No Release Date Yet?

[Brian Clark]

I accept the apology. Looks like I was mistaken about the Wii U CPU since it has a slower clock speed.

 

[Sean]

Well that's just more money I have to spend on other things, I got no problem with that.

 

[francis247uk]

It's all about the Wii's sales - why invest time/money that could be utilised better elsewhere?

 

[Sean]

Except you're still talking an install base of millions with an uncrowded shop and only one other pinball offering: Zen 2. Unless you're going to tell me it's a massive effort to port to the Wii U it seems worth it to me even if only %10 of Wii U owners give it a try. The bar to entry is really low in terms of dev kit costs and they can set the price and have a friendly platform owner (unlike Microsoft, though I acknowledge that may be changing).

Otherwise with your logic no one would be publishing on the platform and yet there's loads of small developers gracing the system with their wares. Titanfall not being on the machine has no bearing on companies that don't spend Hollywood budgets on a game.

 

[francis247uk]

Thats a fair point, although how many people here REALLY would be upset if a Wii U version wasn't released?
For TPA to survive and thrive financially I think they should continue to push forward with the Xbox One/PS4 and PC versions for their graphical prowess and the mobile versions for the play anywhere ability and ease of content delivery.
Dont forget that as well as those versions they've got to tend to the PS3 and 360 versions. Farsight are a business, with only a relatively small team from what I can gather, just can't see any real sort of a niche for Wii U TPA support numbers wise (deemed next gen but with comparable specs to last gen - more hassle then its worth for Farsight I reckon) in any case I'd rather they didnt put out a version at all then a version that wasn't great - I haven't heard good things about the Vita version.

Other then EA games like Fifa or puzzle games like Tetris I cant think of any game thats been released on so many platforms!

 

[Trever Chalmers]

TPA on the gamepad would be kind of a nice feature since the screen is a bit bigger than my tablet and it would be graphically better but I'm no sure I want drop any more money than I already have. I have Season 123 on android and ps3 and season 1 on ps4. I have bought the WII U for my kid but we hadly use it for gaming. It mostly gets used for netflix lol

 

[Brian Clark]

TPA on the gamepad would be kind of a nice feature since the screen is a bit bigger than my tablet and it would be graphically better but I'm no sure I want drop any more money than I already have. I have Season 123 on android and ps3 and season 1 on ps4. I have bought the WII U for my kid but we hadly use it for gaming. It mostly gets used for netflix lol

Not for Wii games, Monster Hunter, Wonderful 101, or Super Mario 3D World? Using Wii U only for Netflix sounds like a waste when it's also on PS3.

 

[Trever Chalmers]

Not for Wii games, Monster Hunter, Wonderful 101, or Super Mario 3D World? Using Wii U only for Netflix sounds like a waste when it's also on PS3.

I mostly got it for my wife and kid, we used to use the bluray for netflix but too slow to load much faster on the WII U

 

[Rafie]

The PS3 Netflix loads faster than my Wii U Netflix.

 

[Sean]

@francis247uk I too am surprised at how many platforms they're hitting and given they've only favoured Nintendo with a couple of disc releases in the past there's no precedent for them to publish on the Wii U.

I'm perfectly happy playing Pinball Arcade on my iPad, but I did like the idea of having DMD on the Gamepad display and higher-quality assets and it's hard not to be a Wii bit disappointed (haha) after they strung people along for a year with statements about it coming to the platform.

 

[Sean DonCarlos]

I'm perfectly happy playing Pinball Arcade on my iPad, but I did like the idea of having DMD on the Gamepad display and higher-quality assets and it's hard not to be a Wii bit disappointed (haha) after they strung people along for a year with statements about it coming to the platform.

If I had to guess, I'd say that management wanted to come out with a Wii U version, the developers tried and saw it was not possible, management told them to make it work somehow, the developers tried again and reality said "no, this really is not going to happen", and then it took a while for that to sink in on the management side.

 

[Sean]

If it can run on Playstation or Xbox it could run on Wii U - I have no doubt of that. I find it easier to believe it's just a time/reward issue and they don't think it's worth investing the time. It's their choice and I'm not going to second guess them.

 

[Brian Clark]

If I had to guess, I'd say that management wanted to come out with a Wii U version, the developers tried and saw it was not possible, management told them to make it work somehow, the developers tried again and reality said "no, this really is not going to happen", and then it took a while for that to sink in on the management side.

I doubt this is the case, especially since Pinball Arcade is on systems less powerful than the WiiU like Android and iOS. I think it has more to do with how WiiU is less popular than other systems and not as powerful as PS4 or Xbox 1.

The 3DS one was the one cancelled for the system being less powerful, though I still think they could do better than the PHoF that came out for 3DS. The PS2 version runs at 60 FPS and the 3DS can do that with 3D off.

 

[superballs]

If I had to guess, I'd say that management wanted to come out with a Wii U version, the developers tried and saw it was not possible, management told them to make it work somehow, the developers tried again and reality said "no, this really is not going to happen", and then it took a while for that to sink in on the management side.

I'd have to think it was the opposite, as I can't see any reason for it not to be possible to run TPA on the Wii-U, any less well than it runs on the 360 or PS3, contentiously maybe even a bit better. The devels probably had big ideas and management more than likely nixxed the project as it may have been viewed as not financially viable.

The Wii-U's worth will be determined in the next year when big Nintendo titles come out. I know there's one in my future, but that doesn't mean it's going to be very successful in the long run.

 

[Redrazorback64]

Again, the Wii U has a slower CPU than 360 or PS3. I know that's hard to believe, but it's true. Other companies have scrapped Wii U ports for this reason. I'm not sure if that has anything to do with TPA not being on the Wii U though.

 

[Bowflex]

I'd have to think it was the opposite, as I can't see any reason for it not to be possible to run TPA on the Wii-U, any less well than it runs on the 360 or PS3, contentiously maybe even a bit better. The devels probably had big ideas and management more than likely nixxed the project as it may have been viewed as not financially viable.

The Wii-U's worth will be determined in the next year when big Nintendo titles come out. I know there's one in my future, but that doesn't mean it's going to be very successful in the long run.

Yeah, the way I've heard it is that any emulation requires more horsepower out of the system processor. While the overall Wii U has the power and potential to make much better looking games than any of the last gen of consoles, it would struggle to perform the emulation as well. The PS4 and XBone (and even their predecessors) will be running great looking tables in 3d while Wii U will have tables that would look slightly better than an iPhone or Android but not likely measure up to the other consoles. I imagine that it might still be able to handle it but would require a bit more programming effort and/or trickery to pull off everything.

Nobody ever makes games on any Nintendo system as great as Nintendo themselves. When you buy one of their consoles, you should be going in with the understanding that you are buying it on faith that they will deliver great games. I plan on buying a Wii U eventually and I think Nintendo has some great games coming out in the next year. But starting with the N64 they started losing third party support. When I bought a Gamecube it was well into the lifespan and I was buying it just for the first and second party games. I would bet Mario Kart 8 will look as good or better as most games on the Xbone and PS4 but I would not buy the Wii U for third party games, including pinball arcade.

 

[Brian Clark]

Again, the Wii U has a slower CPU than 360 or PS3. I know that's hard to believe, but it's true. Other companies have scrapped Wii U ports for this reason. I'm not sure if that has anything to do with TPA not being on the Wii U though.

I'm not sure if it's all that cut and dry. It has a slower clock speed, but different processors aren't always comparable. I remember hearing similar things back during the GameCube days, but ports to GCN outdid ports to PS2 when developers didn't just take the easy way out and port everything from PS2.

I understand emulation is CPU heavy (and probably the main reason Pinball Arcade runs well on my PC despite it having a Geforce GT 520M video card), but I doubt Pinball Arcade is ALL CPU since parts of the game can't be done in emulation. I know M2 did tricks to get Galaxy Force II running on PS2 and 3DS, which I heard was even hard to port to SEGA Saturn due to the Y board hardware.

I don't know if I agree about no one making games on a Nintendo system as good as Nintendo themselves. I would argue that Clover studio, Platinum, Treasure, M2, Capcom, Atlus, and Namco (and probably a few others) made games every bit as good as the games Nintendo puts out. Not to mention second parties like Retro and HAL.

 

[superballs]

I'm not sure if it's all that cut and dry. It has a slower clock speed, but different processors aren't always comparable. I remember hearing similar things back during the GameCube days, but ports to GCN outdid ports to PS2 when developers didn't just take the easy way out and port everything from PS2.

I understand emulation is CPU heavy (and probably the main reason Pinball Arcade runs well on my PC despite it having a Geforce GT 520M video card), but I doubt Pinball Arcade is ALL CPU since parts of the game can't be done in emulation. I know M2 did tricks to get Galaxy Force II running on PS2 and 3DS, which I heard was even hard to port to SEGA Saturn due to the Y board hardware.

I don't know if I agree about no one making games on a Nintendo system as good as Nintendo themselves. I would argue that Clover studio, Platinum, Treasure, M2, Capcom, Atlus, and Namco (and probably a few others) made games every bit as good as the games Nintendo puts out. Not to mention second parties like Retro and HAL.

Factor 5 put out a few good games for the game cube as well

 

[Rudy]

I thought one of the guys who visited Farsight's studio mentioned that they had a working Wii U version there with the DMD on the gamepad?

Something doesn't add up about all of this, and I'm inclined to believe it's been dropped until it's considered profitable to port to the Wii U. The delays to games like Watch_dogs for the Wii U make me think that there's a lot of companies that have given up hope on the Wii U and don't publicly want to say it, yes if Pinball Arcade was ported to the Wii U it'd have a tiny dedicated fanbase, and probably a bunch of Wii U users who want something new... but it wouldn't make anywhere near the sales that they'd be making for the PS4/PC/One and they're a drop in the ocean compared to the Android/iOS market. Considering the price that Nintendo might want farsight to pay to get the game on their consoles and you're looking at something that may not ever recoup it's development costs.

Farsight are probably better off by devoting their time to getting the PS4/One tables upgraded so they can be released, for it'll make them a lot more money than adding a brand new division to cater for.

 

[Brian Clark]

At least 360 is coming back and PC has low requirements. I'm shocked by how good the iPad 1 version of Pinball Arcade is, especially considering how it ran when it first came out. As far as next gen goes, I'm more interested in PS4 than Xbox One. Vita is more attractive than it was at launch, and it will probably be my next system (unless I get lucky and find a good deal on a Lynx at a yard sale).