141–150 of 160 posts
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>full backwards compatibility with a prior console (Wii) Wasn't the Wii, at least initially, compatible with gamecube? Mine even has gamecube controller and memory card slots.
The article mentions that the Wii U had gamecube compatibility. I wonder how that was achieved? And I'm guessing it can't take the small optical disks of the gamecube.
Another badly designed Nintendo console. Now hear me out: NES: Well designed. SNES: Well designed. N64: Hampered by the originally 12-24 MB cartridges as opposed to 650 MB CDs. GameCube: Well designed. A little hampered by the 1.4 GB mini DVDs as opposed to 7.8 GB DVDs. Wii: Underpowered, but a surprise smash hit capturing that era’s sensibilities (like the PS2). Wii U: Clunky and awkward, which however led to the Sw…
You’re missing the whole story here. Was the Game Boy well designed? It was a smash hit upon release, but everybody immediately complained about the screen quality. The thing sold and sold and sold because it was inexpensive and just plain fun, bad screen notwithstanding. By 1996 however, it was woefully old, and the Game Boy Pocket sales were soft when it came out. Pokémon saved Nintendo’s bacon and gave them leeway…
With the tech at the time, the Game Boy wasn't going to have a better screen without seriously compromising battery life. Case in point, the Sega Game Gear which was graphically way better than the Game Boy but died fast if you took it off the wall plug.
The GBC didn't have the same excuse; it was so many years newer, and it offered very little over the Game Boy other than a color screen. And its color screen still looked like a joke next to a Game Gear. Given how much newer the GBC was than the GG, I doubt Nintendo couldn't have made a handheld with Game Gear-quality graphics but without the awful battery life.
But it doesn't matter, because the GBC had an awesome games library and people loved it.
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The parent comment isn't wrong, but it's referring to piracy. The Wii U has been blown wide open such that tools exist that allow you to pirate games by downloading them directly from Nintendo's servers, essentially giving you free eShop downloads. Every game that's available for the Wii U digitally, is available for a pirated download. Straight from Nintendo.
>Every game that's available for the Wii U digitally, is available for a pirated download. Straight from Nintendo. Oh wow, how did Nintendo manage to be this stupid?
Except the cryptography and security has been bypassed. So the consoles have a homebrew app that lets you download and install to console and pirate the game. All done on the console.
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>full backwards compatibility with a prior console (Wii) Wasn't the Wii, at least initially, compatible with gamecube? Mine even has gamecube controller and memory card slots.
The article mentions that the Wii U had gamecube compatibility. I wonder how that was achieved? And I'm guessing it can't take the small optical disks of the gamecube.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>full backwards compatibility with a prior console (Wii) Wasn't the Wii, at least initially, compatible with gamecube? Mine even has gamecube controller and memory card slots.
The article mentions that the Wii U had gamecube compatibility. I wonder how that was achieved? And I'm guessing it can't take the small optical disks of the gamecube.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>full backwards compatibility with a prior console (Wii) Wasn't the Wii, at least initially, compatible with gamecube? Mine even has gamecube controller and memory card slots.
The article mentions that the Wii U had gamecube compatibility. I wonder how that was achieved? And I'm guessing it can't take the small optical disks of the gamecube.
The Wii was compatible with the GameCube largely by being basically an enhanced GameCube under the hood, and the Wii U is kind of a further step down that same road with its "vWii" backwards compatibility mode, so it's possible to use homebrew to play dumped GameCube games on a Wii U natively, only providing some light glue to hook things together. It's not officially supported though.
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The gamecube is 20 years old though and ever since then they've had the weakest hardware. I remember buying a Wii the month it released and being pretty disappointed at how bad the graphics looked.
The Switch's mobile chipset was basically as bleeding edge as you could buy at the time. But it was a mobile chipset, so couldn't compete with a PS4 or Xbox.
The Wii U was unfortunately not a very successful console, but I feel that it had plenty of power to make fantastic looking games and great experiences. It came out in a weird time for technology and Nintendo always uses slightly older hardware. As a homebrew device it is amazing. There are still exploits being found with a new, safe, simple method out now thanks to some crazy dedicated modders. There’s a whole homeb…
The games library was just too weak honestly, I think that was the main thing. The software problems were in large part caused by Nintendo under-speccing its machines catching up to it. Multiplatform's were particularly adversely affected.
All in all you were better off buying a PS4 honestly.
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The Switch's mobile chipset was basically as bleeding edge as you could buy at the time. But it was a mobile chipset, so couldn't compete with a PS4 or Xbox.
The main problem is that even if it was cutting edge at the time, they can't or won't upgrade it. Of course iPads, which do upgrade their SoC every year, aren't as good at playing games.