News about the Wii U’s tech has been trickling out at a fairly steady pace, and we now know that more precise information should arrive soon. Eurogamer recently learned from Sega Europe’s Gary Dunn that Nintendo will be distributing updated Wii U prototypes to developers. There’s no word on who, besides Sega, will receive the hardware; but, Dunn promised that “more information” about the system’s power and online functions will emerge once the prototypes have made the rounds.
He also let loose a rough timeline for when these bad boys will be sent out. “It’s still a little early. There’s another generation of prototype hardware coming out in June or July that’s going to give us more information”. So while the new stuff won’t be precisely indicative of the final product, it will clear some of the fog when it makes the rounds. Gary Dunn also mentioned that it would be unwise for him to inform the public of how old the development kits Sega currently has are, beyond them being “very early doors”. Despite that, Sega is already “finding it to be quite powerful”.
More specifically, it’s too early to judge whether or not the console will exceed the PS3/360’s power. “It’s different.” But does that mean different-good, or different-bad? Elaborating, Dunn noted that Wii U is “a good platform to develop for”. Dunn continued: “We’ve certainly found it easier to get prototypes up and running on next-gen definition visuals, so we’re quite pleased with it”. That’s a good sign for the Nintendo faithful, because ease-of-development paired with graphical firepower is key to securing mass amounts of third party support. “Given the fact that one of our graphics engineers ported something across very quickly I would say the answer to [Does it contain dev-friendly internals?] has got to be yes.”
When considering which platforms to bring their future projects to, Dunn says they “would certainly consider Wii U in the mix, but every single game is green lit on an individual platform by platform consideration.” The publisher intends to port Gearbox’s Aliens: Colonial Marines over to the U; but, contrary to what you may have heard, has not yet confirmed that it will definitely be doing so.
Eurogamer also got Dunn to speak up on Sega’s policy towards lazily porting old HD console titles over to Nintendo’s next home console. “No, no we wouldn’t [do that],” Dunn emphatically replied. “Clearly, the new control mechanic allows some asymmetrical gameplay which we’re quite excited about – to leverage that when we’re looking to put any game on that system.” Unfortunately, he added that Sega was not currently prepared to officially announce any Wii U software that they may or may not have in development.
Keep your browsers zoned in on MTB for any new Wii U intel when and if it becomes available.
[Source: Eurogamer]
[Images via Inquisitr and That Video Game Blog.]
