Gadgetory

the console wars is back previously in the console wars to PlayStation 4 showed off its assets in the hardware department taking down the Xbox one and CPU and GPU performance the matchup is now three to one and in the next round we're going to be taking a look at it's a medium aureole oh hello Mario cool what can I do you for why don't do you include Nintendo in the console war well to tell you the truth Mario I feel Nintendo has very little place in the console wars and this round tell you what back to the console the console wars is finally back from hiatus and for those who don't follow me on Twitter the delay was thanks to a little addition to my family so between my busy day job and first months of fatherhood it's been a bit tricky to find time to play games let alone make an in-depth analysis of several platforms I feel like I owe it to the viewers to actually base the console wars on experience and not just pull facts out of a hat the beginning of my story with Nintendo stands back two and a half decades the Christmas of 1989 little did I know back then that that particular event would define how I spend my spare time for the next 25 years the NES was the machine that saved the gaming industry from the slump of the early 80s which was caused mainly by the market being flooded with content more suitable for landfills than living rooms so what changed exactly a certain Japanese company came along with characters and stories that people actually cared about and with gameplay mechanics that were easy to pick up and very difficult to master after joking around on Nintendo's expense I think I owe it to them to clear up some annoyingness conceptions that I seem to run into quite often so free your mind of all the Nintendo related negative hype and listen up Nintendo is undoubtedly in many ways alienated a large slice of its younger audience with the questionable copyrights policies that restrict youtubers from creating let's play videos Nintendo currently offers a creators program for youtubers where it takes 30 to 40-percent ad revenue generated by the videos and the company can still take a hundred percent of the ad revenue if it's not happy with the content so I can definitely see why people are up in arms but consider this the amount of youtubers with let's play content has grown exponentially over the past couple of years and more and more people are spending their time watching gaming related videos and streams and actually playing the games themselves and this trend has evolved into an entirely new form of media consumption that I think is somewhat in direct competition with people actually paying and playing the games and I think Nintendo has issue with this as well and they've made a conscious decision based on old-school principles not to consider the video watching audience as potential buyers for their hardware and software and Nintendo knows exactly that there are thousands upon thousands of youtubers who are willing to give that 30 to 40 percent cut to the company just to be able to stream Nintendo games obviously in the process Nintendo has pissed off a lot of people but the company knows that their core audience is very loyal and this kind of negative PR can be brushed off with a single shrug it all comes down to what Nintendo things will affect purchase decisions of their hardware and software this or this another very popular statement that I wholeheartedly disagree with is that Nintendo needs to release its content on mobile platforms iOS and Android again brand evaluation and dilutions into play Nintendo sees no benefit in releasing its content in venues that are populated with hundreds of thousands of shovelware games that are worth less than the dollar they cost for every smash hit mobile game there's a thousand greed filled free-to-play abominations that even the developers themselves in their heart of hearts are ashamed of profit margins of mobile games are highly overstated the company sees no reason to pay Apple and Google are cut for hosting inferior versions of Mario and Zelda especially when seven million people are still willing to pay 40 bucks for games like Animal Crossing on the 3ds grand illusion assigned in Tendo designs gained around tight mechanics and controls that require physical buttons and I really don't see the word compromise in the company's vocabulary sure there's huge potential for a quick cash grab but in the long run inferior controls combined with the variable experience caused by horrible fragmentation especially on Android would only dilute the appeal of great great Nintendo classics I personally do not want to see this happen say what you want about Nintendo it's one of the very few companies that stays true to its core and is willing to sacrifice some income to maintain it many have been quick to dig Nintendo's grave ever since a flop of the Gamecube but lucky for us Nintendo is in it for the long haul and they've played their finances smart enough to last them for decades to come even if they're making bubkis and speaking of bupkis the exterior hardware design of the Wii U doesn't say much it looks like a pretty minimalistic rounded brick nothing too offensive and flashy but definitely not something I'd like to have on display in terms of technical number-crunching prowess and space on a triple core PowerPC CPU codename espresso coupled with a 550 megahertz AMD GPU codenamed latte you know sometimes the code names for chips really speak for themselves I mean the Wii U offers about a quarter of the number crunching performance of the Xbox one and less than a fifth of the power of the ps4 so any direct comparisons are completely redundant the Wii U is closer to the ps3 and xbox360 in performance than it is to its generational counterparts but don't get me wrong this does not mean the Wii U can't produce beautiful visuals it definitely can some games even run at 1080p 60 frames a second but what the Wii U will never do is push modern games with ultra-high res textures complex physics tessellation and other cutting-edge graphics processing I mean forget about thank felides kooky characters really don't need much of any of that fancy-pants graphical flair and blue dazzle although I would not mind some extra anti-aliasing in some cases other than that Mario 3d World Mario Kart 8 and Bayonetta 2 all look gorgeous for what they are and aren't any less fun without the high-end graphics all the Wii you will never achieve the levels of photo realism as a competition smart use of colors and simple textures combined with polished shader effects can provide gorgeous fully fleshed out worlds are quite sufficient for the likes of the Mushroom Kingdom and Hyrule but for the many worlds that are not out of Nintendo's own sketchbook that's another story thanks to the similar hardware architecture between the ps4 and Xbox one and multi-platform development is pretty much a breeze but this puts the powerpc-based Wii U in an awkward position reporting games requires some extra effort on top of that ports require significantly downgraded graphics plus some extra development time thanks to that Wii U gamepad despite some optimistic statements from Nintendo before launch aspirations of big third-party titles such as Call of Duty Arkham Knight Metal Gear phantom pain or any other multi-platform games for that matter can be buried and forgotten Nintendo has done very little to keep the third parties happy and one by one Ubisoft EA and Activision have quietly backed away from actively supporting the Wii U Ubisoft ended up taking the hardest hit with decent launch games the tanked thanks to the horrific ly bad sales numbers of the Wii U despite third parties jumping ship for Nintendo this isn't as big of a loss as what most would think the lion's share of Nintendo platform hits and cash cows have always been Nintendo first party titles with of course a few exceptions to make the rule but getting back to the console itself the Wii U gamepad is an essential part of the Wii U Hardware the tablet / gamepad Hybrid has been somewhat of a hard sell to hardcore gamers and it definitely took me some convincing that it can offer anything beyond sheer gimmickry the gamepad is also a bit tricky to explain to casual gamers who already own an iPad or Android tablet and an all.we for that matter the naming scheme didn't help the situation either I mean Wii U is a dumb name it ended up misleading even the mainstream media to think that the gamepad was an accessory for the original Wii I mean even the super we would have been a better name in this regard in terms of ergonomics the Wii U gamepad is fine the matte textured buttons and triggers are sturdy old-school Nintendo quality and the d-pad is actually sublime for games that require speed and intricate position shovelknight perfect example simple and pure gameplay mechanics only possible with physical controls so smartphones and tablets you can still go ahead and suck it otherwise the Wii U gamepad is quite comfortable the rounded ridges in the back help it feel more like a controller and less like a tablet while it kind of reminds you of a beefed up 3ds the ergonomics are clearly more thought-out and comfortable compared to what the competition offers the analog sticks and triggers are quite satisfactory they offer quite a bit less range of motion but overall the Wii U gamepad holds its own surprisingly well against the Xbox one and ps4 controllers it does however weigh half a kilo or pound which means that it's not as comfortable to handle for extensive gaming sessions nor is the battery life equipped to do so the 6.2 inch screen does a good job of draining the battery within three to five hours so keep the cord handy in terms of touch screen use even after two years it still has some ways to go most of the gameplay mechanics tied in with the use of the screen are fun nothing mind-blowing and nothing really that couldn't be accomplished with the physical buttons I guess the main problem is the majority of games force the use of the gamepad but take very little use of its features which just makes it an expensive heavy controller after over a year of use I still find myself neglecting to utilize the second screen no matter how much I make an effort of it it doesn't come natural to look down to check the map on Mario Cart or switch over to use touch screen functions mid-game it more often than not breaks the immersion and offers anything that can expand upon the gaming experience Nintendo took a risk with the Wii mote and that risk definitely paid off the company took another risk with the Wii U gamepad and that didn't exactly pan out but as they say if you don't risk it you ain't gonna get the biscuit that being said the Wii U gamepad does have a built in feature that the competition can't offer at least out of the box streaming to the gamepad or remote play works flawlessly late he is superb with next to no delay and the wireless reach is about 30 feet or 10 meters a bit less than with the Vita and the ps4 but sufficient for moderately sized home surprisingly the Wii U offers a buttery smooth frame rate that trumps that of the ps4 and Vita combo and it effortlessly handles even the fasted pace of action games like Bayonetta 2 with I think surprisingly little compromise the 6.2 inch screen is adamantly sharp but the contrast and viewing angles leave some room for improvement it's definitely no oled screen which is understandable for the price tag the Wii U gamepad is also equipped with near-field communication and the purpose is quite simple if you're still a noun as to the appeal of the Nintendo brand and its family of characters the number of amiibo sold in the first two months may convince you otherwise sometimes the sum is larger than all the technical parts and in the Wii U's case that is absolutely true from a technical perspective the Wii U has more in common with the shoe than it does with its console brethren the deluxe model only has 32 gigs of storage space which of course can be expanded with the external hard drive but it's clear that it's not intended for digital downloads and you'll end up playing most of your games off game DVDs and this means the DVD Drive will be running constantly making the Wii U the noisiest of the bunch the Wii U is not cutting edge technology and the faster you get over this fact the faster you will discover what Nintendo is all about I can give you a hint and another and perhaps another if there's one thing that you can be sure about is that you will not see unfinished games of the likes of Assassin's Creed unity in battlefield 4 on the Wii U Nintendo is old-school in this sense as well it releases games that are completed and they shine with Polish that is something that cannot be said about many games these days and even the my tier of gaming Giants have succumb to this atrocious trend for better and for worse Nintendo is conservative you may not agree with the company's policies but at least they are pretty consistent I can't be said for everyone I'd probably not invest in the company's stock as some of Nintendo's decisions really don't invoke investor confidence I mean what the fuck but the games the games continue to be truly just that good Super vine tight gameplay mechanics and with a level of polish that should be the industry standard in Tendo has exclusive games that invoke a sense of joy and sheer fun that at this stage of the game the competition simply cannot touch but unfortunately while we're still in the hardware rounds we you simply cannot compete so no points are awarded in this round however what Nintendo managed to achieve is my newly discovered respect for what the Nintendo brand encompasses follow me on Twitter and stay tuned for the next installment of the console wars you