Dynasty Warriors dev on the Wii U's CPU "challenge"
CPU offers weaker performance than Xbox 360 and PS3, but graphics performance is better
The producer of the Dynasty Warriors franchise has detailed some of the benefits and difficulties of developing for Nintendo's new Wii U Console.
In a conversation with Eurogamer at the Tokyo Game Show, Tecmo Koei's Akihiro Suzuki explained that the Wii U's three Power PC cores have created difficulties in achieving a similar frame-rate to Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions.
"For games in the Warriors series, including Dynasty Warriors and Warriors Orochi, when you have a lot of enemies coming at you at once, the performance tends to be affected because of the CPU," he said. "Dealing with that is a challenge."
The Warriors games are known for large numbers of on-screen characters, and Eurogamer notes that the Wii U demo of Warriors Orochi 3 Hyper did not match the performance of the PlayStation 3. The specifications of the Wii U's CPU are still unknown, but Eurogamer claims that a number of developers other than Suzuki have confirmed that it is slower than the CPUs in the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.
However, Suzuki claims that the Wii U's custom AMD 7 series GPU and IGB of games RAM gives the console an edge over the competition in terms of graphics.
"From a visual standpoint, based on the performance of the Wii U, we knew [Warriors Orochi 3 Hyper] had the capability of having much better graphics than games on PS3 and Xbox 360. Make no mistake, from a visual standpoint, it is able to produce better graphics. So our challenge was to make a higher quality graphics. We were able to meet that."
Top Comment Not 'weaker' performance, it just won't run 360/PS3 code the way a 360 or PS3 does. My understanding is that the CPU clock rate on the Wii U is lower to avoid over-heating in such a small case. The CPU has the benefit of being a more modern piece of kit than the 360/PS3 processors, which has several advantages: more Cache, new instruction set, faster connection to RAM and GPU etc.
The GPU is also a GP-GPU, which will be able to do a large number calculations (such as with in-game physics) that are hugely important to game performance. As the interview notes, the GPU and RAM are something of a step-up from current machines. The most important point is, of course, that this is a launch title and developers have not optimised the game's code for the Wii U's architecture. As soon as developers make that effort, the Wii U will yield much better performance than current machines.
Of course, given this is the launch window, I'll let them off for now! I just hope that cross-platform development does make the effort here, because the myth that Wii U performance is weaker than 360/PS3 will only be perpetuated by developers not bothering to optimise their code or take the time and effort to utilise the Wii U's strengths. The proof of the pudding will be (in these early stages at least) in the way exclusive games perform on the system. Platinum's games, coming from a top tier developer with a significant budget behind them, particularly the (presumably) intense Bayonetta 2, should be a fantastic indication of just how capable Wii U is.
Posted:8 months ago