and important, why is Vita still on the shelves and not in my hands?
You just have to appeal to wider audience, and ps4 has nothing to intrigue the casual gamer.
No ilumiroom, no second screen wihout buying a Vita, no real gimmick or some innovation to draw the attention of a non hardcore gamer.

So good luck Sony, with you're core gamer oriented Vita and ps4.

[just-joe]

To be honest, PS4's tech is so advance than that of the Wii it's almost like they're not competing. I think if anything once the Wii U gets some good games, it'll be a secondary system to PS4 or 720, another system to play other games on.

[herbs]

On paper PS4 is roughly 3.5X as powerful as Wii U, this was basically the same difference between PS2 and the original Xbox, except now the fidelity of graphics is on a much higher level so the perceived difference will infact be even smaller (logic). Also Nintendo consoles are consistently known for pushing beyond there on paper specs while the opposite has always been true for Sony consoles (fact). Im not saying the Wii U is magically as powerful as the PS4 but they are in the same ballpark. Disagree as much as you fanboys like it doesn't matter (truth) it all comes down to the games not theoretical numbers.

[kratos17]

I think people are too harsh on the wii u. Nintendo always releases a budget console with creatively traditional gameplay.

Their exclusive games may not have changed all that much in the last couple decades but there presence today proves the fans still love those experiences.

[Link079]

It's not a budget console its a memory intensive design in other words eDRAM is very expensive and makes wiiu very powerful,everyone seems to forget about the 40MB eDRAM on the MCM on wiiu it basically runs rings around the 720 reportedly poor 100GB Bandwidth RAM,to ps4's 174GB,WiiU has well over 200GB of Bandwidth RAM on that gpgpu and that's just 70% that we know of.

The wiiu with its specs indicate the WiiU is selling at a loss.

Heres the cpu on wiiu.

a tricore 4 stage pipeline risc cpu with 4/5 instructions per clock a high bandwidth edram catch 4 x data compression graphics data custom burst pipes to gpu custom regesters and instructions at 45 nm MCM with high speed connectors not standard buses IS CUTTING EDGE TECH NOT TWENTY YEARS OLD!!!!
broadway @729mhz would beat a intel ATOM @1.6mhz with shere ease it will litterally leave it for dead expresso per core easily destroys each jaguar core expected in the other systems there badically AMDs version of ATOM skightly better same catch same pipe stages same VERY BASIC x86 core just some added basic out of order thats it..
wiiu cpu has ibm edram as level 2 catch IS CUTTING EDGE TECH its the future of IBM cores and wiiu LEADS THE WAY its top secret tech its stuff nintendo and ibm seem to want to protect

Heres the gpgpu specs that matter.

32mb 140gb plus,, ,3mb edram say 512bit bus 35gb plus,,,sram could be anything 20 to 50 gb whatever theres easily 200gb of fast ram on that custom gpu ,it wouldnt be there DOING NOTHING expensive ram is used to push POWERFUL PROCESSORS VERY HARD

[nosferatuzodd]

Link079
youre more delusional than i ever thought possible none of what you've said make any sense

[MasterCornholio]

You know that this guy just copies and pasts the same comment over and over and over and over again.

Its starting to get very irritating and he really should stop bragging about the stupid Wii Us eDram and SRAM.

I have never seen a Nintendo fanboy so defensive of hardware in my life. Go play your Wii U and leave use alone.

[Yodagamer]

Same people make feel a shamed of being a Sony/Nintendo fan, you sir are one of them. I'll openly admit the Wii u simply isn't gonna be on the same level, the games will look great, but that's not why I buy Nintendo platforms.

[NobodyImportant]

@kratos17

Are you quite new to gaming? Nintendo doesn't always release a budget console. It's only done it the last two gens with the Wii and Wii U.
The SNES and N64 were the most powerful of their generation. The Gamecube out performed the PS2 with better graphics. Only when the XBox came late to the party did the cube get out performed.

[spoonard]

When Iwata saw the PlayStation 4 conference he likely shit himself, and Reggie quickly filled out a Sony job application! LoL

[Kos-Mos]

Drugs are bad for you. BAD

[Link079]

Nintendo have said time and time again it's a memory intensive design.

Look it up IBM eDRAM its the future of cpu cores and wiiu has it,Moonlith soft said no problems with wiiu cpu ? now if it was a weak tri-core cpu it wouldnt get a game like X up and running would it ?

I'm not banging on about it,its true what i say eDRAM as cache on a cpu makes it beast look it up,and eDRAM on the gpgpu makes it beast FINAL,plus its a modified E6760 which in benchmarks smashes the ps4 gpu to pieces anyway.

[kingPoS]

@onyoursistersback

I must of watched that gif for a least two minutes. lol

[Munnkyman]

My prediction is that this e3 is going to be insane(in a good way)

[ziggurcat]

well, it sort of means that the wii U becomes irrelevant. they'll still have great first party titles, but i see most 3rd party devs jumping ship to the next xbox/PS4 once those systems have hit the market - and i hate to say - then the wii U will likely end up being nothing more than a conduit for shovelware once that happens.

[Kingthrash360]

The wiiu will live. The gamecube did...going up against ps2 xbox...name five 3rd party juggernauts for the game cube....go ahead and google it. While ps2 had a plethora of games it didnt doom the cube. History shows itb will survive.

[NobodyImportant]

The cube was a decent machine though. It ran the best version of Resident Evil 4 with the best graphics and effects.

[Kingthrash360]

Also had my favorite mgs remake.....that why I said name 5. I wasnt trolling the cube I was just showing that it survived.

[ToaLugia]

I think people are too concentrated on power and rumors and people are getting scared and excited. Fact of the matter is, the Wii U is an incredibly unique system. It hasn't been doing all that well because it has a bad case of 3DS syndrome (no (good) launch titles). But we all know the system will get it's Mario 3D platformer, Zelda, MarioKart, etc. And those games will get the system selling. And let's face it, the new Smash Bros. will get the system selling like crack, that's the inevitable truth. What I'm saying is Wii U is not the end of Nintendo, however, whether or not it can match or outsell the competition is an entirely different story on it's own. (Maybe it could do the best, if it had a decent online infrastructure and system customizability. HINT HINT. It has a few months and if Nintendo did that it could get decent sales)

[skyrimer]

If wii u biggest problem is that it doesn't appear to be good value right now, I can't think how that problem is going to improve when next gen consoles arrive and make wii u games look prehistoric.

[GABRIEL1030]

Lower the price of WiiU to 249 and release AAA game like Zelda and Nintendo will have good sales. The problem it's bad tablet controller: It's innecesary ( why do you have a screen in your hands when do you have a 40" TV?) , very expensive to produce, the touch technology is old and don't have all the functions that Nintendo promises in the beggining. Nintendo makes too a mistake calling this new machine Wii U, some people think that's new machine is the same Wii, but with a tablet...o wait It's.