http://www.eurogamer.net/article ... -u-the-inside-story

太长了，还没来得及仔细看
简单来说一句话，WiiU的制造工艺陈旧（反正不是28纳米），任天堂又重视功耗、散热和体积多过性能，所以WiiU最后就这样了

艹… 真长

硬件水平低下，重视能耗和噪音，因为“妈妈不介意摆一台在客厅”，任认为主频低可以靠其他功能来凑
开发环境落后，toolchain在VS直接没法用，最后解决方法还是其他三方给出来的
debug非常慢，非常耗时，devkit每次更新也不写changelog，盒子里是个低频4850
沟通搞笑，有问题找本地支持，本地支持再找日本，中间几次翻译，前后耽搁一个星期
为了低频CPU必须砍掉一些参数，GPU比360和PS3都好，但距离XB1和PS4差了太多
游戏开发了一半，任天堂自己网络代码还没写完，搞的别人也没法测试
任想做一个能和PSN/XBL抗衡的网络，但是经验差了太多，别人问Mii Network是不是准备参考PSN/XBL，对方回答我们开发团队没有人用这俩

揭秘开发商： Wii U的 - 内情
从显示启动和超越 - 关于与任天堂和它的最新的调音台工作的挑战第三方开发者会谈。


通过秘密开发发布时间星期六， 2014年1月11日

秘密开发是数字Foundry的偶尔的系列游戏在那里的决策者出面跟我们谈 - 你 - 的话题，他们是充满激情，或在本文的案例，给你后面一个特定的热门话题内情。随着Wii U的未来看起来不确定的成功发射为一的Xbox和PlayStation 4，本次“疣和所有”从一个受人尊敬的第三方的创造者的故事让你的任天堂是如何处理过渡到一些概念的脸高清游戏时代，面临的挑战开发商面临的将他们的游戏在Wii U的平台。

我在那里的时候任天堂第一次投了Wii U的开发商，我的工作是广泛的硬件，并帮助产生更好的第三方的标题之一。现在，作为硬件的命运看起来令人失望的销售的第二个圣诞节后不确定，我想告诉什么它实际上是想用控制台工作的故事，并与任天堂，或许给一些上下文的喜忧参半机器和它的第三方冠军。

但首先，让我们回到开头。新游戏机的起源一般遵循的标准模式。最初，有内部的所在范围内的目标和硬件设计都勾勒出一个厂商的研发长时间。然后，这些经过提炼的过程中与五金件制造商，根据他们的技术，很明显，成本。

一旦基本的硬件设计已经惨败了，内部软件（ SDK），团队涉足编写了最初的代码/驱动程序和所需要的运行硬件测试。一旦团队很高兴与硬件，成本和时间表，该公司开始走出去，跟开发商对新硬件。

首先，这将是第一方开发商和反馈将被收集的可能或可能不会，会影响硬件的设计。在这个阶段，硬件设计是可以改变的，而是机会之窗正在变得越来越小。硬件零部件生产企业必须提升他们的生产线，年产硅，这需要时间。

最初的反馈后，工作室的旅游“开始，谈选择第三方出版商，育碧， Take-Two公司和世界的EA ，该平台持有人需要吸引，使游戏的游戏机。如果没有游戏，他们提供的收入，控制台很快就开始赔钱，成为各地制造商的脖子上的绞索。

在这一点上的主要变化是罕见的，除非他们是东西，可以通过软件修改（时钟速度，系统的OS时间片等）或改变可以'轻松'添加到硬件设计，例如换出一组对于另一个更高容量的内存模块。

这就是我进来。

“最初的反馈后，工作室的旅'开始，聊到育碧， Take-Two公司和世界的中介......如果没有游戏，他们提供的收入，控制台很快就开始赔钱，成为一个绞索绕制造商的脖子上。 “
WiiU的
Wii U的开始了生活作为项目咖啡馆，一机多用的平台持有者投给开发商作为节能的方块，将谨慎地坐在客厅里。
在揭示和后显露追赶
当我被告知，任天堂已经进入办公室开会我已经可以猜到是什么，他们要谈论。谣言已经流传了几个星期的新硬件，但没有具体的被说。签署各种保密协议后，我们都聚集在一个房间里听到的演示文稿。

它以通常的方式开始了与一回头就如何成功的Wii已经和他们的意图是为新硬件。他们想要一个控制台，是同样大小的Wii和不大声喧哗，所以“妈妈不介意它在客厅里。”正是这一说法在那个安静的警钟开始在我脑中响起，但我不理他们，继续观看演示。音高然后转移到通常的“我们需要你的帮助，以确保Wii U的是成功的，你可以帮助我们（任天堂）沿途” 。这些话结束了有更多的意义比任何我们或主持人，本来设想。

然后，新的控制器，显示为一个虚拟样机，完成一个光滑的视频显示它如何被使用在游戏中作为一系列的实物模型，这看起来令人振奋。通过这一点，我们都在考虑我们如何能够使用控制器在我们的游戏。但随后他们发现控制台的内部细节，我实现了我刚才的警钟的原因。如果任天堂想有一个小的足迹和安静的硬件，他们需要最小的风扇噪音，这意味着冷却是有限的，而这又意味着CPU将不得不产生的热量最小量，这意味着时钟速度会必须保持在较低水平。虽然我无法确认具体的细节，互联网的集体心思都提出了维基百科上的参考。

因此，一个基本的比较/计算使得Wii U的样子，至少在纸面上，比原CPU方面的Xbox 360显著放缓。这一点有人提出了会议，但任天堂的代表驳回说， “低功耗更重要的是整体的设计目标”，以及“其他CPU功能将改善对原始数据的表现” 。

“在揭示邮件后，几乎立即开始飞问什么人都认为新的中控台设计和规格的几乎是普遍的回答是， ”我喜欢新的控制器，但CPU看起来有点动力不足。“
处理器
渲染Wii U的处理器，显示了最后的组装与散热器（左）和“ MCM ”模块下方，显示（右侧）在CPU的大小的巨大差异和GPU （向左） 。图片由Henriok创建。
在显示的电子邮件后，几乎立即开始飞问什么人都认为新的中控台设计和规范。几乎普遍的回答是， “我喜欢新的控制器，但CPU看起来有点动力不足” 。

在未来几周内，人们开始做其他的计算试图猜测机器的性能 - 不要忘记，这是一个漫长的时间开发套件是可用做实际测试之前。有些人甚至建立定制的PC平台下超频的CPU ，试图了解他们的代码表现这些机器上。同样，几乎是普遍的答案是，它不会是强大到足以运行次世代引擎，它甚至可能会努力做电流根（ PS3和X360）冠军。但是，尽管这些测试的管理作出决定，对各种业务的原因，释放一个游戏在Wii U。所以现在我们不得不陷入，并尝试做一个游戏。

因此，工作
在作出决定后不久，开发工具包开始到达。正如通常用于早期硬件它们均大于与专门用于开发用于连接器和端口的混合物的最终设计。因此，我们插入他们和他们亮出最新的系统代码，然后试图得到一个简单的“Hello World ”式游戏的运行，证明比你想象的要难。

经对其他硬件控制台上工作，我想，我们宁愿由有成熟的工具链的集成很好地与我们的开发环境宠坏了。 Wii U的，另一方面似乎动辄要设法将使其难以编译和运行任何代码。任天堂提供了他们的开发工具集成到Visual Studio中 - 事实标准的发展 - 但是它没有工作，甚至还没有接近。所以时间花在试图让这个固定起来，同时报告问题的平台支架。最后，我们收到来自任天堂通过其他第三方公司谁也一直在这个问题上一阵子的解决方案。

所以，现在我们可以让代码显示在Visual Studio中，并把它编译，这是不错的，但编译时间真的很慢，即使是微小的变化。然后，它必须做链接步骤，此时你可以快乐地起床，做一杯茶，聊聊天，并取回您的办公桌前的联系是完整的。链接时间测定多个（四个或更多）分钟Wii U的相比，一分钟左右在其他平台上。

这听起来并不坏，但是当你在调试，使很多的变化，这些额外的时间加起来。如果您在今天上午10更改一个文件，你可能会花费50分钟等待链接器来完成，这是一个很大的时间浪费。

“作为一个团队，我们失去了时间天编译/链接/调试费用和这个功能，我们可以把我们的游戏的发布日期前的金额负面影响。 ”
的devkit
这是一个Wii U的开发工具包，大白于天下礼貌VGLeaks的 - 一定程度上比基于PC组件的下一代游戏机阿尔法套件更娇小。开发套件来厚，快速，但实际的硬件版本总是相当小。
最后，当你有代码，你将它部署到控制台，并启动调试器，这是任天堂曾Green Hills Software公司许可的工具链的一部分。作为一名经验丰富的开发人员，我已经用了很多调试器，但是这一次，即使我感到惊讶。它的接口是笨重的，它是使用非常缓慢的，如果你做的其实点击任何代码的错误，那么它会停下来检索所有的你已经点击了变量的值，这可能需要一分钟或更长时间回来。

所有这些事情使代码实际开发难度比它应该已经吃进游戏的开发时间。作为一个团队，我们失去了时间天编译/链接/调试费用和这个功能，我们可以把我们的游戏的发布日期前的金额负面影响。

另一个奇怪的事情要注意在这一点上是超过我们的多种颜色，收到了多个不同的开发工具包半年当然其中没有透露为什么他们从以前的不同。我们知道，有一些是固定的硬件错误，但发行说明中很少说什么发生了变化 - 我们只是不得不采取新的，并让他们与我们的代码再次工作，消耗宝贵的开发时间。已经有一些有趣的谣言流传的PC式发展箱子，甚至是Radeon HD 4850 （运行降频）利用作为Wii U的的GPU的代理。我们曾在Wii U的从成立之初，从来没有见过的设备，如这一点 - 我们的包总是把定制硬件，我相信的形式是基于近到最终芯片。

与Wii U的工作
现在，比赛是和在控制台上运行，我们可以开始开发，将使用新的控制器，使我们的游戏中脱颖而出的平台功能。但是，这起不久后，我们跑进了（最小的）文档没有涉及的一些问题，所以我们要求我们的当地任天堂的支持团队的问题。他们不知道答案，所以他们说他们会检查与开发商在日本，我们等待答复。我们等待着。我们等待着。

大约一个星期追逐后，我们听到他们接到一个答案来自日本，他们通过电子邮件发送给我们的支持团队回来。得到的答复是在非常蹩脚的英语几句话并没有真正回答这个问题，我们已要求摆在首位的问题的形式。于是我们又回到了他们要求澄清，这又过了一周左右才能回来。第二延时后，我们问为什么它正在采取长期的答复从日本回来，他们都非常忙碌？本地支持团队说没有，它只是任何问题都必须被罚下翻译成日文，然后发送给开发者，谁回答，然后答复被翻译回英文并送回给我们。与时区的差异和翻译的延迟，这通常每周花！

让游戏在其目标帧速率运行是开发过程就是在这样的背景下那么有趣，因为它遵循的标准模式的一部分。获得游戏的运行，优化代码（ CPU和GPU ），如果它仍然不会执行，削减功能，直到它适合。

“获得比赛的目标帧速率运行...遵循标准模式。获取游戏的运行，优化代码，如果仍然不执行，削减功能，直到它倒是可以。 ”

数字Foundry的第一个Wii U的多平台比较排在质量效应3的形式 - 在这三重格式的性能比较， Wii U的版本是与Xbox 360的大致相若，并提前令人失望的PS3版。
至于CPU的优化去了，是的，我们也不得不削减一些功能，由于CPU不被足够强大。当我们最初担心的那样，试图支持一个详细的游戏高清运行投入了大量的应变上的CPU和我们所希望的，我们不能做那么多。削减一些功能是一件容易的事，但影响了游戏的整体利益。代码在Xbox 360和PlayStation 3中发现的PowerPC处理器优化并不总是一个好的适合于Wii U的CPU，所以在芯片有一些可以让高于其重量的CPU冲有趣的功能，我们不能充分利用利用它们。通过加入外序执行的任何高达4倍升压由于除去Load-命中-商店，以及更高的IPC （每周期指令） - 然而，某些代码可以看到大幅度的改进，确实减轻较低的时钟。

在GPU方面，故事发生了逆转。 GPU的证明是非常有能力，我们结束了增加额外的“抛光”的特点为GPU有能力做到这一点。更有人在试图通过计算着色器（ GPGPU ）利用GPU来分担工作从CPU的一些讨论 - 这正是我希望看到收益的次世代主机牵引的方法 - 但非常有限的开发时间，并没有实例或从任天堂的指导下，我们并不认为我们可以冒险尝试这项工作。如果我们有一个更大的开发团队或一个较长的时间，也许我们会尝试，但在事后，我们会一直有限，因为什么，我们可以做之前，我们刷爆了GPU的一次。在GPU是比PS3或Xbox 360更好，但联赛远离在PS4或Xbox一个图形硬件。

我也看到了有关的DDR3内存的Wii U的利用率和带宽赤字相比， PS3和Xbox 360的一些顾虑。这不是一个真正的问题我们。 GPU的可能（通过EDRAM ）取最小的小摊数据迅速，我们可以有效地预取，让GPU来以最快的速度运行。

任天堂与在线游戏
现在，游戏是撞在了一起，并在硬件问题正在解决我们的注意力转向我们的游戏，其界面的网络侧到新发布的任天堂网络。我们很早就发现的，有似乎是在文档中的空白，并且代码，周围的网络领域，所以我们要求澄清。通常的翻译延迟之后，我们收到消息说他们仍然工作的代码，不过不用担心它会被很快到达。

警钟又开始在我的脑海悄然响起，但我把它们一边暂时。这是任天堂的，他们是根据他们的控制台各地的新的网络基础设施，他们应该确保它是完整的，并分享它之前全面测试，所以我可以原谅他们一些延迟。我们有基础，所以我们至少可以做一些测试和连接多个包在一起，但很多信息产业部和朋友含量失踪，有没有办法来测试现有的代码将表现得有“零售环境” ，因为没有散户“闪”的开发套件。我们不得不编写这一切在黑暗中，只是希望它的工作。

大约在这个时候，我们有机会向一些较高级的人在任天堂，通过电话会议，因为他们聚集在我们的开发经验反馈和他们的工具链。该电话会议给了一个有趣的洞察任天堂和它如何出现操作。

“在这次谈话某些时候，我们被告知，这是没有什么好参照Live和PSN因为没有人在[任天堂]开发团队使用的那些系统（ ！ ），所以我们可以提供更详细的解释呢？ ”

没有比猛将雷吉其他建议， Wii U的会得到最好的跨平台的头衔，挑出使命召唤：黑色行动2特别。现实竟然是有些不同，并针对PS3和Xbox 360的Wii U的性能赤字一直持续到今年的使命召唤：鬼魂。
在讨论开始时不够好，并覆盖掉我们的硬件和（慢）工具链经验，然后我们带领他们走向讨论时在线功能可能是可用的。我们被告知，在功能和操作系统的更新，以支持他们，会前提供的硬件推出，但仅仅只。有显然与设立一个大型的网络基础设施，竞争对手索尼和微软，他们没有预料到的问题。

这是令人惊讶的听到，因为我们本来以为他们有充足的时间来对这些功能的工作，因为它已被公布之前几个月，所以我们探讨得更深一些，问怎么某些情况下可能工作与信息产业部朋友和网络，所有的时间参考的Xbox Live和PSN如何达到同样的事情。在这次谈话某些时候，我们被告知，这是没有什么好参照Live和PSN因为没有人在他们的开发团队使用的那些系统（ ！ ），所以我们可以提供更详细的解释呢？我的这个电话后，唯一的想法是，他们都在努力 - 严重 - 与网络方面，因为它是复杂得多比他们的预期。他们试图追赶与竞争对手的系统，但没有多年的经验，将它备份起来。

如所承诺的， （只是）前在全球推出我们收到最终的网络功能，我们需要为我们的游戏以及为开发工具包，使我们来测试操作系统的更新。因此，我们修补了我们的代码，并试图开始测试我们的游戏。

首先我们不得不把包闪到零售模式，有信息产业部和网络功能。这是离开了游戏机在半路状态一个非常复杂的手动过程。在零售模式下，我们可以测试我们的功能，并确保他们的工作预期，这将是任天堂通过获得认证的要求，但在这种模式下，调试能力是有限的。因此，我们可以看到，当事情出错了，但我们不能完全调试找出原因。作为开发人员，我们不得不做出的选择，希望您发现的任何问题都因（未经测试）操作系统的代码，也不会出现在最终的零售环境。什么应该是简单的任务是冗长且容易出错。如发送一个朋友简单的事情，请求到另一个用户，不支持的操作系统，所以你必须手动启动该控制台上的一个单独的程序，通过调试菜单，这样你可以发送一个。但是，如果发生任何错误，没有办法调试，为什么它没有，它只是失败。

我们开始询问如何能启动控制台，这是几个星期的事情了，有部分开发的操作系统的问题。他们怎么会得到操作系统到所有已制造到这一点的游戏机？是它只是我们得到了它晚了，但他们推到生产线更早？

发射当天来到身边，答案变得清晰：任天堂迟到 - 很晚 - 与它的网络系统。事实上，要完全访问他们的系统的唯一办法就是下载一个大补丁在一天之内的所有添加这些缺少的组成部分。如果没有这个补丁了大量的释放头衔本来只有半功能。

“我们开始询问如何能启动控制台，这是几个星期的事情了，与部分发达操作系统的问题......发射当天来到身边，答案变得清晰：任天堂迟到 - 很晚 - 其网络系统“。

使命召唤类似，第二刺客信条标题赶到Wii U的在尾部2013 - 又一次，我们看到很少有证据表明发动机的性能已经比前一年的努力显著增加，尽管任天堂游戏机的更强大的图形技术。
接下来发生了什么？
好了，我们终于发布了我们的游戏，它是普遍受欢迎，所以管理层坐了回去，看看有什么样的销售数字，我们会得到我们所有的努力。如果没有细谈地说，我们看到的数字是乏善可陈这将是公平的。事实上，我们是幸运的，使回所有我们已经投资了制作游戏摆在首位的钱，虽然管理层公开表示支持Wii U的平台，这是不可能的，我们将不断推出另一Wii U的称号。

但对于世界其他地方？怎么了其他开发工作室流线型？为接下来发生的事情的故事是相当有据可查的游戏媒体，但我想强调，一直在我的脑海最近一些有趣的观点。首先，第三方支持。你还记得周围所有的Wii U的推出的炒作？所有这些第三方显示现有游戏的影片，他们将带来的Wii U的？无论发生了很多那些游戏？

游戏标题的最初的狂热过后很多工作室悄然放弃了他们最初的报表，并宣布，以最小的记者，他们实际上是不会让一台Wii U版。后面一个特定的标题没有出现在Wii U的原因都是纯粹的猜测，但我个人认为的组合：

使用工具链和硬件以前的开发经验推迟开发团队作出另一个标题在Wii U。
从任天堂的技术和功能支持都缺乏第三方工作室。有一种感觉在内部，如果你不是第一方开发工作室，你被很大程度上忽视了任天堂，因为我们是肤浅的，以他们的利润。内部开发的头衔将节省任天堂和我们只是有增加深度到游戏目录。
销售数字为Wii U的主机并没有找好发射后不久。有很多混乱周围发射的总人口，因为大多数人认为Wii U的是某种附加到Wii ，他们不知道，这是一个新的控制台。这种缺乏认识可能有助于控制台没有下车的开始，任天堂也希望和推迟从工作室开发的硬件。
任天堂还牺牲品糟糕的时机。控制台启动几个月后，下一代炒作火车加紧齿轮作为索尼宣布了PlayStation 4 ，微软加入战局几个月后。不要忘记，许多大的工作室会知道有关硬件月它宣布前， Wii U的硬件其实也推出之前。
因此，这些大的工作室有一个选择。他们会制定一个现有的游戏控制台的能力有限和有限的市场渗透的一个端口？或把他们的团队合作开发新的功能和概念为“真正的”次世代主机的打算这一年将推出？当你看它这样，选择并不难。

“大的工作室有一个选择。难道他们现有的游戏控制台的能力有限和有限的市场渗透的端口呢，还是把他们的团队合作开发新的功能和概念为”真正的“次世代主机？ ”

超级马里奥3D世界杯是2013年当之无愧的Eurogamer的游戏，突出的是，无论硬件，任天堂的人才，为游戏设计仍然是首屈一指的。
从第一方的角度来看，似乎任天堂本身并没有过的最容易的时候。现在，这是纯粹的猜测，但是从与一些开发团队的互动却仿佛任天堂自己的队有真正的麻烦适应新的控制台 - 主要的理由是此举对HD和硬件来支持它的能力。不要忘了，直到Wii U的走了出来，没有第一方游戏都是高清和移动从标清到高清是不是你所期望的那样容易。 PS3和Xbox 360开发人员可以通过这种疼痛就在前面的控制台周期的早期阶段，它花费了他们大量的时间和金钱试图适应，与一些工作室失败的一大途径。

任天堂的内部队现在面临着有限的开发时间和很大的压力来提供有吸引力的标题一个新的控制台这一挑战。随着对他们这方面的压力是不可避免的，一些高知名度的标题会打滑，但它是令人惊讶的是稀疏的第一方阵容已超过去年。

未来的Wii U的
可以在Wii U的在这个勇敢的新世界下一代（当前根？ ）游戏机的竞争？在原始性能方面，它不安地坐了上一代和当前之间。硬件部分的运行速度比上一代更好，但其他部分拖下来。如果你试图对PS4/XO比较Wii U的，它脱落不舒服极了 - 它只是不能与新的游戏机竞争。

在一个非常基本的水平，看看采取的次世代主机相比， Wii的U。而PlayStation 4平超过100W以上的电源比任天堂的主机的耗电量，并且这得使用最新的，最节能来自AMD在演唱会与一个更大的GPU这是未来的一代，并运行在一个更小的制程x86核心 - 与28nm的就是我可靠消息是由日本公司Renasas的55nm工艺。

还有的Wii U和次世代主机之间的一些稍纵即逝的相似之处 - 低功耗的CPU具有更强大的图形芯片的组合 - 但下一代职称的概念是很容易移植到Wii U的少了点工作。在电源的鸿沟是太高了，而GPGPU ，我们将在Xbox一个和PlayStation 4看是不是与在Wii U。发现旧的着色器模型四个硬件兼容

毫无疑问，第一方开发商任天堂将会使硬件唱 - 他们总是这样 - 但情况看起来严峻，对于我们这些在第三方开发，有机会就通过两者的质量忍住硬件进步工具和缺乏财政奖励剪裁我们的代码到硬件的优势。那么，这是否离开了Wii U的？

就个人而言，我不肯定会发生什么，但如果目前的趋势继续下去， Wii U的可能会继续在小批量销售，直到一个“必须有”的称号被释放，可能是由第一方工作室，在这一点销售将天空火箭一阵子 - 但即便如此，匹配的PlayStation 4和Xbox之一的势头似乎不大可能。其他变量，如最近的新闻对中国解除游戏机禁令可能会影响任天堂的未来发展方向。这个巨大的尚未开发的市场可能会提供一条生命线在销售方面，但与普通人群的工资低，这些销售很可能来自于原来的Wii游戏机，而不是更昂贵的Wii U。

你永远不能低估任天堂，但根据我的经验 - 和平台的销售 - 公司面临着大多数测试的挑战在近代。




The Secret Developers: Wii U - the inside story
From reveal to launch and beyond - a third-party developer talks about the challenges of working with Nintendo and its latest console.


By The Secret Developers Published Saturday, 11 January 2014

The Secret Developers is Digital Foundry's occasional series where game-makers come forward to talk with us - and you - about topics they are passionate about, or in the case of this article, to give you the inside story behind a particular hot topic. As the future of the Wii U looks uncertain in the face of the successful launches for both Xbox One and PlayStation 4, this "warts and all" tale from a respected third-party creator gives you some idea of how Nintendo handled the transition to the high-definition gaming era, and the challenges developers faced in bringing their games to the Wii U platform.

I was there when Nintendo first pitched the Wii U to developers, I worked on the hardware extensively and helped to produce one of the better third-party titles. Now, as the fate of the hardware looks uncertain after a second Christmas of disappointing sales, I wanted to tell the story of what it was actually like to work with the console, and with Nintendo, and perhaps give some context to the mixed fortunes of the machine and its third-party titles.

But first, let's go back to the beginning. The genesis of a new games console generally follows a standard pattern. Initially there is a prolonged period of research and development internally within a manufacturer where the goals and hardware designs are sketched out. These then go through a process of refinement with the hardware parts manufacturers, based on their technology and, obviously, cost.

Once the basic hardware design has been thrashed out, the internal software (SDK) teams get involved in writing the initial code/drivers and tests that are required to run the hardware. Once the teams are happy with the hardware, cost and timelines, the companies start to go out and talk to developers about the new hardware.

To begin with this will be first-party developers and feedback will be gathered that may, or may not, affect the design of the hardware. At this stage the hardware design can be changed, but the window of opportunity is getting smaller. The hardware parts manufacturers have to ramp up their production lines to produce the silicon, which takes time.

After initial feedback, the studio 'tours' begin, talking to select third-party publishers, the Ubisoft, Take-Two and EAs of the world, that the platform holders need to entice to make games for their consoles. Without games, and the income that they provide, the console soon starts to lose money, becoming a noose around the manufacturer's neck.

Major changes at this point are rare, unless they are things that can be altered through software changes (clock speeds, system OS time-slices, etc.) or can be 'easily' added to the hardware design, for example swapping out one set of memory modules for another of higher capacity.

That's where I come in.

"After initial feedback, the studio 'tours' begin, talking to the Ubisoft, Take-Two and EAs of the world... Without games, and the income that they provide, the console soon starts to lose money, becoming a noose around the manufacturer's neck."
wiiu
Wii U started out life as Project Cafe, a machine pitched to developers by the platform holder as a power-efficient box that would sit discreetly in the living room.
The reveal and post-reveal catch-up
When I was told that Nintendo had come into the office for a meeting I could already guess as to what they were going to be talking about. Rumours had been circulating for weeks of new hardware, but nothing concrete had been said. After signing the various NDAs we all gathered in a room to hear the presentation.

It started off in the usual way with a look back on how successful the Wii had been and what their intentions were for the new hardware. They wanted a console that was the same size as the Wii and wouldn't make much noise, so "mum wouldn't mind having it in the living room". It was during this statement that quiet alarm bells started to ring in my brain, but I ignored them and continued watching the presentation. The pitch then moved on to the usual "we need your help to ensure that the Wii U is a success and you can help us (Nintendo) along the way". These words ended up having more significance than either we, or the presenters, could have envisaged.

Then the new controller was shown as a dummy prototype, complete with a glossy video showing how it could be used in games as a series of mock-ups, which looked exciting. By this point we were all considering how we could use the controller in our games. But then they revealed the internal details of the console and I realised the reason for my earlier alarm bells. If Nintendo wanted the hardware to have a small footprint and be quiet, they needed minimal fan noise, meaning that cooling was limited, which in turn meant that the CPU would have to produce a minimal amount of heat, which meant that the clock speed would have to be kept low. While I can't confirm specific details, the collective thoughts of the internet are presented for reference on Wikipedia.

So a basic comparison/calculation makes the Wii U look, on paper at least, significantly slower than an Xbox 360 in terms of raw CPU. This point was raised in the meeting, but the Nintendo representatives dismissed it saying that the "low power consumption was more important to the overall design goals" and that "other CPU features would improve the performance over the raw numbers".

"Almost immediately after the reveal the emails starting flying asking what people thought of the new console design and specification. The almost universal answer was, 'I like the new controller, but the CPU looks a bit underpowered.'"
processor
Renders of the Wii U processor, showing the final assembly with heat spreader (left) and the 'MCM' module underneath, showing the vast difference in the size of the CPU (to the right) and GPU (to the left). Image created by Henriok.
Almost immediately after the reveal the emails starting flying asking what people thought of the new console design and specification. The almost universal answer was, "I like the new controller, but the CPU looks a bit underpowered".

Over the coming weeks people started doing other calculations trying to guess the performance of the machine - don't forget that this is a long time before development kits were available to do actual tests. Some people even built custom PC rigs with under-clocked CPUs to try and gauge performance of their code on these machine. Again, the almost universal answer was that it wasn't going to be powerful enough to run next-gen engines and it might even struggle to do current-gen (PS3 and X360) titles. But in spite of these tests the management made the decision, for various business reasons, to release a game on the Wii U. So now we had to get stuck in and try to make a game.

And so, to work
Soon after the decision was made the development kits started arriving. As is usual for early hardware they were bigger than the final design with a mixture of connectors and ports used specifically for development. So we plugged them in and flashed them to the latest system code, then tried to get a simple "hello world" type game running, which proved harder than you might think.

Having worked on other hardware consoles, I suppose that we were rather spoilt by having mature toolchains that integrated nicely with our development environment. Wii U on the other hand seemed to be trying at every turn to make it difficult to compile and run any code. Nintendo had provided an integration of their development tools into Visual Studio - the de facto standard for development - but it didn't work, not even close. So time was spent trying to get this fixed up, while reporting the issue to the platform holder. Eventually we received a solution from Nintendo via another third-party company who had also been working on this issue for a while.

So now we could make the code visible in Visual Studio and get it compiling, which was good, but the compilation times were really slow, even for minor changes. Then it had to do the link step, at which point you could happily get up, make a cup of tea, have a chat and get back to your desk before the link was complete. Link times were measured in multiple (four or more) minutes on Wii U compared to around one minute on other platforms.

This doesn't sound bad, but when you are debugging and making lots of changes, these additional times add up. If you made 10 changes to a file in a morning, you could be spending over 50 minutes waiting for the linker to complete, which is a lot of wasted time.

"As a team, we lost days of time to the compile/link/debug overheads and this negatively impacted the amount of features that we could put into our game before the release date."
devkit
This is a Wii U dev kit, revealed to the world courtesy of VGLeaks - somewhat more petite than the next-gen console alpha kits based on PC components. Dev kits came thick and fast, but actual hardware revisions were always fairly minimal.
Finally, when you had the code, you would deploy it to the console and start up the debugger, which was part of the toolchain that Nintendo had licensed from Green Hills Software. As a seasoned developer I've used a lot of debuggers, but this one surprised even me. Its interface was clunky, it was very slow to use and if you made the mistake of actually clicking on any code, then it would pause and retrieve all of the values for the variables that you had clicked, which might take a minute or more to come back.

All of these things made the actual development of code harder than it should have been and ate into the development time of the game. As a team, we lost days of time to the compile/link/debug overheads and this negatively impacted the amount of features that we could put into our game before the release date.

Another curious thing to note at this point was that over the course of six months we received multiple different development kits in a variety of colours, none of which revealed why they were different from the previous one. We knew that there were some hardware bugs that were being fixed, but the release notes rarely stated what had changed - we just had to take the new ones and get them working with our code again, consuming valuable development time. There have been some interesting rumours circulating of PC-style development boxes, and even the Radeon HD 4850 (running underclocked) utilised as a proxy for the Wii U's GPU. We worked on Wii U from the early days and never saw equipment like this - our kits always took the form of custom hardware that I presume was based on near-to-final silicon.

Working with Wii U
Now that the game was up and running on the console we could start developing features that would use the new controllers and make our game stand out on the platform. But soon after starting this we ran into some issues that the (minimal) documentation didn't cover, so we asked questions of our local Nintendo support team. They didn't know the answers so they said they would check with the developers in Japan and we waited for a reply. And we waited. And we waited.

After about a week of chasing we heard back from the support team that they had received an answer from Japan, which they emailed to us. The reply was in the form of a few sentences of very broken English that didn't really answer the question that we had asked in the first place. So we went back to them asking for clarification, which took another week or so to come back. After the second delay we asked why it was taking to long for replies to come back from Japan, were they very busy? The local support team said no, it's just that any questions had to be sent off for translation into Japanese, then sent to the developers, who replied and then the replies were translated back to English and sent back to us. With timezone differences and the delay in translating, this usually took a week !

Getting the game to run at its target frame-rate is a part of the development process that is less interesting in this context as it follows the standard pattern. Get the game running, optimise the code (CPU and GPU) and if it still won't perform, cut back on features until it does fit.

"Getting the game to run at its target frame-rates... follows the standard pattern. Get the game running, optimise the code and if it still won't perform, cut back on features until it does fit."

Digital Foundry's very first Wii U multi-platform comparison came in the form of Mass Effect 3 - in this triple-format performance comparison, the Wii U version was roughly comparable with Xbox 360, and ahead of the disappointing PS3 version.
As far as the CPU optimisations went, yes we did have to cut back on some features due to the CPU not being powerful enough. As we originally feared, trying to support a detailed game running in HD put a lot of strain on the CPUs and we couldn't do as much as we would have liked. Cutting back on some of the features was an easy thing to do, but impacted the game as a whole. Code optimised for the PowerPC processors found in the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 wasn't always a good fit for the Wii U CPU, so while the chip has some interesting features that let the CPU punch above its weight, we couldn't fully take advantage of them. However, some code could see substantial improvements that did mitigate the lower clocks - anything up to a 4x boost owing to the removal of Load-Hit-Stores, and higher IPC (instructions per cycle) via the inclusion of out-of-order execution.

On the GPU side, the story was reversed. The GPU proved very capable and we ended up adding additional "polish" features as the GPU had capacity to do it. There was even some discussion on trying to utilise the GPU via compute shaders (GPGPU) to offload work from the CPU - exactly the approach I expect to see gain traction on the next-gen consoles - but with very limited development time and no examples or guidance from Nintendo, we didn't feel that we could risk attempting this work. If we had a larger development team or a longer timeframe, maybe we would have attempted it, but in hindsight we would have been limited as to what we could have done before we maxed out the GPU again. The GPU is better than on PS3 or Xbox 360, but leagues away from the graphics hardware in the PS4 or Xbox One.

I've also seen some concerns about the utilisation of DDR3 RAM on Wii U, and a bandwidth deficit compared to the PS3 and Xbox 360. This wasn't really a problem for us. The GPU could fetch data rapidly with minimal stalls (via the EDRAM) and we could efficiently pre-fetch, allowing the GPU to run at top speed.

Nintendo vs. online gaming
Now that the game was coming together and the hardware issues were being resolved our attention turned to the networking side of our game and its interface to the newly announced Nintendo Network. We spotted early on that there seemed to be gaps in the documentation, and the code, around the networking area, so we asked for clarification. After the usual translation delay we received word that they were still working on the code, but don't worry it would be arriving soon.

Alarm bells started ringing quietly in my head again, but I put them to one side for the time being. This is Nintendo's new network infrastructure that they are basing their console around, they should make sure that it is complete and fully tested before sharing it, so I could forgive them some delay. We had the basics so we could at least do some testing and connect multiple kits together, but a lot of the Mii and friends content was missing and there was no way to test how the existing code would behave in a "retail environment" as there was no retail "flash" for the development kits. We had to code it all in the dark and just hope that it worked.

Around this time we got the chance to talk to some more senior people in Nintendo, via a phone conference, as they were gathering feedback on our development experiences and their toolchain. This phone conference gave an interesting insight into Nintendo and how it appears to operate.

"At some point in this conversation we were informed that it was no good referencing Live and PSN as nobody in [Nintendo's] development teams used those systems (!) so could we provide more detailed explanations for them?"

None other than Reggie Fils-Aime suggested that the Wii U would receive the best cross-platform titles, singling out Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 in particular. The reality turned out to be somewhat different, and the Wii U performance deficit against PS3 and Xbox 360 persisted into this year's Call of Duty: Ghosts.
The discussion started off well enough and covered off our experiences with the hardware and (slow) toolchain and then we steered them towards discussing when the online features might be available. We were told that the features, and the OS updates to support them, would be available before the hardware launch, but only just. There were apparently issues with setting up a large networking infrastructure to rival Sony and Microsoft that they hadn't envisaged.

This was surprising to hear, as we would have thought that they had plenty of time to work on these features as it had been announced months before, so we probed a little deeper and asked how certain scenarios might work with the Mii friends and networking, all the time referencing how Xbox Live and PSN achieve the same thing. At some point in this conversation we were informed that it was no good referencing Live and PSN as nobody in their development teams used those systems (!) so could we provide more detailed explanations for them? My only thought after this call was that they were struggling - badly - with the networking side as it was far more complicated than they anticipated. They were trying to play catch-up with the rival systems, but without the years of experience to back it up.

As promised, (just) before the worldwide launch we received the final networking features that we required for our game along with an OS update for the development kits that would allow us to test. So we patched up our code and tried to start testing our game.

First up we had to flash the kits to the retail mode that had the Mii and network features. This was a very complicated manual process that left the consoles in a halfway state. In the retail mode we could test our features and ensure that they worked as expected, which would be a requirement for getting through Nintendo certification, but in this mode the debugging capabilities were limited. So we could see when things went wrong, but we couldn't fully debug to find out why. As developers, we had to make a choice and hope that any issues that you found were due to the (untested) OS code and wouldn't happen in the final retail environment. What should have been simple tasks were long-winded and error prone. Simple things like sending a friends request to another user were not supported in the OS, so you had to boot a separate program on the console manually, via a debug menu, so that you could send one. But if any error occurred there was no way to debug why it had failed, it just failed.

We started to ask questions about how they could possibly launch the console, which was a matter of weeks away, with a partially developed OS. How were they going to get the OS onto all of the consoles that had been manufactured up to that point? Was it just that we got it late, but they had pushed it into the production line earlier?

Launch day came around and the answer became clear: Nintendo was late - very late - with its network systems. In fact, the only way to access their systems fully was to download a big patch on day one that added all these missing components. Without that patch a lot of the release titles would have been only semi-functional.

"We started to ask questions about how they could possibly launch the console, which was a matter of weeks away, with a partially developed OS... Launch day came around and the answer became clear: Nintendo was late - very late - with its network systems."

Similar to Call of Duty, a second Assassin's Creed title arrived on Wii U at the tail end of 2013 - and again, we saw little evidence that engine performance had increased significantly compared to the previous year's effort, despite the Nintendo console's more powerful graphics tech.
What happened next?
Well, we eventually released our game and it was generally well-received, so the management sat back to see what kind of sales figures we would get for all our efforts. Without going into detail it would be fair to say that the numbers we were seeing were less than impressive. In fact we would be lucky to make back all the money that we had invested in making the game in the first place, and although the management publicly supported the Wii U platform, it is unlikely that we would ever release another Wii U title.

But what about the rest of the world? How had other development studios faired? The story of what happened next is pretty well documented in the gaming press, but I'd like to highlight some interesting points that have been on my mind recently. Firstly, third-party support. Do you remember all the hype surrounding the Wii U launch? All those third parties showing videos of existing games that they were going to bring to the Wii U? Whatever happened to a lot of those games?

After the initial flurry of game titles a lot of the studios quietly backed away from their initial statements and announced, with minimal press, that they were in fact not going to make a Wii U version. The reasons behind a particular title not appearing on the Wii U are all pure speculation, but I personally think that a combination of:

Previous development experience using the toolchain and hardware put off development teams from making another title on Wii U.
The technical and feature support from Nintendo were lacking for third-party studios. There was a feeling internally that if you weren't a first-party development studio, you were largely ignored by Nintendo, as we were superficial to their profits. Internally developed titles would save Nintendo and we were just there to add depth to the games catalogue.
The sales figures for the Wii U console were not looking that good soon after launch. There was a lot of confusion in the general population around the launch as most people thought that the Wii U was some kind of add-on to the Wii, they didn't know that it was a new console. This lack of awareness probably contributed to the console not getting off to the start that Nintendo would have hoped and put off studio from developing on the hardware.
Nintendo also fell victim to bad timing. A few months after the console launched the next-gen hype train stepped up a gear as Sony announced the PlayStation 4, with Microsoft joining the fray a few months later. Don't forget that many of the larger studios would have known about the hardware months before it was announced, well before the Wii U hardware actually launched.
So, these larger studios had a choice. Would they develop a port of an existing game to a console with limited capabilities and limited market penetration? Or put their teams to work on developing new features and concepts for the "real" next-gen consoles that were going to be launched that year? When you look at it this way, the choice isn't that hard.

"Larger studios had a choice. Would they port of an existing game to a console with limited capabilities and limited market penetration? Or put their teams to work on developing new features and concepts for the 'real' next-gen consoles?"

Super Mario 3D World was a deserved Eurogamer Game of 2013, highlighting that, regardless of the hardware, Nintendo's talent for game design remains second to none.
From a first-party perspective, it seems that Nintendo itself hasn't had the easiest time. Now this is pure speculation, but from interactions with some of the development teams it seems as though Nintendo's own teams were having real troubles adapting to the new console - the main reason being the move to HD and the ability of the hardware to support it. Don't forget that until the Wii U came out, none of the first-party titles were in HD and the move from SD to HD is not as easy as you would expect. PS3 and Xbox 360 developers went through this pain early in the previous console cycle and it cost them a lot of time and money trying to adapt, with some studios failing in a big way.

Nintendo's internal teams were now facing this challenge on a new console with limited development time and a lot of pressure to deliver compelling titles. With these pressures upon them it was inevitable that some of the higher-profile titles would slip, but it's surprising how sparse the first-party line-up has been over the last year.

The future for Wii U
Can the Wii U compete in this brave new world of next-gen (current-gen?) consoles? In terms of raw performance it sits uncomfortably between the previous generation and the current one. Parts of the hardware run better than the previous generation, but other parts drag it down. If you tried to compare the Wii U against the PS4/XO, it comes off very badly indeed - it just cannot compete with the new consoles.

At a very basic level, look at the power draw taken by the next-gen consoles compared to the Wii U. The PlayStation 4 draws over 100W more from the mains than Nintendo's console, and it does so using the latest, most power-efficient x86 cores from AMD in concert with a much larger GPU that's a generation ahead and runs on a much smaller fabrication process - 28nm vs. what I'm reliably informed is the 55nm process from Japanese company Renasas.

There are some fleeting parallels between Wii U and the next-gen consoles - the combination of a low-power CPU with a much more powerful graphics chip - but the notion of next-gen titles being easily portable to the Wii U just doesn't work. The gulf in power is just too high, while the GPGPU that we'll see on Xbox One and PlayStation 4 isn't compatible with the older shader model four hardware found in the Wii U.

Doubtless, the first-party developers at Nintendo will make the hardware sing - they always do - but the situation looks grim for those of us in third-party development, with the opportunity to progress on the hardware held back by both the quality of the tools and the lack of financial reward for tailoring our code to the strengths of the hardware. So where does that leave the Wii U?

Personally I'm not sure on what will happen, but if the current trends continue, the Wii U will probably continue to sell in small quantities until a "must have" title is released, probably from a first-party studio, at which point the sales will sky rocket for a while - but even so, matching the momentum of PlayStation 4 and Xbox One seems highly unlikely. Other variables such as the recent news regarding China lifting the ban on games consoles may influence Nintendo's future direction. This huge untapped market may provide a lifeline in terms of sales, but with the low wages of the general population these sales might well come from the original Wii, rather than the more expensive Wii U.

You can never discount Nintendo, but based on my experience - and the sales of the platform - the company's facing its most testing challenge in modern times.

posted by wap, platform: Galaxy Note III

楼上的翻译好牛

posted by wap, platform: Firefox

wiiu不清楚，但是做过wii开发的筒子都叫苦连天。。任天堂在开发者支持方面落后另外两家不少

索尼收购SN Systems很明智

本帖最后由 mieumieu 于 2014-1-12 09:37 通过手机版编辑

posted by wap, platform: Galaxy Nexus

我来翻：任地狱必须死！

posted by wap, platform: 华为 (A199)

这文章中没有提wiiu最终降低gpu 指标的事，事实到底是如何呢

mark

引用:

原帖由 yfl2 于 2014-1-12 09:56 发表
posted by wap, platform: 华为 (A199)

这文章中没有提wiiu最终降低gpu 指标的事，事实到底是如何呢

由什么水平降低到什么水平？

引用:

原帖由 nikito 于 2014-1-12 11:58 发表


由什么水平降低到什么水平？

对折，记得楼主贴过，当然是传言

另外要么是开发环境实在太恶劣，否则我很怀疑wiiu的gpu真的比ps360强，毕竟所有软件商包括任天堂自己都没有一款游戏能证明这种优势是可察觉的

[ 本帖最后由 yfl2 于 2014-1-12 12:06 编辑 ]

引用:

原帖由 yfl2 于 2014-1-12 12:04 发表

对折，记得楼主贴过，当然是传言

另外要么是开发环境实在太恶劣，否则我很怀疑wiiu的gpu真的比ps360强，毕竟所有软件商包括任天堂自己都没有一款游戏能证明这种优势是可察觉的

那只是传言，按看到的开发者一些说法，WiiU的GPU是比较强的，
CPU就真的太弱。 (WiiU的CPU是IBM 45nm制程，GPU是台积电40nm代工)

GPU在开发机上是用4850的低频版，这也是IGN传出WiiU可能会用4850的原因，
但实机GPU的性能比4850差太多了，大约就是4650左右而已。

引用:

原帖由 sisik 于 2014-1-12 12:33 发表


那只是传言，按看到的开发者一些说法，WiiU的GPU是比较强的，
CPU就真的太弱。 (WiiU的CPU是IBM 45nm制程，GPU是台积电40nm代工)

GPU在开发机上是用4850的低频版，这也是IGN传出WiiU可能会用4850的原因，
但 ...

there have been some interesting rumours circulating of PC-style development boxes, and even the Radeon HD 4850 (running underclocked) utilised as a proxy for the Wii U's GPU. We worked on Wii U from the early days and never saw equipment like this - our kits always took the form of custom hardware that I presume was based on near-to-final silicon



据本文来看，4850也只能说是一个传闻

另外如果wiiu的gpu真的比较强，那么起码应该比360好50%吧？那么很多游戏比如cod，分辨率或者aa为什么不能高点呢？毕竟这和cpu无关了，你看任天堂自己的游戏也就720p，像新马和任大陆都没有1080p，这个gpu真的没问题么

[ 本帖最后由 yfl2 于 2014-1-12 12:37 编辑 ]

去微薄上看了看评论，很多人都表示任地狱对第三方不友好，但是任饭只注重任地狱第一方和第二方的游戏，so，第三方可以洗洗睡

引用:

原帖由 sisik 于 2014-1-12 12:33 发表


那只是传言，按看到的开发者一些说法，WiiU的GPU是比较强的，
CPU就真的太弱。 (WiiU的CPU是IBM 45nm制程，GPU是台积电40nm代工)

GPU在开发机上是用4850的低频版，这也是IGN传出WiiU可能会用4850的原因，
但 ...

GPU在开发机上是用4850的低频版，这也是IGN传出WiiU可能会用4850的原因，
但实机GPU的性能比4850差太多了，大约就是4650左右而已。


另外如果真这样，就符合零售版性能对折的传闻了

所以Wii U大概还有多少降价空间、？就今年来讲。。。准备等199/249时候入一台