- dev kit boxes are numbered and sealed by a large warning sticker
- sticker roughly states that a "warranty" wouldn't be valid anymore if it was removed
- includes legal documentation warning against dismantling the dev kit to try and reverse-engineer the platform
- some of the specs are seen while booting the dev kits
- a list is accessible in SDK
- major elements of the Wii U are still unknown to some major third parties
- third parties are still unsure of the Wii U OS
- Nintendo has given some basic details, but most elements are still a secret
- this includes the dashboard design, user interface and more
Link, Link
- sticker roughly states that a "warranty" wouldn't be valid anymore if it was removed
- includes legal documentation warning against dismantling the dev kit to try and reverse-engineer the platform
- some of the specs are seen while booting the dev kits
- a list is accessible in SDK
- major elements of the Wii U are still unknown to some major third parties
- third parties are still unsure of the Wii U OS
- Nintendo has given some basic details, but most elements are still a secret
- this includes the dashboard design, user interface and more
Link, Link
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Considering Nintendo want to be the ones to lift the lid on it all at E3, I can't say I blame them for being overly cautious with those fickle third parties!
Doesn't this sound like a bad thing that the devs are almost completely in the dark? Especially this close to launch.
You can trust dem thurd partis to keep their mouths shut
@cbbomb The Wii U's launch is still quite a while off. The full version of the console will be revealed next month, by then most 3rd party devs should know almost all the features
You'd think so, but no. lol
This doesn't sound like anything too out of the ordinary.
But who are these devs and major parties?
I thought the 2 gigs of ram from the same topic was more interesting
By the way, developers not knowing everything about the system does not mean they can't make the games as good as they want. Holding secrets from 3rd party teams is important because it ensures nothing can leak out.
So it isn't like "OMG WTF BBQ!! Developers can't make the games the way they want, cause Nintendo is being secret!!"
@TheBitBlock Isn't that like... more obvious after the Ubisoft leak?
this is pretty much par for course. I've heard about some of the crazy requirements nintendo has to a get a pre-launch dev kit. you have to have certain security features at the location where you store it, etc, etc.
It's interesting that Nintendo doesn't want people to know what's inside the devkit. It sounds like there may be some interesting tech that they don't want copied right away.
Let's hope they change the crappy Wii/3DS design for something beautiful and more flexible...
An for the love of God, add an option for us to install themes to the system's menus! FFS, it's 2012!
Give us user accounts instead of system-locked accounts for game downloads and all will be forgiven.
I just hope they keep the folders going. more with the categories, less windows desktop of a 60 year old grandmother.
"Doesn't this sound like a bad thing that the devs are almost completely in the dark? Especially this close to launch."
The 3rd Party Developers are always left in the dark, when new hardware is coming out. The 360 didn't get its final dev kits out until September 2005 and it came out in November of that same year, so talk about cutting it close. That's probably why there was so many problems with the 360's RROD, but hey that's Microsoft's problem. The rumor now is that final Wii U dev kits will be out in June, so that's way more time, than Microsoft gave for the 360.
I wonder which third parties are making this claim ... and when they made it.
The links to substantiate this were to NeoGaf forums, which often have their own view of reality and what they find acceptable.
Mike from Morgantown
Waiting for E3 is KILLING me!
Well that's tieing the hands of the 3rd parties, but I guess it's either that or let out all of your secrets for Sony to try and copy and Microsoft to try and 1-up it.
that guy might mean well , but it doesn't seem like he knows anything valuable . except the lack of hidden feature in the drc , which is quite big .... so in a way he does actually know things . He also realized that 720p + 480p should mean a better tv image if the drc is unused which is probably going to be most of the time . That delirious eye tracking on the other hand , meh i don't think they'll try
I'm pretty interested in this. It makes it seem like there's plenty of features we have no clue about yet. It makes me all the more excited for E3 this year. I'm sure it'll be a blast.
The poster on the GAF forums is French and certainly used to be a journalist (might still be, not sure) and has made some very accurate predictions in the past. Based on that, we could assume that the third party in question might possibly be Ubisoft. Not sure what "what they find acceptable" has anything to do with, the post was pretty observational with no subjective analysis.
We all want to know technical specs, albeit Nintendo won't fake us like Sony does.
Do you remember the absurd tech specs of the PS3 shown of with the FAKE Killzone E3 prerendered video, as they said this is all "running in real-time on PS3 hardware" ???
Sony posted 2.18 Teraflops for PS3, which is a straight lie, because 10-times more powerful PC hardware has around 1 Teraflops. Microsoft claimed 1 Teraflops for thier XBox360 and 10-times more powerful PCs have around 1 Teraflops.
Nintendo would only tell us the true specs and these specs will be lower than the FAKE SPECS Sony/Microsoft announced 2005 for thier PS360.
Maybe the Wii U will have indeed 1 Teraflops of calculating power, that's a realistic estimate, but will look like weaker than PS360, because Nintendo won't fool us.
McDaniel-77
Ahh.. you're probably referring to our buddy IdeaMan. He's given us some pretty good insight regarding what to expect with hardware, how developers could possibly be lookong at and using the uPad, etc.
(and while I'm at it, I might as well as that he's a very nice, stand-up guy. Always a pleasure to converse with him.)
IdeaMan (a former journalist who still has connections inside the industry) has talked to a few of NeoGAF's confirmed inside sources, and they seem pretty confident in him as a source while acknowledging the limitations on how much direct information he has access to.
So after E3 devs will get the final Wii U dev kits?
Whomever is currently getting the latest kits as nintendo rolls them, will probably continue to do so. everyone else will be some number of versions behind, I figure every WiiU dev will all be on the same version after launch.
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