Games Generation 8 consoles

[Embattle]

I though the Wii U was a April Fools Joke at first it seems like a terrible concept. With a Nintendo Badge though i bet it still sells OK.

Dunno, 3DS was a bit of a let down for Nintendo with it only really seeing higher volumes via a price cut thus no reason to think Wii U won't follow.

 

[Aada]

Them losses are nasty they better hope the PS4 sells well or they could be in a huge shit storm, they need to get it out before the next Xbox if they want the headstart in sales and not have it be obscenely priced, maybe they learned their lesson with the PS3 eye watering prices?

In the current climate people will vote with their wallets i'm afraid.

 

[Raven]

I doubt it. They sell everything else for 20-30% more than it should be.

 

[cHodAX]

Don't see them making that mistake again, they need to launch at £249 but if they end up at £349 they are totally fucking themselves, only the hardcore buy in that price bracket. With Wii U probably having a 12 month start there will be competition from day 1 and I fully expect Microsoft to launch 18 months from now as well. It will be fierce and whoever comes in at the highest price will automatically be chasing the game.

 

[ECA]

Wii U is aiming at the kids/toy/christmas market - gamers are an afterthought - as always with nintendo.

It's underpowered compared to ps3/360 which is pretty bad.
Regardless - nintendo will make money on it because they don't sell hardware units at a loss.

 

[cHodAX]

The worry is that it spoils the market again, eats up marketshare and lowers the bar for what we can expect technically.

 

[Yaka]

Regardless - nintendo will make money on it because they don't sell hardware units at a loss.

its worked for them, earning losses like sony would kill them. but ninty must be worried look at the wii all games that have shifted huge numbers and made money on the wii are all from nintendo. they need devs making games on thier console but after the first 2 years most will bugger off towards the ms/sony console.

 

[MYstIC G]

its worked for them, earning losses like sony would kill them. but ninty must be worried look at the wii all games that have shifted huge numbers and made money on the wii are all from nintendo. they need devs making games on thier console but after the first 2 years most will bugger off towards the ms/sony console.

Ninty are only surviving because of the DS. If Apple make a serious enough dent they're fucked.

 

[megadave]

sounds like its time to return to pc gaming

 

[Raven]

Never left it

 

[MYstIC G]

And actually, haven't Apple effectively already got the Wii U for those with more money than sense. Tablet device that does all the fancy tilt and move bits plus a device that lets you use your TV as a display?

 

[cHodAX]

Nintendo post an annual loss for the first time in thier long history! £284 million!

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/gaming/...ts-first-annual-loss-in-companys-history.html

 

[cHodAX]

Bang on time. Next gen Xbox dev kits being manufactured at Flextronics!

The new Xbox is in the manufacturing stages of development, a new report has suggested.

The next generation of Microsoft consoles is being assembled at the Texas branch of Flextronics, according to sources close to IGN.


Flextronics, the company in charge of manufacturing the Xbox 360 and the original Xbox, is said to have created a separate testing group to carry out hardware and software trials and marketing.

With testing complete, the company has moved onto the assembly of the new Xbox, although it is more likely that at this stage that it is only producing development kits.

Microsoft has previously denied reports that it will unveil the console at this year's E3, and has refused to comment on the latest rumours.

"Xbox 360 has found new ways to extend its lifecycle like introducing the world to controller-free experiences with Kinect and reinventing the console with a new dashboard and new entertainment content partnerships," reads a Microsoft statement.

"We are always thinking about what is next for our platform and how to continue to defy the lifecycle convention. Beyond that, we do not comment on rumours or speculation."

 

[cHodAX]

Console gaming, the forum where threads go to die.

 

[TheDoon]

Rip

 

[MYstIC G]

Bang on time. Next gen Xbox dev kits being manufactured at Flextronics!

Gotta be honest Cho, it's more that I don't give a shit about xbox dev kits and they've announced nothing of interest.

More interesting to me of late was that a friend told me that in the states you can get an xbox at a subsidised hardware cost with a X month long contract to subscribe to xbox live, i.e. it's like a mobile phone contract. If this is the future of console gaming then I'll be jumping back to the PC with both feet as at the moment I've got a PS3 and XBOX and there's no way I'm paying £10 a month for each all year long for the life of the consoles.

 

[cHodAX]

Gotta be honest Cho, it's more that I don't give a shit about xbox dev kits and they've announced nothing of interest.

More interesting to me of late was that a friend told me that in the states you can get an xbox at a subsidised hardware cost with a X month long contract to subscribe to xbox live, i.e. it's like a mobile phone contract. If this is the future of console gaming then I'll be jumping back to the PC with both feet as at the moment I've got a PS3 and XBOX and there's no way I'm paying £10 a month for each all year long for the life of the consoles.

The point was more about the lack of posts, not as a reaction to what I just posted earlier. When the thread was elsewhere it was highly active and lots of people pitched in but since it has moved the viewing figures have barely moved, nevermind the replies. It was a sad and pointless exercise, the thread was consigned to a forum that probably less than 10% of the members ever even look at.

 

[cHodAX]

Oh and as for the contract thingy, that does indeed sound brutal but it doesn't suprise me, MS made a fuckload of money off XBL and still see it as a huge area for growth.

 

[Keitanz]

Yep, people rarely look at this section, amongst others... I only do when I'm pretty bored tbh.

 

[MYstIC G]

Yep, people rarely look at this section, amongst others... I only do when I'm pretty bored tbh.

We've done this to death.

Oh and as for the contract thingy, that does indeed sound brutal but it doesn't suprise me, MS made a fuckload of money off XBL and still see it as a huge area for growth.

Doesn't surprise me either unfortunately. It also increases the concern that going forward we'll be seeing non-media based consoles. On the PC this isn't a problem as if I don't like steam then it can FOAD and I can go elsewhere, that's not true on an XBOX though.

 

[cHodAX]

We've done this to death.

No, we haven't done it to death at all.

Basically one or two people decided something that the rest of the members thought made no sense. If this forum was busy then fine but it is a graveyard and we all know it, I doubt more than 20 people check it regularly. When this thread was in a prominent place it was very active and sparked a discussion, surely that is what keeps forums alive? Moving it was an incredibly short sighted example of following 'the rules' to the nth degree without considering either the opinions of the members nor the fate of a busy thread. At some point logic needs to prevail, this thread is a general discussion about anything to do with potential next generation machines and while it fits this forum as far as 'the rules' go it thrived in Front Room and common sense would have seen it remain there.

 

[MYstIC G]

Actually Cho it was done with a redirect that stayed on the main page in the original forum for over a fortnight (I double checked).

This kinda shit kills things more. Total thread derailment on a persistent basis.

Just check out the thread about the sick nipper to illustrate.

 

[cHodAX]

Wii U specs are not impressive, performance wise it is what a console created in 2008 would have aimed for...

Main Application Processor

• PowerPC architecture
• Three cores (fully coherent).
• 3MB aggregate L2 Cache size.
• core 0: 512 KB
• core 1: 2048 KB
• core 2: 512 KB
• Write gatherer per core.
• Locked (L1d) cache DMA per core.

Main Memory

• Up to 3GB of main memory (CAT-DEVs only). Note: retail machine will have half devkit memory
• Please note that the quantity of memory available from the Cafe SDK and Operating System may vary

Graphics and Video

• Modern unified shader architecture
• 32MB high-bandwidth eDRAM, supports 720p 4x MSAA or 1080p rendering in a single pass
• HDMI and component video outputs

Features

• Unified shader architecture executes vertex, geometry, and pixel shaders
• Multi-sample anti-aliasing (2, 4, or 8 samples per pixel)
• Read from multi-sample surfaces in the shader
• 128-bit floating point HDR texture filtering
• High resolution texture support (up to 8192 x 8192)
• Indexed cube map arrays
• 8 render targets
• Independent blend modes per render target
• Pixel coverage sample masking
• Hierarchical Z/stencil buffer
• Early Z test and Fast Z Clear
• Lossless Z & stencil compression
• 2x/4x/8x/16x high quality adaptive anisotropic filtering modes
• sRGB filtering (gamma/degamma)
• Tessellation unit
• Stream out support
• Compute shader support

GX2 is a 3D graphics API for the Nintendo Wii U system (also known as Cafe). The API is designed to be as efficient as GX(1) from the Nintendo GameCube and Wii systems. Current features are modeled after OpenGL and the AMD r7xx series of graphics processors. Wii U’s graphics processor is referred to as GPU7
Sound and Audio

• Dedicated 120MHz audio DSP
• Support for 6 channel discrete uncompressed audio (via HDMI)
• 2 channel audio for the Cafe DRC controller
• Monaural audio for the Cafe Remote controller

Networking

• 802.11 b/g/n Wifi

Peripherals

• 2 x USB 2.0 host controllers x 2 ports each
• SDCard Slot

Built-in Storage

• 512MB SLC NAND for System
• 8GB MLC NAND for Applications

Host PC Bridge

• Dedicated Cafe-to-host PC bridge hardware
• Allows File System emulation by host PC
• Provides interface for debugger and logging to host PC

 

[Embattle]

It's Nintendo....they'll never be top of the pile for long in terms of specs but that doesn't tend to hinder them that much.

 

[ECA]

tldr, <£100 costs, sell for £200 to millions of idiots. Profit?

Maybe you get a zelda game, maybe you dont.

 

[Zenith.UK]

Don't forget the new must-buy feature.... 1080p HD!!! o_0

 

[Embattle]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...s-what-epic-hopes-next-gen-will-be-capable-of

 

[cHodAX]

UE4 looks great, the particle stuff has massively improved.

 

[ECA]

UE looks like shit.

UE3 is a massive resource hog and runs like ass.

The engine Square-Enix have got is SICK, it runs smooth as fuck and looks amazing, shame they have no good games for it right now

 

[cHodAX]

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/06/leaked-document-points-to-299-xbox-720-for-2013/

The 56-page document, which started circulating widely this morning, purportedly represents a road map for the future of the Xbox platform through 2015. The document seems to date back to a mid-2010 internal planning meeting, and is focused on how Microsoft will sell the next Xbox's new features to consumers, developers and other relevant parties. Microsoft is supposedly targeting a 2013 holiday season launch for the system in a $299 bundle with new Kinect hardware (more on that below), and plans to sell 100 million units during the console's ten year lifecycle.

Fingers crossed the leaked document is legit but I shall reserve judgement for now.