|
Hey look, it's the Wii U . It rhymes with "Wii 2," and that probably means awhole bunch of people are going to buy one, then shelf it, justlike the Wii, right? I have no idea how well the Wii U's going to sell, butsomething's bothering me: this somewhat sullen attitude— as far as I can tell mostly from traditional gamers —that the Wii U is just the Wii all over again; an underpowered,under-designed game console that'll be obsolete before itstime. When Microsoft and Sony finally do unveil their gamma-irradiated, raging-red-Hulk-powered nextconsoles, probably at E3 2013, this dismissive assumption holdsthat they'll blow the doors off Nintendo's system. ( MORE: Hands On with the Wii U, Nintendo s Next-Generation Game Console ) Anything's possible, but we're at a point in gamehardware design where what's under the hood matters less thanat any point before. I'll concede a few eyebrow-raisingchoices, like the Wii U's smallish internal storage, but Idon't think it's as simple as some are saying. Let's walk through some of the criticisms based on what weknow about the Wii U, now that Nintendo's spilled (most of)the beans on the hardware. Processor and Graphics Nintendo says the Wii U will use an IBM Power multi-core CPU and anAMD Radeon-based GPU, though it isn't talking speeds or thenumber of CPU cores or offering anything like a benchmark at thispoint. That's just as well — focusing on abstractionslike frequencies or integer and floating point calculations tellsus less and less about what a system's actually capable of, as what we expect from computers has changed. The most important visual spec is probably this one: up to 1080psupport. The Wii U finally brings Nintendo into the high-definitionfold. That's important for several reasons — streamingmovie playback topping the list — but above all, it meanswe'll no longer be subject to blurry, interpolated videobecause of a mismatch between the system's visual output anda flatscreen TV's native resolution. Even if, as some have said, the Wii U is only "aspowerful" or "slightly more powerful than"current-gen systems, I don't see the problem. I never hearanyone complain that iPad games don't look as good asPlayStation 3 or Xbox 360 ones, for instance, or that PC games— now crunched by more than half-a-decade more powerfulhardware than either the Xbox 360 or PS3 — are in any waysuperior because their visuals are more advanced. ( MORE: Nintendo s Provocative Pre-E3 Wii U Reveal: A Tweaked Controllerand New Social Network ) I think the same will apply to Wii U games when compared towhatever Microsoft and Sony have up their sleeves, graphicallyspeaking. It's a point I've raised before about contemporary visuals in games: We're far past thepoint of abstraction-by-limitation, and games that want to simulatereality do such a good job of it on today's systems thatfussing over photorealism is a core crowd fetish, still stuck inthe "mine's bigger than yours" mindset. I submit that when Sony and Microsoft's next systems arrive,after the initial "here's what next-gen Halo and God of War look like!" hoopla dies down, we're not going to caremuch about the upticks in visual sophistication. Does Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 look better than my favorite game in the series, Call of Duty 2 ? Ask me if I care. These days, when I'm thinking aboutvisual design, I notice particular style-related choices, not thegraphically muscular ones. Nothing against more powerful new hardware — I'mitching to have a look at one of these new MacBook Pros we might see next week at WWDC, for instance. And you canobviously do a lot more than crank out uber-realistic visuals withhigh-end hardware, so I don't want to discount all the otherthings developers might (and I stress might ) take the time to pull together with any extra processing oomph interms of long-neglected design elements like artificialintelligence, which as any A.I. wonk will tell you, can be a hugedrag on system resources. But if your whole investment in gamingpivots on visual output, I think you've let a shortsighted,increasingly irrelevant way of thinking about games get between youand appreciating games as games. Storage Then there's Nintendo's decision to put an opticaldrive in the Wii U — one that'll accommodate 25GBdiscs. By all accounts, Microsoft and Sony plan to put opticaldrives in their next-gen systems, too, so I'm not sure whatcritics of the decision were expecting Nintendo to do. Games aren't getting any smaller and there's still thequestion of Internet access to consider. Don't forget thatsome ISPs are moving backwards when it comes to data caps and cracking down on monthly limits. Ifyou're in a pay-as-you-go situation, as many people I knoware, the last thing you want is a game system you can't playgames on because it's download-only — here comes thenew Zelda -whatever, and you're at your monthly ceiling. But let's talk about a design choice Nintendo made thatreally does seem odd on its face: the Wii U's marginal internal storage. ( MORE: 11 Things to Expect (or Not to Expect) from E3 2012 ) Despite everything I just said about game size growth,there's still a substantial market for downloadable games— both indie/arcade fare as well as digital versions ofretail games. The Xbox 360 and PS3 support hundreds of gigabytes ofhard drive space. Laptops and desktop PCs now ship with upwards of1TB. Even smartphones and tablets routinely come with 16GB, 32GB or64GB of internal space. Nintendo's Wii U? A fractional 8GB of flash storage.Isn't that a problem? It would be, if the Wii U didn't support storage upgrades,much as Microsoft did with its original no-hard-drive Xbox 360 orcurrently does with its entry-level 4GB model. Word is Nintendowill allow you to grow the Wii U's storage via flash memorysticks or external hard drives via USB (the system has four USBports). As a functional sticking point, therefore, it isn'tone. You could argue it's a move to accessorize the Wii U and makeextra bucks off add-on peripherals…or you could argueit's just Nintendo's way of keeping the Wii U'sinternal mechanics simple and the system's upfront price down(we'll see about the latter when the company finallyannounces pricing, of course). The GamePad And so we come to the final critique: that the tablet-stylecontroller is too big and clunky-looking. It's definitely not your garden-variety gamepad, andit's anyone's guess whether it'll be the go-tocontroller when it comes to this game or that one. But here'sthe thing gamers balking at the controller don't seem tounderstand: Nintendo is offering more controller possibilities thanany console-maker in history. As my colleague Harry McCracken notes , the Wii U GamePad can be "a Wiimote with atouchscreen," "a second screen which may or may notmirror what s being shown on the TV," "a complement tothe Wiimote," "a tethered gaming handheld,""a window into a virtual world," "asocial-networking device" and "a fancy universalremote." And that's just the GamePad itself. Nintendo's going tosupport all of the older Wii peripherals, as well as something newit's calling the Wii U Pro Controller. If you're a coregamer balking at the size of the Wii U GamePad, therefore, stopfretting — Nintendo has you covered. One more thing: Let's disabuse ourselves of the notion thatNintendo's trying to edge in on the tablet market with theWii U GamePad. It's not, any more than the dual-screen DS wasa smartphone rival. Nintendo's trying to enliven the home gaming experience witha two-screen angle, not trying to subvert the iPad. And don't forget the Wii UGamePad is really just the bottom half of the DS snapped off andheld in free-space. This is about melding the Wii and DS experience, not doing a me-tootablet. Nintendo knows iPads make terrible game controllers when itcomes to games that require fine motor input and precise control.And the impact of the tablet market's growth on whatNintendo's hoping to achieve with the Wii U will be next tozero. If Apple ever gets serious about console-style gaming — and according to recent comments from Apple CEO Tim Cook , it has no plans to — then we'll see, but at present,I detect nothing about Nintendo's approach that feelsanything but forward-looking. Whether it's the right way forward remains to be seen, and it'll be driven by thekinds of games developers produce, but wave-off accusations thatthe company is just "pulling another Wii" are —it seems to me, anyway — missing some pretty obvious andsalient points. More Techland E3 coverage: Hands On with the Wii U, Nintendo s Next-Generation Game Console Nintendo s Provocative Pre-E3 Wii U Reveal: A Tweaked Controllerand New Social Network Photos: E3 2012 Video Game Conference Hands On with Halo 4 : Maybe New Blood Isn't So Bad In Praise of Cartoon Violence: Borderlands 2 at E3 2012 Sony s E3: Games, Games, Games Microsoft s E3: A Tale of Two Xboxes. I am an expert from stroke-outboardmotors.com, while we provides the quality product, such as 5HP Outboard Motors , Outboard Motor Spare Parts Manufacturer, Gas Outboard Motor,and more.
Related Articles -
5HP Outboard Motors, Outboard Motor Spare Parts Manufacturer,
|
