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Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime has defended Wii U against reports from developers suggesting that an underpowered CPU will bottleneck the system, and claimed that Microsoft and Sony will need to do more than deliver “faster processors and pretty pictures” to win over consumers with their next-generation hardware.
Instead, Reggie thinks that the competition will “need to react to what [Nintendo is] doing in the marketplace and need to figure out what their innovation will be” when the time comes to launch their next-gen consoles.
“It’s likely that faster processors and pretty pictures won’t be enough to motivate consumers,” he continued. “They need to react to what we’ve done and we need to continue innovating with the Wii U and we will.”
Developers have repeatedly argued that the Wii U’s CPU is not powerful enough to handle the most technologically-advanced titles.
Last week, the chief technical officer at Metro: Last Light developer 4A Games said that the Wii U has a “horrible, slow CPU”, echoing remarks from Tekken producer Katsuhiro Harada who, back in July, claimed that the CPU’s clock “is kinda low”.
And, in response to 4A’s comments, Battlefield 3 developer DICE waded in, claiming that the CPU will “shorten [the console’s] life a lot”.
But Nintendo thinks that it was right to launch the console now, rather than holding off in the hope of shipping with stronger technology.
“For us, launching new systems is about bringing new consumer experiences to the marketplace,” Reggie continued, “and we’re doing that with Nintendo land and third-party publishers are doing it with games like ZombiU. For us, now is the right time to launch new hardware.”
Wii U sold 400,000 units during its launch week in the US. The console goes on sale across the UK this Friday.
Source: CNET
