THQ Clarifies Claims of "Horrible, Slow" Wii U CPU

An anonymous reader writes "THQ has clarified comments made by 4A Games' chief technical officer, Oles Shishkovtsov, about why their upcoming first-person shooter, Metro, won't be available for Nintendo's new Wii U console. Shishkovtsov had told NowGamer, '[The] Wii U has a horrible, slow CPU,' by way of explaining why a Wii U version of Metro wasn't in the works. Now, THQ's Huw Beynon has provided a more thorough (and more diplomatic) explanation: 'It's a very CPU intensive game. I think it's been verified by plenty of other sources, including your own Digital Foundry guys, that the CPU on Wii U on the face of it isn't as fast as some of the other consoles out there. Lots of developers are finding ways to get around that because of other interesting parts of the platform. ... We genuinely looked at what it would take to bring the game to Wii U. It's certainly possible, and it's something we thought we'd like to do. The reality is that would mean a dedicated team, dedicated time and effort, and it would either result in a detriment to what we're trying to focus on or we probably wouldn't be able to do the Wii U version the justice that we'd want.'"

Better get used to it, THQ

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a strong suspicion that Microsoft and Sony's next hardware is only going to be a modest step up from this current generation. Sony's taken about five billion dollars of losses on the PS3, and recently had their bond rating downgraded to junk territory, while Microsoft took substantial losses on the RROD debacle. Simply put, nobody can afford a repeat of the seventh generation of the console wars. Except for Nintendo, which, between the Wii and the DS, pretty much had a license to print money. Third party problems notwithstanding, Nintendo's lower-end hardware approach seems to be the only sustainable one, and I think Microsoft and Sony would have to be asleep at the wheel to fail to recognize that in time for the upcoming eighth generation.

Re:Better get used to it, THQ

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm doubtful. Ridiculous amounts of RAM are extremely cheap nowadays, and even a low-end Core i3 is leaps and bounds more powerful than what's in the current consoles.

Keep in mine that these consoles were launched IN 2006, and the Wii U's processor isn't even able to keep up. That's how shitty it is.

Re:Better get used to it, THQ

[Pinhedd]

DDR DIMMs are cheap yes, but extra capacity adds cost and complexity. PC motherboards have DIMM sockets and motherboards with 4 DIMM sockets cost more than motherboards with 2, motherboards with 8 cost more than 4. On consoles this cost is still present in the form of motherboard design and it's multiplied by millions of consoles which are often sold below cost.

Re:In Other Words

[Luckyo]

They are arguing for it because they are both completely failing to compete on performance per core with intel, while they beat intel's GPU offerings with their own.

You essentially have someone who owns a fleet of mopeds arguing that fleet of mopeds is a better way of transporting goods from harbor to the stores. In some cases, they may be right. In many others, they will be wrong. Arguing this as a universal truth is disinformation, and actually believing in these arguments is ignorance of the subject at hand.

Re:Better get used to it, THQ

[bigdavex]

I've never understood why consoles don't simply have more RAM. Even in 2006, it was cheap enough to put in more than what the PS3 and 360 have. Right now, you can get 16GB of DDR3 RAM for $50 from Newegg, which is obviously higher than what manufacturers pay. Will it make the system cost a bit more to produce? Yes. Would it cost that much more to produce? Probably not.

$25 x 70 million units = $1.75 billion

Re:What does it matter?

[partyguerrilla]

Which is why PC gaming is force-fed shitty console ports that look and play like ass with mouse and keyboard. Good thing console sales have been on the decline every month this year, hopefully console gaming will die and we'll get decent PC games again.

Re:Better get used to it, THQ

[RCL]

Also, nowadays it's hard to find programmers who truly realize that memory is not an unlimited resource. Academia supplies pokemons who can only do higher level programming and cannot be bothered with "hardware specific details" like these.

Re:Better get used to it, THQ

[aztracker1]

I think MS, or sony would be well served by say an "XBox 360+" (Plus) architecture, that uses the same or 100% compatible CPUs perhaps slightly up-clocked, with more ram, and maybe a nice fast HDD or SSD.. if they could do this at a $100 price premium, and then offer a flag to games that they have the extra RAM to use, etc. Not a full on upgrade, but a bit more room.. maybe up the onboard cache for the CPU/GPU.

Re:Better get used to it, THQ

[vux984]

I haven't used my 360 or Wii for years, because there aren't any exclusive games out for them that really interest me.

I've got 2 kids under 10, the Wii never goes 2 days in a row without being turned on.

I've got a PC hooked up to the TV, steam with 100 titles, MAME, another dozen classics from GoG, and some humble bundles. Wireless xbox controller, keyboard, mouse, and joystick.

They barely touch it in comparison.

The 'hardcore' consoles are facing stiff competition from the PC, due to the fact that the advance of technology has somewhat levelled off and you can get a VERY competent PC inexpensively and it will last years without needing upgrades. And its fine for single player games, does the internet, and is overall a lot more flexible. Games tend to be cheaper, with free mods, etc, etc.

But the Wii ... and WiiU... they're really in a different market entirely. My kids aren't getting a smartphone anytime soon either. They each have a 3DS. Nintendo is safe for the near future.

Re:any objective numbers?

[raftpeople]

" that would give 1/4th the CPU" - 4x multi-threading doesn't limit a single threaded workload to go at 1/4th the speed of the processor. Multi-threading just allows the processor to do useful work when that single thread would otherwise be waiting on other resources (e.g. memory), but it doesn't slow down a single thread running by itself.

Re:Damage control by THQ...

[Jafafa Hots]

PepsiCo is hugely profitable and really doesn't need to "win the long term war" against Coca-Cola.

Re:Better get used to it, THQ

[Kjella]

So far I'd say the people that care about the storage unit is more a nuisance than a benefit, I do care if it's a 100M row fact table. But I have a guy at work that cares whether it's an int or a smallint when the table will never have more than 1000 rows - that's 4 kB for an int vs 2 kB for a smallint - and 1 kB for a tinyint as that happens too. And it creates all sorts of little fun with tools that says field X isn't compatible with field Y because I'm comparing int's to smallint's. And that total waste of time could probably pay for another 16-256GB RAM on the production server - it's after all one system that'll be running this code "for real". I've done code changes that result in a 10x-100x speed-up so it's not like it's heavily optimized either. I stick to this order for modern code, make it work, make it work well, make it work fast. Saving space on attributes is a fraction of the third priority.