Why is the Wii U so terrible?

[shadowbyte]

I was at my friend's house the other day, and he was playing watch dogs on the wii u. 

The game was running at 20fps with noticable aliasing, and very poor texture quality. 

He claimed he didn't care about framerate, and that the graphics were very good.

I know that the wii u is meant to play nintendo games, such as super mario, etc,, but watch dogs ran worse than a ps2 game.

I don't know, it just seems like nintendo could have put a bit more powerful hardware into the wii u.

[Jacktastic-Mofo]

Lack of great titles, eh choice of hardware.

[Godlygamer23]

Thread moved to Console Gaming. Please post in the proper sub-forum next time.

[The Official Czex]

NINTENDO games are meant for family fun. I doubt eight year olds really care that much about resolution and framerates.

[Mug]

it is from the fucking dark ages so I'd allow it to be as terrible as it is.

 

It's like asking "Why is Pong not in 1080P"

 

Well of fucking course it isn't you mug

 

It was also mediocre at best for its time.

[007agentHP]

the subpar FPS is the fault of watch_dogs developer

the WII U is great for first party titles. have you seen some of the games on it? amazing aesthetics.

remember 

graphics =/= aesthetics 

if your looking for great looking games, here's a very short  list of em

Super Mario / Luigi U

Smash Bros 4

Mario 3D World

Bayonetta 2

Xenoblade Chronicles X

Wind Waker HD

Zelda U 

[crystal6tak]

Weaker hardware, what do you expect? And no, for their own titles, Nintendo never needed much horsepower. All their titles just need cartoony looks and that their first party games are ridiculously optimized. There's no need to put much horsepower in the Wii U.

 

I'm genuinely surprised Watch Dogs is on Wii U. Almost thought you were trolling there OP.

 

Hard to believe such a game manages to be approved on Wii U without much blood censoring...

 

Guess it's understandable, given Nintendo need the money.

[TacoSenpai]

Part of the problem is Nintendo's fault for not using similar architecture/hardware to the XBONE and PS4 making it harder for third parties to develop for.  Additionally, if you are a third party knowing off the bat that your game is probably not going to sell well on a Nintendo console, how much effort are you going to put into optimizing it?  Thats not to say there are not any good third party games on the system there are a few but yeah if you get a Wii U you're probably getting it primarily for first party titles by Nintendo that you are not going to get anywhere else.  That said their first party titles for the system are top notch quality as you'd expect. 

[TopWargamer]

I don't know, it just seems like nintendo could have put a bit more powerful hardware into the wii u.

Or Ubisoft can properly optimize the game on the platform they released it on.

 

Most people who own a WiiU don't have one to play 3rd party games anyways (MOST of the time this is the case). There are fantastic 3rd party games available on the WiiU though - ones that are properly optimized too. Not only that, but the WiiU has a very strong first party line up. 

[Guest]

I have one for Mario games, metroid is soon, Mario kart, although mass effect 3 and batman was smooth gameplay. I wouldn't buy a new gen game from another publisher for it since wii u is incredibly hard to code for. I mainly bought it for Zelda when it came out,

[Fgtfv567]

Nintendo actually has a belief that good video games don't need the latest and greatest tech and power to be fun. So with that in mind, and with a somewhat lower price-point, the Wii U has less processing power than most other consoles from the 8th gen. Also there is a Wii U gamepad, which devs need to spend time to utilize it. Which hurts profits. Which is bad for this capitalist society. MatPat talks about this a lot more

[skywake]

The Wii U versions of most multi-platform games were pretty much always between the 360/PS3 and PS4/XBOne versions. Mostly with more stable framerates and marginally better visual quality on the Wii U version over the 360/PS3. But the Wii U version of Watch_Dogs was a notoriously bad port. It looked marginally better than the 360/PS3 versions but dropped to 15-24fps where the 360/PS3 version was locked at 30fps.

 

Though it shouldn't surprise, Watch_Dogs era Ubisoft wasn't exactly known for great optimisation and ports. 

[ManWithBeard1990]

NINTENDO games are meant for family fun. I doubt eight year olds really care that much about resolution and framerates.

Not so much resolution, but my 9yo brother prefers GT5 over GT6 due to better framerates. Also better music. 

[Jaad]

i have mario kart 8, mario maker and super smash bros. i love it and i love playing them. i wouldnt ask for more...aside from extra MK8 tracks

[Coaxialgamer]

Because it's running hardware comparable to the 10 year old xbox 360 ?

[Sharkyx1]

If anyone cares 

 

Impressive that it runs at all

[PlayStation 2]

The Wii U, software wise, isn't terrible. Yes, it lacks a ton of third party support. However, go play Splatoon or Mario Kart 8 or even Super Mario Maker and tell me if there's something comparable on the Xbox One or PlayStation 4.

 

Hardware wise, Nintendo really did fuck up. They were gambling on what they did with the Wii, except with a tablet screen instead of a motion based controller. Truth be told, barely cracked 10 million units and that was after three years. CPU is a triple core GameCube-based PowerPC G3 CPU clocked at 1.4GHz and the GPU is something like the ATI HD 4870. 1GB of usable RAM also really hurts it.

[Exynos]

The Wii U is more of a specialized console. You don't buy it to play AAA games you buy it for the amazing Nintendo games. Smash 4, Mario Kart, Splatoon, and upcoming games like Twilight Princess HD, Star Fox Zero, Pokken tournament, and Legend of Zelda (whatever it will be called) are why you buy that system. I personally find it to be a companion to other consoles and or PC. I use it all of the time when friends come over so we can play Smash Bros. I would never use it as my primary console though. 

[PC POWER]

I used to love Nintendo, but then the Gamecube came out, and then the Wii, and I considered the Wii U at least a step up since the controller seems pretty solid now compare to the Wii, but it's still crap.

[skywake]

Well, this is a good summary of how I see people whining about Nintendo

 

[flibberdipper]

It was weak as crap when it came out, and now it really sucks.

 

If anyone cares 

 

Impressive that it runs at all

I'm surprised that the PS3 didn't knock the Wii U out of the ballpark for framerate (like at least a steady 25 or 30). But then again, it's also probably running at a higher resolution with a lot better textures and effects.

[Numbafieve]

The only reason i own a wii U is for super smash bros, thats it.  If i want to play AAA games i get on my computer and if i want to play with a bunch of friends at my house i pull out the old wii or xbox360.  Pretty much the only reason i keep all of my consoles is they have at least a single thing that is better than my computer.

[typographie]

NINTENDO games are meant for family fun. I doubt eight year olds really care that much about resolution and framerates.

 

The irony of this statement is that most of the first party kid-friendly titles that are actually selling the system run at 60 FPS and usually 1080p. It's the grim-dark third party stuff like Watch Dogs that run like garbage on the Wii U.

 

Having that sort of responsive feedback on screen and in the controls is a crucial part of what makes games like Smash, Mario Kart, and Splatoon successful and fun. I bet even eight year-olds care about that, even if they wouldn't be able to articulate exactly why.

[skywake]

I'm surprised that the PS3 didn't knock the Wii U out of the ballpark for framerate (like at least a steady 25 or 30). But then again, it's also probably running at a higher resolution with a lot better textures and effects.

Why would you be surprised? The Wii U is underpowered but it's not THAT underpowered. It's certainly more powerful and is far more modern in terms of shaders etc. In particular it smashes the PS3 and 360 for VRAM so textures on the Wii U are actually not that bad. It's by no means "impressive" for when it launched (2012) but don't for a second think its less capable than a machine that launched in 2006! The fact that Watch Dogs doesn't run like a dream can be blamed on the Wii U itself. But the fact that it runs as bad as it does? It's pretty much purely the fault of Ubisoft. 

 

As I said just a bit earlier, Nintendo bashing is fashionable.

[flibberdipper]

Why would you be surprised? The Wii U is underpowered but it's not THAT underpowered. It's certainly more powerful and is far more modern in terms of shaders etc. In particular it smashes the PS3 and 360 for VRAM so textures on the Wii U are actually not that bad. It's by no means "impressive" for when it launched (2012) but don't for a second think its less capable than a machine that launched in 2006! The fact that Watch Dogs doesn't run like a dream can be blamed on the Wii U itself. But the fact that it runs as bad as it does? It's pretty much purely the fault of Ubisoft. 

 

As I said just a bit earlier, Nintendo bashing is fashionable.

First off, I'm not being a basher, I'm just being brutally honest. Don't go down that dark path. It's not a fun one.

 

Second, while the Wii U may be a tick bit faster for GPU performance, I don't really think it can come close to matching the CPU aspect of things when compared to the PS3. Given the advances in compute power of GPUs between the two, I don't really think there can be anything more than a 25% increase in the processing power of the GPU, since it has the same clock speed as the one in the PS3. Considering the GPU in the PS3 is basically a 7800GTX and the one in the Wii U falls in the Radeon HD 4000 category... That is only a 2 year difference between those launching.

 

And after all, all of that RAM/VRAM is useless if the hardware can't utilize it without choking on the lack of processing power.