Sept. 13th Wii U news stuff

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Sept. 13th Wii U news stuff

Well damn. Good thing I pre-ordered mine Thursday.



Mine!

[Kailea]

Re: Sept. 13th Wii U news stuff

I got lucky myself, preordered it and an hour later got an email from corp, saying to stop taking preorders ;p

[Icemage]

Re: Sept. 13th Wii U news stuff

I don't see what problems a touch screen creates when the standard controls people wanted are there, too. Wii U has options here. ME3, TT2, Pikmin, Black Ops II have all found good uses for the touch screen. I seriously don't see how the touch screen begins to be a problem unless you live under a rock and have never touched a smartphone or iPad. Maybe then its witchcraft to you, but otherwise no.

You missed what I was getting at. Right now, the Wii U can only use one Wii Pad, which means there's no parity in controls between player 1 and everyone else (except online, but Nintendo's online service has yet to prove itself to not suck). "Officially" Nintendo is spinning this as a "feature" for asymmetric gameplay, but such setups are rarely stable, rarely balanced, and generally involve some variation of "Man, you suck at this, give me the controller!" or outright jealousy ... i.e. "Why do I have to use the stupid Wiimote?"

Eventually they'll update the firmware to allow a second controller, but looking to the future, you have to wonder how many games will actually support a second Wii Pad. At the $125-$150 range, I don't see a lot of people wanting to buy a second Wii Pad, so will third party developers bother supporting its use? Will they support the Wiimote? Will it require Wii Motion+ if they do? Will they support the Classic Controller? The Nunchuck? The new Wii U Pro controller? These are all questions that developers have to ask themselves before developing a game, and they can potentially cause a lot of headaches as end users become confused - and frustrated - about what controllers they have to use. It'll be interesting to see how much effort developers are going to throw at alternate control schemes, and how they handle local multiplayer when they have no idea what hardware users have on hand for player 2/3/4/whatever.

Also - how are the storage options Nintendo is allowing a "hassle?" I can go out and get a 1TB HDD for less than the price I'd pay for a 250 HDD on my 360. Sony charges me $100 just to get a 32 GB card on the Vita, which is still more than that 1TB external HDD. Don't even get me started on the laughable premium Apple asks for just to have an 64GB iPhone 5.

It's not the external storage that's the issue. It's that the baseline storage before extras is 8GB. Some of that is going to be eaten up by the system itself, and Nintendo being...well.. Nintendo... this will probably translate to "We don't want to confuse customers, so downloads are limited to some arbitrary size". I'm hoping they don't do that, but it wouldn't surprise me, especially considering that both Nintendo and Microsoft currently set some fairly small limits for download sizes - and for the same reason.

I think Nintendo might have been better served with a 16GB base model. It wouldn't have cost them anything significant, and it would improve their logistics tremendously.


Icemage

[Raydeus]

Re: Sept. 13th Wii U news stuff

Speaking of that. It is regular Flash memory and not an SSD right? If it is then I say 64GB should've been the minimum. 'Cause it's 2012 and my 6 year old phone had more built-in memory than the U. <_<;



And yeah, Sony and MS are full of it too for charging that much for storage. Screw them too.

[Malacite]

Re: Sept. 13th Wii U news stuff

yeah it's a flash drive I'm pretty sure.

um, FYI, PS3 can use a standard HDD as well, and from what I've been told the 360 can as well, though it requires you to format the drive in a specific manner 1st.

It's not that I have zero interest in the Wii U - I just refuse to buy it at launch. I'll wait for a price drop and some more games to come out.

[Raydeus]

Re: Sept. 13th Wii U news stuff

Yeah, we've already talked about the other options to replace PS3 and 360's HDD for bigger, cheaper ones years ago.

But what I'm referring to is things like the Vita and the completely retarded pricing for "official" storage solutions from both Sony and MS. The stupidity of the suits making the decisions for things like that or the PS3's ram still boggles my mind to this day.

[Malacite]

Re: Sept. 13th Wii U news stuff

It's annoying lol because on the one hand, I'm glad Sony stuck to their guns and won with their proprietary Blu-Ray.

But it cuts both ways - when they pull shit like this with the Vita or other nonsense, forcing consumers to buy their own overpriced brand stuff.... ugh. I just hate it when companies do that.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Sept. 13th Wii U news stuff

You missed what I was getting at. Right now, the Wii U can only use one Wii Pad, which means there's no parity in controls between player 1 and everyone else (except online, but Nintendo's online service has yet to prove itself to not suck). "Officially" Nintendo is spinning this as a "feature" for asymmetric gameplay, but such setups are rarely stable, rarely balanced, and generally involve some variation of "Man, you suck at this, give me the controller!" or outright jealousy ... i.e. "Why do I have to use the stupid Wiimote?"

I still don't understand why you're stuck on this point. For co-op or even two-player competitive titles games like Black Ops II and Warriors Orogchi 3 Hyper have shown you can just duplicate the experience on the controller so one player just goes at it with the WiiPad and the other uses the TV and the Pro Controller or Wiimote. Asymmetical gameplay seems to work for straight-up party games quite well.

I see nothing that says both players "must" each have a WiiPad. And I seriously do not see what is so confusing about having options for controllers. This never fails - Nintendo does what people ask and then turn it around and complain about it all over again. Only the Wiimote and nunchuck was oppressive and "gimmicky." Nintendo gives you your precious dual analog control scheme to go with Wiimote and nunchuck or a controller with a touch screen and you're confused?

Damned if you do and damned if you don't - that's what I'm getting out of this.

Plus you're completely ignore the fact lots of third parties - pretty much the me-too CoD, GoW multiplayer third party drones - don't even make local multiplayer or co-op a bullet point. They want to sell a copy to each of your friends, section you all off in your homes and flounder as they fail to succeed where CoD, GoW, Halo and BF do. So balanced, local co-op is not only nitpicking, its hardly the norm anymore unless you have an audience on lockdown or are making a party game. And in party games, asymmetrical gameplay is always going to work.

It's not the external storage that's the issue. It's that the baseline storage before extras is 8GB.

You're talking to someone that's managed with a 360 that has a 4GB HDD. The thumbdrive solution has proven effective enough. You're nitpicking. This seems like a small amount to you but that is because PS3 is grossly inefficient with its storage. Installations for PS3 games I've later played on 360 have been smaller by a third to over half what PS3 asked of me. Skyrim's PS3 install alone was three times what it was on 360 (or are you going to run to Bethesda's 'incompetence' as a cop out?). And its a similar story with PC games. Neither platform is demanding I load up my HDD with all these uncompressed audio, video and graphic assets - PS3 demands that.

It seems to actually be a recurring symptom of Sony products. PSP and Vita even have this problem - even if I did pay up for the 32 GB card a handful of Vita and PSP games would eat that up. Meanwhile a 2GB card on my 3DS or Wii is a vast warehouse. Obviously, there's going to be more data consumption with the Wii U, but I'm pretty much expecting it to be as efficient as PC and 360 are being with it.

My plan, since i got the Premium model for all the extras, is to get an 32GB SD card to add to the 32GB internal and just worry about an external HDD later. That's better than even what 360 Slim lets me do - it limits external storage to 32GB, so unless I get a 360 HDD, 36GB total is the best it gets. The fact remains that Nintendo has made storage a ton easier on the consumer than you're making it out to be.

Someone could go onto Amazon right now and get the 64GB SD card for $50 and even be ahead of me if they buy the standard Wii U package, but by that point you should probably be considering the external HDD. I'm only even looking at the SD cards as something I could just jam into my 3DS later when I got an external HDD.

[Kailea]

Re: Sept. 13th Wii U news stuff

Someone could go onto Amazon right now and get the 64GB SD card for $50 and even be ahead of me if they buy the standard Wii U package, but by that point you should probably be considering the external HDD. I'm only even looking at the SD cards as something I could just jam into my 3DS later when I got an external HDD.

or like me, I have an "extra" (will be removing things off it to another storage) 500GB USB HDD, and will be hooking that up to my WiiU when I get it day one. also I want to say the specs said somthing about dedicated storage for the OS, so that 8GB is not eaten up by the system at all.

oh and found this..... ha the Skylanders tech is built into the gamepads, smart idea

Near field communication

The Wii U's near field communication chip is located on the Wii U GamePad. The NFC chip can be used to allow users to import content from supported devices. This is achieved by placing the device on the Wii U GamePad. The NFC chip also has the ability to write information on items which can be used as a means of transferring information.[81] Moreover, the NFC chip can also be used to make wireless transaction using their credit cards by simply placing the supported credit cards on top of the Wii U GamePad.

[Firewind]

Re: Sept. 13th Wii U news stuff

I know I'm late posting this since it's from god knows how many pages back but this is what I say to people that say that Nintendo consoles don't have mature games:



It's one of the best and most terrifying psychological horror games of all time and it was on a Nintendo console. Plus the sequal is rumoured to be on the Wii U which is giving me some inventive to buy that console if it does.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Sept. 13th Wii U news stuff

I don't know if Nintendo owns the Eternal Darkness IP or not. Then again, Silicon Knights would have done themselves a world of good by making a sequel to that than the crap they've been churning out lately. So maybe Nintendo does own the IP. I do know each time that game comes up people get excited and hope for a sequel.

Maybe that's what Retro Studios is up to. All Nintendo has said about what they're up to is "they're working on something we're really excited about and everyone wants us to do."

Freaking vague, is what that is. That could be:

- Metroid Prime 4
- After Donkey Kong Country Returns, people have wanted to see how they'd do a 2D Metroid
- Zelda (Miyamoto has implied NOJ was confident they were up to the task on two occasions)
- Star Fox was another rumored project

Outside of those, I suppose Eternal Darkness us another game they'd be up-to-task on. There's very little Retro Studios could be put on that people wouldn't have absolute faith in the being able to pull off.

[jenova_9]

Re: Sept. 13th Wii U news stuff

I think Wii U is shaping up to be much better than the Wii ever was, mew. Not my taste in console, but Wii U still is an improvement for Nintendo fans.

[Icemage]

Re: Sept. 13th Wii U news stuff

I still don't understand why you're stuck on this point. For co-op or even two-player competitive titles games like Black Ops II and Warriors Orogchi 3 Hyper have shown you can just duplicate the experience on the controller so one player just goes at it with the WiiPad and the other uses the TV and the Pro Controller or Wiimote. Asymmetical gameplay seems to work for straight-up party games quite well.

I see nothing that says both players "must" each have a WiiPad. And I seriously do not see what is so confusing about having options for controllers. This never fails - Nintendo does what people ask and then turn it around and complain about it all over again. Only the Wiimote and nunchuck was oppressive and "gimmicky." Nintendo gives you your precious dual analog control scheme to go with Wiimote and nunchuck or a controller with a touch screen and you're confused?

Army of Two? Madden? Any game where there's touch controls?

The whole reason to have a touch screen for the player is either to show something specific to that player, or give them access to touch controls. As things stand, no game with local multiplayer can use the screen to inform players without going way out of their way to try and design and balance something asymmetric (or more likely they just won't bother at all).

You're talking to someone that's managed with a 360 that has a 4GB HDD.

You're hardly what I call a typical user.

At any rate, the reason why you don't get as much install size on the 360 is that you NEVER get uncompressed audio on the 360 (and even more so on the Wii/DS/3DS). Developers have to be mindful of the limits imposed by the hardware as well as by the console platform holder. That's why I point out the 8GB limit on the Wii U: It's too small to comfortably support a single full game download for the next generation of games.

P.S. It's flash memory, not a HDD.


Icemage

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Sept. 13th Wii U news stuff

Army of Two? Madden? Any game where there's touch controls?

Second screen gets around spiltscreen co op. Army of Two would be fine. Hell, you'd be able to split up better than before with player 2 on his own screen
Madden? See above. Two screens for play-calling - WiiPad and the HDTV. Problem solved.
Again, Black Ops II and Warriors Orochi 3 Hyper are already doing this so its clearly not rocket science we're talking about here.

Touch controls? Well, I would hope any game designer worth his salt would be aware of the pros and cons of making a game based around the touch screen by now. You seem to see this as a problem When we have had years of the DS and now iPhone, iPad and PS Vita to iron these concepts out with. We even had the PDA before those. Shit is situational. I think I've made the case for local co-op, but for online co-op all players would have the added benefits of the touch screen, whatever the designers choose to make of that.

Map screens, extra buttons, quick access to loadouts, setting up waypoints - there's very little that couldn't be done with more options on a touch screen.

At any rate, the reason why you don't get as much install size on the 360 is that you NEVER get uncompressed audio on the 360 (and even more so on the Wii/DS/3DS). Developers have to be mindful of the limits imposed by the hardware as well as by the console platform holder. That's why I point out the 8GB limit on the Wii U: It's too small to comfortably support a single full game download for the next generation of games.

I think I already covered Sony's inefficiency with storage and uncompressed audio. Uncompressed audio is just a marketing gimmick. You can have a fetish for that ll you like, but as someone that was once in audio production I assure you there is a point you can compress audio to that is still not discernable to the human ear. If this were not true, MP3s and other compressed audio formats would have never overcome the uncompressed WAV format. Does your Android phone do play WAV files for music or does it play MP3 and AAC?

I seriously hope its one of the latter two because you're wasting storage if its not. Being mindful of hardware limits is one thing, but I think the consumer at this point is informed enough to know that a flash card and external HDD is not space voo doo. Nintendo is designing the Wii U under the (perhaps misguided) assumption that people are not stupid.

P.S. It's flash memory, not a HDD.

I know, it was a typo.

[Firewind]

Re: Sept. 13th Wii U news stuff

I don't know if Nintendo owns the Eternal Darkness IP or not. Then again, Silicon Knights would have done themselves a world of good by making a sequel to that than the crap they've been churning out lately. So maybe Nintendo does own the IP. I do know each time that game comes up people get excited and hope for a sequel.

Maybe that's what Retro Studios is up to. All Nintendo has said about what they're up to is "they're working on something we're really excited about and everyone wants us to do."

Freaking vague, is what that is. That could be:

- Metroid Prime 4
- After Donkey Kong Country Returns, people have wanted to see how they'd do a 2D Metroid
- Zelda (Miyamoto has implied NOJ was confident they were up to the task on two occasions)
- Star Fox was another rumored project

Outside of those, I suppose Eternal Darkness us another game they'd be up-to-task on. There's very little Retro Studios could be put on that people wouldn't have absolute faith in the being able to pull off.

I don't know about the IP but Nintendo DOES own the patent for a Sanity Meter in video games.