Wii U Specs Update [December 3, 2011]
An undisclosed Japanese developer apparently leaked the following information on the Wii U Specs:
- CPU: An IBM 3-GHz 45-nanometer, PowerPC [Power7 variant]
- MEMORY: 768 megabytes of embedded DRAM [Not likely due to space and costs involved]
- GPU: 40-nanometer GPU from ATI
Set to make its debut sometime in 2012, Nintendo revealed during the June 2011 E3 press conference its newest addition to the family. The Wii U console, controller is a combination unit with a large (6.2”) touchscreen.
The controller’s touchscreen has rumble and axis sensors standard on most touchscreens, however the 1080p high definition screen takes graphics and gameplay out of the kids room and into the living room. One of the greatest assets of this new device, it is backward compatible with all other Wii controllers and games. Unlike many “new generation” devices, you will not need to go out and re-purchase all of your old favorites to play them on your new console.
Nintendo used wordplay for the new name. Wii U simply means Wii (we) can all play as a family or in group formats and yet can be played in “unique” (hence U) ways, thanks to the Wii U Specs. For the hardcore gamer, you can play in the living room while the kids are watching television or even late at night in bed while your spouse is sleeping next to you. No more arguments about who is using the television!
How The Wii U Console Looks So Far
Wii U Specifications Details
- The size is approximately 1.8” tall, 6.8” wide and 10.5” wide
- It has 1080p, 1080i, 720p, 480p and 480i resolution
- There is an IBM powered multi-core microprocessor
- 4 USB 2.0 slots
- The internal flash memory is expandable via DS card slot or USB drive
- Has Video over HDMI, Component, composite or S-Video
- Supports ALL Wii controllers and input devices and
- Is 100% backward compatible will all Wii games
The budding artist will have a blast using the stylist to hone his craft on the touchscreen. Unlike the joystick, the stylus allows detailed shading and depth while creating your own characters or any other graphic you choose to draw. The 1080p resolution for graphics will bring gaming to the big screen in ways that standard or prior generations of Wii controllers simply were incapable of, but now possible thanks to the Wii U Specs.
The inclusion of accelerometers and gyros allow you to use the controller as an aiming device and it detect its orientation. Another new feature that will enhance your gaming experience, you can handle your inventory or sports games on the controller so that you leave space on the main screen for full screen graphics.
The New Controller
The new Wii U controller includes some of the same features as all Wii controllers such as traditional button controls and two analog circle pads while incorporating the 6.2”, 16:9 touchscreen. It also has:
- Rechargeable batteries with AC/DC plug in
- Power and Home buttons
- +Control Pad
- ZL/ZR buttons
- L/R buttons
- A/B/X/Y buttons
- Microphone
- Stereo speakers
- Sensor Strip
- Stylus
- Built in accelerometer and gyroscope
- Rumble feature
The video and audio outputs us an AV multi out connector and 6 channel PCM linear output that are all HDMI, component, S-Video and composite cable compatible. The self- loading media bay will play 12 cm Wii optical discs and 12cm proprietary HD optical discs.
Preliminary Details about the Console Are Slowly Emerging
While much has been learned about the new Wii U controller, information regarding the specs of the new Wii U Specs gaming console has been kept under wraps for the most part. Some of the details that are slowly emerging let us know that the Wii U will be facilitated by a custom Radeon HD graphics processor with embedded DRAM. The new console will also feature 802.11 n Wi-Fi but nearly every other detail is still being tightly held until the 2012 release.
While the older Nintendo systems are confined to being played on a home television the new system can be used without a television at all. Previously every player had the same viewpoint even in a multi-player environment; however the new console strips away these boundaries allowing a totally new gaming environment. In individual play mode, the new console/ controller can display information directly on its screen that is not seen on the television. The gamer can also change the viewpoint and information seen by changing the orientation of the gyroscope. In multi-player mode the gamer holding the console has a greater competitive edge because he can see things that are not shown on the television screen.
Globally there are more than 86 million Wii console users. Nintendo is hoping that the next generation console will expand that number even further. There are already developers around the world working on new games.
Wii U Console Specs
Video Chatting, Video Sharing and Web Browsing!
Let’s say you are watching a video that you really want to share with other people, you no longer have to have anyone looking over your shoulder at the little screen. You can easily share the video with everyone in the room on the television screen. You can also use video chatting and web-browsing either on the 6.2” touchscreen or transfer them to the big screen in the living room. Can you imagine a video chat with a long distance family member on your home 60” tv screen? Talk about making someone feel like they are right there! WOW.
Nintendo believes the Wii U console/controller will fundamentally change how the television, Internet and gaming console interact together, redefining the structure of home entertainment systems. Kids and adults alike will have hours of interactive play time with all of their old favorites because of the backward compatibility to all other Wii games, remotes and components. While new and considerably bloodier games will be available for the mature gamer on many titles including Ninja Gaiden, Ghost Recon and Aliens: Colonial Marines. Especially because of the intensely vivid graphics of these games, you will want to make sure the kids (or squeamish adults) are already asleep or not in viewing range while playing these games
Wii U Console Hands-On Preview
Now that you know how powerful the next nintendo console will be, what do you think the final wii u price will be?
It’s good to see that console technology is improving. I’ve got a Wii and i’m now sparing money for the Wii-U. It’s good to know that you can use the wiimote for multiplayer. Spares so much money
the wii u console looks massive so will be smaller on the final version
the wii u needs to carter for the hardcore gamers with games like call of duty, battlefield 3, saints row, gta etc as if not i wont be buying it
Its the same size as a Wii. you wanna talk big? Xbox 360 and PS3 are fucking enormous. all your “hardcore gamers” consoles are bigger than a cereal box. and screw relating hardcore gamers to first person shooters and just games with guns in general. i own at least different 10 consoles, and i think COD and Battlefield $#%#.
I hear that man…. How does pulling triggers and using headsets make somebody more of a ” hardcore gamer ” as opposed to people like us who have spent fortunes buying up all the games and mastering ” all the games ” on every platform? I just don’t get it, all you ” hardcore ” gamers……
Just because you like to play games like call of duty and other combat games does not make you a hard gamer. some parents like to play and allow their children to play without all kinds of violents. Finally they come out with something that is for everyone and all you people who like the violents and swearing can do is complain. I,m sorry you can’t play bowling or hang with friends and play baseball on the wii without becoming bored.
i would kick your *** and take your name in cod or battlefield!!
but none of this 2 game come even close to experience you get when
playing zelda or metroid.
Cod and bf are just games of sht no content no story , only online .
Zelda metroid are alot better , yes people buy it becuz they think there cool with it but their just selfish lame loser who cant beat the water tenple
Yeah Paul, its really HUUUGE!!…its almost at the same size as the Wii, how can you expect it to be any smaller? :O
My guess on the final hardwarwe specs:
IBM POWER7(confirmed) Quad-core 3.5GHz with 16MB DRAM (my rumor)
Radeon HD (confirmed) 6870-based with 1GB of GDDR5 RAM (my rumor)
1GB DDR3 RAM (my rumor)
Total price for Console: $299.99
Total price With Controller: $374.99
(oh, and the final version will hopefully have squat analog sticks and hybrid triggers).
How are you so certain on such specific hardware configuration?.
judging on what the equivalents to the 360 specs would be now, I have made an aproximate guess. they have similar price points for the respective eras and seem the most logical for the next gen. and since ATI is coming out with a new line of GPUs next year, it only seems logical that they would use the cheaper,last-gen hardware.
(cont.) that an the fact that IBM said themselves that the CPU will be running on a 45nm process and on SOI technology. The ONLY new CPu that IBM is making right now is the POWER7. The clock speeds and core # are up to debate.
I think that most of this seems extremely reasonable except for the GPU RAM. Just because of the way consoles work I would take a random guess and say it’s probably something more like 128-256MB. If that.
But then again, I don’t know. I don’t work for Nintendo.
Xbox 360 has 10MB in the GPU, and the rest is shared with system RAM. Having a massive amount of RAM available to the GPU would be nice though.
Xbox 360 had 512MB unified RAM with the CPU and GPU. the 10MB is eDRAM used for AA. PS3 had 256MB of Dedicated GDDR3 RAM for the GPU.
*Correction* Nintendo likes to buy ridiculously fast, high bandwidth RAM so instead of two separate RAM caches for the CPU and GPU, change that instead to a 2GB 1T-SRAM pool (nintendo loves 1T-SRAM in their consoles)
It still likely won’t have graphics as good as PS3 and Xbox360. It would be more realistic to expect graphics similar to Xbox 360 at launch in 2005, because Wii U Devs will not have experience developing games to take advantage of the hardware. Not to mention, none of the Nintendo exclusive developers will have any experience developing high-res games.
So a console more powerful than either the 360 or PS3 using the POWER7 architecture which is miles ahead of PowerPC and Cell and graphics based on the AMD R700 architecture which is miles ahead of the 360 and PS3 not to mention more RAM and eDRAM, won’t have graphics as good as these relatively underpowered consoles. Gotcha
Yep, compare graphics from when the 360 was released to those now. Plus consider the fact the Wii U claims to be able to play games in native 1080p, where most games on the 360 are only 640p.
Even if the Wii U is substantially faster, they aren’t using blu-ray disks. So games will most likely be limited to relatively low-res textures compared to what you’d see on a PC.
Actually… Nintendo’s developing a new proprietary disc format especially for the Wii-U. An guess what? It’s total physical size is about the size of a Blu-Ray. So I wouldn’t worry about that respect.
That means it must utilize Blu-Ray technology, nothing else can store that much data. That’s just physics. Other than that, every console has a “proprietary” disc format in that you can’t just burn an iso and pop it in your console.
Technically that’s not true. Xbox 360 and PS3 both will output at 1080p. They may be rendering at a lower resolution than that but they use anti-aliasing to clean up the image. You probably wouldn’t notice the difference if it was rendered at 1920×1080 VS something lower with anti-aliasing. Also, the Wii U’s discs are rumored to be 25GB when single layer. Check out HD-DVD. They used a red laser and could hold much more than a standard DVD.
Most 360 games don’t use much Anti-Aliasing (look at MW2 up close and it is as jaggy as a steak knife) and PS3 has one, mabey two games that have it (Uncharted is the only one I can think of athe the moment).
@Phil
you’er wrong..xbox360 cannot do 1080p outright..the system was meant for 720p outputting..but because ps3 is a 1080p output console from the start, MS doesn’t want to lose face, they updated the xbox360 through software emulation to output 1080p, so technically it’s a software trick they are doing and will have slow gameplay if used in 1080p and slowdown… Currently, the ps3 is way ahead of xbox360 in term of outputting pretty gfx.
And yes the Wii U will outperform xbox360 and ps3 in graphic wise. Please, do not be a hater and saying the wii U games will output graphics that is comparable to first gen xbox360 games.. have you seen xbox360 first gen games..they look like shlt. even late ps2 games look better than xbox360 first gen games.
AS for me, as long as the Wii U will have next gen zelda(like the demo), i’m sold! And of course, a new metroid.
Actually, chances are the higher end games will look either the same or slightly better than the current gen games at launch. It’s based on a modern version of basically the same hardware. I can’t imagine why they would have trouble with that.
Games use regular DVDs on the 360, but there was a HD-DVD peripheral drive strictly for playing movies.
You realise some developers have admitted to having the hardware for months and even years? Do you know why Team Ninja didn’t announce a platform for Ninja Gaiden 3 September last year? Because it was planned for Wii U before then. Otherwise they would have come out and said.
And Retro Studios are known to have had the system prior to the release of Donkey Kong Country Returns. So yes, some devs will have had well over two years (at least) to get used to the system. And as I pointed out earlier, thats not even mentioning those that confessed to having one for years.
I can’t wait to see what Retro could do with such high powered hardware… I mean, look at Metroid Prime 3, it’s stunning as far Wii is concerned…
Currently, developers are hitting the limits of the PS3 and the X-Box 360. If the Wii U does launch in 2012, then multi-platform developers should be able to take advantage of this difference between the Wii and Wii U and bring their games to a level similar to the PS3 and X-Box 360. I will say that you may have a point for those developers for the Wii only, which may take awhile to catch up.
They hit the limits of the consoles a long time ago, now they’re pushing their own limits to see what they can make the hardware do.
I could push an Xbox 360 to it’s limits by having it render a small box at 10×10 pixels if I wanted too. It’s all about how the hardware is utilized. That’s the only thing I liked about Wii being so underpowered, if a developer wanted to make a game that looked nice on it they had to put the effort into it. Not many succeeded, however.
I don’t understand what is the appeal to the new wii U console. The WII is fun because you could move to play some of the games. Microsoft jumped on the band wagon and invented the Kinex. I have never played it but it seems like an improvement to the WII. I would have thought Nintendo would have made a console similar to the Kinex.
Ray,
According to what I have read, this system will be backward compatible with all of the WIi,s Wands and controllers, as well as being 100% Backword compatible with all of the Wii games. What I think Nintendo is doing is basically making a system that will be a complement to Wii, while allowing them to make 3D gaming for hardcore gaming. Now that cloud technology is readily available , it could be that somehow they have been able to use it to enhance the new system without adding loads of memory and graphics until the console needs . Then after your finished with the 3D games it could the “put it away” in the cloud till needed again. Seems like they could some how be able to use the cloud this way. But I am not a technology wizard by no means. This is just my own Out of the box thinking.
Really nice idea. Probably the amount of resources involved to pull this thing off is way too much for Nintendo to implement it.
kinex are small building toys… KINECT is microsoft’s product
I’ll just be glad if I don’t pass out unboxing the Wii U!
I think it all sounds good and dandy..but I really disagree with the $600 USD price tag…and hopefully enough of these will be in supply for demand..
still i dont know if i’ll pass out from the awesomeness or the empty waletness
hi there yes red lazers disc can hold lot more data called halographic disc 4 terabytes and laser hard drives hold 37.5 terabytes at 100 tb/s read write speeds or 100 terabyes per second read write speeds be fun at 100 terabytes per second gaming as fast as possable we got look at faster and bigger storage options for future game consoles
The only reason I’m buying this is for ZELDA! and may be the new mario… let’s hope nintendo aims it’s market for Teen/mature players also…this new “Family only” nintendo idea… I don’t like it so much.