Wii U Catch-All

Gumbie wrote:

It's fine. The people who have them obviously love them and someone who is still on the fence (like me) will keep reading opinions and waiting on a better game lineup.

I'm waiting for Monster Hunter, but in the meantime I'm having fun with it. I also see the promise of a continually improving system.

I ordered a Wii U Deluxe + Mario on Monday, and it arrived on Friday. There were just a couple of issues:
* First, I was out of town on Friday. No big deal, I could wait a day.
* Second, both items were shipped separately. The Wii U via Fedex, and Mario via USPS. Again, no big deal, I thought: Mario just might arrive a bit later than the Wii U.

Unfortunately, I realized on Saturday that there was a third issue: My apartment number was cutoff by one digit on the shipping address. This was fine for the Wii U: as I was still able to pick it up from the front desk of my apartment complex. Not so for Mario: USPS packages are sent to the apartment owner's mailbox, and I don't even know if the game had arrived yet. So, I decided to drop over to the apartment where the game was sent to, and knocked on the door to see if it had arrived. Unfortunately, nobody was home.

"No big deal", I thought. "I still have Nintendoland to play around with anyway."

I went ahead and setup the Wii U. I installed the firmware update, transferred my Wii data over (it was nice to see my fiancé's various Miis again), poked around the Miiverse (which looks great, by the way), and decided it was finally time to play Nintendoland. So I popped in the disc and, the game notified me that there was an update to download, and that it would take around 5-7 minutes.

"Great, I'll just go ahead and plug in my external hard drive while that is going on", I thought, "Then I can go ahead and grab Zombie U since it may be a while before I can play Mario."

So I went over to the Wii U, attempted to move it around a bit so I could access the USB ports a bit more easily and proceeded to knock the power plug out of the Wii U.

"Doh. Good thing I didn't try doing this during the firmware update. Then I'd be really screwed!"

I finished up plugging in my usb drive, and reconnected the power cable. Then I turned on the Wii, and the power light turned blue for a couple of seconds before turning right back to red.

"sh*t"

After spending a good bit of time trying various methods of getting the Wii U to reboot, I gave up for the night. Today, I called Nintendo's support and explained what happened. "Yeah, you're going to need to send in system." the technician told me. Fortunately, since the Wii U is so new, the whole process will be expedited

And thus tomorrow I send my Wii U back to Nintendo back for repair.

That sucks, Tuller. I wonder how many bricked units they're dealing with? Anyway, keep us posted as to your results. Hopefully you'll see it back and in working order quickly.

ianunderhill wrote:

That sucks, Tuller. I wonder how many bricked units they're dealing with? Anyway, keep us posted as to your results. Hopefully you'll see it back and in working order quickly.

Sarcasm on: Read the internet. Don't you know that 50% of the units that nintendo shipped were bricked by the update because apparently everybody in North America has electrical power that blinks on and off as frequently as my Christmas lights?

Sarcasm off: Hopefully not that many people were stuck with broken units. An hour long update on day one really is a bummer, it bricking your system due to a mishap must be really frustrating.

@Tuller That really does suck. I hope your neighbors are honest and return your NSMBU, and I hope that Nintendo support is able to quickly turn around your repair so you aren't stuck without a unit for too long. Your problem also really illustrates why it sucks that Nintendo didn't make the Wii --> Wii U transfer include a transfer of your game licenses from hardware based to account based. Hopefully, they come through and not only replace your unit but properly restore all of your Wii content to your new system.

EDIT: Why did my mind read Tuller as Tucker?

I know a lot of the testing and shipping going on in the warehouse I used to work at, they were required to test the units right away and then repackage them. These were units not produced in my warehouse, but actually made in China. That was actually a problem we were having with other things too. A lot of items that would come from the China warehouse had to be doubly checked by us because we found some things that weren't working right away. Hopefully this problem doesn't persist.

And the people that deal with consumer repairs strive to get your console returned to you within 3 days of receiving it. They will probably be working hard core on Christmas Eve too. I know they do every year.

Faceless Clock wrote:

I can hardly wait for the next Mario Kart. I love the franchise.

I'd be happy with online F-Zero first. Disappointed that didn't happen on the Wii, but motion control would've been a major deal breaker there.

But you know what? Nintendo Land has me jonesing hard for the next Smash Bros. especially the way they rearranged some of the classic themes for that collection.

You can brick your Wii U doing a game update?? Weird

TheGameguru wrote:

You can brick your Wii U any piece of hardware doing a game firmware/system update?? Weird Since always.

FTFY.

Of course 360 updates take about 10 seconds :p.

Mr GT Chris wrote:

Of course 360 updates take about 10 seconds :p.

Maybe on your crazy amazing fast Japanese broadband. Not so on my paltry 28Mbps cable. What do you get there, 3GBps up and down with no caps now?

I have optical fibre and it's pretty sweet. Steam games come down at about 4 megabyte per second which is the fastest I've seen a download come down. But 360 updates have always been super fast for me, even when I had sh*tty DSL. 10 seconds isn't really an exaggeration. Maybe because the servers in Japan aren't heavily utilised.

Mr GT Chris wrote:

I have optical fibre and it's pretty sweet. Steam games come down at about 4 megabyte per second which is the fastest I've seen a download come down. But 360 updates have always been super fast for me, even when I had sh*tty DSL. 10 seconds isn't really an exaggeration. Maybe because the servers in Japan aren't heavily utilised.

Sure, but you don't have Wii U's in Japan, do you? So there.

Sounds so awesome. North America has to catch up.

My updates are 50% longer than yours. If I boot up a game that needs an update, the time it takes, from hitting Okay to the game booting back up is about 15 seconds.

The annual Fall Updates do take about 20 minutes, though.

shoptroll wrote:

But you know what? Nintendo Land has me jonesing hard for the next Smash Bros. especially the way they rearranged some of the classic themes for that collection.

I can't wait for Smash Bros either! I hope it doesn't lose anything by being worked on out of house.

Jayhawker wrote:

My updates are 50% longer than yours. If I boot up a game that needs an update, the time it takes, from hitting Okay to the game booting back up is about 15 seconds.

The annual Fall Updates do take about 20 minutes, though.

This has been my experience with the 360 in the midwest using Uverse as well.

Right now, it feels too early to really worry too much about Wii-U update speeds because all of my experiences were on launch week. I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt that they'll get their server situation fixed up. IIRC, the Wii's first downloads and firmware updates were also very slow during launch week, but the speeds of updates improved over the life of the console. As far as Sony, I'm convinced that they simply don't have any decent server coverage in certain parts of the U.S. I'm convinced the problems aren't nationwide because I've read so many accounts of fast update speeds from others in other geographical areas, I've just never met anyone locally who didn't get horrible speeds from their servers.

Stele wrote:
ccesarano wrote:
MisterStatic wrote:

I'll give you that, Wii 2 would have been much better. Folks understand that.

They understand it, but at the same time understand that marketing isn't going to want your system with a lower number next to another new console. Wii 2 versus the Playstation 3.

It's one of the reasons I imagine Microsoft chose Xbox 360 rather than Xbox 2.

They should have called it Wii 4 All then. :p

"Super Wii" perhaps?

gamerparent wrote:

If 360 was chosen to match up with PS 3, do you think if the next Xbox is 720 that the Playstation will be the PS 7, I wonder?

What's wrong with Pl4ystation?

(Besides everything)

Stele wrote:
TheGameguru wrote:

You can brick your Wii U any piece of hardware doing a game firmware/system update?? Weird Since always.

FTFY. ;)

Ahh sorry...I misread. I thought he was doing a game update not some sort of system update..yeah for sure any hardware if you are doing a firmware/os update you can't pull the power

Well re-reading it I'm not sure. He does say something about the game prompting an update. Of course I was thinking that was the system update, like on the Wii, they always included system updates on game discs for Nintendo first-party games.

So... I don't know.

Sorry Tuller. Hope it gets fixed quickly.

Side by side of COD:BOPS2

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/di...

Doesn't exactly paint a flattering picture..but given its a launch title and clearly a hasty "port" of the 360 version I don't believe it is 100% indicative of the true potential quality out of the Wii U (I hope anyway). But it does give you pause on the viability long term of the Wii U getting the big "cross-platform" titles.. Will Mass Effect 4 and Assassins Creed 4 end up as exact releases when they eventually go to the next Xbox/Playstation platform.. or will we be back to the Nintendo console getting "versions" of these titles.

Eh, I wouldn't worry too much about early comparisons yet in terms of graphical fidelity. I can't see Treyarch being one of those companies where, say, the PC version of BLOPS2 looks better than the 360 or PS3 version. I imagine they develop specifically for 360 specs.

I'd be more interested in taking a game that releases cross-platform and on PC, where the PC performance and/or appearance is better than 360 and PS3, and then comparing what is on PC compared to Wii-U. I don't think we'll get that in a launch window third party game, though.

I'm pretty sure the Wii U will be getting versions, as you say. Hopefully it'll get a smattering of interesting third party exclusives as well, like the Wii. Either way I'll have two consoles again, hopefully not three.

True, Treyarch have had years to optimise the COD engine for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 and would not have had this luxury in preparing the game for Wii U. Furthermore, on a basic level, Black Ops 2 itself would have been designed with no regard for the Nintendo hardware. That said, we find it hard to blame the developer here - we have seen generational leaps in CPU, GPU and RAM technology since the launch of the Xbox 360 seven years ago, and for the Wii U hardware to under-perform to this extent on such a crucially important game doesn't look good for future prospects.

So the article wants us to disregard an important part of game development (optimization) so that we can reach the verdict the article desires (the Wii U's hardware is bad).

Also, the videos start showing the absolute lowest point for the Wii U in the video and frame it to suggest that this "unacceptably low level" is how to the game runs a fair amount of the time. That's actually not true at all (watch the videos), the bursts of sub-30 FPS gameplay are rare and last seconds at most. I doubt a typical player would even notice without an FPS counter in view.

Not that I'd blame the developer either, though. It's new hardware. It's pretty typical for ports to run into trouble on a new console.

ccesarano wrote:

Eh, I wouldn't worry too much about early comparisons yet in terms of graphical fidelity. I can't see Treyarch being one of those companies where, say, the PC version of BLOPS2 looks better than the 360 or PS3 version. I imagine they develop specifically for 360 specs.

I'd be more interested in taking a game that releases cross-platform and on PC, where the PC performance and/or appearance is better than 360 and PS3, and then comparing what is on PC compared to Wii-U. I don't think we'll get that in a launch window third party game, though.

Actually the PC version looks much much better than the 360 or PS3. In fact this years release is the first one to use DirectX 11.

Early PS3 ports looked worse them their 360 counterparts, but it would have been wrong to condemn it as an inferior machine.

It is way too soon to tell if U ports are going to be better or worse than other consoles.

PopEsc wrote:

It is way too soon to tell if U ports are going to be better or worse than other consoles.

And it certainly won't matter in a year when MS and Sony roll out their new consoles.

It doesn't matter now.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

It doesn't matter now.

Indeed. Let's see. Console games in 2012 I played:

On my Wii I spent 20+ hours finishing Skyward Sword, 60 hours not finishing Xenoblade, and 30 hours finishing The Last Story. And my wife has logged a lot of hours of Animal Crossing.

On the PS3, I spent maybe 20 hours on Nier, and probably 30-40 finishing platinum on Demon's Souls. Dozens of hours playing NCAA Football, which isn't available on Wii, but I would happily buy there if they made it to avoid all the DLC. And then miscellaneous time playing Rock Band with with wife and other friends. Oh and like 40 hours playing Persona 3, a PS2 game, on PSN, which is definitely graphically inferior to the stuff I spent time with on the Wii.

So yeah, graphics are soooooo important.

Great games are great. And the right art and style can look great on any horsepower. Hell this week the majority of my game time has been spent on a 2D side-scroller (Mark of the Ninja). A game that could have easily been made for the DS or PSP judging by the graphical power needed. But the cartoon/animated style it's done in makes it look great.

Stele wrote:
ClockworkHouse wrote:

It doesn't matter now.

So yeah, graphics are soooooo important.

Great games are great. And the right art and style can look great on any horsepower. Hell this week the majority of my game time has been spent on a 2D side-scroller (Mark of the Ninja). A game that could have easily been made for the DS or PSP judging by the graphical power needed. But the cartoon/animated style it's done in makes it look great.

Just got done playing some Chrono Cross ps1 classic on ps3. Horrible looking, but still a great game

There's nothing horrible looking about Chrono Cross! It's a bit blocky but still full of beauty.

More on topic: My WiiU name is TheDemyx

For those that are into numbers, CNET is reporting 400k Wii-Us sold last week.

On a different note, I finally got a chance to try out ZombiU last night. I'm less than an hour into the game, but I'm enjoying it so far. I was very afraid that the use of the tablet would be gimmicky nonsense, but in the context of this game it really does seem to be adding to atmosphere of the game. Honestly, I'm pleasantly surprised. Both ZombiU and NSMBU seem like solid launch titles, and even Nintendoland has turned out to be better than I had expected.