E3

[HYRUL3]

Off Topic:

Dear 2012 Apocalypse believers,

We'd like to inform you that the reason our calendar ends in 2012 is because some douchey Europeans came and killed a ton of us and effectively brought our culture to a halt.

Thanks,
The Mayans

On Topic:

I hope E3 2012 is a much better show than 2011 was. Microsoft's show was boring as hell. Sony had some good stuff. The Wii U conference was definitely provided without context for what the thing was, confusing a lot of people, and didn't show any games. It was just a confirmation of what most already figured out.

[Naner]

I'm pretty sure no one here really believes in apocalypse '12. I, for one, was just joking about it.

Anyway, what intrigued me this E3 is that the week was much better than the conferences themselves -- at least on Nintendo's side. They showed many Wii and 3DS titles on their e3.nintendo.com site that were way cooler than the way they announced the Wii U. I like the system in itself, but its debut had some serious flaws (the confusion whether it was or not a new console is not one of them, though).

[HYRUL3]

I wasn't being serious with the 2012 thing, by the way. Its a re-post of a someecards.com post. Guess I should have included that statement.

[Naner]

I thought so. Anyway, if someone here was being serious...

[fox mulder]

I thought so. Anyway, if someone here was being serious...

Then we'd have to sick lil birdie on the bastard.

[EmpReb]

I'm pretty sure no one here really believes in apocalypse '12. I, for one, was just joking about it.

Anyway, what intrigued me this E3 is that the week was much better than the conferences themselves -- at least on Nintendo's side. They showed many Wii and 3DS titles on their e3.nintendo.com site that were way cooler than the way they announced the Wii U. I like the system in itself, but its debut had some serious flaws (the confusion whether it was or not a new console is not one of them, though).

I very much want to buy that THE day it comes but I have doubts about the third party support. Being a PC/Nintendo gamer you pretty much get the BEST exclusives ever but the third party support is pretty spotty.

[Chris]

I very much want to buy that THE day it comes but I have doubts about the third party support. Being a PC/Nintendo gamer you pretty much get the BEST exclusives ever but the third party support is pretty spotty.

After the crap that has been the 3DS I won't be getting WiiU early on if at all and I still think not having a hard drive by default is stupid.

[Dark Echoes]

I very much want to buy that THE day it comes but I have doubts about the third party support. Being a PC/Nintendo gamer you pretty much get the BEST exclusives ever but the third party support is pretty spotty.

After the crap that has been the 3DS I won't be getting WiiU early on if at all and I still think not having a hard drive by default is stupid.

Wait, wut.

[Naner]

Heh, someone likes resurrecting topics.

Anyway, I don't mind the lack of a hard drive. I've already got about 3.5 TB of storage, spread in four disks. And I'll likely have more by the time I have a Wii U.

[Chris]

Heh, someone likes resurrecting topics.

Anyway, I don't mind the lack of a hard drive. I've already got about 3.5 TB of storage, spread in four disks. And I'll likely have more by the time I have a Wii U.

You're missing the point, it will hold back developers from taking advantage of having games been able to be installed onto a hard drive, streaming HD textures from DVD isn't ideal, hoping your audience already have external hard drives is risky and can lead to confusion when games do use a hard drive.

Will also mean there will be less technically advanced download titles as some of the audience may not have a hard drive to download to so why bother developing or releases ground breaking titles on the WiiU. Remember the WiiU can do HD now so will need lots of storage for games wanting to take advantage of this.

[Dark Echoes]

Wait, so your saying I have to pay $80 to play on a console I just payed *$300 dollars for?

* I dunno the real price

My thoughts on that:

[Naner]

Who knows, maybe Nintendo used some of its Japanese magic to develop a reasonably sized and priced SSD.

[rondus18]

SSDs are generally not ideal for gaming, their performance can vary drastically and their wright speeds can dip as low as a 5400rpm HDD's. I recall reading that Nintendo was going to use proprietary disks, something akin to Blu-ray. Maybe it will be more ideal for streaming HD textures than a DVD, who knows? But there really is no upside to not having an internal HDD for downloadable games. Developers will not make a game that can only be sold to a limited number of people who own a WiiU. Nintendo will only add an official HDD add on or release a new iteration of the WiiU with an HDD standard if Capcom says they need one for Monster Hunter.

[Chris]

Wait, so your saying I have to pay $80 to play on a console I just payed *$300 dollars for?

You won't have to but if a game released needed to use the hard drive for something then yeah you will have to. Not owning an Xbox360 I don't know if it's true or not but I think some bigger games required a hard drive and those who bought the standard xbox360 couldn't play those games?

SSDs are generally not ideal for gaming, their performance can vary drastically and their wright speeds can dip as low as a 5400rpm HDD's. I recall reading that Nintendo was going to use proprietary disks, something akin to Blu-ray. Maybe it will be more ideal for streaming HD textures than a DVD, who knows? But there really is no upside to not having an internal HDD for downloadable games. Developers will not make a game that can only be sold to a limited number of people who own a WiiU. Nintendo will only add an official HDD add on or release a new iteration of the WiiU with an HDD standard if Capcom says they need one for Monster Hunter.

Yeah, best stick with the regular ones.

You're probably right there even though I suspect you were half joking, this is one of reasons the WiiU wont be a day one purchase for me, it'll be out of date 6 months later.

[Naner]

Well... The 360 had the problem of using DVDs, which is a fairly small media for high definition games. That made it require lots of installations. The PS3 had the issue of having a very slow Blu-ray drive because those were expensive back in 2006. So games had to be installed so load times wouldn't be so long. If Nintendo manages to use a media that's as large as Blu-rays and fast as DVDs, the lack of a hard drive won't be a terrible issue for retail games. However, the question of downloadable games remain, especially since GameCube Virtual Console is pretty likely, which would demand 1+GB of storage for many games.

It would be very weird for Nintendo to release an updated Wii U, because they hardly ever did that with their home consoles (the Wii, for example, received much less modifications throughout the years than the 360 or the PS3), even it it's common practice with their handhelds. One way or another, I still think it's too early to judge. Let's wait for more information.