A speculative look on the Wii U GPU

"As lovable as the Wii might have been, and as nice to Nintendo’s pockets as it certainly was, it would be quite a stretch to call it a rider of the bleeding edge of technology. Indeed, lacking even basic Vertex Shaders, relying only on DX7-era Transform and Lighting (TnL), the little console that could was, at most, frown-worthy for the Beyond3D denizen. So why exactly are we talking about the Wii’s successor then? Well, this round there’s a decent chance that the lords of the Wii remote will try being somewhat more daring on the tech front – or at least we hope so!

This article’s goal is to set some reference frames for what we can reasonably expect from Nintendo Wii U graphics capability. For this speculation to be called educated it has be to be grounded in reason; and all sound reasons have a source. Therefore, this article will rely on three bases: the facts, the rumours and what we will call Nintendo’s current approach to hardware. The facts and rumours are self explanatory, the ”Nintendo current approach to hardware” on the other hand requires some definition. With the exception of some non committal claims, such as “1080p graphics! Check that box!”, with all what Nintendo said and shown about Wii U, it has openly set expectations for graphics at a minimum level. No outrageous claim about huge silicon costs, bleeding edge rendering capabilities, living lucid dreams or jacking-up into the matrix. This, coupled with the graphical outputs of the last few Nintendo machines (DS, Wii, 3DS), will colour the speculation of this article.", writes Beyond3D.