Well, my dad works at Nintendo and~: Console Wars Horseshit Megathread

[Rokal]

I was thinking about buying Xenoblade Chronicles and since the wiiU is backwards compatable maybe getting one, so I finally took a look at it.  That controller looks, and is, a gimped tablet that only has 3-5 hours of battery life.  Despite the fact that people seem to like that new Mario game a lot they did not create a console bundle for it.  Shipping them out with two choices of system based on a laughably small amount of flash memory, 8 or 32 gig, almost makes me angry.  It costs too much for how weak it is.  Their online system is still badly managed.  I guess I would have to buy a wii controller for some wii games.

If it's any consolation, the 8 GB model has been discontinued and the system supports external USB drives or cheap SD cards. The gamepad does have a pretty awful battery life at 3-5 hours, but the deluxe (32 GB) models come with a nice charging dock so it's easy to just sit the gamepad on the cradle between uses. I don't play games for more than 3 hours in one burst anymore these days, but the Pro controller has a much higher battery life if you expect that to be a problem. The only time I get annoyed by the battery life is when I'm using the system to stream a couple hours worth of Netflix/Hulu, in which case you can set it on the charging dock while you watch.

Super Mario 3D World would have been a nice bundle pack-in, but it's pretty rare for the new killer-app on a system to be a part of a discounted bundle. Still, New Super Mario Bros U, the game that was included in the recent holiday bundle, is trash. I feel bad for anyone that got the system for the holidays without any other games.

Then I found out Xenoblade is some sort of rare hard to find game that sells for twice the original msrp, used, so fuck that.

Also looks like blurry shit unless you play it on Dolphin, which is more effort than I'm willing to put into playing a JRPG in 2013/14.

Edit: If you're looking for a game that does a great job making an argument for the gamepad, check out Rayman Legends. The Wii U version is definitely the best version of the game and there are a lot of really clever ways the game uses the gamepad.

[Hawkbit]

Xenoblade C looked really great on Dolphin; it was unstable though.  I kept getting screen tears and lockups, so I bought the Wii version which I found unplayable due to the crap graphics.  Great game, terrible platform decision.

[Yegolev]

It goes unplayed due to my inability to rip the disc.

[Rendakor]

Xenoblade C looked really great on Dolphin; it was unstable though.  I kept getting screen tears and lockups, so I bought the Wii version which I found unplayable due to the crap graphics.  Great game, terrible platform decision.

I never had any problems with it on Dolphin, once I got everything configured properly.

[Fabricated]

So about Titanfall:



lol

[Rasix]

One more than a MOBA.  SHOOT FOR THE STARS!

[Velorath]

If it's what makes the game the most fun rather than just a technical limitation then I don't see what the issue is, not that I'm really interested in the game either way. Much like with MMO's it's easier to get a good team of 6 people together as opposed to playing with 30 other random people.

[jakonovski]

It's actually got loads of bots in it, they're labeled "militia" in all the vids. My pet theory is that games journos loved the game at trade shows because they thought they were massarcing human opponents.

[Yegolev]

It goes unplayed due to my inability to rip the disc.

Actually I remember now that I sort of groaned while reading about configuring a controller for Dolphin.

[Jeff Kelly]

A Dolphin's Tale, The Story of GameCube.

A long but great text about the design and development of the GameCube with lots of quotes and background info. Also relevant to understand why Nintendo does things the way they do.

[Falconeer]

Titanfall 6vs6? This could be a dealbreaker for me. What the fuckin hell.

[Miasma]

Kinect trolling.

[Fabricated]

That video rules. Like every one of those players sounds either stoned or like they're 10 years old.

[Jeff Kelly]

It's COD so the latter.

[MisterNoisy]

It's COD so the latter.

It's CoD, so odds are that for many of them, it's both simultaneously.  :P

[Margalis]

It's actually got loads of bots in it, they're labeled "militia" in all the vids. My pet theory is that games journos loved the game at trade shows because they thought they were massarcing human opponents.

The design of the game is very intentionally that everyone gets to feel good about themselves because they can rack up kills on bots even if they suck. I suspect the more hardcore shooter people are going to have serious issues with it.

I agree that the raw numbers don't really matter, but the game does feel like it's catering to casuals.

[jakonovski]

I can't wait for the Militia Exp Booster, exclusively for Titanfall Premium, only $59.99 on Origin!

[Nonentity]

I think y'all are getting your panties in a twist over a game you haven't played yet. I watched a few full matches at E3 with their devs playing, and I don't really think there's anything to worry about. The bots are more like moba-style creeps you gotta keep an eye out for or you'll get swarmed, but they aren't super hard to mow through. It's to be an impediment more than anything.

I tend to prefer smaller player counts anyways. There's always BF4 for my large playercount fun.

[schild]

It just clicked.

Titanfall is built on the Source Engine but will only be available on Origin?

Valve needs to lay the everloving smackdown on shit like that.

[Goreschach]

Why bother? Just let them hoist themselves on their own petard. Everybody already hates origin, and will hate them for using origin. No reason for Valve to make themselves look like the dicks here.

[Fabricated]

Wait what? Is Titanfall really based on source?

[schild]

Wait what? Is Titanfall really based on source?

Yes. They took the modding capability out of it to boot.

[jakonovski]

It is absolutely hilarious though that the Titanfall people left Activision in anger, and then decided to sign up with EA and a MS console exclusive.  

edit: also, there's a small chance that the reason we have seen so little Titanfall content is because there's a problem and it's not ready. In which case the shitstorm will beautiful.

[Fabricated]

Well, they're basically doing it on their own terms still which is better than they had.

[jakonovski]

Well, there's "on their own terms" and there's "only on Origin". These two combined make for many interpretations, but I don't think any of them are good.

[Miasma]

Hard to say "on their own terms" when EA just ups and decides not to release the game on playstation because of some deal they made with microsoft.

Doesn't matter, big budget console fps games are like the reality singing/dancing shows of video games.  They're all garbage but people will still lap it up.  Fucking CoD Ghosts sold a metric shit ton.  Best possible outcome is titanfall causes a schism in the CoD community causing its user base to be cut in half and making both games less profitable.

Who am I kidding people will just buy both the same way they watch both american idol and dancing with the stars or whatever.

[Yegolev]

Oh, I could be wrong but I think the reality show of gaming is Madden 25.  I've never played a Madden game before, unless maybe you count one on the Genesis, but this thing was apparently programmed by monkeys.  It's just a terrible, terrible program.

[Nonentity]

I doubt this game will be as terrible as the naysayers are predicting. They are making something totally within their wheelhouse, and I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt since they made MW2, which is my favorite in the series.

They've been working on it for what, three or four years?

[Jeff Kelly]

A nice little inside story by Digital Foundry on the experience of developing for the Wii U pre launch.

A few gems from the article:

About the maturity of the toolchain:

"Nintendo had provided an integration of their development tools into Visual Studio - the de facto standard for development - but it didn't work, not even close. So time was spent trying to get this fixed up, while reporting the issue to the platform holder. Eventually we received a solution from Nintendo via another third-party company who had also been working on this issue for a while.

So now we could make the code visible in Visual Studio and get it compiling, which was good, but the compilation times were really slow, even for minor changes. Then it had to do the link step, at which point you could happily get up, make a cup of tea, have a chat and get back to your desk before the link was complete. Link times were measured in multiple (four or more) minutes on Wii U compared to around one minute on other platforms."

about the NCL support experience:

"After about a week of chasing we heard back from the support team that they had received an answer from Japan, which they emailed to us. The reply was in the form of a few sentences of very broken English that didn't really answer the question that we had asked in the first place. So we went back to them asking for clarification, which took another week or so to come back. After the second delay we asked why it was taking to long for replies to come back from Japan, were they very busy? The local support team said no, it's just that any questions had to be sent off for translation into Japanese, then sent to the developers, who replied and then the replies were translated back to English and sent back to us. With timezone differences and the delay in translating, this usually took a week !"

about the networking and social features:

"(we) asked how certain scenarios might work with the Mii friends and networking, all the time referencing how Xbox Live and PSN achieve the same thing. At some point in this conversation we were informed that it was no good referencing Live and PSN as nobody in their development teams used those systems (!) so could we provide more detailed explanations for them?"

Interesting read and if only half of it is true then Nintendo seriously dropped the ball in more than one way.

[Jeff Kelly]

Nintendo apparently licensed the compiler toolchain from Green Hills. For anyone who doesn't know them Green Hills is one of only a few major toolchain companies providing products to the embedded sector. Since Nintendo still uses Power PC cores the selection of viable tool chains is basically limited to Green Hills, Wind River or Freescale's own Codewarrior tools (only viable though if you use Freescale ppc cores). All providers of embedded development tools because PPC is pretty much only used for embedded products today. This is also pretty much the reason why they all suck.

I'd kill for Visual Studio integration for any of those products for example. Unfortunately using those products means that you are stuck with tools and GUI interfaces that are as comfortable to use as Borland Turbo C/C++ from 1990 yet offer even less features.

Since I've had the unfortunate experience of having to work with their tools in several embedded projects I can relate to the developer in the OP. Green Hills exemplifies what is wrong with embedded development. They provide you with tools that are horribly out of date, have horrible UI and a user experience stuck in the middle ages and are as well documented as the incoherent ramblings of a madman while charging you $10,000 per license for the privilege of using them. I can't blame them though since their competition is pretty much as bad.

Switching PS 4 and Xbone to X86 wasn't just a great move to make things easier for multi-platform titles because of easier porting it also meant that companies are no longer stuck with absolutely horrible embedded tool chains and can instead use Visual Studio or Eclipse based IDEs and LLVM/CLANG or Intel's ICC as compiler/linker.

[Fabricated]

Is codewarrior still a gigantic pile of dogshit?

I haven't really heard a good word about from anyone I've ever known who has been forced to use it.

[Jeff Kelly]

Yes but now the dogshit is based on a haphazardly adapted eclipse installation instead of their own GUI.

You can still find references to the Gamecube's gecko ppc processor in the ppc startup code that comes as part of the installation. Which means that those parts haven't been touched since 2001.

As embedded tool chains go it's pretty par for the course though. It's all pretty much overpriced dogshit.

[Margalis]

A nice little inside story by Digital Foundry on the experience of developing for the Wii U pre launch.

This reads like dramatization of typical launch issues with someone who had no previous experience working with any Nintendo hardware. I would not take what some anonymous doom caster on the internet says at face value. I say this as someone who has done both Wii and Wii U development. It ain't hard.

"Nintendo had provided an integration of their development tools into Visual Studio - the de facto standard for development - but it didn't work, not even close. So time was spent trying to get this fixed up, while reporting the issue to the platform holder. Eventually we received a solution from Nintendo via another third-party company who had also been working on this issue for a while.

Nintendo games compile with GCC/cygwin type stuff, which you can integrate into Visual Studio and Incredibuild in minutes if you know how to write a makefile and invoke a command-line compiler. If you are someone who has only done windows / xbox development your entire life and never had to touch a makefile I guess this is minorly challenging?  The fact that it took this person a long time to get "Hello World" running says to me that they are either extremely unfamiliar with non-windows development of any kind or kind of suck at programming.

This sounds like the type of person who when confronted with someone slightly different from what they are used to struggles and whines.

[codewarrior stuff]

I'd kill for Visual Studio integration for any of those products for example. Unfortunately using those products means that you are stuck with tools and GUI interfaces that are as comfortable to use as Borland Turbo C/C++ from 1990 yet offer even less features.

I did all my Wii development in Visual Studio. (PS3 as well) I used CodeWarrior for like a couple days then realized how bad it is. IIRC I did use Codewarrior for debugging (which it is perfectly fine for) but not for editing / compiling. Visual Studio and Incredibuild are both perfectly capable of invoking command line compilers, even in distributed fashion, so build/compile times there aren't any longer. IIRC when comparing link times on 360 / Wii / PS3 the 360 was by far the slowest. By far. I assume because of all the windows cruft that gets included.

It really sounds like this guy doesn't understand command line / makefile style development and could have solved his issues relatively quickly had he bothered to try.

As far as things like needing a big patch day one and some features being poorly documented - welcome to game development launches?

My experience is that developing for Wii and Wii U is pretty painless unless you are a giant scrub or a windows-only guy frightened and confused by anything slightly outside your comfort zone. The actual APIs are very clean (much cleaner than legacy windows stuff) and the tools are fine, other than Codewarrior / editor, which you don't need to use.

[Jeff Kelly]

Well I do most of my professional development in the embedded business and here it's much more common to set up your own build chain with command line tools and build/make setups.

It's easy when the whole code and toolchain has been built with that in mind (as most embedded projects are), it's also easy if you have access to the source for everything or your middleware and engine framework is designed for cross platform wotk and is designed to be tool/compiler agnostic. If not then it is a major pain in the ass to even 'just' switch compilers even if you stay on the same architecture. Incompatible language extensions, incompatible syntax for preprocessor commands, undocumented and incompatible ABIs etc.

This basically means that you'll have to completely ignore the IDE part of whatever compiler you use except as a debugger GUI and to rely solely on the command line capabilities for everything else. If you've been a professional developer long enough or if you've worked on projects or platforms where this is basically the norm (Unix development, most embedded work etc.) then this is not that big a deal. If you are used to 'PC style development' though this will be a major culture shock for you. If the platform vendor chooses to give you some parts of the code as binary lib only you're basically locked into whatever compiler they've used since most embedded compilers use proprietary ABIs by default or 'extend' well known ABIs and debug formats to support their own special debug and profiling features.

So you're relegated to Unix style development where you use one tool for editing your code, a command line setup for building and a separate tool for debugging. Which is entirely doable but get's more and more unwieldy as project and code size increases. This is not that bad but I imagine that their shop had basically only worked with a Visual Studio setup up to this point which means that they'd either have to wait until the integration into VS works or that they would need to set up their whole development workflow from scratch.

I can relate to the developer not because what they faced was exceptionally difficult or uncalled for but simply because I too like the comfort and features of XCode and Visual studio and wished that embedded toolset providers would at least offer some of those features. Also because it is a pain in the ass to 'convert' an IDE based workflow into a command line based one with documentation being what it is (mostly crap or non-existent)

[Jeff Kelly]

Nintendo today published its modified financial forecast prior to the end of the fiscal year in march and it's dire.

The projected net profit changed from 55 billion Yen (520 million USD) profit to 22 billion Yen loss (210 milion USD).
The sales projections for the Wii U got cut from 9 million to 2.8 (!) million units.
The sales projections for the 3 DS got cut from 18 million to 13.5 million (!) units.
Total revenue changed from a üprojected 900 billion Yen to 450 billion Yen.

Iwata failed to meet any of his forecasts. What's worse is that Nintendo not only failed to meet its Wii U sales projections (which everybody knew where shit anyway) but also sold much fewer 3 DS than expected.

I wonder if he can recover from that.