The Wii U Won't Be Getting Unreal Engine 4

This week at the Game Developers Conference, Epic Games took their usual opportunity to show off the latest developments in their whiz-bang Unreal graphics technology. In addition to the shooty/demonic demos in futuristic/fantasy settings, one of the most touted features of the engine was that it can scale from next-gen consoles like the PlayStation 4 all the way to mobile devices and even web browsers. Which raises the question: If the Unreal Engine 4 is so scalable, can it run on Nintendo's still-new Wii U?

[iGAM3R-VIII]

Well that's a bomber. The Wii U has definetly been the down grader and Nintendo have to do something to step the system up, but people should of seen this coming, spec wise I do not think that the Wii U could even handle the engine

[gamefiles]

Epic doesn't intend to bring the engine to Wii U, but that "if a customer decides they want to port an Unreal Engine 4 game to Wii U, they could." lol

[iGAM3R-VIII]

porting an engine so a system isn't a smart thing, you could potentially damage or brick your system

[Godmars290]

Broken logic is broken...

[WrAiTh Sp3cTr3]

Lol, I'm sure Wii U can run this...

http://www.gamespot.com/eve...

[gaffyh]

It seems like what they mean is that you can port a UE4 game to the Wii U, but it will run on UE3 and may or may not be able to do everything that the game originally could do.

Still, the fact that EA also said Frostbite 3 won't work on it is almost showing how much confidence these guys have in the system, which is to say, almost none.

[SilentNegotiator]

So basically, they can just do all of the advanced programming themselves....and still have to pay for their licensing.

.....uuuhhhhh, better just use a different engine, methinks, if you're going to tackle the risky task of third party development on a Nintendo console. Even UE3.

[Muffins1223]

unrealengine 3?Yea!Unreal engine 4?Hell no lol

[nthstew]

Wii u may be the next gen leap for Nintendo but
when it comes to hardware its a junk. Its ram and cpu are even slower than the current gen consoles so, just stop thinking of this piece of shit and support the developer for exploiting the real capabilities of ps4,next Xbox & pc...
fan boys just deal with the fact that Nintendo betrayed u with Wii u..

[showtimefolks]

So since many of us had been saying wiiu isn't next gen now even publishers and developers are saying it

Nintendo made a huge mistake, they are in the middle of this gen and next gen so they have a tough task to get 3rd party support. Wiiu should have happened in 2010 and should have been called wiiHD because this wiiu message is very confusing most casuals don't even know its its next system or just another upgrade over wii

Wii2 or wiiHD could have been better

Also I will say it again the money and R&D that went into the gamepad should have been used to improve the actual specs, rumors are MS has delayed their announcements because Sony has put so much pressure on MS to match Sony specs wise

Best of uck next time around Nintendo but its not gonna be pretty next 3-5 years for Nintendo

[bayport]

I feel like the Wii U's issue isn't its horse power. Can't recall Nintendo being a hardware front runner in a while.

I feel like it's more so the lack of awesome Nintendo exclusives at release. And the game pad doesn't have the same innovative feel that the motion controller focused Wii did of it's time.

[Persistantthug]

When does the Wii U get some good news for a change?

[Starfox-17]

No it will get a more powerful Engine called Retro studio's WiiU GameEngine and at E3 this will squash UE4 END OF epic have seen it and know its coming that's why were getting this insecurity from them.

[gamefiles]

lol like they dont know what they are doing

[NYC_Gamer]

Wii-U can't run UE4 because it's on par with PS3 and 360 hardware wise

[7uff1]

It's quite more powerful, that is a fact.

@linkofrs
Of course they're porting last gen games to the Wii U, what else would they port? They're just trying to reach more people.

[HammadTheBeast]

Next Gen games, like BF4, That will reach way more people.

[Dgander]

Yup because 7 year old hardware with 7 year old shaders and features is on par with 2 year old hardware with shader 5.0 features. Trolling and fanboyism at its greatest here. PS3 and Xbox360 GPU has 256 VRAM while Wii U GPU has 1GB VRAM with up to date shaders. This website is infested with diehard Sony fanboys and trolls its sad.

[hollabox]

Relax Dgander, why should developers waste their time porting to inferior hardware when they know their games is not going to sell? Just admit it, Nintendo made an mistake developing a new system to compete with last gen products. Wii U has more ram but slower, faster GPU but slower CPU, blu ray drive but can't play movies, the whole system doesn't make sense. If there is any confusion regarding specs blame Nintendo for not letting the public know what's under the Wii U hood.

Wii U hardware sales are decent,but its the third party software sales publishers are upset with. Here's a link to VGAchartz http://www.vgchartz.com/pla...
Most Wii U games struggle to hit 100,000 units sold with only two crossing the million sold mark. So far if your not Nintendo there's no money to made on this platform, the same thing happened to the Wii.

[hollabox]

1 disagree already? Just stating facts, look at the software sales for third party developers so far. If Nintendo has sold 3.5-4.2 million units or whatever, the highest selling third party game is Zombie U! This title only sold 380,000 units or so, most third party don't even hit 100,000 units sold. No matter how you slice, you can't make money off 100,000 units sold or less for average budget games. Wii U so far is not good business for third party developers much like the Wii.

And yes Nintendo needs to release their full hardware specs. Not releasing your hardware specs only shows you have something to hide, I don't buy products from companies who don't give out details of their products, makes them look shady.

[Tito08]

Devs are the ones that are saying the Wii U can't run their new tech, not PS fanboys. As it's implied, you're a Nintendo fanboy. Sorry, but you guys are not devs nor experts, neither of us. Nobody is denying the Wii U is more powerful than both PS3 & 360, but the fact is, it's not by much. Just like last gen, Gamecube was more powerful than PS2, but wasn't by much as well, Wii U is more powerful, but for the most part it's on par with current Gen.

If you want to blame anyone for not running newer tech, it's Nintendo to blame for going current gen 7 years late. But fanboys like you let Nintendo get away with anything & play it safe. The audience demographics & fanboys are what's wrong with Nintendo. And it's totally evident, if PS3/360 can't run next gen tech, obviously Wii U won't either, accept the reality partner.

[Nilemonitors13]

Don't worry man, Wii u will be fine just like the dinosa...jk. On a serious note, if wii u gets a pokemon open world game it will sell crazy as fu**, I know i would buy one, gonna buy one anyways(after Ps muthaf***in' 4 btw sorry bout the lame joke, but nintendo foos wouln't shut up about the vita.

[Tito08]

@ Dgander- this is what you wrote to me on the PM before I decided to block you, you're like a buggy parasite trying to win an argument you already lost:

"If you hate the Wii U already i can tell you will hate the PS4 cause most of the features Sony showed off the Wii U can already do."

And don't deny you said that. I show this so everyone could see how insecure you are plus I never said I hate the Wii U, you just did trying twist words into my mouth, mostly everybody on N4G is telling you the same thing in regards to UE4 not on Wii U & you still don't get it? E3 is around the corner, wait til the Sony press conference & see what the PS4 can really do before you come with stupid conclusions, this shows how much of an insecure Nintendo Fanboy you are. I wouldn't be surprised if you PM me again with a different account or going to a different comment section. The more you try, the more Laughing Stock you become, insect, END OF DISCUSSION.

[SUKMELONGTIME]

Nope.... prepare to be schooled.

Wii U has the raw GPU visual horsepower of 350 Gflops

PS3 has 230 Gflops, 360 gets 240 Gflops.

Saying the PS3 and 360 are on par with Wii U, hardware wise, is like saying a VW Golf TDI (236 pound feet of torque) is on par with an Aston Martin V8 Vantage (346 pound feet of torque)

*U JUST GOT PWNED*

[hollabox]

Oh wow, it took Nintendo 7 years to make a GPU just 1/3 faster. Lets talk about the CPU, according to http://wiiudaily.com/wii-u-... max flops for the Wii Clock rates seem to only be about 33 GLOPS a second.

Compared to 77 GLOPS Xbox and 224 GFLOPS (X7 SPUs) PS3. Xbox360 twice as fast, PS3 about 7 times faster based on raw performance. This like comparing a Civic (Wii U) to an McLaren F1 (PS3) and BMW 335i (Xbox 360).

*Wii didn't just get PWNED*
*U Did*

[Nick_515]

Please, stop... Do you even know what that is compared to the PS4 and whatever the 720 will be? Compared to them, it's virtually the same thing as the PS3/Xbox 360, but it's able to handle 1080p on some games. That's about it. Everything is just a tiny step above PS3/360. Sorry, but Nintendo should have known this was going to happen.

@hollabox

You have to admit that that doesn't tell the whole story, though. That comment is almost as bad as his. Sorry.

[hollabox]

Meant as a joke my friend, but yeah the comparisons are about right. Any who I like what I'm seeing from Sony with the 8 GBs of ram and performance around 2 TFLOPS in the PS4. Microsoft remains to be seen, the more time passes, more they are becoming like Nintendo.

I'm sad to see Nintendo on the ropes, purchased every system up until the Wii, didn't care for the remote, and playing 480i/P games on a 60 inch plasma, yuck. I can see Nintendo rebounding with new IPs, but like always E3 comes around and we have a new Mario, new Zelda, new Mario Kart, new reboots of old franchises, and maybe Metroid other M crap-2. Nothing new, same old, same old, same actions that has been killing Sega. A new Sonic, more Sonic, Virtual Fighter, oh more Sonic, bad movie license game, and maybe an arcade port.

Any who Nintendo needs to work further with third party developers to improve their sales numbers. Have you seen this link http://www.vgchartz.com/pla...

[Starfox-17]

The UE4 Got confirmed after this article,who cares anyway power isnt measured off UE4 so not really bothered its game engines built solely for an individual console like what Retro Studio's are doing with all them ex employee's from Crytek,Virgil and Naughty dog,together with Retro i think this Engine that is built to use every ounce of power the WiiU has and built around its memory intensive design ie huge cache,bandwith ram ect,this Engine will be big news at E3 and games will be shown running on it or them.

WiiU GPGPU is a modified E6760,it supports DX11 END OF.

[GiantFriendlyCrab]

wii u GPU does not support dirext 11. And unreal engine 4 is based on directx 11, and can not be scaled down to direct x 10,1 level

http://en.wikipedia.org/wik...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wik...

[mcstorm]

Lol like how you get 2 disagrees.

[SpartanQ8]

Like n4g man :)

[mcstorm]

Lol I got 16 for saying that shows what dome people are likes on this site.

[greenpowerz]

Nice post. Love the logic instead of the malice. You knew why it can't *vs* not wanting it to/hoping it can't/assuming it won't be able to.

Well you atleast made a great case why it would be an undesirable challenge for the devs thinking it's not worth it, and just not technical reasons either. It's going to take Nintendo a bit/while before they repair the damage done by their 1st party priority strategy. Building back up the fanbase that would be buying these games using this engine will take a while.

Next gen Nintendo will get serious or parish.

Wii u can still get a watered down version of UE4 which is more than PS3 and 360, said by the dev and based on your links.

[HammadTheBeast]

Yes. But then the Wii U will not get Frostbite 3 or the REAL UE4.

[Gemmol]

I do not understand your post, the first link say Nintendo GPU is a completely customized design which resembles no existing GPU on the market today, then you show another link of the 4000 series. My point is if the Wii GPU completely customized where no one know but Nintendo what it do, how do you know it do not have Direct X 11.

I am hoping no one bash me, I am just asking a question, because I read a few places that no one know what the GPU could do and all everyone is doing is assumptions

[GiantFriendlyCrab]

wii u GPU "latte" is based on R700 family of AMD GPU (Radeon HD 4000 Series). look at the right bar of the wiki page of the second link. All graphics card from Radeon HD 5000 Series supports direct x 11 and therefore they will to run support unreal engine 4 games, but it will not be ideal

[hollabox]

Nintendo just need to fire everybody in their hardware R&D department. What were the engineers thinking in the R&D department to pair an under power DX10 GPU with the same 10 plus year old modified CPU with slow DDR 3 ram? I like the 1 Gig for games, but seriously can't their software engineers figure out a way to run the OS on 256 MBs of ram instead of 1 Gig? Not seen anything fancy with the Wii U OS that suggest 1 GB is needed to run.

Any who from what I've seen the Wii GPU only looks DX9 level graphics, its probably DX10 but like early DX10 graphic cards none of them had the power to run DX10 graphics efficiently. Nintendo is not alone, Microsoft has been coping Nintendo as of late with smart glass, Kinect, and casual games. Going forward MS business model seem to be make money off the casual gamers at the expense of core gamers. Durango hardware does not look like the jump we saw from the first Xbox to the Xbox 360.

[Starfox-17]

Just look at what developers that have actually developed a game say ect.

Michel ancel,WiiU is very powerful and has no limitations,even on ps3 we had fillrate issues ect.

Gearbox,Wiiu is a powerful,powerful machine,and its defo nextgen,it has much more modern architecture.

Criterion,Wiiu shown us no limitations when developing Most Wanted U.

Shinen,Wiiu has zero memory/ram limitations due to cache and controller layout ect,with a small effort we could make the code 6x as fast,this was with out optimizing and without using any additional cores ?

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

Here Carmack explains 720p/30fps is what nextgen will target.

http://www.develop-online.n...

WiiU gpgpu is a modified E6760 which is dx11,but uses 32MB/64MB of eDRAM for extreme bandwidth,and uses 3MB of eDRAM Cache on the cpu,which has out of order ex,and 512bit,basically IBM cpu cores in the future will all have eDRAM Cache FACT it's the future of IBM cpu cores.

Cache is very expensive memory,it costs alot more than system RAM in other words 3MB of eDRAM Cache would be more expensive than 8GB GDDR RAM end of,in other words 2GB of system ram and 3MB of eDRAM Cache is more expensive than ps4's solution and more effective,people forget this.

[chukamachine]

Just cannot understand how Ninty did not go with a dx11 gpu.

It's like they knew they would not support newer engines, but instead because they are all about Mario and first party titles, they did not really care.

Don't get me wrong,

NFSMW looks really good on it, with the better textures vs PS3/360. And i'm sure it can push out some very nice looking titles.

[linkofrs]

But not everything uses Direct x. Direct x is a Microsoft API. Realistically the only thing using Direct x will be the new Xbox or whatever they decide to call it. Sony and Nintendo will probably use something equivalent to it, or opengl. Direct x pretty much has nothing to do with any of this.

[Thirty3Three]

Well of course it won't. If the PS3/360 can't handle it (yes, that'd been confirmed that they cannot handle it) then the Wii U can't handle it either.

Source:
http://www.qj.net/ps3/news/...

[Freedomland]

So what!! it's not the end of the world.

[SonyNGP]

Didn't we know about this since last year?

[PirateThom]

Last year it was left open that Epic weren't doing it and a customer of UE4 could port it if they wanted to.

Now Mark Rein is laughing at the idea and pushing UE3 on Wii U instead.

[brettyd]

Dreamcast U

[nthstew]

nope castaway u

[LOL_WUT]

Nice one! The people going around disagreeing need to chill out ;)

[Tito08]

Hey, do not disrespect my beloved Sega Dreamcast, still love that machine lol.

[coolmast3r]

as far as i can see, wiiU isn't getting anything in this world...

[Nilemonitors13]

actually its getting an updated controller with another screen on the bottom part and a new super duper saiyan mario 64 skyward wank jk. im just being dumb today. (stupid drugs)

[coolmast3r]

hey, whats the price for one packet? =P

[Nilemonitors13]

Its pretty cheap, we will share the packet, its called Ps4 and meth mc combo whopper

[animegamingnerd]

and yet it can run on smart phones and tablets i smell bullshit here

[jcnba28]

Misleading title, how did this article get through??

Article clearly states:

Epic has been unclear about the Wii U's support for UE4 in the past, with Epic co-founder Mark Rein telling Videogamer that Epic doesn't intend to bring the engine to Wii U, but that "if a customer decides they want to port an Unreal Engine 4 game to Wii U, they could."

Even Retro Studios have already been confirmed to be making their own version of the UE4 for Wii U.

[animegamingnerd]

they need a misleading title for hits

[NYC_Gamer]

Not really since that VG article is from 12/07/2012...

GDC 2013 Q&A:

I figured I'd ask straight-out, so during the Q&A with Rein, I did. "Will UE4 run on the Wii U?"

"Hahaha no." Rein said, with expert comedic timing. The room erupted with laughter. As the laughs died down, Rein continued: "I mean, sorry, it's not really a correct answer. We're not… we have Unreal Engine 3 for the Wii U. Right? And Unreal Engine 3 is powering all kinds of amazing games, still lots of games are being made with Unreal Engine 3. We announced today about a new Unreal Engine 3 license. Unreal Engine 3 doesn't disappear because of Unreal Engine 4. But our goal for Unreal Engine 4 console-wise is next-gen consoles. That's really what our energies are focused on. If you want to make a Wii U game, we have Unreal Engine 3, and it's powering some of the best games on the Wii U already.

@animegamingnerd

How?he said UE4 is built for next gen consoles[PS4/720]Epic must not view Wii-U to be powerful enough hardware wise

[animegamingnerd]

from what it looks like to me they completely avoided the question

[theWB27]

@animegamingnerd
How did he avoid the question? He said no, UE4 is not for the WiiU...but they can still UE3. That's pretty concrete.

[Dgander]

@theWB27 He said their energies are focused on porting UE4 to PS4 and 720. Where did he state Wii U is not capable of running it? As a matter of fact he already confirmed Wii U can run UE4 scaled down a bit.

[lovegames718]

Weak system can't handle that that's a fact. We already know that in terms of power wiiunisnt next gen.

[gamefiles]

all u got to back up your view is that 2012 E3 WiiU zeldaTech DEmo . ?

[MysticStrummer]

Nintendo seems dead set on handing back all the money they made with Wii. Good thing their handheld business is doing well. They need to start pumping out quality Wii U exclusives fast.

[Freedomland]

As a proud gammer I really respect Nindento for their contribution.
In 90s Nintendo and Sony really paved way for home console gaming and how many times Nintendo has to prove that they are not going anywhere.
Ungrateful devs.

[Gamer-40]

Sad, not too good news.

[CouldHaveYelledUiiW]

He did not have to say it that way.
Dudes comments were dripping with extra-DOUCHE Sauce. (jk)
And the people in the room were kind of the same.

But anyway-
at least we know WiiU can run it. All it will take is the Will.

But based on the laughter, I'm not sure that it is going to happen much.

[GiantFriendlyCrab]

..
http://cdn.memegenerator.ne...

[PopRocks359]

Ugh. Great, the ignorant and the trolls are going to have a hey-day with this POS article. I really don't see how the hell this got through.

Mark Rein has already confirmed the engine can run on the Wii U, albeit scaled down.

http://www.videogamer.com/n...

EDIT: @NYC_Gamer

So in other words the headline is actually misleading. Like stated in the article I linked, Unreal Engine 4 in its full form is being brought to other consoles but not to Wii U from Epic. However, other developers can use a scaled down version of the engine. That issue was never addressed here in this new article whose headline implies the engine won't be supported at all.

My problem is the above comments are taking this as the console is too weak to support the engine altogether, like the 360 and PS3 when Rein had already confirmed you can scale down the engine to run on the platform, something apparently not doable on the 360 or PS3. It's misinformation, plain and simple.

Now that I think of it, this article isn't even news. It's just Mark Rein reaffirming what he has stated before. But conveniently enough, everyone forgot about Wii U's already confirmed ability to run this engine.

[NYC_Gamer]

That article is from last year though...

GDC 2013 Q&A

I figured I'd ask straight-out, so during the Q&A with Rein, I did. "Will UE4 run on the Wii U?"

"Hahaha no." Rein said, with expert comedic timing. The room erupted with laughter. As the laughs died down, Rein continued: "I mean, sorry, it's not really a correct answer. We're not… we have Unreal Engine 3 for the Wii U. Right? And Unreal Engine 3 is powering all kinds of amazing games, still lots of games are being made with Unreal Engine 3. We announced today about a new Unreal Engine 3 license. Unreal Engine 3 doesn't disappear because of Unreal Engine 4. But our goal for Unreal Engine 4 console-wise is next-gen consoles. That's really what our energies are focused on. If you want to make a Wii U game, we have Unreal Engine 3, and it's powering some of the best games on the Wii U already.

That's what has been said so the article stands correct

[Sevir]

This clear confirmation from the man who lead the development of UE4, comes nearly a year later, in a development seminar at GDC yesterday morning.

The WiiU doesn't support directx11.1 which is what the UE4 is built around.

High end tablets and phones have some sort of equivalent in their graphics cards so scalability for mobile platforms was taken into consideration for these new quad core mobile CPU/GPUs.

Mark Rein the Chief engineer behind the New Middle ware has come about and said that UE4 was not tailored to the specifications of the WiiU. There for its not supported. No use in trying to make this seem like Epic or Kotaku is trolling. We heard it from the horse's mouth, the WiiU isn't up to chops with Next Gen consoles. Get over it.

I love how they refute it. The Wii U while a step up from the Wii is more bin line with the ps3 and the Xbox360... Its not next gen by any margin.

@PopRocks

Lol. We all know Kotaku trolls a lot, but geez, the editor in question sat at the seminar and quoted Epic's mark rein word for word. Just have a seat and relax.

Its not just kotaku who is reporting this but other game media sites and publications. The related links and secondary source links are there just below the article. CLICK THEM.

Just to further hammer the point, DICE's Frostbite Engine 3 is skipping the WiiU. And Damn near all the major features of the new iterations of that engine are not being scaled into the PS3/XBOX360 version, like Ray tracing, High Dynamic Range Gobal Illumination Lighting, Procedural Destruction, and Tessellation... Just give it a rest.

The WiiU while is a condole stronger than the PS3 and xbox360 by virtue of using newer parts, its still a pipe dream awasy from putting forward anything even remotely as good looking as as PS4 launch game and 2 of the biggest Middle ware Developers has Just plain out left the WiiU out not any form of support foir those engines.