Video compares Wii U and PS3 load times

GE: "Nintendo will be improving the Wii U’s load times in April, including the time it takes to boot out of a game and return to the home menu. The company recently released a video highlighting the improvement, so one Japanese gamer decided to create a video and see how it stacks up to the PlayStation 3."

[NastyLeftHook0]

pretty close, but thats not saying much.

[Black-Rock-Shooter]

Yea seeing as the ps3 is over 6 years older.

But if Nintendo keep updating it will get better.

[NastyLeftHook0]

they will need too.

[iGAM3R-VIII]

Yea agreed, also some of the processing power in the PS3 is larger than the WiiU so you cannot really compare the two. Comparing the load times in the WiiU and he Wii seem a bit fair but I really do not know about the PS3 vs. WiiU. Also the fact that the PS3 drive is faster and spins faster than the Wii U. You could compare the load times PS3 vs. 360 but I do not know about PS3 vs WiiU or 360 vs. Wii U. It is still nice to see that Nintendo are making an effort with their system, keep it up Nintendo

[SilentNegotiator]

They also should have gone with faster RAM.

[guitarded77]

Most importantly... THEY'RE USING DIFFERENT SOFTWARE!!! That's kinda important for comparisons and benchmarks.

[lilbroRx]

You do know that much older, 20 year old tech swapped much faster than any of this right?

OS load times tend to increase as technology expands, not decrease.

[Blackdeath_663]

there only so much you updating you can do on the same hardware.

[TheXonySbox]

If you buy a wiiu and compare it to anything you are clearly 'slow' or retarded.

Wii U is rubbish casual crap.

[herbs]

iGAM3R you have no idea what your talking about. Wii U disc read speeds are 22mb/s vs PS3 9mb/s and Nintendo uses proprietary Blu-ray Discs. I'm not a fan of people just spreading fanboy Bullshit like butter get your facts straight before posting thanks.

[DeadlyFire]

Well WiiU looks to have 480 Gigaflops + CPU Gigaflops. Maybe 500ish. That's a 25x improvement from the Wii right there. Now they just need to make a 10x improvement next generation after this one for 5 Tflops and they will be set. Top cards coming out this year might be in the WiiU2 in 2020.

[xHeavYx]

And to think that the PS4 will barely have any load times...

[Autodidactdystopia]

Think again man.

Unless they include an ssd out of the box, its still gonna take a very long time to pull 8gb off the hdd every time. even if the game is installed.

very basic logic there, (in order to fill system ram, one must pull the data from somewhere;the harddisk being both the location of that data and the slowest part on the system short of optical.)

[Autodidactdystopia]

One must never state the truth, cause that is upsetting to people who cant handle it.

JEEZ.

someone explain to me how to fill system ram in a fraction of a second when loading a game besides getting it either off the game disk or harddisk.

no cause it takes time right or have i missed something?

EXPLAIN YOURSELVES.

ok well lotta disagrees, dont expect that to change so

"Gamedata coming from a AAA game disc or a harddrive that utilizes 8gbs of system ram, can indeed be loaded in .032 milliseconds because.... Magic.
- Everyone"

I get it. point taken

[Thirty3Three]

@Autodidactdystopia,

They've confirmed it will literally "appear" on. Like, if that makes sense. It won't need to 'load' when being booted up. Really odd, I know, watch the stream though :)

Why am I getting disagrees?! This was confirmed.

This community really does suck sometimes.

[_QQ_]

or games.

[flyingmunky]

I don't think you will have to load a full 8 gb into ram to get the program up and running. Programs these days have a sense of modularity that allows it to load what it needs into ram a piece at a time. For example continuing to load while the screen pops up havok, the gamedev, and the start screen.

Also I do think the next gen consoles should be able to take advantage of ssd's extra speed if someone is willing to burn that much cash, but it shouldn't be a standard.

[BitbyDeath]

Thirty3Three is right.

Here's the quote and link.

"The Sony PS4 will have no boot-up time according to system architect Mark Cerny. Pressing “on” will bring you directly to the home screen."

http://www.forbes.com/sites...

[DeadlyFire]

All games will have load times until Cloud tech appears. I expect more Hard Drive installs for PS4/X720 to fix loading times to be a little faster.

[jcnba28]

This video is pathetic because tokyo jungle is a psn game. They should have been comparing it to an actual ps3 game which take longer to load back to home screen.

[AngelicIceDiamond]

Sorry but the Xbox is faster then both of those.

[Drekken]

And then it burnt down your house.

[Godmars290]

So...um, err...

At a total loss why before its update the WiiU loaded slower than the PS3.

I mean, is it really something to crow about when talking up how the WiiU is 3X more powerful than the PS3 when you've just now matched its loading speed?

And again; the PS3 is not the WiiU's generational equal. Its like comparing the N64 to the SNES.

@DarkHeroZX:
Who honestly really cares? Right now my front running next gen system is the WiiU for the Project X title. I will buy a WiiU when that game comes out.

Meanwhile with the PS4 I'm concerned where the focus on social features and functions will take games on it.

[DarkHeroZX]

the wii U isn't 3x more powerful. it's about 50% or 1.5x more powerful.

[thezeldadoth]

love these so obviously factual numbers.

[lilbroRx]

Actually, altogether is around twice as powerful.

On top of the 50% increase in raw gpu horsepower, it also has much more advanced tech in it such as moving from DX9 eqiuvelent graphics to DX10.1 or 11(still not confirmed which is uses) and from Shader Modal 3 to 5.

Its also has over twice as much game usable RAM(the PS3 and 360 dedicated some of their RAM to sound, the os and other system functions. The Wii U gave those things their own RAM pool) and the CPU in the Wii U has 3 cores purely dedicated to gaming that do 3 processes per cycle(the Cell is only single core with 8 SPUs and two of those were used for the OS and Security. The 360's CPU is 3 cores hyped-thread so but 1.5 of its cores are dedicated to the OS, music and sound. Both the Cell and Xenos them only do 1 instruction per cycle as well). Contarary to early reports based on raw clock frequency, the Wii U RAM actually faster than the 360/PS3 in real world performance. All signs point to it being dual channel, meaning its performance is twice what its clock speed suggests.

90% of the technical problems observed on the Wii U right now are "software" issues, not hardware issues.

If the hardware capabilities caused the problem, then there would be nothing that could fix it. This update is only the first for improving system performance. They have another one coming out in the Summer that will improve it even more.

[SUKMELONGTIME]

It's 2x as powerful. It also uses 1/3 of the power.

Imagine having a car that has 2x the power of your old car but also getting 3x better gas mileage.

Welcome to the Wii U.

Everyone who compares PS4 to Wii U needs to get their brain checked.

PS4 is a $599 console that consumes 150W-200W

Wii U is a $250 console that consumes 35W

Comparing the Wii U and the PS4 with each other is like comparing a Toyota FRS to a Nissan GTR

[jcnba28]

This video isn't even fair, they were comparing a PSN game to a Wii U disc game. I did a real loading time myself here with an actual PS3 game Uncharted 3:

http://www.youtube.com/watc...

[Godmars290]

And that is the total opposite of what I said.

[PopRocks359]

Hmm. PS3 is still a little faster by a couple of seconds. Nice upgrade, but I think Nintendo should take it further in a future update.

[ChickeyCantor]

As much as I want a fast and seamless transitions... Why are we even comparing it to other consoles? It could be very well be that in a year or 2 Nintendo overhauls the interface completely. And even if it doesn't go faster than this, it won't be a factor for purchasing decisions.

As for the video, I don't see the same amount running on the background. So the comparison is flawed. And rather pointless.

[lilbroRx]

Look at the video the person made right above the you using an actual retail game, and not a PSN title.

[Krew_92]

The person took their time pressing the buttons though, as the Wii U demonstration too. So in reality in real time play both of these would exit much faster.

Also exiting a game on PS3 by going to the home menu is just adding more time. As holding the PS button and exiting from that menu is so much faster. As the home menu takes a while to load while in game.

[abzdine]

man some people really dont know what to do in their spare time..

[kakashishinoda]

Don't forget that the wii u has also the wara wara plaza on the upperscreen running that needs to load too

[Nodoze]

IMO this is a bit embarrassing for Nintendo. The console should not have been released in the state it was in. Unoptimized OS code, massive day 1 OS patch adding features, etc etc

The problem Nintendo had was that if they went up head to head with the PS4 (like they are going to soon) it would have been bad.

It will be very interesting to see where Sony prices the PS4. If it is 399, expect a 75.00 or higher WiiU price drop.

[izumo_lee]

That's strange. Wasn't the Wii U have in it a faster 'Blu Ray' disc reader than inside the PS3. So it should be loading up considerably faster but in the video it is still pretty close.

I think that having that tablet really makes the difference since the system has to stream to the tablet controller. If it was only a regular controller i believe it would load up faster than the PS3.

[torchic]

Wii U has neither a Bluray nor a DVD drive.

they use their own proprietary disc

or is that what you meant, with the inverted commas around Bluray?

[Yodagamer]

Because the disc is pretty much blu ray tech, but for legal/cost reason it's not.

[torchic]

oh really? I always thought it was Nintendo's own tech. well it is, but it isn't at the same time.

[deafdani]

Torchic, it's basically Nintendo's own version of the blu ray format. Therefore, it's not called "blu ray", but propietary media, even though for all intents and purposes it's actually blu ray.

To give you another example, the Wii's discs are also called a propietary Nintendo format, but they happen to be actual DVDs. That's why the Wii can run games and movies off regular DVD discs on Wii's running homebrew.

:)

The Wii U's "blu-ray" technology is actually much faster than the one present in the PS3, as you stated. However, this video isn't of the machines loading a game, but QUITTING the game to go to the main OS.

While the PS3's XMB is fairly simple, the Wii U's OS is much more complicated -- Wara Wara Plaza on the upper screen, plus the apps and tiles present in the Gamepad's screen, plus the shortcuts that appear when you press the home button on the Gamepad... All of this makes the Wii U's OS much more resource intensive than the PS3 one.

So, all in all, this comparison isn't really all that fair. If the PS3's OS was as complicated as the Wii U one, would it still load it faster? I don't think so.

[torchic]

@deafdani

thanks for the explanation. it does make sense though as developing your own high capacity disc format from scratch is not really feasible. and in fact many have done what Nintendo are doing (like Sony with their CD-ROM based proprietary disc for PSone)

still somehow thought Nintendo used their own but good information +1 bubble :)

[Yodagamer]

The wii u is also streaming in the mii verse info, so it might be what's causing this to slow down a bit. It would explain why i've heard varying reports of how long it takes to load.

[MoveTheGlow]

If we're thinking "next-gen" for the WiiU, the loading times are still not great, but hey, that's a huge improvement over what it used to be, right? It's almost like the console's ready for a retail release now!

[o-Sunny-o]

Yeah power of 256 mb of ram vs 8 gb of ram.

[jcnba28]

Obvious troll is obvious.

[PopRocks359]

@0-Sonny-o

Whatever context this comment is in, it's incorrect.

The PS3's OS RAM is 256MB.

The Wii U's OS RAM is 1GB.

The PS4's OS RAM will be used within 8 GB, but no one has confirmed how much of it will be used to my knowledge (whether it's the usual half or if it's shared).

[Yodagamer]

It's unified shared memory, as for how much it will use for the system software i'm guessing it will be around 1 gb- 1.5 since in development the ps4 originally had 4 gb of ram and killzone ps4 took 1.5 for the gpu, leaving 2.5 of the original 4 gb limit left and some of that has to go to the cpu.

[dantesparda]

The PS3's OS is 64MB or 96MB's, The main system RAM is 256MB (XDR) and then its got the other 256MB of video RAM (GDDR3)

Update: Its actually 50MB

http://www.tomsguide.com/us...

[Qrphe]

.

[gamer42]

With the summer update the loading times should be shortened again, but I might be wrong.

[SonyNGP]

I could've sworn it took longer to reach the XMB on my PS3...

[Hicken]

You would have sworn wrong.

[Knightofelemia]

I don't mind the load time its enough time to grab a few beers or a rhum and coke and some Doritos and let the gaming begin.

[MilkMan]

Why is this comparison even being made? I don't get it. Wait, is this another one of those Dante hating bandwagon things? Cause didn't even make sense.

[wahn0004]

Why not compare it to the load times of PS1 or NES while we're at it? I think the load times on Wii U are awful, but the comparison is pretty meaningless when the content being loaded is different.

[black911]

all this is pointless.

[BrianC6234]

This video makes no sense. Why even make it? And wouldn't it make more sense to find a game that's on both consoles and show that at least?

[_QQ_]

sorry nintendo,but i only buy consoles for the loading times.

[profgerbik]

Another randomly pointless comparison.

I think I am going to make a comparison video of how long photoshop takes to load vs the Wii U and PS3. /s

[BosSSyndrome]

Man, it's a good thing loading times have gotten so fast nowadays. Remember cartridges? Those things took FOREVER!

[LOL_WUT]

Still a tad slower than the PS3 should've been fixed by now ;)

[PopRocks359]

There's a video comparing disc loading speeds as oppose to this clip which used a PSN game. The Wii U is faster in that regard.

[imXify]

I think the loading time of the PS4 will be the same as the Vita when quitting a game.

INSTANT SNAP !

[LastXeno]

Sony drones, sony drones everywhere

[axisofweevils]

Good. Now compare it to how slow the PS3 was when it first released.

[dungeonboss]

I'm wondering how much faster the Summer patch will make the Wii U menu, since the Spring patch in the video is only part 1 of 2.

Also, to be fair, the Wii U menu is displaying a lot more content, that notably must download from the internet - in the form of Miiverse and Wara Wara Plaza.

[DivineAssault]

isnt a whole GB of memory dedicated to the OS on wii u? Why would it be that slow???

[ape007]

here's some of the worst things about wiiu...

1-u can't access to the wiiu menu while playing Black ops online( i don't know about other online games) also the wiiu menu always freeze the game background, u can't access it while the game is playing in the background like 360\ps3

2-i still cannot get used to the right analog position

3- no achievements or trophies, u know achievements\trophies are no big deal but they add to a game like mayonnaise or BBQ sauce to your food

4- you cannot install games

5-load times are horrible on wiiu, zombie u, lego etc...

[darsman]

I think it was more about getting a plug for the WiiU's update mentioned and posted than it was about any real comparison. That's my gut feeling anyways...