Reassurance of what we already believed to be true?
IdeaMan over @ NeoGAF (a french "ex-journalist") has been dropping bread crumbs behind him in hopes of keeping things exciting on the long road to E3 based on 2nd hand info he has obtained from dev contacts of his.
His latest post points things out quite clearly.
Current Wii U dev kits are topping out @ 720p with extensive uPad screen usage.1080p still doable with little to no complex sub-screening... but, games being referenced are ports of PS360 games.
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=36144655&postcount=4991About the resolution of the games from which my second-hand knowledge come. This may precise a tad more the Wii U power, in a specific context, how third-parties handle the system. It’s related to everything I’ve said before.
The games concerned run ALL in 720p on the main screen. For now, from the mouths of my sources, it's not a console that looks to manage software with complex engines with such ease that their resolution might be 1080p, even at 30 fps. The 720p resolution is best suited for these titles to have a smooth framerate, in addition of the subscreen.
Now let’s talk about the context, which is as important as the information itself:
- Both games have an intensive use of the padlet. More concretely, 3D scenes, different angle of what is on the TV (bird eye view for example). The system is therefore capable of displaying a main screen of AT LEAST comparable quality than current gen versions in 720p (with I guess, a certain amount of AA, etc.) AND another 480p content on the tablet.
- The titles are ports that will be available on actual HD platforms, or more “exclusive” ones but build on inhouse engines already deployed in previous softs. They aren’t tailored from A to Z for the Wii U particularities. And everything is still in development, + dependent of the evolution of dev kits that are changing regularly (at least until now). So it can only improve, and the situation may be different for Nintendo and first-party titles.
- The dev kit involved are the V4 ones. The “V5” is a little more powerful, but apparently not to a point to push these games from 720p to 1080p.
- My sources added that the resolution is the one chosen for now, but a hypothetical other power boost that may occurring post V5 need to be important to allow the system to run these games properly in 1080p.
- These titles will change in the visual department as, like I said, some effects will be applied more in the “end” of the development, with perhaps graphical features not handled by current gen, thanks to the more modern Wii U GPU. So the end result on the main screen will be prettier than on PS360, with a higher resolution (many current gen content are not in true 720p) and especially in conjunction with a heavy use of the tablet. We might expect that games leaving it for simple things will be even more impressive on the TV.
From these informations, several speculations can be derived as:
- The possibility that games with simple engines, such as family titles, Mii-based ones, etc, will be in 1080p.
- Maybe other developers, with a simplistic use of the padlet + after all the optimizations and hardware boosts/tweaking until the dev kit finalization (if they are only moderate and not extensive to a point that it will change this situation completely), will release games in 1080p (with less AA than on 720p, less FPS, etc.), but it doesn’t seem possible AT the moment, if they want their titles to reach a certain level of sophistication and quality in visuals on the TV + intricate use of the subscreen.
- I guess we can speculate further on the power and the amount of some components with this, such as memory / buffer, the GPU…
All these infos are related to my previous posts (it’s the same context) about the hardware power scale, the impressions of my sources, the tablet usage, the memory, the surprising amount of RAM occupation from the OS/Background (it will surely be better and therefore have a positive impact on the general performances, etc.).
Nothing revolutionary as I said, but it can help narrowing a little more the Wii U capacities in this particular context, what you can expect from third parties ports/not exclusive games (because having followed each page of these threads, I saw many gafers who are expecting these titles to be the 1080p versions of their current gen counterparts, but for now, it’s not the case). This does not necessarily mean that the Wii U is underpowered EITHER: manage a visually ambitious game in a solid 720p & framerate, at the minimum a bit prettier than on Xbox 360 + an additional 480p screen with a complex scene rendered on it, is not a small thing.
Just want to note that he is talking about PS360 ports on the Wii U and not games that were build from the ground up for Wii U, nor are they being developed on final Dev Kits, so many things could still change.
But what is being said:
Better than PS360 visuals (atleast true 720p) with more effects and better framerates on the TV while also using the uPad (480p) screen, and that is for a game with complex imagery going on on the uPad at the same time.does still sound good. and that is from a non final dev kit from a game(s) that are not built from the ground up for Wii U.
Now we need to know how the dual uPad usage is gonna work out. 1080p Madden 2013?
Topic: The OFFICIAL Big N rumor thread *bring your own salt* (Read 3476303 times)
