Digital Foundry vs. Wii U at E3
It’s safe to say that last year’s Wii U E3 debut left us with more questions than we had answers. It was clear that Nintendo has once again stepped back from the technological arms race that had cost its competitors billions in losses, and was focusing on controller-driven concept games that it felt had a greater chance of mainstream success. However, at the same time, the console was being released seven years after the debut of Xbox 360, so surely it had to reflect the generational leaps in technology we’ve seen since then? The demos suggested otherwise and, one year later, the evidence suggests that not a great deal has changed. Of course, as we’ve demonstrated, tech specs don’t really matter so much to Nintendo – a sentiment it is quite happy to put on the record. Its world-class development teams have the uncanny ability to create games that look as good as they play even on less accomplished kit, and the opportunities afforded by any modern processing hardware are immense. Traditionally, the success of Nintendo’s consoles has been entirely proportional to the quality of its own games and even its less successful systems like GameCube have turned a profit. By developing to the strengths of its own hardware, the company’s dev teams have an uncanny ability to defy the technological limits of the host architecture. Combined with its unique take on game design, Nintendo games are quite like any other. Read more…







