We’ve got some bad news or good news for you today, depending on whether you’re a Nintendo Wii U supporter or are rooting for either Sony or Microsoft — Tecmo Koei, the developers behind the Wii U launch title Warriors Orochi 3 Hyper, has gone on record to say that the Nintendo’s console is actually less powerful than the Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3.
Eurogamer had a chance to chat with Tecmo Koei’s Akihiro Suzuki about Warriors Orochi 3 Hyper, and their experience working with the Wii U. Suzuki reveals there were issues in getting Warriors Orochi 3 to deliver an experience similar to their other successful franchise, the Dynasty Warriors series:
“One of the weaknesses of the Wii U compared to PS3 and Xbox 360 is the CPU power is a little bit less. So for games in the Warriors series, including Dynasty Warriors and Warriors Orochi, when you have a lot of enemies coming at you at once, the performance tends to be affected because of the CPU. Dealing with that is a challenge.”
Suzuki, however, says that while there were challenges in developing for the new platform, he acknowledges that the Wii U is capable of delivering amazing graphics and it allowed them to create visuals that are superior to the Playstation 3 and the Xbox 360:
“Developing on new hardware in itself was a challenge, and also making that launch date was a challenge. But from a visual standpoint, based on the performance of the Wii U, we knew the game had the capability of having much better graphics than games on PS3 and Xbox 360. Make no mistake, from a visual standpoint, it is able to produce better graphics. So our challenge was to make a higher quality graphics. We were able to meet that.”
We’ve heard of other developers saying that the Wii U is not as powerful as a lot of people had hoped but this is the first time that an insider has admitted that there are aspects of this next-gen console that doesn’t even compare with the Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3. This news will probably make it even tougher for people still on the fence about getting a Wii U when it launches in November.
Are you still planning to get a Wii U? Could a great game line-up make up for its processing shortcomings? Share your two cents in the comments below!