Nintendo Wii U hardware specs

 According to VGleaks and then supported by alleged industry insiders posting on NeoGAF

Main Application Processor

• PowerPC architecture.
• Three cores (fully coherent).
• 3MB aggregate L2 Cache size.
• core 0: 512 KB
• core 1: 2048 KB
• core 2: 512 KB
• Write gatherer per core.
• Locked (L1d) cache DMA per core.

Main Memory

Up to 3GB of main memory (CAT-DEVs only). Note: retail machine will have half devkit memory
Please note that the quantity of memory available from the Cafe SDK and Operating System may vary.

Graphics and Video

• Modern unified shader architecture.
• 32MB high-bandwidth eDRAM, supports 720p 4x MSAA or 1080p rendering in a single pass.
• HDMI and component video outputs.

Features

• Unified shader architecture executes vertex, geometry, and pixel shaders
• Multi-sample anti-aliasing (2, 4, or 8 samples per pixel)
• Read from multi-sample surfaces in the shader
• 128-bit floating point HDR texture filtering
• High resolution texture support (up to 8192 x 8192)
• Indexed cube map arrays
• 8 render targets
• Independent blend modes per render target
• Pixel coverage sample masking
• Hierarchical Z/stencil buffer
• Early Z test and Fast Z Clear
• Lossless Z & stencil compression
• 2x/4x/8x/16x high quality adaptive anisotropic filtering modes
• sRGB filtering (gamma/degamma)
• Tessellation unit
• Stream out support
• Compute shader support

• GX2 is a 3D graphics API for the Nintendo Wii U system (also known as Cafe). The API is designed to be as efficient as GX(1) from the Nintendo GameCube and Wii systems. Current features are modeled after OpenGL and the AMD r7xx series of graphics processors. Wii U's graphics processor is referred to as GPU7.

Sound and Audio

• Dedicated 120MHz audio DSP.
• Support for 6 channel discrete uncompressed audio (via HDMI).
• 2 channel audio for the Cafe DRC controller.
• Monaural audio for the Cafe Remote controller.

Networking

• 802.11 b/g/n Wifi.

Peripherals

• 2 x USB 2.0 host controllers x 2 ports each.
• SDCard Slot.

Built-in Storage

• 512MB SLC NAND for System.
• 8GB MLC NAND for Applications.

Host PC Bridge

• Dedicated Cafe-to-host PC bridge hardware.
• Allows File System emulation by host PC.
• Provides interface for debugger and logging to host PC.

Read more »

The Next PlayStation is Called Orbis

While the official reveal of Sony's next home console could still be months away, if not longer, Kotaku has today learned some important details concerning the PlayStation 3's successor. For one, the console's name—or at least its codename/working title—is apparently Orbis. And it's being planned for release in time for 2013

The details in this story come from a reliable source who is not authorized to talk publicly about next-gen hardware but has shared correct information with us before. What they're telling us in specifics matches much of what we've heard and reported in generalities in recent weeks.

A Sony spokesperson declined to comment about these details, citing the company's policy not to comment on "rumors or speculation." A source supplied some basic specs for the console, but as the future is always in motion, bear in mind these could easily change between now and the Orbis' retail release. Still, if you'd like to know what developers are being told to plan for now, here you go.

AMD x64 CPU AMD Southern Islands GPU The former, that's largely something we've heard before, but the latter is interesting. That's the name given to many of AMD's 2012 roster of high-end PC cards. 

The PS4's GPU in particular, we're told, will be capable of displaying Orbis games at a resolution of up to 4096x2160, which is far in excess of the needs of most current HDTV sets. It'll also be capable of playing 3D games in 1080p (the PS3 could only safely manage 3D at 720p).   none outside none;"> Our main source tell us that "select developers" have been receiving dev kits for the new console since the beginning of this year. 

 Revised and improved versions of these kits were sent out around GDC, while more finalised beta units will be shipped to developers towards the end of 2012. That should hopefully give developers plenty of time to have launch games ready for the Orbis' retail release, which will be in time for the 2013 holiday season.

 If you can remember the PS3 launch—it's OK if you can't, it was a while ago—that too was in time for the holiday shopping season (November 2006 for Japan and North America). Remember how the PlayStation 3 swiftly dropped the ability to play PS2 games? Well, our main source tell us the Orbis won't even bother, and that Sony has no plans to offer backwards compatibility for its existing catalogue of PS3 games. 

  Just like the next Xbox/Durango, we've heard from multiple sources that the Orbis will likewise have some kind of anti-used games measures built into the console. Here's how our main source says it's currently shaping up: new games for the system will be available one of two ways, either on a Blu-Ray disc or as a PSN download (yes, even full retail titles). If you buy the disc, it must be locked to a single PSN account, after which you can play the game, save the whole thing to your HDD, or peg it as "downloaded" in your account history and be free to download it at a later date. 

Don't think you can simply buy the disc and stay offline, though; like many PC games these days, you'll need to have a PSN account and be online to even get the thing started. If you then decide to trade that disc in, the pre-owned customer picking it up will be limited in what they can do. While the sources were unclear on how exactly the pre-owned customer side of things would work, it's believed used games will be limited to a trial mode or some other form of content restriction, with consumers having to pay a fee to unlock/register the full game. 

 This would allow used games to continue to be sold at outlets such as GameStop, while also appeasing major publishers who would no longer have to implement their own haphazard approaches to "online passes". >

Read more »

Mass Effect 3 first two missions

 Fancy ruining it ? ok then.

The first two missions of the game.

Read more »

Aliens: Colonial marines gets it's boxes out

PS3, PC, Xbox 360 and er.. wii u

Aliens: Colonial Marines is a sci-fi/horror fps that puts you in the role of a Colonial Marine as seen in the film Aliens. The player will have access to iconic weapons from the movie such as the flamethrower, pulse rifle, smartgun, pistol, RPGs, and robotic sentry turrets. Players will also be able to use welding torches to seal doors and motion trackers to detect unseen enemies.

Aliens: Colonial Marines will have no HUD to provide the player with onscreen information.

Gameplay types have been described as "Gauntlet Runs", where players must fight enemies as they travel from point A to point B, and "Last Stand" moments, where players must defend a specific area by welding doors and/or setting up automated sentry turrets.

In Aliens: Colonial Marines players will gain experience points when killing enemies and completing certain objectives. These experience points will allow players to customize the appearance of their character, purchase upgrades for weapons, and unlock other skill sets. All of which carry over to other gameplay modes.

The primary enemies of the game are the Xenomorphs from the first three films, which include the Facehugger, Chestburster, and "Scout" alien from Alien, the "Warrior" and the "Queen" aliens from Aliens, as well as the "Runner" alien from Alien 3. The game will also feature never before seen xenomorph types created by Gearbox Software. The specifics of these new alien types have been kept a secret, with the exception of the "Crusher" alien, which was revealed in the E3 2011 Walkthrough demo.

Along with being able to traverse different surfaces from any angle, Gearbox and Sega have also stated that the aliens' AI will use the environment to set up sneak attacks, and group tactics to overwhelm the player.

 Not all enemies will be aliens as players will find themselves also fighting human enemies in the form of Weyland-Yutani commandos and mercenaries.

Read more »

Sony patents 'me too' controller

A Sony patent shows what looks to be a touchscreen handheld controller ..It's called the “Position-Dependent Gaming 3-D controller, and Handheld as a Remote,”  and appears to act as a controller that allows interaction between what’s on its screen and those on your box.

patent info:

Read more »

Colonial Marines gameplay trailer

I'm ready, man. Check it out! I am the ultimate bad-ass! State of the bad-ass art! You do not want to fuck with me. Check it out! Hey, Ripley, don't worry. Me and my squad of ultimate bad-asses will protect you! Check it out. Independently targeting particle-beam phalanx. WHAP! Fry half a city with this puppy. We got tactical smart missiles, phase plasma pulse rifles, RPGs. We got sonic, electronic ball breakers! We got nukes, we got knives, we got sharp sticks.

Read more »

World-Record: 999 players on a single server

 A multiplayer match of epic proportions. It’s been rubber-stamped by Guinness as a success. Here’s how it looked from a player’s perspective. utter madness

PS, i forgot all about this so its probably my fault it wasnt 1000...

Read more »

Wii U hardware “changing constantly,” says Team Ninja

“Nintendo asked us what we would want from the hardware. And when we gave them our feedback, we could see that they really listened and made ​​changes. The hardware is currently changing constantly.” – Team Ninja boss Yosuke Hayashi, speaking to German website Gamefront.de.
 
Team Ninja has previously said it was pushing Wii U hardware as hard as it can. Ninja Gaiden 3 is set to launch this year.

Read more »

Mass effects edi gets a body and other nonsense

Well, I think we can universally decree Mass Effect 3 the worst kept secret in video games ever. It’s had a horrible string of bad luck. First, a demo that wasn’t supposed to be seen by everyone appears on Xbox Live and is there long enough for people to completely Play through it.

Then, people managed to get a rough draft of the script from that leaked demo. found here

Now, there’s another leak. It just so happens that The Art of the Mass Effect Universe artbook, which wasn’t due out until February 21, 2012, has landed in some fans’ hands and sensitive images have been scanned and uploaded online.

full story with more pics

Read more »

Aliens: Colonial Marines Cinematic Trailer

Set just after the events of Alien 3, you must pull on the virtual boots of another squad of marines as you investigate what happened to Ellen Ripley and the original team from the movies.

You can switch between any squad member whenever you want, each with a different speciality or weapon. High tech equipment like the motion tracker and sentry guns are now yours to use and deploy as you see fit, as you fight off wave after wave of xenomorph.

Read more »

Nintendo to launch Wii U by Christmas

Speaking at an investor meeting following the release of its Q3 financials today, Iwata said (via Reuters) that Wii U will launch within the holiday period in EU, US, Japan and Australia.

A 2012 launch was confirmed Wii U’s debut at E3 last year, and was narrowed down for release between E3 and December at the end of last year. This is the first time Nintendo has been specific on release timing and regions since the console’s announcement in Los Angeles last summer.


Nintendo has said it will re-reveal Wii U at this year’s E3. That will take place between June 5-7. The console was shown to press at CES in Vegas this month, an event which included the debut of a new panoramic demo of a Tokyo street.

On the first-party front, not much is known to be in development for the system besides Super Smash Bros. A Zelda HD demo was also shown at E3 last year, as was a New Super Mario Bros-like experience.

For third-parties, EA, THQ, Ubisoft and Warner are some of the studios who have committed to Wii U, with local versions of Darksiders II, Metro: Last Light, Batman: Arkham City, Assassin’s Creed and Ghost Recon planned for the system.

Full Story

Read more »

Wii U has twice Xbox 360′s power, still not enough

According to a developer speaking under the condition of anonymity, some designers have complained the new console is still a bit “underpowered compared to what Nintendo announced,” which has resulted in some studios having to “de-scale” current plans.
Rumors over the processing power of the device have been rampant since before E3 2011, when the console was known as Project Cafe.

Various sources claimed the new console would be “significantly” more powerful than both PS3 and Xbox 360, and that it would contain a minimum 700mb of RAM, an R700 AMD GPU, and contain a TriCore PPC similar to the one in used in 360.

However, it’s impossible at this point to know exactly what kind of hardware is inside the system, as Nintendo’s lording an iron-clad NDA over developers’ heads. Until someone is able to speak freely regarding specs, anything relating to Wii U’s performance will remain speculative.

If the rumors regarding its processing power are to be believed, it will still fall short of the next-gen Xbox rumored to also be in development – reportedly.

Yesterday, IGN quoted a source as saying Microsoft’s next system will be “six times as powerful” as 360 with performance power 20% greater than that of Wii U.

Meanwhile, rumors that Sony are working on PS4 are also all over the net.

full Story

Read more »

Single-player footage for Mass Effect 3

Bioware has said one of the philosophy’s behind the development of Mass Effect 3 was “go big or go home,” according to lead series writer Mac Walters.

Speaking with GTTV, Walter said since the March release will be the end of Shepard’s story, the team wanted to pull out all the stops by including “the biggest decisions, the biggest consequences, and the biggest battles” for the conclusion of the trilogy.

Read more »

More rumored Wii U specs

An “unnamed Japanese developer” has told Wii U daily that Nintendo’s next console will contain a quad-core 3GHz PowerPC-based 45nm CPU, 768MB of DRAM “embedded” with the CPU and shared between it and the GPU which is 40nm and ATI-based.

Try saying all of that three times really fast while holding your tongue. The site’s source claims to be working on porting a PS3 game to Wii U, and that Nintendo is currently testing another version of the console with 1GB of DRAM embedded with the processor. As usual, just file this away for later use until Nintendo officially announces specs.

Read more »

Next Unreal Engine In 2014 And Supports 20 Cores

The next version of Unreal Engine won’t be out before 2014 but it will be worth the wait, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney claimed.

“I spend about 60 percent of my time every day doing research work that's aimed at our next generation engine and the next generation of consoles,” he said.

“This is technology that won't see the light of day until probably around 2014, but focusing on that horizon enables me to do some really cool things that just aren't practical today, but soon will be.”

Sweeney then explained his belief that the biggest challenge and opportunity facing graphics engines in the near future is dealing with multiple CPUs.

“Once you have 20 cores, you can't easily say this one is going to be for animation and this one is going to be for details on the face of the character, because all these parameters change dynamically as different things come on screen and load as you shift from scene to scene,” he explained.

“The big challenge will be redesigning our engine and our workload so that we scale more of these different computer tasks between CPU cores seamlessly in real-time and dynamically so that you're always getting the maximum computing power out with the engine, regardless of what sort of work you're doing.”

Read more »

Aliens : Colonial Marines Gameplay Demo Walkthrough

 "Somebody wake up Hicks."

Aliens: Colonial Marines will feature a story driven single-player mode and an all-new four player co-op mode allowing players to share the chilling experience with three friends. In co-op mode, each player will assume the persona of a Colonial Marine and have a distinct role to play in the completion of every mission. Additionally, more multiplayer modes will be revealed later in the year that will complete the Aliens video game experience.

Read more »

More BF3 than you can shake a stick at

Hours to drool over, Enjoy.

Battlefield 3 - All Classes All Guns Gameplay


Battlefield 3 Tournament Match A


Battlefield 3 Tournament Match B


BF3 Beta Full Extended Gameplay

Metro Rush Full Game



Right, That's all folks. i'll do a review once i get my mits on it.

Read more »

Colonial Marines Trailer

There’s nothing official from SEGA, but it looks like this might be the new trailer for Gearbox’s Aliens: Colonial Marines, below. It has come skittering out of the darkness on YouTube, but there’s a good chance SEGA will set the flamethrowers on it if this is a leak.

Read more »

Star Trek : blow out

Deep Space Fine: Star Trek: Infinite Space

Two new trailers for Star Trek: Deep Space Nine-inspired free-to-play MMO, Star Trek: Infinite Space. They’re both game footage pieces, showing space combat in the game’s 2.5D engine as well as (quite briefly) some of the walking around on stations stuff.

Read more »

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive !

As rumoured, there really is a new Counter-Strike coming. And it’s not some side-project: this sounds like a major sequel-come-relaunch of Counter-Strike for a new generation of manshoot fans. Valve have just solemnly and officially declared its existence to the world – Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, aka CS: GO, is indeed its war-lovin’ name. It will feature new maps, modes, weapons, characters and social gaming features such as matchmaking and leaderboards, on top of assorted updates to tried and tested stuff like de_dust.

It’s due on PC and consoles. Which, I think, means this is Valve looking Call of Duty square in the eye and telling it to step outside.


Not too many details beyond that, but here’s a quote from Valve’s Doug Lombardi:

“Counter-Strike took the gaming industry by surprise when the unlikely MOD became the most played online PC action game in the world almost immediately after its release in August 1999.
“For the past 12 years, it has continued to be one of the most-played games in the world, headline competitive gaming tournaments and selling over 25 million units worldwide across the franchise. CS: GO promises to expand on CS’ award-winning gameplay and deliver it to gamers on the PC as well as the next gen consoles and the Mac.”

Valve are recruiting Hidden Path Entertainment for CS:GO, who you’ll know from the rather good tower defence game Defense Grid: The Awakening.

It’s due in 2012, and the world will get to clap eyes on it at PAX Prime and the Eurogamer Expo later this year.

This, in essence, is Counter-Strike 3, and the first news of it this morning was a huge surprise. It is, it’s safe to say, going to be enormous – but will it be free to play as TF2 now is and Dota 2 is rumoured to be? Mysteries!

There’s a Steam store URL with, basically, this information in a different format, but keep an eye on it for updates.

Read more »