Wii U "50% more powerful than a PS3"
Nintendo’s Wii U console was the highlight of this year’s E3 gaming conference thanks to its mad touchscreen controller and HD graphics update. However, while it was a significant jump in graphical fidelity over the original Wii, the general consensus of industry insiders has been that the console would land on a par with the PS3 in terms of power when it eventually launched.
That belief has been shook somewhat by a new claim from Sterne Agee analyst Arvind Bhatia. Bhatia is quoted by Industry Gamers as saying, “Some of the developers we spoke to indicated to us that the [Wii U] console will have 50 per cent more processing power compared to the PS3 or Xbox 360. This is yet to be confirmed by Nintendo.”
When you consider that by the time the Wii U likely launches the PS3 will be around 6 years old, it’s not too much of a stretch to believe in the Wii U making a 50% increase in processing power over the aging console. It does beg the question as to why Nintendo chose to use PS3 and Xbox 360 game footage to illustrate the power of the Wii U at their press conference though if this claimed power increase would have in anyway given the Wii U games a graphical edge over the competition. Unless of course the Wii U games simply aren’t ready yet.
Either way, Bhatia’s comments contradict the general feeling coming out of E3. Take the comments made by id Software’s John Carmack, the brains behind Doom and Wolfenstein, for instance: “the technology level on there brings it up to parity with the other consoles.”
Hardly a 50% jump then coming from a man who knows the potential of a good graphics chip; just take a look at the relative minimum specs of Doom 3 when it hit PCs back in 2004 and the amazing visuals of this year’s Rage, also from id Software.
We’ll take this one with a pinch of salt for the time being, but keep you posted once Nintendo reveal the console’s official specs.
Click here for everything there is to know so far about Nintendo’s Wii U
