Hardware Wii u Hype Thread

[kevan]

Well... *Looks at Steam games list* I own around 83 games... and I've been heavily into strategy lately... so I'll pass

 

[koji2009]

Errr...... wha? I don't know a single person that knows what "Wii" is, but not what "nintendo" is... Nintendo has the greater name recognition at least here in the States.

I had a thought.... if Nintendo really wanted to cash in on it's hit Wii titles come Wii U's launch... they should make sure that Wii games render at full 1080p on the system. Think of how the Dolphin Emu can make many Wii games look particularly gorgeous. Compare this to how the PS3 emulates PS2 games (at either native res, or with just bilinear filtering applied to the entire image). That would give a recent Zelda (SS) an instant "HD" makeover that would draw in some of those hardcore gamers who hated Wii's SD visuals.

It's not entirely without precedense either. OoT and MM on the GCN were emulated at full GCN resolution (640x480, versus the N64 default 320x240). All N64 games via the Wii virtual console are also emulated at full Wii res.

*edit* Also, to be clear, you can remove a disc drive while still having proprietary discs that can be sold. Just look at 3DS or Vita carts. While it may seem a "Step backwards" to go that route, flash medium is very very quickly dropping in prices making them ideal for distribution. On top of that, they don't require a very large hardware device taking up valuable space inside the machine (no DVD/BR drive means you could theoretically make a much smaller system)

 

[DiscostewSM]

Errr...... wha? I don't know a single person that knows what "Wii" is, but not what "nintendo" is... Nintendo has the greater name recognition at least here in the States.

I had a thought.... if Nintendo really wanted to cash in on it's hit Wii titles come Wii U's launch... they should make sure that Wii games render at full 1080p on the system. Think of how the Dolphin Emu can make many Wii games look particularly gorgeous. Compare this to how the PS3 emulates PS2 games (at either native res, or with just bilinear filtering applied to the entire image). That would give a recent Zelda (SS) an instant "HD" makeover that would draw in some of those hardcore gamers who hated Wii's SD visuals.

It's not entirely without precedense either. OoT and MM on the GCN were emulated at full GCN resolution (640x480, versus the N64 default 320x240). All N64 games via the Wii virtual console are also emulated at full Wii res.

*edit* Also, to be clear, you can remove a disc drive while still having proprietary discs that can be sold. Just look at 3DS or Vita carts. While it may seem a "Step backwards" to go that route, flash medium is very very quickly dropping in prices making them ideal for distribution. On top of that, they don't require a very large hardware device taking up valuable space inside the machine (no DVD/BR drive means you could theoretically make a much smaller system)

If I understand Nintendo's stance on Wii games on the Wii U, they won't be up-scaling them because they can't. They're most likely in the same boat as Sony was with PS2 games on the PS3, which involved not emulating, but packing in the prior generation hardware into the unit to have that backwards compatibility. It couldn't go beyond up-sampling as that was a limitation to using real hardware vs emulation, whereas something like Dolphin doesn't have that limitation due to doing complete emulation. In all likelihood, Nintendo is going the hardware way with Wii games.

If they were to go the emulation route, then I wouldn't see anything stopping them from up-scaling to HD quality.

 

[koji2009]

If I understand Nintendo's stance on Wii games on the Wii U, they won't be up-scaling them because they can't. They're most likely in the same boat as Sony was with PS2 games on the PS3, which involved not emulating, but packing in the prior generation hardware into the unit to have that backwards compatibility. It couldn't go beyond up-sampling as that was a limitation to using real hardware vs emulation, whereas something like Dolphin doesn't have that limitation due to doing complete emulation. In all likelihood, Nintendo is going the hardware way with Wii games.

If they were to go the emulation route, then I wouldn't see anything stopping them from up-scaling to HD quality.

The reason BC PS2 games had to use low-res is not because they used the older hardware versus emulation, but rather because the PS3 video hardware was 100% incompatible with the the PS2's video hardware. It wasn't the PS3 video hardware that rendered PS2 graphics, but rather REAL PS2 hardware had to emulate the PS2 graphics because the PS3 graphics were completely incompatible. This is true for PCSX2 (the PS2 emualtor on PC). The video hardware in PCs is completely incompatible with how the PS2 renders graphics, meaning the entire PS2 Vector Units have to be fully emulated via CPU processing power, and then just the final leftovers handed to the PC graphics cards to display the final image. That's also why PCSX2 has so much higher system requirements than Dolphin, even though the PS2 had lower end hardware than GCN or Wii.

The GCN/Wii/Wii U graphic hardware, however, is actually a natural progression of fully backwards compatible hardware. All three graphics chips were designed by the same company (ATi/AMD) and are more or less just console versions of PC graphics cards. These wouldn't need to be "locked" into a certain hardware configuration, nor would the Wii U require having a secondary graphics chip that's designed just to play Wii games (See early BC PS2 models)

Your example is like saying I couldn't play an old 3D PC game designed around 800x600 displays properly rendered at 1440x1080 because the games aren't being emulated, but rather just being rendered on newer compatible hardware.

That said, Nintendo could just as easily not upscale for any number of reasons (the biggest being thoroughly testing the entire library, though this could be remedied with a small warning about possible graphical glitches when playing in 'upscaled' mode). I would hope however that nintendo would do proper upscaling so I wouldn't have to rely on Dolphin's often wonky compatibility/glitches just so I can play Skyward Sword in HD.

(edit) Forgive me... rereading this blob of text even I had a hard time gathering my meaning. That's what happens when you write something at 10am and you haven't slept in 2 days. Shortened version below:

The PS3 running PS2 games is like the Super Nintendo running Gameboy games (via the Super Gameboy)... That is, the games aren't being emulated or run natively through themselves, they are literally just two systems put together.

The Wii U running Wii games is neither emulation OR two seperate systems stitched together. It's one set of advanced hardware that can run the older software. It's like playing Quake 2 on my current PC. Quake 2 wasn't designed to run on my state of the art PC, but it still plays on it natively and therefore can benefit from the enhancements available to it.

The question still comes down to whether nintendo would or not.

(edit 2) snipping out some of that extra stuff.

 

[RichardLaughter]

it dosnt matter if they up scale to me. i've beaten all the good wii games, and im ready to start beating the wiiu games

 

[BornInBlack]

@koji2009

not to question your technical knowledge, but did nintendo ever confirm how the Wii U handles backwards compatibility?

its entirely possible that it has wii components [must be dirt cheap by now and would fall in line with what they did with wii (GC components)]
i wont put it past them that Wii U may be able to emulate Wii, im sure it has the power, pure speculation all around

i admit i find that your hypothesis of an all new machine all around is most likely

 

[DiscostewSM]

The Wii could do GC backwards compatibility because the Wii components were, for the most part, upgraded GC components. All they'd do is change the mode of the components to match the GC, and off it went. Unfortunately, unlike the 3DS, the Wii couldn't go back into Wii mode without resetting.

If the Wii U were capable of emulating the Wii, would it be sensible to do it? Other than the high processing requirement and the extra heat generated because of that, emulation on this scale is not exactly 100%. You wonder why they don't go crazy with VC releases. It's mainly because it isn't the exact same emulator running each title. Many have been tailored to what that game requires. Injecting ROMS into existing VC titles works for some, but not all.

 

[koji2009]

The Wii could do GC backwards compatibility because the Wii components were, for the most part, upgraded GC components. All they'd do is change the mode of the components to match the GC, and off it went. Unfortunately, unlike the 3DS, the Wii couldn't go back into Wii mode without resetting.

If the Wii U were capable of emulating the Wii, would it be sensible to do it? Other than the high processing requirement and the extra heat generated because of that, emulation on this scale is not exactly 100%. You wonder why they don't go crazy with VC releases. It's mainly because it isn't the exact same emulator running each title. Many have been tailored to what that game requires. Injecting ROMS into existing VC titles works for some, but not all.

The GCN isn't emulated on the Wii, it down clocks it's video/processor to match GCN specs (you're correct on this, just using this as a reference).

The Wii U won't be emulating the Wii (the point you seem to be making). There is no point for it to do so because they are the same architecture (both are powerPC consoles with AMD video chipsets). The Wii U will do one of two things... Either it will do what the Wii did for GCN (that is, underclock and lock out features) or it will run the games natively through a compatibility layer (like DIOS MIOS, and DEVOLUTION homebrews on the Wii).

I don't believe that they will do the former because that means they have to lock out Wii U features (like the Wii U menu, possibly using the controller screen as a stand alone display for the whole game, etc). Now, just because they use the latter doesn't necessarily mean that Nintendo will use the advanced rendering of the Wii U to up-scale the games... Many games exhibit odd graphic glitches from having their images scaled (mostly with certain framebuffer effects that assume the lower resolution). So instead of risking glitches they may just decide to render them at their default res.

Forgive me in advance if I'm somehow still misunderstanding what you're saying. I'm by no means saying "This is how it is and this is what Nintendo will do" only stating that from what we know of the Wii U, this would be a logical approach they could make. But then again, Nintendo isn't always logical.

 

[DiscostewSM]

They'll most likely up-sample the resulting output of Wii games (if the display mode is greater than 480p). It helps retain the image with how the hardware originally renders it, and then apply a filter and process the image to the final result. They do this on the 3DS with the output stretched. While the DS games on the 3DS suffered a little bit of blurring from this, I don't think it'll be that bad for Wii games. They used that specific filtering on the 3DS because it was cheap to do and didn't drain the battery nearly as much. They don't have those problems with a console being plugged in. Plus, they've got much higher resolutions to work with.

 

[boombox]

Oh yeah..Pikmin 3 - that will be amazing, the other 2 were great games. Like i said in a previous post. If they release Nintendo's own games I'll be very interested..if not, then i don't see why I'd buy it if it had a poor choice of games (or ones I already own on other consoles). It's good for people who don't have a PS3 or XBox 360 though.