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In an interview with CNN, Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime has gone on record to say that third-party games on Wii U have higher graphical fidelity on Wii U than they do on the PS3 and the Xbox 360.
Eurogamer have posted a transcript of an excerpt of the interview:
CNN: In terms of specs, the Wii is pretty much on par with the Xbox 360 and the PS3. But we know Sony and Microsoft are set to release new consoles next year. Aren’t you worried about the timing and that the Wii U will be a generation behind your rivals?
Reggie Fils-Aime: Well, first off I have to correct you. The specs are quite different than the competitive systems, much more graphically intensive. If you do a side by side comparison you would actually see third-party games like Call of Duty look dramatically better on our system.
In terms of what competition’s going to do in the future, we’ll see. We know based on our own development this two screen gaming experience really is the next innovation consumers are gravitating to. It’s selling extremely well here in the Americas. Already stocks are quote low in the marketplace. We’re rapidly replenishing. So for us, certainly the consumer is deciding the innovation is well worth the investment.”
It’s a shame that Fils-Aime has had to resort to greatly exaggerating the Wii U’s capabilities, as the majority of the console ports on the Wii U are merely on par with the six-year-old systems, and others, such as Warriors Orochi 3 Hyper, actually look and perform worse. Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, the game Fils-Aime was directly referencing, has been proven graphically equal to the Xbox version, but Digital Foundry have shown that it performs at a much lower, and fluctuating, frame rate, which severely affects the gameplay experience.
As several online commentators have stated, perhaps it would have been better if Fils-Aime had drawn attention to the fact that launch games for a new and unfamiliar system have so closely matched concurrent releases for established hardware– an impressive feat for a presumably short development time– and that future multiplatform releases can only get better from here. Others have noted that this is simply PR spin, and that Christmas is right around the corner.
“…launch games for a new and unfamiliar system have so closely matched concurrent releases for established hardware– an impressive feat for a presumably short development time– and that future multiplatform releases can only get better from here.”
I couldn’t agree more with this statement. I wouldn’t doubt the Wii U is more powerful. The OS and the GamePad streaming probably tax the hardware, I’m sure, and yet almost all of the games in Wii U’s launch lineup look a generation ahead of what the 360 and PS3 put out in their first year (The first Uncharted, anyone?). The Wii U’s graphical potential has barely, if at all, been tapped. Not to mention that games like Smash Bros may very well leave out the GamePad all together and let that extra horsepower work for them (I doubt SSBB will try anything asymmetric).
The ported games, however, don’t demonstrate this, and it definitely doesn’t makes sense that Reggie would try to pull this… meh, I guess it’s his job, isn’t it? And maybe in some more subtle ways, these games are superior graphically.
I guess I should refer to it as SSBU, shouldn’t I? Heheh…
Well, actually the games doesnt look better, just on par, but yeah i know in 1 year the games are gonna be better. Its like mario 64 and conquers bad fur day, the same system but a big difference in graphics.