Wii U Development Kits Underpowered?

By Stuart Lawrence 16.06.2011 6

Wii U Development Kits Underpowered? on Nintendo gaming news, videos and discussion

A recent report says that game developers were working on underclocked Wii U development kits prior to E3, meaning that the kits were not up to the full specification of the final Wii U hardware.

The report from Hit Detection, founded by former technology journalist N'Gai Croal states the following:

Developers have underclocked development kits, and worked hard to deliver titles running on that hardware to demonstrate live at E3. However, due to titles not looking much better than what is currently available on Xbox 360 and the PS3, Nintendo decided late in the game to not show those titles and focus instead on tech demos. In particular, THQ stated that Darksiders II was running on development hardware and could have been shown. Also, Epic vice president Mark Rein tweeted during E3 that Gearbox's Aliens: Colonial Marines was being made for Wii U with Unreal Engine 3, showing that Epic is bringing its tech to Wii U.

Source: Kotaku

This could explain the confusion with many developers saying the system being only 50% more powerful than the current generation, leading to queries about how much more powerful the system is.

What are your thoughts on this revelation? What are you expecting out of the Wii U in terms of graphical horsepower?

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This news doesn't really reveal anything new. Basically underpowered Wii U dev kits are more powerful than the PS3/Xbox360 and that the final specs are still being finalized, but will be even more powerful than PS3/Xbox360 than they already are.

( Edited 16.06.2011 23:29 by Sonic_13 )

By launch time, we'll actually see how much the Wii U can handle.

( Edited 16.06.2011 23:30 by bornforthis43 )

Love how Nintendo is trolling all of us with this!Smilie

It's a wise move:

1.) Get developers transferring PS360 engines across to Wii U in order to become familiar with the tech and make good use of the controller

2.) Bump up the spec of dev kits later down the line so that there is room for improvement to counter the impending Sony and Microsoft successor systems.

Adam Riley [ Director :: Cubed3 ]

UNITE714: Weekly Prayers | Bible Verses

Hopefully Nintendo have done it right and provided us with a console that will greatly compete with the future Xbox and PlayStation. Many of us worried it would only be so powerful at the moment, and behind once the other consoles arrived. Hope they've got it right.

WII U

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