It was no secret that Wii U was bizarrely behind in power to pretty much everything current at the time and especially coming soon after (console-wise of course).
The fact was that Wii U was struggling to even go toe-to-toe against the PS3 and Xbox 360 which were 6-7 years old at that point, mostly due to the ancient CPU that was a 2-gen reused GameCube chip, so it was pretty damn outdated. I recall the reason for that was to help enable backwards-compatibility with the Wii (maybe I'm wrong?).
Fast forward just over four years later, and Nintendo decided to not only release a system to succeed 3DS (which was 6 years old by this point), but also evidently the Wii U, as one singular platform.
Rewinding back to the legendary NX speculation days, no one had a fucking clue on what to expect the system to be power-wise. We've had countless rumors over the course of a LONG drawn out year and a half from its March 17th, 2015 announcement to the long-awaited October 20th, 2016 reveal. You just had to be there MAN!
Folks couldn't decide what form it'd even take, what the chip provider would be, and most importantly just how it'd stack up to the PS4 and XBO.
So the reveal finally arrived and while it didn't tell us much, I think at this point we knew that 1. it was primarily a portable (since the core hardware is in the screen) and uses an included dock accessory to play on the TV. 2. the processor was by Nvidia, rather than AMD as Nintendo had used for Wii U (which bought ATI, etc). And possibly 3. it was a 1280x720 screen.
It didn't become clear until near launch that this thing would natively support arguably THE most important engine of the gen; Unreal Engine 4, and not the smaller mobile variant IIRC. The first game to use this would be Snake Pass by Sumo Digital.
This was infamously passed over for Wii U, which itself lacked many current features (which is what SE claimed was the reason for it missing FFXV and KH3 back in 2013 IIRC). Wii U couldn't even use UE3 as well as PS3 and 360, and even Cry Engine 3 was infamously not natively supported (which resulted in Sonic Boom's horrific development issues).
So now that we're 18 months in, we've seen the system used quite nicely by some folks, from Nintendo, to 3rd-parties. Some require mention such as Panic Button for their work on DOOM and Wolfenstein 2 on Switch, and the upcoming DOOM Eternal is also coming from them. These being top-tier AAA graphical powerhouse games. And of course UE4 games like the aforementioned Snake Pass, to recent games like Dragon Ball FighterZ. Epic requires mention for doing their own part in not only getting Fortnite on the system within a fortnight *shot* but also keeping UE4 updated periodically. The most recent update being Ver. 4.20 which introduces dynamic resolution and apparently makes games run even better (as the Everspace devs recently confirmed from transitioning to the new version).
It's out of this world how much better Switch is over Wii U, not just in power, but its use of the Tegra X1 and the modern architecture is absolutely leagues better than Wii U was, being FAR easier for devs to use.
What are your thoughts on this? hell if any devs on Era want to chime in and maybe comment from their perspective from working on the system (maybe even both systems!), that'd be extra neat as well.
The fact was that Wii U was struggling to even go toe-to-toe against the PS3 and Xbox 360 which were 6-7 years old at that point, mostly due to the ancient CPU that was a 2-gen reused GameCube chip, so it was pretty damn outdated. I recall the reason for that was to help enable backwards-compatibility with the Wii (maybe I'm wrong?).
Fast forward just over four years later, and Nintendo decided to not only release a system to succeed 3DS (which was 6 years old by this point), but also evidently the Wii U, as one singular platform.
Rewinding back to the legendary NX speculation days, no one had a fucking clue on what to expect the system to be power-wise. We've had countless rumors over the course of a LONG drawn out year and a half from its March 17th, 2015 announcement to the long-awaited October 20th, 2016 reveal. You just had to be there MAN!
Folks couldn't decide what form it'd even take, what the chip provider would be, and most importantly just how it'd stack up to the PS4 and XBO.
So the reveal finally arrived and while it didn't tell us much, I think at this point we knew that 1. it was primarily a portable (since the core hardware is in the screen) and uses an included dock accessory to play on the TV. 2. the processor was by Nvidia, rather than AMD as Nintendo had used for Wii U (which bought ATI, etc). And possibly 3. it was a 1280x720 screen.
It didn't become clear until near launch that this thing would natively support arguably THE most important engine of the gen; Unreal Engine 4, and not the smaller mobile variant IIRC. The first game to use this would be Snake Pass by Sumo Digital.
This was infamously passed over for Wii U, which itself lacked many current features (which is what SE claimed was the reason for it missing FFXV and KH3 back in 2013 IIRC). Wii U couldn't even use UE3 as well as PS3 and 360, and even Cry Engine 3 was infamously not natively supported (which resulted in Sonic Boom's horrific development issues).
So now that we're 18 months in, we've seen the system used quite nicely by some folks, from Nintendo, to 3rd-parties. Some require mention such as Panic Button for their work on DOOM and Wolfenstein 2 on Switch, and the upcoming DOOM Eternal is also coming from them. These being top-tier AAA graphical powerhouse games. And of course UE4 games like the aforementioned Snake Pass, to recent games like Dragon Ball FighterZ. Epic requires mention for doing their own part in not only getting Fortnite on the system within a fortnight *shot* but also keeping UE4 updated periodically. The most recent update being Ver. 4.20 which introduces dynamic resolution and apparently makes games run even better (as the Everspace devs recently confirmed from transitioning to the new version).
It's out of this world how much better Switch is over Wii U, not just in power, but its use of the Tegra X1 and the modern architecture is absolutely leagues better than Wii U was, being FAR easier for devs to use.
What are your thoughts on this? hell if any devs on Era want to chime in and maybe comment from their perspective from working on the system (maybe even both systems!), that'd be extra neat as well.
