Nintendo “Cheaps Out” on Wii U Controller Battery
- Categories: Games, News
- Date: Nov 19, 2012 10:57 JST
- Tags: Comparison, Image Gallery, Nintendo, Technology, Video Gallery, Wii U
Disappointed gamers have been complaining bitterly that Nintendo has even “cheaped out” on the Wii U’s controller battery, after learning of its “paltry” 1500mAh battery and the rather suspect large empty space around it.
This time around, Japanese gamers were moaning about the inadequate nature of the controller battery:
“What the hell! This is less than the 3DS LL!”
“This is worse than anyone imagined!”
“Arrrgh!”
“They totally cheaped out here.”
“What’s up with that huge unnatural space in there…”
“They are going to sell a high capacity battery pack separately I guess.”
“And you lot kept complaining about how heavy it was – and yet this is how it turns out.”
“Obviously that huge space is for a battery pack, sold separately of course. That’s why it only gets a 3 hour one!”
“God, this is a trashy spec!”
“That space!”
“Oh come on…”
“Worse than the Vita?”
“Perhaps they just originally intended to give us a huge battery but changed it?”
“There is obviously something supposed to go in that big space.”
“What a godly space. This is Nintendo hardware quality alright.”
“Expect a fat battery pack soon…”
After a post-release dissection, the console was also revealed to have a fairly miserly 2GB of RAM:
Doubts about the main console’s computing power continue to be raised, with most putting it at “similar to” the current PS3 or Xbox 360 despite the intervening half decade since their releases, though for some reason Nintendo has been less than forthcoming with details of its specs – not that most mainstream buyers will care.
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The space around the battery is to catch the flames when it explodes.
Nintendo is made in Japan, not China!
you might want to check on that, components are made in china.
not only the components, the console is also made in china, like the wii, the 360, the ps3 and over 90 percent of all consumers electronics, sadly legal slavery and an endless stream of "workers" is too good a deal to pass
Still overly priced.
$349 for the console and another $100+ for an extra controller.
PASS.
Will stick to my Xbox 360.
You can't actually buy extra touchscreen controllers though, at least at this point, nor would you really want to, since current games don't make use of more than one. For same-system multiplayer, the other players use either the Pro Controller, Classic Controller or Wii Remotes, which existing Wii owners will already have.
I'd say the price seems reasonable in comparison with the other consoles. The current non-stripped down Xbox 360 bundles sell in the $250 to $350 range, depending on the bundled game, kinect, and other features, and if you want to play online, you'll be spending an additional $50 or more a year. The PS3 is around $300 to $400, depending on the bundle. Plus, you have to remember that the Wii U is new right now, and demand outstrips production. When the next generation of consoles from Microsoft and Sony debut in another year or two, they'll undoubtedly cost hundreds of dollars more.
Of course, if you already have a 360 or PS3, I can see how you might not be able to justify the cost of a new console that currently mostly features ports of games already available on your system. The Wii has a decent number of games available at launch, but doesn't really have an exclusive killer app quite yet.
Another satisfying product brought to you by Shit. Because fuck it, you're going to buy it anyways.
All Shit brand products are manufactured by A$$, the world's largest supplier of Shit.
Some A$$embly required, big-A$$ batteries not included.
You, sir, made my day.
LOL! Nintendo knows the situation they're in. They have to cut costs to get the console cheaper for production and for the consumer. They know that their audience is similar to those who buy Apple products. They buy it just because, "it's the new *blank*" no matter how disappointing it turns out.
(videogame industry in a nutshell)
Nintendo: aw shit! these tech issue will hinder out sales! RELEASE THE ZELDA GAMES!!!
5 months later...
Gamers: what tech issues! this console rocks!
^
Pretty much this.
no joke.. Of course Zelda fans will buy Wii U, just like an Uncharted fans buying a PS3..
If a game enjoyed by the fans, I'd say money is well spend.
I wont buy a Wii U for a 3rd party released, but just for the first party game, and a ps3 and Wii U is all I need for my gaming session.
But Zelda has a decline of quality as well...
Other M was not popular in the west either.
Yeah Nintendo way to screw up Zelda by forcing motion controls down peoples throat with Skyward Sword. Which is why I think GameCube Twilight Princess was better than the Wii version.
But all they have to is release a new EarthBound/Mother then all is forgiven, a game that is better played than described.
Except then Nintendo will choose not release Earthbound outside of Japan, just all the other games that Wii fans wanted but never got, because releasing actual games for Gamers in the significantly larger western market just makes too much sense for Nintendo to handle.
When Twilight Princess came you, the internet bitched about "the formula being old" and said Wind Waker was the best Zelda.
When Wind Waker came out, the internet bitched about cel-shading and said OoT was the best Zelda.
When OoT came out, the internet bitched about ditching the 2D Gameplay Mechanics and said LttP was the best Zelda.
Seeing a pattern here?
Oh, yeah. Pattern's easy to spot.
The internet likes to bitch, but they are a little bitch, so they bitch the whole while they're being made bitches.
Bitches love to bitch. So I gave my bitch a bitch. Bitches love bitches.
>seeing a pattern here?
It's easy to dismiss critics as a 'vocal minority'.
Yes, it is true that there was always someone complaining when new Zelda games came out though. And you missed out on Majoras Mask with some people complaining about "time pressure" (which was missing the point).
But what I meant was execution and not that opinionated stuff. When OoT came out, it had good characterization for it's time and for Nintendo. It doesn't matter if someone complained about 3D, because the game was still really good and has become an all-time favorite for many.
Compare Saria and Illya for example, and the way they were handled story-wise. Illya was not only badly written, she vanished out of the plot completely! Even though it seemed she'd play a role in the main story after she lost her memories. The story jumped from A to B and was a confusing pile of crap.
Nintendo needs to put a bit more heart into their characters and story. Times have changed, and Nintendo can't keep up anymore it seems.
No. What are you on about? Every single Zelda since the original has been divisive. And because of that, the ongoing sentiment has been that it's been in decline since then. Which isn't true at all.
Unless you're to take the discontentment of the vocal minority as fact. :/
I gave up on Nintendo since I had the GCN.
GC was everything Wii should have been.
But Wii is everything GC was.
It can play GC games and supports GC controllers.
Not the Game Boy Player!
Calling the GC GCN. Awkward.
That was have GamePro and a lot of others abbreviated GameCube, because NGC is the name of a company
Do NOT want!
Even if it were for free!
I'll take it for free..
I'd take it for free and sell it to idiots for 3-4x the value.
3-4x of free is still free....
take it for free and sell it to dumb sheep consumers
I'll take it for free, truckloads of it, and sell it to chinese flea markets for profit.
Then I will buy better consoles in the future.
Hardware comes second when most important thing is about game. We all seen what happen to PS3 when it launch, no games.
I will only consider buying a Wii U when more appealing game available only on Wii U.
Give it about three months. They tend to release this stuff for Christmas, then wait a bit and go "Oh, hey, remember that thing you got? Check out what you can play on it now!"
Buying newly launched system sucks. I buy the damn Vita early, and I have no game like for 3 months. After that, a Vita Value pack offered in stores, bundled with a game and the whole things is much cheaper than the Vita I bought.. Next time, I will only buy a system after I saw a game I like on it.
I always wait for 2-3 years after the console's launch before I buy it - that way I know all about it and it's competition and can make a proper choice. Compulsive purchases rarely pay off...
Patience is a customer's best friend - granted you know for sure that the item you're planning to buy is going to stay on store shelves for long enough.
Not that argument again!
The consumer has no gain from how Nintendo handles this. With Nintendo, you won't even see it on the price tag. And with having lower specs you limit what developers can do with your console!
Yes, we don't need good graphics to enjoy ourselves. But it would be nice if developers could actually MAKE them for your console!
Agreed. Except that the games aren't all that hot either.
Place for invisible Region Locks?
>implying 2gb of ram is small for a console.
This is not a pc, you can't quantify performances simply based on the same numbers. For example, the xbox 360 has 512 MB of ram. So we're talking about 4 times the amount of ram...
My 20 dollar jump drive has more memory than these consoles.
USB stick is not the same as RAM. Write speed on FLASH is horrible.
It doesn't cost as much as your DDR2/3 memory per GB nor have the same performance.
Some moron doesn't know about memory hierarchy lol.
When'd they start making usb drives with RAM?
You're a fucking idiot.
Whom are you calling an idiot? The person who correctly pointed out that USB drives don't use RAM?
... lol, what a noob.
LOL Please re-evaluate your knowledge of computers. You're becoming an addition of ignorance in this country. Flash is not RAM. You have the internet. Use wikipedia or something.
Gee people... you guys need to upgrade your sarcasm detector
That's not sarcasm, dude. Making a tech mistake like that only make people laugh at you. Making a comparison between a usb drive and ram only shows one huge misunderstanding of the hardware.
Mistaking a comment that's meant to imply that the WiiU is an overblown USB drive and not a console as a comparison between USB drives and ram shows a lack of cognitive depth.
Calling someone on their comment regarding the intended joke behind the initial statement based on the aforementioned misconception makes more people laugh at you than the one you presumed would be laughed at for their "mistake".
This is the internet, sarcasm doesn't work. You say something stupid we're laughing at you. Don't even try to save face by saying you were just trolling or it was sarcasm
Dude, you're still doing it wrong. Please resubmit your report with the corrections by the end of the week.
Maybe it's just me, but I thought his usb flash comparison was so obviously wrong that it was very funny.
lol even if the comparison of thumb drives vs RAM was legit, we're talking about a 10 dollar saving PER CONSOLE here. Now do the math and see how much they saved when they manufacture 100 million consoles.
My video card has more on-board memory, u mad bro?
Not really, I was saying that we should compare apples with apples, and you just compared an apple to a banana...
Well let's not mistake that these consoles are in fact computers. They are just locked down and customized with their own OS and capabilities. Every single game made is tested initially on PCs and has to be locked down by custom hardware and software to limit the playability on the console, so really the reason the comparison still exists is because it'll never really disappear.
That doesn't give my fellow PC gamers a good reason to be douchebag about PC vs Console of course, because that doesn't really do anything for anyone.
Comparison still isn't fully correct since the 'OS' isn't fully loaded onto the ram during game.
And I have no idea about where you got the idea of made and tested on PC but no, not all games are tested on PC.
The OS wouldn't be loaded onto the RAM, it'd be installed to the hard drive. The games themselves take advantage of the RAM.
All games are technically "tested" on a PC first because that's where they're created. They have to at least make sure it works before going through the trouble of porting it to a consoles software.
They have this wonderful device which allows them to 'test' the games on the target consoles. They've had them for years. Some in the form of PC cards which essentially run a miniaturized version of the console (essentially a virtual machine), and some are genuine console units with extra bells and whistles to allow them to transfer code.
Generally speaking though, these test systems are given extra RAM than their retail counterparts because they'll be running un-optimized code which generally has a bigger overhead.
so whats your clock speed and throughput of that memory bro? lots o memory isn't worth anything for a video card unless there is enough bus bandwidth and speed.
the latency between the gpu and cpu is super low, your video card has more on board memory? How much did it cost. Oh so your whole computer with all the bells and whistle costs twice as much as the wii u? You see why your logic is fucked up?
let the plebeians be with their whining, console wars only exists in the minds of poverty-stricken fanboys who can only afford one console
RAM is cheap, 2GB is nothing. To say, "but this isn't a PC!", is a ridiculous argument.
Do you realize how much of a pain in the ass it is to optimize a game for that paltry amount of RAM? How many corners have to be cut? How many aspects of a game have to be lessened to meet this requirement?
The Xbox 360 does only have 512MB of RAM, but 360 games also have horrendous graphics as compared to their PC counter-parts.
Well said, expert.
Now back to your seat.
There's something called efficiency and there is also something called not wanting to make the console really expensive. Have you programmed a game before? Only graphic whores will complain only about the graphics. A game doesn't need serious HD graphics to be a good game. Plus, the majority of people who buy Nintendo products aren't hardcore gamers who play shooters all the time. The argument, "but this isn't a PC" , is not a ridiculous argument because it's aim more for kids and casual gamers so the specs is not supposed to match a PC. As a programmer, it's more than enough to work with.
You're implying RAM is only for pretty graphics?
How about larger maps?
More objects on screen?
More parallel operations allowing for a more complex gameplay?
SHUT THE FUCK UP, YOU IGNORANT PIECE OF SHIT.
When was there an implication of RAM being for only graphics? It appears you're the ignorant piece of shit since you don't understand reading comprehension. Larger maps and more objects is still part of the graphics whore topic dumbass. Complex gameplay? It's a Nintendo console! When was gameplay suppose to be complex for a console that's aimed for casual gamers? It's apparent whose the piece of shit whose vocabulary is limited down to profanity and using caps lock to show anger which is really embarrassing. Must be an inbred person.
"It's a Nintendo console, so why care because they're aimed for casuals."
Too many games Nintendo have made for Wii and are making for WiiU that shows that they do care about hardcores and they damn want that part of marketshare so damn bad, they could taste it. It's just that they're taking the cheap way out for hardware because they know they can sell those consoles on gimmick and brand alone.
You're saying The Last Story, Xenoblade, both Fatal Frame IV, Fatal Frame 2 remake and Pandora's Tower were aimed for casuals?
You think casuals would bother to learn inventory management and studying zombie AI for ZombiU?
Hell, would they even consider Bayonetta? lol
Nintendo ported so many hardcore titles for WiiU, and those hardcore titles are the ones being advertised the most along the usual Mario and Zelda titles for the game launch.
Also, larger maps and more objects actually contribute more to gameplay. It's not the same as resolution because whether the image is sharp or not, it will still determine whether the game will load every 3 fucking doors or just one. Also, bigger maps would enable more players to roam in a map for multiplayer.
Let's not forgetting all the side stuff they're implimenting like chat, watching TV and stuff. How many of these operations can run at the same time or while gaming depends on RAM among other things.
There are other factors such as CPU processing power and threading, but RAM directly affects gameplay because of the sheer amount of data it can hold. Since RAM is also cheap as fuck, there really were no excuses for Nintendo.
Are you really a programmer...?
Halo 4 says hi.
Your hurting the cause. It's comments like this that give Halo players a bad name. A game is a game.
And then you have people complaining the console is too expensive >.>
2GB of ram costs maybe like 10-20 bucks. It'd hardly matter on the pricetag...
@06:08
Yeah, the ram you buy for PC costs that much, but you don't know how much it costs to produce ram for a console.
Consoles don't use the same motherboards and shit as PCs do, so you can't apply the same pricetags to completely different pieces of hardware.
you cant compare a Nintendo OS like a Windows OS which has many services/ programms runs in the background, in my case my pc would take around 60%(Windows Performance Index) of my 4GB DDR3 busy.
RAM on consoles not the same as PC huh? You're trying to spread some farce here?
Both Sony and MS are going to make an x86 based console for next gen, so future consoles are only going to be technically closer to PCs than they were in the past.
And no one saw the AMD stamp on one of the parts in that WiiU breakdown? lol
It's amazing how some people think 2GB is good enough because BLABLABLA 360 ONLY HAS 512KB BLABLA. Are you guys forgetting that WiiU is supposed to be next gen? That it's supposed to be ABOVE PS3 and 360?
If they're still going to remain with 32bit systems when PCs have long made the transition to 64bit, shouldn't they just maximize RAM to the 32bit system's RAM cap of 4GB if this is truly supposed to be next gen?
"The Xbox 360 does only have 512MB of RAM, but 360 games also have horrendous graphics as compared to their PC counter-parts."
Graphics has nothing to do with RAM
poly count no but texture size and how many you put in ram at once DO
less ram = lower texture res / less
which is why all console ports have shit textures
"Do you realize how much of a pain in the ass it is to optimize a game for that paltry amount of RAM?" : since the N64, nintendo has been overly cheapass with hardware, and developers always had to cope with that. don't worry, we used to it. and play on other consoles.
when you know your way with gbc or gba, 1+1Gb is fairly enough, even if it is slow
Nintendo hasn't really been cheap with hardware since the N64, at least not compared to the competition. The N64 was a very capable system, in many ways better than the other consoles available at the time. The Gamecube's hardware was likewise on par with, and in some ways better than its competitors, though much like the PS3 early this generation, the hardware was "different" from the market leader, and it received a lot of ports that weren't well-optimized for it. It's only been since the Wii that Nintendo really skimped on hardware compared to the competition, and that seemed to work out fine enough for them, since they offered something different from the competition.
Even so, optimizing for any amount of RAM on a console can be a challenge, since developers will use all of it when trying to push for graphics that meet or exceed what's being done by others. With fixed hardware specifications, they'll always be going through great lengths to hunt for new ways to get more out of the system. With the PC, there's no fixed limit to hardware specifications, so they can simply design for whatever arbitrary limit they decide upon, and list that as the requirements. They may push for some amount of optimization to enable their game to run on low-end hardware, but it's not as important.
While you could argue that Nintendo could have included more RAM at minimal cost, or a slightly faster graphics chipset, or whatever, at the end of the day, someone has to pay for this. Even with the current specifications, Nintendo is losing money on each console sold, even if they make it back after selling one game. Add in another $10 worth of RAM though, and they might need the licensing fees of two games to break even. Add some more internal storage, and it might be three games, and so on. They could raise the price of the console to make up for this, but that might slow sales, and in the past doing so hasn't worked all that well for them.
ram is cheap yes, but 4gb is more expensive than 2gb and 2 are actually more than enough for a gaming console. the only thing more ram would do is to lure devs into sloppy coding, and that's it.
same goes for pc. if the majority of applications and games wouldn't have crappy coding, any system would run fine with 2 to 4gb - there's absolutely no reason for 8gb, 16gb or even 32gb specs.
Haha youre funny. Even nowadays games for pc dont use more that 2gb
some games needs more than 4GB of RAM
they are very few and far in between though. none of my game are capable, they all are 32 bit and have the same 2 GB limitation (Huge problem with sins of a solar empire). while i'm sure they exist, they are pretty rare.
This reminds me not to take things people say on the internet at face value. So many words, so little accuracy.
Anyway, 2 GB of RAM on a console is a fuckton. You think your nice little lap top with 8 gigs is "just barely pulling it off" until you check what is using all that RAM and realize your god damn mp3 player uses more RAM than you could fit in 500 computers 20 years ago. The browser sits contently on top of a pile of 3-4 gigs of RAM after running for a few days because developers these days think "sall good if they run out of RAM there's always swapping other shit to disk". Blerf.
My PC has 8 GB of ram - _ - and I am currently planning on getting 2160p HD tv or Pc monitor for my PC
Its also the most RAM a console has ever launched with.
One thing everyone seems to forget is that the reason consoles can be better optimised than PC's is because the hardware remains the same on every system. The same is not true for PC games where owners might have different graphics cards, motherboards and CPU's, meaning they're forced to make a 'cover-all' program to deal with that. Cutting out the crap is why consoles, despite their minimalist RAM, can function perfectly fine and perform graphics on par with average spec PCs.
Optimization is something which simply can't be done to the same degree on a PC.
Fact is specs are what you can expect of a console which core fanbase is kids with main buyers as parents, Nintendo has the monopoly of this segment so they can afford so many things, including no need to have really high specs for causal gamers looking merely for fun not the best performance or graphics.
Do you think parents rae gonna bother with specs? NO, they look at mario, smash borther, zelda, etc, just frun for their kids.
Now be intelligent before you come up and complain that you are not a kid and you enjoy it, thats fine, I enjoy some nintendo games too, they are fun with friends, otherwise for the serious gamers that's what the pc/xbox/ps are for.
So point is, nintendo core fanbase could care less about specs, they have no idea anyway.
Instead of spouting your "Nintendo is for kids" nonsense, how about looking at the games actually being released on the new console. There's nothing that scream "kiddy" about many of the launch title and more are coming, including Bayonetta 2. Now if you dare say that's a game for kids, you deserve to die in the most horrible way.
LIke he said BE INTELLIGENT and stop being a moron that cannnot read.
LIke it or not CORE (do you know what it means) base is KIDS! PERIOD.
Did he said its ONLY for kids? or that 100% base is KIDS?
GO back to school to learn reading comprehension?
YOu are probably a kid that does not want to be called a kid!!
Of course Nintendo has a small percentage of more serious gamers, whith some games now and then to them,
DO you know why the drama for the really hardcore gamers that wanted bayonetta and turned out the sequel is only in wii U?
SO if you dont want to be called a kid dont act like one then and accept the obvious,
NIntendo is NOT about bayonetta o0r the like, ITS ABOUT MARIO, POKEMON, ZELDA, etc
CASUAL GAMER PERIOD.
ITS FACT! NINTENDO = KIDS AND CAUSLA GAMERS PERIOD!
Are you a kid pretending to be an adult? You behave exactly like that
CHeck the news about the miiverse debug menu "hack" on day one, even nintendo clearly and textually says "GAMES FOR KIDS"
NO doubt, nintendo fanbase is kids and casualk gamer.
Of course they will also have some games for more series gamer as they always do.
Yea, seriously, so they have bayonetta and then suddenly Nintendo is a console for hardcore adult gamers?
Grow up, what is wrong with not being a kid and liking a console for kids? Nothing, I enjoy nintendo games too and I accept its a console for little kids and casual gamers, and I dont feel ashamed or insulted by it or when someone says it.
i don't know about you, but I'm getting Pikmin 3 and it better be in HD!
"serious gamers".
One question, what is your age? You looks like a 12 years old child trying to prove: "I'm an adult".
Are you trying to say that PS3/360/PS3 are for adults only? Don't make me laugh! All consoles are for children! There's some game rated +18, but its only because the violence, blood, etc.
all consoles are not for children, please go back to the 80s where you belong.
Uuuuuh, no, it is a PC. It's structurally identical to any PC, only difference is it was meant for gaming.
ITT lots of people that don't understand how consoles and console games development work.
You know what the PS3 main problem is and was?
It was the RAM, I can't count the number of developers that said they could have achieved much much more on it with twice the ammount.