Welch wrote:http://www.complex.com/video-games/2012/08/the-wii-us-final-specs-have-been-revealed
Seems to me that with a DX 10 (Not 10.1 and surely not DX 11) that its just one of the fails of the device. 1gb of ram..... My god, with DRAM prices at an all time low and supposedly ready to drop again, how can they justify not dropping at least 2gb into it, or a lot more? Just talking retail prices, DDR3 1333 or 1600 2gb sticks can be had for $12.99 all day long. That is retail and not what a vendor with a large number of consoles to produce would pay. Even taking into account specialized RAM and all, being purchased in bulk you'd imagine that this is a huge oversight.
Then again if you look at the CPU, its purportedly less powerful than the XBoX 360 or PS3. How you can release a console THIS long after the other two and make it a competitor to them instead of a competition to the next generation stuff MS and Sony have to offer is beyond me. It almost feels like they are riding on the hope that a lot of people will buy it out of nostalgia... I mean COME ON... Its Nintendo!
XBox360
3-core 3.2 GHz PPC (6 threads)
512 MB RAM
PS3
7-core 3.2 GHz PPC (yes, I know one general-purpose and 6 vector units)
256 MB RAM
nvidia 7800-ish graphics?
Wii
1-core 730 MHz PPC
88 MB RAM (?)
Wii U
3-core PPC based on POWER7, 3 GHz? (4 threads per core?)
1 GB RAM
ATI 7000-series-ish graphics w/512 MB RAM?
Ok, so... the Wii U will be about on par with the current "real" consoles and will have better graphics abilities. It's far better than the Wii it's supplanting. Do you think that the games on the PS3 and XBox360 have sucked because they don't have enough RAM? Consoles don't push the limits, PCs do. This was already spoken to due to development lead time and all that jazz. I just don't see that the PS3 I'm playing on sucks because it doesn't have DX11 graphics. Heck, it doesn't even have DX10!
You list some technical stuff as fails. That seems harsh to me. The Wii was a backward piece of junk. The games were fun and novel and popular. It's not the specs that make a game system fun, it's the games. It's not the effects a game engine can use, it's the overall art direction. I still get a blast out of playing GTA3:San Andreas and the graphics are old and busted.
I could care less what's inside a game console as long as it does what I want it to. No one knows yet what the games are like so you can't just claim fail based on some specs.
Even if the PS4 and XBox720 (or whatever) is much better, hardware-wise, what will it really matter? PC gamers still get along with 3 GHz Core 2 Duos and nvidia 8800's. It's about the experience, not the hardware. If the Wii U provides that and the PS4 doesn't, that's what matters.
I don't have a vested interest in any of the consoles. I own a PS3, XBox360, Wii, DreamCast, PS2, XBox, Sega Saturn. I'm not eagerly awaiting the next generation. This isn't an OMG YOU BASED THE WII fanboy response. I just think you're fixating on the wrong thing to make a premature declaration.